Tottenham and Hornsey and Wood Green (HWG) Labour Party: Joint Statement by CLP Chairs
BANNED from 2022 Labour Party Conference
Hornsey and Wood Green and Tottenham Labour CLPs (the two CLPs that represent Haringey Borough) should have had delegations attending the Labour Party annual conference last week. Our delegations reflected the diverse communities that our CLPs represent and included young, BAME, LBGTQ+ and disabled members. These are the voices that need to be heard.
As chairs of the CLPs, we wish to put the record straight on the reasons given for the exclusions – and our attempts to have the decision re-examined and overturned.
Our delegates were deliberately excluded by the Regional Director for reasons that were spurious and unjustified by the rules.
The LP London Region office informed both CLPs in June that the exclusion was because notice of the relevant GC meeting was not given with the required 7-day notice period. Both CLPs provided evidence that disproved this assertion. After several emails to London Region and a tortuous back and forth, our evidence was accepted. Then a new reason for disallowing our delegations suddenly appeared; namely that the agenda was not sent out 7 days in advance. We pointed out that this is not a rulebook requirement and therefore irrelevant.
We were told that there was no means of appeal, even though London Region took their initial decision without any kind of investigation and based it on incorrect information from a source unknown to us.
Despite representations from members of the NEC and the London Regional Committee’s CLP representative, the General Secretary’s office also failed to look impartially at the evidence.
This treatment is becoming a pattern that London Region has adopted towards both Haringey CLPs. London Region stepped in last year to manage our candidate selection process in advance of the London local elections. The entire procedure, previously managed locally by the elected Haringey Local Campaign Forum (LCF), was taken out of their hands, without explanation and despite repeated protests and references to LP rules. We were dismayed but not surprised that several long-standing and active members, whose sympathies were with the left of the LP, were excluded as potential candidates.
Given repeated stonewalling, refusal to justify decisions with reference to the rulebook, and shifting goalposts, it is hard to see the denial of our delegations as anything other than factional and politically motivated.
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