L-R Paul Mason, Kevin Courtney, Melissa Benn & Emma Dent Coad in Kilburn, March 25th
A fortnight ago we published the transcript of famed British journalist and broadcaster Paul Mason publicly abusing a local anti-war activist. Now we are publishing another abusive outburst from Mason at the same event, this time aimed at former Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn.
At a debate organised by Kensal & Kilburn – Better 2024, titled “Is it worth voting Labour in 2024?” Mason, who was arguing that it is worth voting for the party, attacked Corbyn during the Question & Answer session when the event Chair, Melissa Benn, asked him to explain “why Keir Starmer has made the left within the party the enemy instead of working with them as Biden worked with Bernie Sanders.”
The high-profile journalist and Labour campaigner Paul Mason was in Kilburn tonight, part of a debate organised by Kensal & Kilburn – Better 2024 titled “Is it worth voting Labour in 2024?”
Chaired by Melissa Benn, the panel was made up of the Kensington independent candidate, Emma Dent Coad; former General Secretary of the National Education Union, Kevin Courtney, and Mason, who confirmed he is looking to become a Labour parliamentary candidate ahead of the general election. In 2022 Mason was apparently exposed plotting to take down the British left in collaboration with security agents, something he strongly denies.
Below is a transcript of part of the Q and A session at end of tonight’s meeting in which Mason accused an audience member of antisemitism. Within minutes of the meeting concluding, Mason had tweeted his slur against the audience member, a well-known North Kensington community campaigner, to his 611,000 followers. The audio can be heard here. Judge for yourself.
Audience member: “I can’t believe that there hasn’t been any mention here of the Labour Files, like you know the way that Jeremy Corbyn was outed and obliterated through the media because of Keir Starmer and his Israeli sponsors and the fact that so many in the Labour Party are supported and funded by Israel. How can anyone even consider voting Labour, they don’t stand for the people. The only hope that we have and why I’m here supporting Emma is because she’s local she would have stood for Labour again but Starmer and his Israeli body didn’t want her standing and that’s been the case as we’ve seen across the country and it means that Labour candidates in the wards aren’t locals known to locals, don’t understand the local situation and the issues that we’ve struggled through. She knows us, she’s out there with us, she stood alongside us through the atrocity of Grenfell, she never gave up when she was our MP at the time. She held meeting after meeting after meeting in the House of Commons and has constantly supported everyone. That’s what we want, that’s our hope so as far as I’m concerned, the more independent candidates that stand the better.”
Paul Mason: “See, why didn’t you just say Jew? Why didn’t you just say Jew? Because…why didn’t you just say “He’s a Jewish agent”? Why didn’t you just say it because that’s what you mean isn’t it. And I’ll say to you, anybody in this room who wants to be part of a left where you go around saying ‘Starmer’s an Israeli agent’ if you want to do that, fine, form a party together, form an alliance, support Emma, but don’t bother supporting the Labour party because we are anti-racists, we are anti-racists and I will never accept that Starmer is an agent of Israel, comrade. If the left wants to break with Labour, if the left wants to go down a little rabbit hole of all the other five, six, seven alliances that are being formed, good luck, not as good luck as to the Greens, but good look. But please work out that that that’s where you’re heading, you have to either decide you’re for it or against it. I am against it. I am against it. I am against it and I don’t need any lectures about genocide, I’ve been to Gaza, I’ve seen what the Israelis do, I’ve seen what they do I will not have Starmer being called an Israeli agent.”
Emma Dent Coad: “I’m just going to pass by that….”
Mason interrupts: “She’s your supporter”
Dent Coad: “We’ve marched together, I know exactly where she stands, and we are marching with our Jewish brothers and sisters. I’m not having that and you know that it’s a political ideology. It’s the easiest thing in the world to accuse somebody of anti-Semitism when they are against a political ideology. It’s a political ideology which is the issue and we all know that, so, you know, don’t fall down that rabbit hole please.”
Kensington Labour Party finally released a statement calling for a ceasefire in Palestine, over three weeks after local councillors wrote a first draft, and only after the criminal government of Binyamin Netanyahu had agreed to a temporary truce. Multiple Labour councillors have told Urban Dandy that interventions from local and regional Labour officials delayed the release of the statement and ensured the local party did not contradict and embarrass Labour leader Keir Starmer and Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy who have backed Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip. We have obtained the Kensington councillors’ original statement, which bears little resemblance to the published version, adding to the evidence of a crackdown on internal democracy and a prioritisation of Israeli government interests under Starmer.
