Labour has expelled a Jewish NEC member from the party
The Labour Party has expelled one of its most prominent Jewish members – by telling a right-wing newspaper first, and allowing a journalist to leak it.
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi: gone
As SKWAWKBOX reported:
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, the only elected Jewish member of Labour’s national executive committee (NEC) and a leading member of left-wing Jewish group JVL [Jewish Voice for Labour], has been expelled by the Labour party.
Wimborne-Idrissi revealed the expulsion via Twitter early on Friday 16 December. However, this was over 12 hours after Labour had leaked the news to the right-wing Jewish Chronicle. She claimed the party had told journalist at the Chronicle Lee Harpin:
While celebrating my 70th birthday on December 15, I heard from friends that Jewish Chronicle reporter Lee @lmharpin was claiming confirmation from "multiple sources" that I had been expelled from the Labour Party. Thread 1/5
— Naomi4LabNEC (@Naomi4LabNEC) December 16, 2022
Harpin did claim on Twitter that Wimborne-Idrissi had been expelled. The timestamp on his tweet was 9:29pm – with an earlier tweet where he hinted at a “significant Labour expulsion” stamped at 8:06pm.
Wimborne-Idrissi expanded on what happened in a Twitter thread:
Confidential email to me says my “membership of the Party stands terminated”. An NEC panel concluded I had “in its opinion, demonstrated the type of support for REIST (sic) [Resist], LIEN [Labour In Exile Network] and LAW [Labour Against the Witchhunt] prohibited by Chapter 2, Clause I.5.B.v of the Rules.”
So, details of internal disciplinary cases continue to be leaked to external media in breach of @UKLabour rules. Factional abuses highlighted by Forde Report continue unchecked. Action Plan supposedly overseen by @EHRC to ensure independence/transparency is a sham.
My treatment demonstrates the hostile campaign to which LW Labour Party members are being subjected, including disproportionate numbers of Jewish members. Expulsion follows my suspension in September, within weeks of being elected to Labour’s National Executive Committee.
Charge was, by taking part in discussion a year earlier organised by proscribed groups, I had demonstrated support for them – a “prohibited act”. I dispute this interpretation and will appeal my expulsion. It disenfranchises 1000s of members who voted to put me on the NEC.
The Labour purge continues
As the Canary previously reported, Labour proscribed (banned) several groups involved in the party back in July 2021. These were:
- Socialist Appeal.
- Labour in Exile Network (LIEN).
- Labour against the Witchhunt.
- Resist (the Chris Williamson-founded group).
Labour has since been expelling people who were members of the groups, or had associated with them. Victims of this included award-winning film director Ken Loach, Jewish member and organiser with JVL Graham Bash, and countless other people, too. Now, it seems even a democratically elected NEC member is not immune to Labour’s authoritarian purge. As Electronic Intifada journalist Asa Winstanley tweeted:
Disgusting. And entirely predictable.
Naomi was elected as the left’s anti-witch hunt candidate to the NEC (despite sabotage by the pitiful @PeoplesMomentum). So of course Starmer’s Labour has purged her. https://t.co/ItmB6Ch9oK
— Asa Winstanley (@AsaWinstanley) December 16, 2022
As Bash previously told the Canary:
For years and years, I was saying this witch-hunt[s]… real target is Jeremy Corbyn… And of course, I underestimated it. They’ve got rid of him, and it’s continued. And why is it continuing? Because [of] the Corbyn legacy… members, most of whom are on the left, are still here. And they want to gut the party of a vital part of its membership. So it will not stop, I’m quite convinced, unless and until they manage to do that.
However, it shows a new level of malice from the Labour machinery that it would unceremoniously dump one of its most prominent Jewish members. It remains to be seen what the point of the Labour Party is any more.
Featured image via Double Down News – YouTube
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Thanks for publishing this. I only recently found out that Oswald Mosley was a labour MP at one point founding the British Union of Fascists. It seems there are now the 21st century replacements in place via fake selections, mass surveillance and targeting of specific groups.
Is the solution a new socialist party?
I got involved with the launch of SA about 20 years ago but it got nowhere and I believe other initiatives to create a proper socialist party have also failed.
However, I am sure there is a large enough demographic in the country who would vote for a socialist party but it needs for the Labour party to be destroyed before an alternative can take its place. I think it would only work if the trade unions withdraw funding from Labour, en masse, and back a new party. Why are the unions so quiet about the purges anyway?
As ever I live in hope of being able to vote for a viable socialist party.
One supposes that it could be argued in a nuanced, intellectual and philosophical way that being Jewish would preclude Jewish people, whether orthodox or from the three other forms of self-identifying Jewishness (Haredi – ‘ultra-Orthodox’, Dati – ‘religious’, Masorti – ‘traditional’ and Hiloni – ‘secular’), ever could or should be capable of a generally and commonly prescribed ‘anti-Semitism’ that we see so freely bandied about ‘at the drop of a yarmulke’ within the UK Labour Party and elsewhere with indignant screechings of “anti-Semite”. Or, furthermore, that po-faced gentiles and indifferent atheists holding court (in Labour’s NEC) probably have questionable authority to decide what anti-Semitism is ~ that there’s an intrinsic impossibility, that there are oxymorons continually floating about unless the ‘court’ consists of learned Jews selected from across the Jewish divide of religious and ethnic identifiers sitting in formal and serious contemplation ruminating upon whether ‘this Jewish person’ or ‘that Jewish person’ had committed the grievous sin of ‘anti-Semitism’. Or, is it that the UK Labour Party’s reaches for its easy ‘get out’ to sufficiently grab a rubber-stamp and thump the oftimes pathetic that explains nothing “Brought The Labour Party Into Disrepute” on an expelee or someone whose been suspended Jewish or Gentile?
“Or, furthermore, that po-faced gentiles and indifferent atheists holding court (in Labour’s NEC) probably have questionable authority to decide what anti-Semitism is…”
Let’s not forget that there were plenty of Jewish voices within Labour who were all too enthusiastic ally making false claims of anti-semitism. They knew they were making false statements, but they carried right on. What does that make them ?
“What does that make them ? Emm ~ Nasty, horrible Jewish types bringing the faith into disrepute?
Perhaps the most depressing part of Ms. Wimborne-Idrissi’s statement is the line : “… will appeal my expulsion.”
Why ? You know how you and many others have been treated. You know the right-wing MPs and unelected officials who really own the party aren’t going to change.
Why do you still want to be a member ?
We’ve seen the same problem with Corbyn. Not wanting to leave, despite the knife sticking out of his back.
Corbyn, the few Socialist Campaign Group MPs, and people like Ms. Wimborne-Idrissi could have fronted a new Socialist Party.
Several times over the past few years there have been occasions when such a party could have taken off immediately…. but in each case the momentum was lost , as those who could have acted as a catalyst chose not to.
I agree. I fear that the people that have been victimized by the Tory Lite Starmer clique are afraid that starting a new, better socialist party will divide the left from the center and leave the right to carry on screwing up the country. This reminds me of when the Labour party split the last time and left the greedy, incompetent Tory imbeciles running the country into the ground.
Britain has to decide. Does it want the greedy Tories, the stumbling Starmers or people that care and represent the workers in Britain in power. I really want to see Corbyn back in a leadership role. Unfortunately he’s just too nice to stick the boot in where it hurts. He should split the Labour Party. Let the Tory Lites see they cannot gain power without the left. He could get it started by calling for a general strike to bring down the Tory twits.