Clacton Constituency Labour Party

Clacton CLP

The Clacton Constituency Labour Party (CLP) has a membership approaching 400, over half of whom joined following the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of the Labour Party in 2015.

Seventy members attended an All Members Meeting (AAM) on 11 August 2016 when a vote was taken on which candidate to nominate for the leadership:

48 (69.57%) nominated Jeremy Corbyn for re-election and 21 (30.43%) nominated Owen Smith (one spoilt ballot).

The result of the 2016 leadership election was announced at a special conference on 24 September 2016:

Total votes: Jeremy Corbyn 313,209 (61.80%), Owen Smith 193,229 (38.20%).

Executive Committee

The current Clacton CLP Executive Committee (EC), re-appointed at the June 2016 AGM, comprises:

• Sam Atkinson (Chair)
• Danielle Atkinson, Samantha's daughter, (Women's Officer)
• Chris Bird (Treasurer, acting Secretary)
• Dan Casey (vice-Chair, Campaigns & Membership)
• Nicole El-Safty (vice-Chair)
• Joe Freebody (Secretary - resigned from the EC and the party, August 2016)
• Jack Parsons (Labour Councillor for St Paul's Ward - defected from UKIP, November 2016)

The EC should have appointed four ordinary non-voting members to the EC at the June 2015 AGM. As a result of this failure, four ordinary members were not appointed at the June 2016 AGM either.

Exposed by SKWAWKBOX

On 4 January 2017, the SKWAWKBOX blog reported that the Clacton CLP had been suspended for supporting Jeremy Corbyn:

Following the debacles at Wallasey CLP and Brighton & Hove CLP, the SKWAWKBOX has learned that Clacton CLP in Essex has – in effect – been suspended because its Executive Committee (EC) – which consists more or less entirely of right-wingers – feel their positions are threatened by the steadfast support of the majority of its members for Jeremy Corbyn.

Members of Clacton have told this blog that a vote of no-confidence in the EC was likely to be carried at an ‘All Members Meeting’ (AMM) scheduled for tomorrow – and apparently with considerable justification. The CLP EC includes:

• One member (Dan Casey) who claimed, just last month, to have deliberately fielded a weak council-election candidate (Chris Bird) just so a UKIP candidate would win because the EC member ‘knew’ that the winning UKIP Councillor (Jack Parsons) would ‘jump’ to Labour. Hard to believe, but it’s right from the horse’s (or ass’) mouth;
• A Chair (Sam Atkinson) who rubbished the decision of two-thirds of CLP members to support Corbyn for last summer’s leadership election – and said she wished for a snap election to be called and Labour to lose, to get rid of the party’s leader;
• The Chair’s 17-year-old daughter, Danielle;
• The ‘weak’ council candidate (Chris Bird) who, if the above claim is to be believed, stood in order to lose;
• Another EC member (Nicole El-Safty) who is in a relationship with the former UKIP councillor (Jack Parsons) in whose favour the party apparently ‘threw’ the recent council ward election.

In order to prevent the much-needed clear-out of the unfit EC, which has been extensively discussed among the members, including on the CLP’s Facebook page, Labour East’s regional director, only today – the day before the meeting – sent this:

All,

I wish to make you aware that I am instructing Clacton CLP officers to cancel the CLP All Members Meeting planned for Thursday 5 January.

Should any meeting go ahead any decisions taken will be considered void.

I would request that the CLP Secretary or other officer emails members to inform them of this asap, and to explain that the instruction has been given by the Labour East Regional Director on the grounds that concerns have been raised with him about the proceedings of the meeting and that no Regional Officer is available to attend.

I have discussed the issue with the Chair of the Labour East Regional Board, Eileen Davidson who is in agreement with this action.

If any member has any queries about this please direct them to email eastern@labour.org.uk whereby a Regional Officer will respond to their query.

I will contact you next week to discuss next steps.