Original Statement
The original statement drafted by the Kensington Labour councillors was ready for publication on 7th November. In contrast with the version published three weeks later, the original is clear that Israel is responsible for the genocide it is carrying out. This put the Kensington group of councillors in alignment with international law as Israel has no right to use violence against a population that it occupies.Continue reading →
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the political-media establishment went wild with its virtue signalling; opposing Vladimir Putin’s government as a pariah and offering unrestrained moral support to the plucky underdog Ukrainians. When Israel accelerated its genocide of Palestinians in October, the same establishment did a 180. Instead of calling for international law to be upheld, or offering moral and military support to the victims of a decades-long occupation and siege, establishment figures went from virtue signalling to sin signalling. For Ukraine, there was one audience, for Palestine, another. One audience required virtue, the other something very different.
Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine triggered a full-spectrum psychological operation against the minds of the British population. A clean sweep of politicians, commentators and public figures demanded that we uphold human rights and support the Ukrainians at any cost short of direct British military confrontation with Russia.Continue reading →
The Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain, Holland Park Avenue, London. Does the slogan reflect reality?
The liberal freak out following two acts of democracy in 2016 (Brexit and Trump) trapped our culture in binary (liberal and conservative) thought patterns. The lies that Russia influenced the EU vote and hacked the US election were eagerly lapped up by liberals, helping consolidate an anti-democracy pro-war consensus that currently dominates power (posing as two parties) and laid the foundations for a Psychological Operation that has force-fed us non-stop since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The Psy-Op has been stunningly effective, leading us to the brink of nuclear catastrophe while shutting down free speech, diplomacy and our prospects for survival.
Propaganda
The Psy-Op pushes unrelenting propaganda across the most trusted mainstream media outlets. From the start of the war, these outlets presented highly dubious claims about the most serious crimes as true.
Some of their reporting has been entirely false, including the Snake Island ‘heroics’ that you probably forgot a couple of weeks later.
Screengrab from BBC.co.uk
It’s all additive, so even if it’s a lie, it still works because it builds the one-sided narrative and they don’t have to admit or report that they misled us. No other media will call them out because they are at it too.
The Psy-Op has censored alternative (including fact-based) perspectives. No dissenting opinions (including those advocating diplomacy) have been allowed; in the age of mobile phones very little footage of the war is broadcast; Ukraine’s defeats are ignored or downplayed; President Biden’s historic role in the most corrupt country in Europe is under-reported; the inconvenientUkrainiandeath toll is generally ignored as if it’s a minor detail, while the dead soldiers are lauded as “heroic” – part of an emotional, irrational justification for British arms manufacturers to export more weapons. The pro-war legacy media refers to these weapons shipments as an “extraordinary level of support” without which the war could not continue.
Screengrab from Google search
Imagine if half of the UK’s current population was sacrificed to save Europe from Nazis. That’s what happened to the Soviet Union in World War Two. This historical perspective is omitted from the coverage, yet it is pertinent, as Ukraine’s army contains Nazi battalions. The Psy-Op has even tried to rehabilitate the image of Ukraine’s Nazi Azov Battalion. Nazis – the people we were raised to hate and fear, who blitzed our cities and sought to enslave us. The Holocaust.
To the Psy-Op, Nazis are not a moral problem, only a public relations challenge.
Screengrab from The Times
Nazi Azov flags behind England’s goal, 9th September 2023, did not spark outrage among our well-disciplined media professionals.
The Psy-Op immediately proscribed the Russian perspective. No more Russia Today on your telly. The war (2014-ongoing) on the Donbas in east Ukraine, covered by all news outlets until 2022, is now omitted from reporting. Why?
Screengrab from Google/International Crisis Group
As millions of refugees left Ukraine, with millions more internally displaced, the Psy-Op focused on President Zelenskyy as the embodiment of virtue and bravery. He dressed in military colours but is an actor, not a soldier.
Green?
In October, the Psy-Op told us that Russia blew up its own pipeline, Nord Stream 2. It didn’t make any sense, not from any perspective, but you could accept it or suppress your doubts because no other view (such as the truth) was given air time. Severing the economic partnership between our two most powerful neighbours (Germany and Russia), the pipeline sabotage is a climate catastrophe but the perpetrators will go on to decide sustainability goals for the world.
Intense gaslighting. Screengrab from Google
The Psy Op plays a game of Them & Us. Russia is them, Ukraine is us. Ukrainians are dying fighting for our values, politicians tell you. The name Ukraine quickly became synonymous with liberal Western values. Despite being located in the east, and despite its intricate ethnic, religious, historical, cultural, and familial ties with Russia, we were suddenly informed that Ukraine is European like us, while Russia is talked about as if it is non-European. Did it help that on day one of the invasion, every single news reporter simultaneously started pronouncing Ukraine’s capital city as Keev? Was that all it took? No doubt the yellow and blue flags everywhere helped too. For those in a torpid state of binary identity politics, joining in with the hysteria was seamless.
An American, Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, was recently appointed as a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The transgender journalist with her outlandish propaganda is not the only American mercenary in Ukraine and Biden has authorised combat pay for them, despite them not officially fighting for the US.
