It’s been a good year for the Labour party. Doing well in the polls, and with the Tories in a state of perpetual crisis – from which Rishi Sunak’s coronation may only offer a short relief – there is a rising sense that power, which has been so elusive, may be within its grasp.
But at the same time there is another story going on within the party – one that’s leaving many members and activists on the party’s left with a bitter taste in the mouth.
There is still a desire for leftwing politics within the membership. But, increasingly, prospective candidates from the party’s left are finding themselves unable to get to the point where their local party can choose to vote for them or not – because they’ve been blocked from standing by the party bureaucracy.
In Wakefield, Hastings, Peterborough, Stroud, Kensington and Milton Keynes to name but a few places, highly capable, leftwing candidates are being denied the chance to put themselves in front of Labour members in parliamentary selections. Candidates are often being blocked by “due diligence” checks, which, to many people, look like a motivated trawling through social media histories.
In a statement, the party said: “The process for selecting candidates is set by the NEC [national executive committee], with a particular focus on ensuring the highest levels of due diligence are applied to those seeking to stand as a Labour party candidates. Panels of elected NEC and REC [regional executive committee] members take decisions on long-listing.” But that’s not where the story ends for me – because I’ve been on the receiving end of this newfound intolerance.
After decades of trying to make change through journalism, campaigning, activism and by leading anti-racist charities, I finally saw in 2015 a political party that promised some of the transformational change that my community has been crying out for – and I became active in Labour. And then, when Harriet Harman, the long-standing MP for Camberwell and Peckham, south London, announced she would be retiring after 40 years, I decided to enter the race to replace her.
People well-versed in internal Labour machinations told me that there was no way the leadership would allow me on to the ballot because I’d been seen as part of the party’s left. Naively for a man in his 50s, I thought that my history of campaigning, my dedication to the Labour party as the vehicle for change and my calm media appearances would convince the party machine that I wasn’t too scary to be considered as a candidate. As a black, working-class Londoner, who has lived his whole life on council estates, I felt like I was exactly the kind of person who my fellow constituents might want to see represent them in parliament.
It was going well, with endorsements and volunteers coming in thick and fast. Then I got an email telling me to come for a “due diligence” interview. Four things were flagged up, but once I had time to look at the issues raised, I relaxed because they were, to my mind, all minor and completely explainable
Two of the issues raised were from before I was even a councillor. They included a tweet, free from any invective, that criticised a Labour council’s treatment of its residents and my “liking” of a tweet by Caroline Lucas. But the other two related to the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which was incredibly controversial for the Labour party in 2018. One was a quote from me in a news article in which I said the definition was “good” but explained why I thought there were issues with some of the examples. This view, I calmly stated, was that of the Labour leadership at the time. What’s more, the article with my quote was in August 2018 and Labour changed its stance to fully accept the IHRA definition and the examples at an NEC meeting the next month.
The other was when my political inexperience meant I was mistakenly out of the council chamber for a vote on IHRA – Tory councillors spun this at the time as a staged “walk out”. It made hardly any waves; I received no rebuke from my whip; and even the local Tory leader said, at a later meeting, that it should not be discussed again. I only really lay out these given explanations to show that none of them should be enough to stop someone from running for office.
But then I got the call: I had been blocked.
The party says: “The process of choosing our candidate here is in line with all other party selection processes.” Keir Starmer, it adds, has “always seen the quality of the candidates we put forward at the next election as a vital piece of the jigsaw for getting into Downing Street. Labour is committed to ensuring that being a Labour candidate is a mark of quality. The longlist was an all-BAME list.”
But its actions over these recent selections leave me wondering what routes there are for representation for the many people who think like me. The party’s desire to distance itself from the previous leadership, which saw a massive upswell of interest in parliamentary politics from communities that had been disengaged, runs the risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Our country’s political and economic systems are broken and we need a bold and transformative Labour government to provide the solutions. But the only way we can get that is by making sure that the government remains anchored in the communities that put them in power and are responsive to their needs. And if we really want to see the transformative socialist solutions that so much of the country now supports – such as a £15 minimum wage and the real public ownership of mail and energy – we need people in parliament who have a track record of campaigning for them, and are willing to fight for them.
Maurice Mcleod is an anti-racism activist, social commentator and Labour councillor
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