THE Labour Party is seeing a wave of activists and Councillors quit across the country, all reporting that their complaints of serious bullying from party officials and fellow colleagues are being ignored.
Yesterday, Cllr Mandy Clare, who represents Winsford Dene, Cheshire, resigned from the party, claiming she had been bullied and prevented from speaking out about women’s rights and from raising concerns about ‘serial abuse’.
Earlier this week, several Labour Councillors sitting on Newham Council also quit, citing the party’s failure to investigate serious allegations of bullying registered by 18 fellow Councillors against sitting Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz.
Cllr Pat Murphy, a long-serving councillor from Newham, said he had quit the Labour group because the party had not investigated the allegations, and that the Labour refused to accept requests to intervene or even provide comment on the matter.
“There has been nothing other than silence from the party,” Cllr Murphy added.
The serious allegations and resignations aren’t isolated to Newham and Cheshire, but are in fact just two examples from what has become a covered-up case of apparently institutionalised bullying and harassment in Labour branches across the nation.
From Blackburn to Peterborough, Scotland to Wales, Councillors are speaking out about intimidation and victimisation from their fellow colleagues, and how the national party and regional officers are ignoring their complaints or attempting to silence them.
In December of last year, several more Councillors raised concerns in various parts of the UK – only for their complaints to be completely ignored, and to find themselves bullied further, often to the point of being forced to quit.
Marcia Hutchinson, a Labour Councillor who was elected in Ancoats and Beswick, Manchester, resigned, alleging a toxic culture of racism and bullying.
Before her, Saima Afzal, a well-respected Councillor from Blackburn, also spoke out about being a victim of sexism and bullying by Labour colleagues, and of her frustrating battle to get Labour to take her complaints seriously.
Further Councillors quit for the same reasons late last year, from Croydon, Slough, and many other constituencies.
“They made my life hell!” said Birmingham Labour Councillor Zhor Malik, who had been a Labour activist since 1973 until resigning from the party last week and joining the Tories after accusing his former colleagues of bullying him and ‘acting like a dictatorship’.
Yet, when asked for comment on each individual case, the Labour Party offer up the same hollow quote to the press before sweeping the growing issue under the rug: “The Labour Party takes all allegations seriously”.
Yet, as with their promise to take antisemitism seriously (only to recently readmit a long list of antisemites back into its fold), alleged bullies in the party continue to go unpunished, complaints are not investigated, and victims are further victimised.
Shockingly, the Labour Party is even failing to investigate serious complaints of racism, with Labour MPs Dawn Butler and Diane Abbott signing a letter demanding that Keir Starmer look into the THOUSANDS of racism complaints submitted by members against other party members – all of which were being ignored, and to date have still not been addressed.