Screengrab from Twitter/Sarah Ashton-Cirillo
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
Suspicious? You surely are by now. We have consented to a merger with other NATO states and Ukraine’s autocratic government in an extreme provocation of a nuclear power and nobody is talking about diplomacy. Why not?
In 1947, the United States, at the pinnacle of its unassailable global power, passed its National Security Act. That same year, President Truman warned of the “Red Menace” and the American population got used to the permanent state of fear that justifies military spending. In 1950, a top-secret National Security Council policy paper called NSC-68 committed the US to never negotiating with Russia, the bad faith approach that encompassed the creation of NATO, its aggressive eastward expansion, and American/British interference in Ukraine’s democratic processes.
Politicians, unconcerned by the environmental destruction of the Nord Stream sabotage, and undeterred by the Ukrainian death toll, have played their part to perfection. Any parliamentarians who resist, even slightly, are easily brought into line.
Screengrab from GoogleScreengrab from The Independent
There’s a non-existent dividing line between the media and the state. The media, politicians, and some citizens too, love to demonise President Putin, diplomacy, and peace, but I am yet to meet a British person (aside from British-Ukrainians) whose daily life has ever been negatively impacted by Putin (or diplomacy, or peace).
The Russian government was duped into playing along with the Minsk Accords, hoping to bring peace to eastern Ukraine where Nazis and other Ukrainian units were targeting ethnic Russians. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted the Accords were just a ruse to buy time to prime Ukraine for war. She framed this as a clever move, which it is if you’re a psychopath who doesn’t care about human life.
Projection: “the attribution of one’s ideas, feelings, or attitudes to other people or to objects.”
The Psy Op’s functionaries project their own characteristics and psychology onto Russia. What are the traits? A salivating desire for violent domination of others. This enables the functionaries to ignore or downplay the very real prospect of nuclear war. The UK follows the country that dropped two atomic bombs on Japan for no reason other than pursuit of a destructive rivalry with the Russians. President Biden is “leading” the Western world, yet he can’t walk or talk straight. He doesn’t know our prime minister’s name, but we follow him anyway, enslaved.
Screengrab from Google
British people have sponsored approximately 180,000 Ukrainians to escape the hell of war. What a contrast to the cynicism of the officials and corporations who knowingly sacrifice Ukrainians, and possibly Ukraine as a functioning state, for their own ends.
Us
British popular culture and millions of individuals declared their solidarity with Ukraine at the onset of Russia’s illegal invasion.
Image from Twitter / Alongcamenorwich
But this was a passive activism reflecting a herd mentality. Manchester City players wore tracksuits emblazoned with ‘No War’ but it reflected the Psy-Op’s co-opting of the language of peace rather than an effective grassroots movement calling for an end to hostilities. It was all easy, risk-free, socially acceptable virtue signalling.
Nuance is still not allowed. If you suggest that diplomacy is preferable to war, get ready to be shadow-banned or shut down immediately by those in the pay of the Psy-Op, or those who understand that the war industry (the constant state of war that keeps us scared and arms dealers’ profits high) benefits them and their economic status and have appointed themselves as Psy-Op cops policing the home front for signs of critical thinking.
Photo from Twitter / Janinebeckie
From day one of the invasion, anybody with a functioning brain cell knew the war could only end one of two ways: defeat for one side or a negotiated settlement. Because engaging diplomatically with Russia would undermine the purpose of the Psy-Op, the media and Psy-Op cops parroted the lie that Ukraine was winning. The Psy-Op’s victims, on (and in) the ground in Ukraine and the population of the Western world therefore had to maintain two contradictory ideas in their minds: Russia was so terrifyingly powerful it had to be stopped quickly before it decided to conquer all of Europe. And Russia was so meek that it was sure to be defeated on the battlefield by Ukraine.
NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg speaking at the World Economic Forum, Davos 2023. Screengrab from YouTube/NATO News
Confidence in a Ukrainian victory was useful in the early months of the war, to persuade the public that it was all worth it and that there was no need to consider alternative solutions while BAE Systems and the rest reaped the spoils of war (they will reap the spoils of reconstruction too).
Consideration of the Russian point of view has been left to serious analysts who are not invited to appear in legacy media, which has become infantilising and lightweight.
At home, the state is becoming increasingly draconian. Journalists are imprisoned in Belmarsh or harassed if they publish inconvenient facts, and the right to protest has been significantly limited. Parliament’s official opposition has purged its membership of peace activists. At the next election, we will choose between two pro-war parties willing to play brinksmanship with nuclear Armageddon.
The latest round of our impoverishment was labeled “Putin’s price hike” by Prime Minister Liz Truss. The surreal concept that China is a “threat” is being normalised, as it was with Russia, with no explanation of what exactly the “threat” is to the population. The Psy-Op’s media talk as if it is self-evidently true. With the “threat” of China, they pretend that all British people share the same values. But when it comes to these values being practiced in our daily lives, in our economy, they vanish – it’s then survival of the fittest, and if you can’t feed your children, that’s your problem.
