Humanity is (a)live again!
Some of you will be aware that I chose to try a new tack when I left Derbyshire in 2021. I moved to Suffolk with my wife and joined Waveney Labour Party in the summer of 2022. I had been reasonably successful in Derbyshire, doubling and then trippling again my vote in Parliamentary elections, from 50 votes in 2010 to 450 votes in 2015. I had decided in 2019 not to stand and split the progressive vote, having done my best to facilitate a progressive alliance between Humanity, the Greens, Labour and the Liberal Democrats, to no avail. Such an alliance would definitely have won the seat from the Conservatives. So I decided to see what I could manifest in the Labour Party, where there would be a ready made group of people I imagined were up for progressive change and whom I might win to a firm progressive stand.
I joined the Waveney Constituency Labour Party in the summer of 2022. I became a parish councillor in Kessingland in 2023 and became the Waveney CLP Policy Officer, also in 2023.
I led two very successful education and policy circles in 2023 and was re-elected Policy and Education Officer of the new Lowestoft CLP in January 2024.
During this time I was becoming less and less enamoured with the Labour Party leadership and found myself also at odds with our prospective parliamentary candidate, who was turning to the Eastern Region Officers to have discussions on policy I had planned (on anti-semitism) banned, and motions on Gaza and on CLP Executive Committee voting rights also banned.
At the February CLP Executive meeting, where I was proposing that we invite our prospective parliamentary candidate to participate in CLP meetings much more regularly than she had done, it became obvious that the majority of the Executive was quite happy for the PPC to continue to act completely independently of ourselves, and I felt myself being told that the rules were the rules and that if I didn’t like them, then I should do my best to get them changed, or leave. What I heard was that the majority of the Executive did not wish to rock the boat and make requests of the PPC that would promote communication and accountability, and have her recognise that we were expecting our PPC to take account of our wishes rather than do her own thing and have discussions she didn’t want to us to have, banned by Region. I felt that those arguing to let the PPC do her own thing without reference to us were normalising a lack of accountability that I could not possibily go along with.
That night I couldn’t sleep, knowing that I could spend my life at odds with my fellow Labour Party members, with my PPC, and with the Labour Party leadership, or I could step out and try out something of my own again, which is what I then decided to do.
There are some very fine people in the Labour Party nationally, and within the local Lowestoft Labour Party . I trust that we will remain friends and that we will work together in the future.