Labour Party leader Sir Kier Starmer has a problem with democracy: he simply doesn’t like it. Providing evidence to support this problematic democratic orientation, in late August Starmer suspended the entire Leicester East Constituency Labour Party, thereby repeating a fundamental attack on democracy that he had already imposed upon Wirral West CLP earlier in the year.
In Leicester not everyone has been critical of such anti-democratic coups, and supporting Starmer’s latest bureaucratic manoeuvrings’ our local City Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby went so far as to say: “I think it is a very healthy move.” (“Entire Leicester East Labour group suspended by party chiefs,” Leicester Mercury, August 31, 2023)
In another important Labour Party affront to democracy, last month it was revealed that Starmer aims to reduce the number of people serving on local CLP executives by more than half. New rules changes aim to “see certain CLP officer roles eventually downgraded.” The idea being that “The requirement for executive officers to include LGBT+, BAME, disability, policy and youth officers will be removed.” (“Labour to expel Corbyn backers, demote equality posts and curb conference debate,” LabourList, September 26, 2023)
These attacks on democracy must be opposed. And former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has some understanding for what is necessary. In an article titled “Only a democratic party can provide the policies this country needs,” which he penned for the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy “briefing,” Corbyn recalled how when he was “elected Leader” the “main challenges ahead of me would come from MPs in the PLP hostile to my leadership”. He added that “Some people thought this [problem] should be solved by imposing candidates, imposing decisions, and imposing diktat.” And Corbyn rightly disagreed with such wrongheaded solutions.
But while Corbyn is right in saying that “Real strength comes from empowering the mass of the membership and the affiliated unions,” this, sadly, is something that he failed to do. I say this because it was his leadership that actively blocked attempts by Labour members to reintroduce a full reselection process for Labour candidates.
This limitation on Corbyn’s part is even apparent within his short article wherein he celebrates historic grassroots victories in favour of democracy (in the 1970s and 1980s) by writing:
“Thanks to the dedication of campaigners, we delivered significant advances in Party democracy: a wider franchise for the election of the Leader and Deputy Leader and what is now the re-selection trigger ballot system for sitting MPs.”
But only if you read the single footnote relating to this point do you realise that such trigger ballots actually represented something of a set-back for Labour Party democracy. In the footnote Corbyn therefore admits:
“We originally won a full re-selection process every Parliament; the current trigger ballot system was introduced later under Neil Kinnock as a retreat from a fully-democratic selection.”
It was such a “full re-selection process” otherwise known as “mandatory reselection” that socialists campaigned for when Corbyn was elected Labour leader. But as we all now know, the reintroduction of such a democratic process was never backed by Corbyn which represented a massive mistake that is still not admitted to this day.
Thoughts of a Leicester Socialist 
I have been the Unite delegate to Leicester East CLP for well before the pandemic. Like other well meaning Labour members, I expected to be invited to CLP meetings. I expected to be told when the CLP decided not to have members at CLP meetings. I knew there was going to be a ballot, but I never heard the results of the ballot. It is no good saying it is undemocratic to close down an undemocratic organisation. Whether you like the people investigating or not, it needed to be investigated and justice done. You know as well as I do that things haven’t been right in Leicester East CLP for a very long time. You know that my membership money and others should have been coming down through the CLP to the Labour Party Branches. You know that I have first hand experience and proof that things have been dreadfully wrong. You know Keith Vaz grabbed the chair of Leicester East CLP and then in February 2020 had to resign and he managed to get Sue Hunter as Chair. It was a horrible meeting because anyone just a minute late wasn’t allowed into the meeting. There was a very nasty notice circulated at the meeting about a Labour member (who was named) saying that she made it all up when she was pushed by a Councillor and hurt her hand at the previous CLP meeting and the police had confirmed this. The police had done no such thing. You can’t deal with people like this in the Labour Party. So why suddenly are you saying this? You write some excellent articles, but please don’t say that closing down the CLP in Leicester East is wrong. It has needed someone to look into the way they were operating and it definitely needs its finances looking into and some people in the Labour Party associated with Leicester East need to be accountable – I would say in a court of law, if possible.