From 2014, the United States turned Ukraine into a client state and a proxy. Nine years on and the proxy is fulfilling its role as a suicidal guarantor of endless war (endless war being preferable to successful war of course). We have heard stories about Ukrainian men who don’t believe in the war, who know their government has been conned for nine years with the promise of EU and NATO membership and they don’t want to die for it. They hide at home all day to avoid getting picked up by army recruitment officers. At night they scurry out and buy what they need as quickly as possible, hoping to wait out the carnage. What will be left of their country by the time Western states decide Ukraine has given enough for their anti-Russian cause?
If you disagree vehemently with my point of view yet managed to read this far, you deserve credit. Even if you believe that Ukraine really does represent Western liberal values that must be protected, we can surely still agree that the war needs to end. Anybody who cares about Ukrainians should be calling for peace talks as soon as possible, while Zelenskyy still has a bit of leverage.
But the Psy-Op doesn’t want you to think that deeply or logically, even at this stage when Ukraine seems to have no future as a unified country and the permanent displacement of the millions of refugees is a real prospect. If you can see this and still insist that Ukraine should fight to the last man, then maybe you don’t really care about Ukrainians. Maybe you never really did.
In Kensington Town Hall last Wednesday night, a Labour councillor’s motion, “Assistance to Children in Poverty,” was slapped down by the permanent Conservative majority that dominates the council. A perfect allegory for the hopelessly dysfunctional politics of Kensington & Chelsea.
(the Labour councillors’ original motion)
Councillor Mohammed Bakhtiar’s motion was modest; he acknowledged the appalling rates of child poverty in the borough and the additional challenges created by the Covid restrictions. He called on the council to establish systems and allocate additional funds to address a crisis in which food poverty and job insecurity have compounded the difficulties faced by thousands of families.
The Labour councillor’s motion noted that a quarter (4,500 according to the last census) of the borough’s children live in poverty, with most of them residing in working households. A report by WPU Economics for the Kensington & Chelsea Foundation in 2021 showed that almost half (45.3%) of the borough’s children attend independent schools, far higher than both the London (10.1%) and England (9.7%) averages. This means that, of the Kensington children not in private education, close to half are living in poverty. The WPU report also notes:
• Black students in the borough have a gap in average Attainment 8 scores (a measure of progression in attainment) that is four and a half times larger than in England overall.
• White British pupils eligible for Free School Meals in the borough are the largest educationally disadvantaged group in terms of GCSE performance and higher education.
WPU Economics identified a wide range of factors that contribute to the borough’s educational inequalities:
• RBKC had higher temporary and permanent exclusion rates in primary and secondary state schools than both London and England as a whole. (This has been worsened by the academisation process, including the unaccountable leadership installed at Holland Park School)
• Exclusions for Black and Mixed ethnicity students are twice as high as their White or Asian peers. For students with Special Education Needs provision, they are three times as high as those without.
• Inadequate housing impacts education and 13% of RBKC households are overcrowded; 29.8 out of every 1,000 households are in temporary accommodation in the borough, compared to 17 in London 4.1 in England overall.
• A combination of a lack of space to learn at home and language and cultural barriers has meant that many children struggled to access quality education during the period of Covid restrictions.[i]
If we break the statistics down geographically, they become even more stark. Census figures for Golborne ward in North Kensington revealed that 68% of children were living in overcrowded homes. On Henry Dickens Court in another northern ward, Notting Dale, child poverty was at 58% while in Queens Gate, South Kensington, it was 2.8%.
Before Covid, communities in the north of the borough already faced a deteriorating situation; men in Golborne’s life expectancy had dropped to 72, while in a southern ward, Hans Town, they live 22 years longer. With a higher number of people from Black and minority ethnic communities residing in North Kensington, the area was disproportionately impacted by Covid. Office for National Statistics data showed Black males being over 400% more likely to die from Covid than white males. Parents of children living in poverty and overcrowded accommodation were also more likely to have a job deemed key to the economy, so many had to continue going to work while the laptop class worked from home, saving money and extending economic inequality.
The obscene inequalities affect the south of the borough too, with cuts to services worsening the poverty already entrenched in Earls Court and Chelsea World’s End.
Demand for tuition
While the borough’s third sector has worked valiantly to provide opportunities for children to catch up with lost learning following the counter-productive school closures, the demand has been difficult to meet in a funding environment in which charitable donations are declining.
An education coordinator at local charity told us: “The cost-of-living has bitten down on families, and we’re still in the long shadow of Covid, so demand for our classes has sky rocketed. We’ve doubled our registrations for educational support in the last year.