Best wishes,

Cameron Scott

Regional Director

Labour East

While this is not – yet – a formal suspension of the CLP, a key meeting has been summarily cancelled from on high. Not because of anything that has happened, but because of ‘concerns’ about what might be done at the meeting. There are no grounds whatever to assume that there will be any unacceptable behaviour. The only ‘concerns’ will be those of the EC, who are aware that they were likely to be out on their ear via the vote of no-confidence.

Members tell me that they fully expect a formal suspension of the CLP to be imposed soon – as has already happened in Wallasey and Brighton/Hove under similar circumstances. Once is unfortunate. Twice is worrying. Three times is a pattern. It’s clear that we’re seeing a pattern emerge of entrenched, right-wing MPs, Councillors and CLP ECs who will resort to causing the suspension of their local party rather than allow its Corbyn-supporting majority to run it democratically – with the collusion of regional and even national authorities to enable them.

This is, beyond question, bringing the Labour Party into disrepute and the MPs, Councillors or Members responsible should be on administrative suspension pending an investigation to decide whether they should be expelled. The SKWAWKBOX calls on Labour’s NEC (National Executive Committee) to intervene in all these cases and to do so with an independent investigator so that the similar debacles in Wallasey and Brighton are corrected and not repeated in Clacton.

The country needs a Labour Party focused on moving forward and winning – and that requires decisive action against those clinging to positions of power who are prepared to lose elections to protect those positions.

Dissociated by Frinton candidate

Following the SKWAWKBOX revelations, Patrick Haseldine, Labour candidate in the 2017 Frinton by-election, immediately dissociated himself and his election campaign from the Clacton CLP's EC. None of them was allowed to take part in the campaign, culminating on election day: Thursday 19 January 2017. Undaunted by the prospect of inevitable defeat in the Tory stronghold of Frinton, Haseldine had prepared his victory speech. The Declaration took place at 23:10, Conservative Pamela Walford was declared the winner but, in the absence of any media at the event, declined to speak. This is what Haseldine would have said:

"The voters of Frinton have today responded to my electoral friend request: 'Let’s Be Friends in Frinton'.

"Like the rest of the United Kingdom, Frinton has been needlessly divided after last June’s EU Referendum. A majority voted to Leave, a big minority wanted to Remain and nearly one third Abstained from voting altogether. Scotland and Northern Ireland were Remainers, while England and Wales were Brexiteers. Regions, communities and even families were and are divided. So let’s come together inside the gates, heal our divisions and talk to each other again. Let’s show the rest of the UK outside the gates how to do it!

"Some Frintonians have been quick to challenge me, saying: 'that’s all very well, but what about all the divisions in the Labour Party?'

"My response was that Jeremy Corbyn has been at pains to offer the hand of friendship to his Blairite parliamentary colleagues but they spurned him in 2015 when he was first elected Labour leader, and many continue to do so after Jeremy's re-election as leader with an even greater majority in 2016.

"If these recalcitrant MPs are not prepared to support Jeremy now, then they should step down and cause a by-election – just as happened today in Frinton. The local Constituency Labour Party must then select one of the hundreds of thousands of new members, who are overwhelmingly pro-Corbyn supporters, to replace them. I’m thinking of MPs like Angela Eagle, Owen Smith, Tom Watson, Rachel Reeves (and her brother-in-law John Cryer), John Woodcock, Ruth Smeeth and Wes Streeting. A lot of them belong to Labour Friends of Israel which has a visceral dislike of Corbyn.

But it’s no good if the local CLP’s Executive Committee is similarly anti-Corbyn (like Clacton’s current six-member EC: Sam Atkinson, her daughter Danielle Atkinson, Chris Bird, Dan Casey, Nicole El-Safty and her partner Jack Parsons) who then select another Blairite to replace them. In such a case, the whole Executive Committee should resign immediately and hand over to the new pro-Corbyn membership.

"So let’s heal the divides and be friends in Frinton. Let’s unite inside and outside the gates of Frinton. Let unity break out in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, and we’ll have a Labour government in Next to No Time!"