Ken Loach just handed Labour’s arse to it on a plate
Director Ken Loach has slammed the Labour Party leadership. In a now-published letter, he takes aim at both Keir Starmer and the party’s general secretary David Evans. It’s over their actions towards his Constituency Labour Party (CLP). And Loach pulls no punches – slating their “ludicrous behaviour” and “conscious attempt to destroy” his CLP’s leadership.
The situation in Bath: Loach intervenes
The letter is specifically about Bath CLP. As The Canary previously reported, the Labour Party machinery has subjected it to part of its ongoing purge of left-wing members:
In Bath, the party has put a stop to a meeting to elect new officials. It also barred all motions there, except one which (ironically) marked the death of George Orwell.
Bath is Loach’s CLP. And his letter is damning.
You can read the full letter via Labour Briefing here. In it Loach outlines what the party machinery has inflicted on Bath CLP.
But it was Loach’s broader points that were most caustic.
“Conscious” destruction
He accused the party machinery of ‘consciously’ trying to ‘destroy’ Bath CLP’s leadership:
Read on...
In any competently managed organisation, this ludicrous behaviour would not have been allowed to continue. The inefficiency of the Labour Party is nothing new, it has regularly failed its members. but these actions suggest a conscious attempt to destroy a CLP leadership that was functioning well, carefully following rules, with a positive determination to attack the local Tory and Liberal establishment.
Loach said many members felt ‘disillusioned’ and ‘cynical’ about the party, adding:
The Labour Party is seen as a useless, self-serving clique, a waste of time for those who really want to make a difference.
Starmer and Evans: orders from the top
Also, he directly accused “the top” of the party of ‘approving’ the regional officer’s actions. Loach said:
There is a clear determination to drive out anyone who showed support for [Jeremy] Corbyn and [John] McDonnell’s programme of radical change.
He finished by saying:
The aim of the current leaders would seem to be to have a small, tightly disciplined party, with few troublesome activists, where policy is endorsed by a docile conference — standing ovations and little discussion. Leaders are then not accountable to members, but speak to the voters directly through a media that welcomes a Labour Party that will make no substantial changes to the established order.
Loach’s points may well resonate with many Labour members across the country.
The purge
As The Canary has been documenting, CLP’s accusing the Labour machinery of attempting to shut them down has become widespread. Up and down the country, the party has targeted left-wing members and committees. Moreover, some Corbyn-supporting members have been leaving the party.
So, Loach’s final word perhaps reflected the despondency of a lot of members:
This may be your party, David Evans and Keir Starmer, it is not ours.
It’s unlikely Loach’s intervention will rattle the party’s leadership. But what it does show is the deafening disquiet that now exists in Labour.
Featured image via Channel 4 News – YouTube and Sky News – YouTube
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Painful though it is to read, Ken Loach is right, right and right again.
Throughout my life (a long time) he has been a champion of truth and justice.
His comments on Starmer’s version of the Labour Party are spot-on …. “Useless, self-serving clique, a waste of time”.
Ken is too kind – – The words “malevolent liars working to ensure that the Labour Party is colonised by the rich and powerful” are my description.
They want you to leave FFS
HOW ABOUT
RaV
Return and vote
How about everyone of us recruits 3 new members then, guess what, when they finally have to face the music they will be wiped out, history
The internal report sets in stone the challenge we have to remove once and for all the Red Tories who prefer a cheap and nasty government to a Socialist Labour government
From now now on we should refer to them as ‘Red Tories ‘ or ‘The ersatz Tory party ‘
Return and vote …. I agree.
I’m still there, but I am surprised that I have not already been subject to ethnic cleansing.
Many good comrades are suspended for faying far lessd than I have said.
Yes – Vote them out – BUT – Don’t think it will be easy.
Our party has been colonised by the rich and powerful.
Remove the red Tories !
Labour is run by tin pot amateurs who are a disgrace to the Labour movement in general, imo. Well done for speaking out, Ken Loach.
It’s interesting that, in Scotland, there is now a Labour for Independence group. Largely, I suspect, because they see the current Labour party as no longer relevant but feel that, after Independence, a Labour party which is no longer dictated to by the WM party, could move back to being socialist rather than red Tory. Labour have been losing support since the days of Tony Blair and Starmer has put the tin lid on it. Local CLP’s have suffered like Bath. In the Scottish Parliament elections, they, like the Tories depended on the list vote and joining with the Tories, to use tactical voting rather than the constituency vote. Not trying to insult anyone but some may not realise that Scotland does not use FPTP to elect MSPs and the list vote is the secondary form of voting. For example, the current Tory leader in Scotland had to depend on the list vote and Labour tactical voting to remain an MSP.
The Scots are a lot cannier than the English when it comes to political understanding.
They saw thru Bliar and that’s what put the skids under Labour in Scotland.
As said – Starmer has finished Labour in Scotland.
He’s doing his best to finish Labour as a serious party representing the interests of the many not the few.
Everything in life changes accept British politics…….
We still have the same self interested political parties’ from the victorian workhouse days..
Theses parties’ are but parasites, a cancer feeding from it’s host……..
Change is as good as a rest………
Go for it Ken! Loach For Leader!