“All children were negatively affected by Covid because most learning progress happens in the classroom. But children from economically disadvantaged families were hit the hardest, and it’s not because the children aren’t capable or they have the wrong attitude. Factors like a lack of financial resources in the family, unsettled home circumstances and having parents who don’t have a high level of UK education are decisive.
“Children from families with money have been negatively affected too, results are down across the board. But being able to afford private tuition and IT equipment stops them falling behind. Teachers at schools are now over-stretched so can’t give time and attention to those who need it most. So an attempt at equity in education is not unfair in any way. Investing in high-impact support will help all children because it would free up time in the classroom for all pupils.
“Education is the most important thing to invest in in any community. It lifts people out of poverty, breaks negative cycles in families and empowers individuals to improve their circumstances. There’s a net positive effect on every aspect of the local community, social and economic. Crime goes down, cohesion increases.”
It was in this dire economic and social milieu, and under the council’s giant crest with its motto ‘What a good thing it is to dwell together in unity’ that Labour councillors sought to make some inroads into addressing the educational inequality they see worsening every day in their wards.
The Conservatives’ response was moved by Cllr Will Pascall of Chelsea and Cllr David Lindsay, former Mayor of Kensington:
(Tories’ amended motion)
The Tory councillors deleted from the specific actions proposed by the Labour councillors, namely identifying children in particular need of educational support and allocating funds to help them. The urgency in the Labour motion was replaced with a reaffirmation of the status quo and a specific focus on celebrating children at “grant-maintained schools” – the children already least in need of support catching up after Covid because they aren’t hampered by overcrowding, over-worked parents, poverty, and stress.
Because of the rules of the game at the Town Hall, Labour, the minority party, could not oppose the majority party’s amendments; they could only voice their opposition in a debate, and policy remained unchanged. As it has since the 1960s when an in-depth study found that Kensington’s Tory councillors saw it as their duty to limit public spending strictly to the provision of statutory services and to encourage “self-help” among the poor.
This was a boilerplate move from the Tories. Nothing has changed in the 50 years of the borough’s existence. No event, even the “most serious crime committed on British soil this century”[ii] can shake the Conservatives’ complacency. Posh white people with property portfolios who pay other people to raise their children and clean their homes push “self-reliance” on impoverished young people while restoring the council’s bank reserves and keeping their voting base, who have no material problems, on high alert over Labour’s menacing attitude towards the Tories’ one local campaign issue: bin collections.
The specific councillors who submitted the Tories’ response are typical Kensington toffs. Cllr Lindsay is an old Etonian, while Cllr Pascall apparently sent his children there.
The council does not look like an administrative entity capable of responding to the needs of disparate groups in a time of widening inequality when senior councillors treat politics like a sport. The Labour councillors who spoke against the Conservatives’ amendments to the timely “Assistance to Children in Poverty” motion also have to reckon with Sir Keir Starmer’s determination to keep those same children in poverty as he appeases the donor base that he serves, many of whom live in Kensington.
What a good thing it is to dwell together in unity.
[i] All statistics in these bullet points are taken from Poverty and Prosperity in Kensington + Chelsea Understanding inequalities in a Borough of Extremes; A WPI Economics Report for The Kensington + Chelsea Foundation; November 2021
[ii] Peter Apps, quote from Show Me The Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen; Oneworld Publications
Labour’s National Executive Committee torpedoed local party democracy to prevent local candidates from being chosen in the marginal seat of Kensington for the next general election. Here’s what we know about how they did it…
Former MP barred
October 17th: Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) excludes Labour’s only ever Kensington MP Emma Dent Coad from the candidate longlist. Read about it here.
The three-person NEC panel that excludes Dent Coad includes two influential figures committed to Sir Keir Starmer’s purge of socialists: LukeAkehurst, director of the lobbying organisation We Believe in Israel. And Shama Tatler, co-chair of Labour to Win, a right-wing campaigning group.
NEC & London Region usurp local officers
October 20th: Regional Director of Greater London Labour Party Pearleen Sangha dismisses two Kensington Selection Committee members for “openly supporting” a candidate. Sangha speculates about “a blatant attempt to undermine the process” – the two members reject the accusation.
A more right-wing member of the Committee remains in post, despite openly campaigning for candidate Joe Powell, even appearing in his campaign video. Complaints from party members to London Region about the double standard go unanswered.
Local candidate would have been shortlisted
October 27th: Councillor Kasim Ali wins every round in the South Branch vote, meaning he needs to be selected by just one of the remaining two branches to make the shortlist. Afsana Lachaux is also nominated.
Results from the South Branch vote are circulated to members in accordance with Labour’s democratic procedures. Sangha declares that this constitutes a “leak” and runs all subsequent meetings and votes herself, keeping the results secret.
