Corbyn’s troops are hounding moderates like me
THERE can be no doubt about the degree of personal nastiness being handed out at national level by the Labour Party’s Corbynistas (Mail). Sadly, after bitter personal experience, I can reveal that this is true at local level also. Only a few months ago, Spelthorne Labour Party, to which I have belonged for some time, was a happy, moderate band of sisters and brothers working as best we could for the welfare of our local community in Surrey. Almost overnight, this formerly comradely group appears to have become controlled by the pro-Corbyn Momentum organisation, with anyone not sticking to the party line getting it very much ‘in the neck’. Last spring, I worked hard with a number of (I thought, like-minded) Labour people in the local election campaign. It was only after it was over that I discovered the true nature and agenda of the majority of these folk. It became clear that it was their intention to take over the local party organisation and mould it into a hard Left image. A new chair (one of my former candidate colleagues) was elected and other pro-Momentum-ites also got senior posts in the outfit. When, during the summer, I raised with the chair the possibility of an amicable bifurcation within Labour of socialist ‘true believers’ and social democrats, I was told to resign. Soon after that exchange I found out that, mysteriously and without any credible explanation on anyone’s part, I was banned from contributing to a local paper. When I rang the local party press officer to discuss this and other issues, he put the phone down on me. I’m not given to phobias, but a few days ago I got a tranche of emails which told me in no uncertain terms that I could expect no rational discussion with the party about troubling national or local issues. This isn’t an isolated phenomenon. At both national and local level, it’s clear that the hard Left now has its hands on the levers of power in the Labour Party and I reckon this is likely to remain the case for some time. The only hope for moderate social democrats like me must be the formation of an SDP Mk 2.