‘STRING ’EM UP!’
Corbyn allies’ sick threat to Shadow Cabinet Plot to gag Khan as Mayor candidate
ONE of Jeremy Corbyn’s leading supporters has threatened to ‘string up’ Shadow Cabinet Ministers who defy the new leader.
The warning was issued at a secret meeting of ‘Corbynistas’ in London, details of which were leaked to The Mail on Sunday.
Left-wing allies of the new Labour leader backed moves to silence Shadow Ministers who have criticised him, and Labour MPs opposed to Corbyn’s plan to scrap Britain’s nuclear weapons.
The most provocative warning came from Christine Shawcross, a member of Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) and a key Corbyn backer.
Commenting on claims that Shadow Ministers wanted to oust Corbyn but were prevented by fears that his supporters would ‘string them up’, Ms Shawcross said such fears were well-founded.
She said: ‘They are right about that – let’s all be in favour of stringing up in certain circumstances.’ She was backed by fellow Corbyn ally Jon Lansman, who said it was vital to tighten the Left-wing grip on the Labour Party machine to prevent the new leader being ousted by moderates. ‘Defensive’ measures were needed, he said, because: ‘There is no doubt that they are going to come for Jeremy – and they are going to come sooner rather than later.’
More than 30 of Corbyn’s closest political confidants – his ‘Praetorian Guard’ – gathered in a meeting room at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies on Wednesday.
The activists’ meeting, organised by pressure group London Labour Left, was entitled ‘Next steps after Labour conference – winning with Jeremy.’
A detailed account of the meeting obtained by this newspaper shows that, apart from issuing their crude threat, the organisers plotted to replace Labour’s Blairite London leader Len Duvall with Corbyn aide, London MP Kate Osamor.
They also discussed gagging Labour mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan, who criticised Corbyn for not singing the National Anthem at the Battle of Britain commemoration last month.
Christine Shawcross is no stranger to controversy: earlier this year she was suspended from the Labour Party after supporting the former mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman, who was sacked by an electoral court after corruption claims. She told Wednesday’s meeting: ‘When Jeremy was elected, all you heard was there were going to be coups against him, they weren’t going to stand this and wanted him out by Christmas.’
She said that it was vital to send a tough message to anti-Corbyn Shadow Cabinet Ministers: ‘We’ve got to make sure we let them know there are huge numbers of people in the party who support Jeremy.
‘We are not going to allow anybody to play silly buggers and undermine a leader elected with a huge mandate.’
Ms Shawcross also mocked Shadow Ministers who opposed him on Trident. Although she did not name them, they include Shadow Defence Secretary Maria Eagle and Lord Falconer.
Prompting laughter, she said: ‘Jeremy said no, he wouldn’t push the nuclear button and annihilate millions of innocent civilians, which just shows what a b****** he is.
‘Shadow Cabinet members couldn’t get to a microphone quick enough to say, “We can’t have this, we’ve got to have a Labour leader who does want to commit mass murder”.’
Corbyn’s Labour frontbench rebels had tried to portray him as ‘ridiculous,’ she said.
‘They made it look like some sort of fringe policy he [Corbyn] had dreamt up on a quiet Sunday afternoon – not that it had huge support.’
She called on Labour supporters to bombard local parties with messages and resolutions supporting Corbyn’s stance on nuclear weapons using so called ‘resolutionary socialism’ tactics. She said that it ‘would undercut all these Shadow Cabinet Ministers who are “nuclear weapons? Yes, please”.’
She was backed by fellow Corbyn backer Lansman who came under fire during the Labour leadership contest when he lampooned Blairite candidate Liz Kendall. He directed Twitter followers to a spoof page showing a mocked up picture of her as a potential Tory leader.
Lansman, who backs moves to use ‘mandatory reselection’ to get rid of moderate MPs, said: ‘We may have the leader of the Labour Party… but we don’t have the Labour Party machine and we’ve got to do something about that.’
Lansman called for London Labour chairman Len Duvall, who backed Blairite Tessa Jowell in Labour’s London mayor selection battle, to be challenged by Ms Osamor. She is one of the handful of MPs who nominated Corbyn for the leadership, and was recently rewarded with a job as his Parliamentary Private Secretary.
Other activists who were present
‘They’re coming for him sooner rather than later’
said London mayoral candidate Khan should be forced to toe Corbyn’s line on policies. Ms Shawcross said: ‘We have got a mayoral candidate who doesn’t support a lot of his [Corbyn’s] policies.’ It was ‘a pity’ that Diane Abbott, Corbyn’s former lover and fellow London Labour MP, hadn’t beaten Khan, she said.
Former NEC member Liz Davies, who was barred from standing as a Labour candidate in 1995 over her Left-wing links, said Corbyn was ‘completely out-numbered’ over Trident in the Shadow Cabinet. She called for a vote of Labour activists on the issue to force them to follow their leader. She said: ‘We should take the challenge head-on and build Jeremy a very loud and clear man- date on Trident.’ Another speaker railed at Labour moderates who wanted to ‘fly the English flag, be patriotic, and concede a whole series of issues to Ukip’.