In a statement, senior Kensington Labour officers say: “In all three Kensington branch selection meetings, Sangha overruled local elected role-holders and chaired the Zoom call herself…muting all attendees. She has been unprofessional, hostile, and insulting to local role holders, often making threats and rarely responding to messages”.
screengrabs from twitter / tomorrowsmps
Intervention over Black History Month
October 31st: A Constituency Labour Party (CLP) ‘All Members’ meeting with a Black History Month theme is scheduled, but on the day of the meeting, London Region informs the CLP Secretary the meeting cannot take place during the selection process. The CLP Secretary asks if the meeting can go ahead if the discussion is limited to the Black history theme and presented by a local campaigner. London Region agrees but states that no candidates can attend.Continue reading →
In an unashamed assault on party democracy last month, Keir Starmer’s Labour targeted and excluded significant numbers of British Somalis from the shortlisting process for candidates hoping to become Kensington’s next member of parliament. Urban Dandy has been given details of how the party’s bureaucracy was mobilised to guarantee a result favourable to the party’s right wing.
The Kensington Constituency Labour Party (CLP) is made up of three branches: South, North East and North West. Labour members in each branch were to vote to narrow down their choice of candidates from a longlist to a shortlist of three, then to vote for one candidate to take on Conservative incumbent Felicity Buchan at the next general election. Former Kensington MP Emma Dent Coad had already been barred from standing by the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) in a factional right-wing intervention.
South Branch
Next in the NEC’s sights was Councillor Kasim Ali, a prominent local politician and a British Somali with a history of community activism in North Kensington. From several Kensington Labour insiders we have heard that, with Dent Coad removed, the NEC hoped that one of their preferred candidates would secure the candidacy. But at the South Branch’s 27th October selection vote, Cllr Ali eased to a comfortable victory, winning every round.
image from Twitter / Kasim Ali
With Cllr Ali needing a nomination from just one of the two North Kensington branches to secure a place on the shortlist, the NEC took over, overriding the CLP’s democratic procedures and fixing the result. Here’s how they did it…
North East Branch
The North East vote scheduled for 1st November was postponed on the pretext of the branch not having the correct Zoom license to accommodate the number of members wishing to attend. Local Labour sources told us that a new license was hastily purchased but Labour’s London Region Executive postponed the vote until 9th November, giving the NEC time to create the chaotic circumstances in which they could guarantee victory for one of their preferred candidates.
By the day of the North West selection on 3rd November, a familiar tactic from the Corbyn era had been put in play to prevent Cllr Ali from securing a nomination at his home branch vote. A vitriolic message about one of the candidates, Mete Coban, was sent to all CLP members from an email address named ‘Danger in Kensington.’ Access to the membership mailing list is strictly limited so the email is likely to have been circulated by somebody holding a senior position within Labour at local, regional or NEC level. Two local Labour sources told Urban Dandy that the NEC’s two preferred candidates had also been provided with the membership’s contact data “months before”.
The highly dubious message was unquestioningly amplified in a vicious attack piece on Kasim Ali in a local blog, while Jewish News blamed “a group of activists” in North Kensington. There was no evidence that the councillor or any of his associates had a connection to the message and no explanation was offered as to how they could have circulated it or what their motivation to sabotage the process might have been. Labour bureaucrats seized upon the story to torpedo the CLP’s democracy, taking control of the selection process and barring Cllr Ali from standing.
Senior Kensington Labour members issued a statement that included the line “there is evidence that the racist message was written by a local known not be (sic) a Labour Party member and was initially posted on a Kensington Community Facebook page.”
There will be more on what Cllr Ali describes as a “fake antisemitism” smear in a later article.
North West Branch
On the day of the ‘Danger in Kensington’ email, Labour members in the North West branch were set to vote on who to shortlist. However, a significant number were prevented from doing so. A Labour councillor told Urban Dandy that “14 to 16 members” were blocked. Another councillor informed us that the number was closer to 20. Both told us that all the excluded members had one thing in common, they were British Somali.
By this point, the selection meetings, held on Zoom, were being chaired by Labour’s London Region Director, Parleen Sangha. According to a local councillor, Sangha told some of the British Somali members “we can’t hear you” before removing them from the meeting and not readmitting them as they attempted to re-join the meeting for an hour and a half. Others simply saw the image below when they clicked on the meeting link.
(Screengrabbed and sent to Urban Dandy by a British Somali Labour member in the North West branch)
We have been informed that an elected Labour councillor for Golborne ward (part of the North West branch and one of the most impoverished wards in Britain) received a text message from a London Region representative as voting commenced telling them ‘I don’t have the correct email for you’ as a justification for cancelling their access to the ballot. The councillor is also British Somali and was using the same email address used when registering as a party member and used to log in to all subsequent meetings and votes.
No results from the North East or North West selection votes were published, and Joe Powell will stand for Labour at the general election having easily defeated the other shortlisted candidates, Mete Coban and Apsana Lachaux on 9th November.
Racial Profiling?
Labour councillors who spoke to Urban Dandy stopped just short of accusing Keir Starmer’s NEC and London Region of racism against British Somalis. They informed us that Labour members in the North East branch, mostly from ethnic minority communities, were also prevented from participating, while former party members with favourable views of Starmer were enabled by London Region to fast-track their re-joining on the day of the vote.
We asked London Region for clarity on why Cllr Ali’s bid for candidacy was undemocratically denied. They responded that they “had to” commence a “serious investigation” into antisemitism in Kensington CLP and that local members had been suspended “due to antisemitism”.
Their reply to Urban Dandy did not mention Kasim Ali or explain the prima facie racial profiling of British Somalis.
On 4th November Kasim Ali was interviewed by the NEC over the ‘Danger in Kensington’ email. They accepted that there was no connection between the councillor or his supporters and the message. However, his right to stand was not reinstated. It is not clear if this meeting was the “serious investigation” referred to by London Region.
A Labour source told Urban Dandy that they had searched the membership database and found that none had been suspended for suspected antisemitism.
Cllr Ali told us that he asked the Labour Party to investigate the circulation of the ‘Danger in Kensington’ email but, to date, the party has not done this.
We also understand that Cllr Ali was blocked from speaking at the CLP’s Black History Month event in October following a concern raised by a rival candidate that this would give Ali an unfair advantage in the constituency selection. London Region issued a ban on longlisted Kensington candidates attending the event. Cllr Ali complained to London Region about his exclusion but has not received a reply.
Starmer’s Labour
Under the leadership of Keir Starmer, Labour has purged its left-wing, often expelling or suspending members on spurious grounds, while many others who identify as left-wing have resigned their memberships in protest at Labour’s dramatic shift to the right.
When people rose up to protest racism in Summer 2020, Starmer dismissed the Black Lives Matter movement as “Black Lives Matter moment” while the party has at times positioned itself to theright of Suella Braverman on migration.
The signs are that Labour in government would be pro-war, unreservedly pro-NATO and cement the UK’s role as junior partner and enabler of the United States’ constant war-making. US foreign policy currently includes bombing Somalia, humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen and occupation of a significant proportion of Syria.
To fulfil this agenda, Starmer and his bureaucracy must minimise the number of potentially anti-war politicians in parliament. In Kensington, once the party members had indicated a preference for Kasim Ali, the NEC abandoned any pretence of a commitment to democracy.
It can be claimed that the removal of Cllr Ali and the disenfranchisement of British Somali members was about ensuring a preferred candidate would stand, rather than a case of racism. But would Labour have done this if Ali was not a Black, Muslim, African, working-class British Somali in North Kensington?
Would an antisemitic trope have been weaponised if the targeted candidate and party members came from a different demographic? And if so, would its use have passed without comment or investigation by the party and media?
Generating fear in our Jewish community and disenfranchising our British Somali community appear to be acceptable collateral damage to the fanatical clique that has control of Labour. Starmer’s party is liberal-fascist, uninterested in the cause of labour and intent on using power to advance the class interests of the British establishment and the economic elite.
Just over a decade ago, I was involved in producing an important political pamphlet you have never read. Its title was ‘Unknown Hell’ and it reported on a visit undertaken by several Labour politicians to Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.
The pamphlet’s title was suggested by Sir Gerald Kaufman, the legendary phrase coiner who dubbed Labour’s 1983 manifesto “the longest suicide note in history.” Along with Kaufman and me, the contributors to the pamphlet were the MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Michael Connarty, reflecting a Labour party that was still a broad church. Kaufman was to the right, Connarty to the left, and Corbyn firmly on the left.
Kaufman’s ‘Unknown Hell’ title captured the fact that, despite them being the world’s largest refugee population, most people in the west are ignorant of the displaced Palestinians’ suffering. Ethnically cleansed in the 1940s and trapped in camps around the region ever since, Palestinian refugees have been re-victimised in every host country. Their legal right to return home under UN Resolution 194 has been reaffirmed by virtually the whole world every year since 1949, but the fulfilment of this right has been blocked by the United States and Israel.
The Unknown Hell pamphlet was to be circulated among Labour members to raise awareness about the world’s longest-running refugee crisis, and hopefully influence party policy. But it was blocked by people (none were Palestinian) inside the Labour party who were convinced that the Palestinian cause was better served by policies focused on supporting the corrupted Palestinian Authority. This thinking was in line with US-Israeli diktats to ignore the main problems facing the Palestinians and focus myopically on bureaucracy. A comfortable position for the faction within Labour that thinks efficient obeyance of power will produce a better world. Coincidently, the smooth advancement of their careers is also better served by taking this stance.
The MPs’ reflections on the hideous conditions in the Beirut and Tripoli camps, and their analysis of meetings with all the key players in Lebanon, were silenced. The Labour hostiles were led by Simon Danczuk, who feigned interest in justice and human rights to pick up Muslim votes in Rochdale before consuming himself with fanatical factional hatred of Corbyn.
Ten years on and politicians and officials with this belligerent mentality have full control of Labour under Keir Starmer. Their creed is the goodness of the British state, giving them much in common with security state officials who appear to be influential in deciding who should stand for the party at general elections, candidates who will ensure that Palestinians’ (and Yemenis’, Ukrainians’…) misery is perpetuated by constant war. In this setup, there is no room for those who talk the language of diplomacy and peace.
A purge of grassroots Labour members is in full effect, but, like the suffering of the Palestinians in Lebanon, it is unknown to most people thanks to the media’s determined silence. An assault on the democracy of the party that is likely to form the next government is taking place in plain sight, but you’d never know it.
Those thrown out by Labour suffer their own personal hell, gaslit with infantile explanations after giving years to grassroots causes. Criticism of NATO is proscribed by party whips, further subduing what remains of socialist resistance to war in parliament. In these perverted circumstances, members are being expelled for possessing the qualities that most people find admirable: loyalty, steadfastness, and a willingness to support the most vulnerable.
There is no hierarchy of suffering that prevents the pain of these ousted Labour members from being discussed alongside the suffering of the 9.5 million Palestinian refugees or Britain’s many other victims. These are not discrete issues, and Keir Starmer’s purge of campaigners for peace and justice means that the UK cannot elect a progressive government at the next election. This has echoes in the refugee camps of Lebanon, and the unknown hell will continue thanks to the pro-war right’s grip on Labour.
by Tom Charles @tomhcharles
Jeremy Corbyn at the entrance of Bourj al Barajneh refugee camp in Beirut
Emma Dent Coad, the only Labour politician to win Kensington in its true blue history, spoke to Urban Dandy about the Labour party’s decision to bar her from standing at the next general election.
Context
Architectural historian, author, activist, and local resident Emma Dent Coad was elected to Kensington and Chelsea council in 2006. She campaigned on the full range of issues impacting residents in the most inequitable local authority in Britain including housing rights, poverty, and air quality. Dent Coad’s background in housing made her an ideal choice to be Labour’s 2017 parliamentary candidate in a constituency home to oligarchs and royals yet has seen a dramatic life expectancy decline in the borough’s poorest wards once austerity economics was imposed in 2010.
The councillor’s 2014 report, updated after the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, The Most Unequal Borough in Britain, used incontestable data to lay bare the shocking inequity of the borough where at one end 51% of children live in poverty vs at the other only 6% suffer this indignity. Dent Coad’s 2022 book, One Kensington, cemented her reputation as an expert on the impact of neoliberal economics in the borough.
Emma Dent Coad at a poster design competition for children affected by Grenfell, 2017.
2017
On Friday, June 11th the final seat in the 2017 general election was declared and Dent Coad was elected MP for Kensington: a first-time Labour gain. Winning by 20 votes, Dent Coad joined the activist Labour MPs’ Socialist Campaign Group in parliament. The role of socialists diminished under New Labour, but backbenchers like Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, and Diane Abbott kept community-based democratic, internationalist socialist politics alive in parliament. Labour’s left-right, democrat-technocrat schism had widened under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, yet New Labour was confident enough in its political project to co-exist with anti-war backbenchers and their frequent rebellions.
Three days after the Kensington constituency victory, the fire at Grenfell Tower brought the local issues that Emma Dent Coad had campaigned on to national prominence, crystalizing her parliamentary priority: justice for Grenfell.
Party leader Corbyn and other Campaign Group members were supportive of North Kensington; but Labour’s bureaucracy was dominated by factional enemies, intent on sabotaging the leadership, and as came to be revealed, actively worked to deny Labour an election victory. The harassment of Diane Abbott, the diversion of funds from left-wing candidates in marginal seats to right-wingers in safe seats and smear campaigns were among the methods deployed by this group, which included Iain McNicol, Labour’s then General Secretary. In 2017, Labour finished just 2227 votes short of being able to form a government.
Internal Labour documents leaked in 2020 showed senior party bureaucrats favouring cronyism over Corbynism. They preferred Tory rule with all the misery that brings to their own party’s kinder, more equitable, leadership. As the leaks became public (albeit not reported in the mainstream news) Dent Coad revealed her campaign had received little support from Labour HQ even when it became clear that an historic win in Kensington was on the cards.
Dent Coad explained: “When the atrocity of the Grenfell Tower fire ripped through my neighbourhood, I was finally sent help from McNicol’s office. However, it quickly became clear that this was not the help requested; I needed assistance with my casework team, who were struggling to help those impacted by the fire, but instead the general secretary sent someone to police me.Continue reading →
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