David White, the local official who was summarily suspended without a hearing by Labour over his now notorious Ken Livingstone/Zionist/Hitler tweet, has received no information from the party regarding the procedure for any hearing, who has accused him, nor what rules he is alleged to have broken.
It is nearly one month since Labour drew-up its letter to advise White of his suspension.
Labour’s handling of his case has persuaded White, a retired solicitor, to look to co-ordinate his own campaign for reinstatement with other party members “who have also been suspended in what appear to be unfair circumstances”.
Some observers of recent Labour Party wranglings saw the suspension of White as one of the latest expressions of the power struggle between socialists and the right-wing Blairites from Progress, the party-within-a-party.
Steve Reed OBE, the former leader of Lambeth Council and since 2012 the MP for the neighbouring constituency of Croydon North, is a vice-chair of Progress.
Croydon Central was one of the CLPs which nominated Jeremy Corbyn for Labour Party leader. White is the second Croydon Central figure to have been suspended by the party, following Andrew Fisher, the Corbyn adviser, who was also investigated following complaints, it is thought from Progress, about his activity on social media.
Reed is understood to have briefed close colleagues that he had no knowledge of the complaint against White which led to his suspension.
David White: no information about his suspension for nearly one month
White, 67, has been a Labour Party member since 1970. Prior to his suspension, White was the secretary of the Croydon Central Constituency Labour Party.
Just before the Bank Holiday weekend, White issued a brief update on his position to friends and party colleagues. “I’m grateful for the many expressions of support on the issue of my suspension,” he said. “To date, I’ve received no details of the procedure or timescale for the investigation or what Labour Party rules I’m alleged to have breached,” White said.
“I have, however, been told that the investigation will be conducted by Dan Simpson, the London regional director. Dan will no doubt be delighted to have been assigned this task at the same time as he’s running the Tooting by-election and London’s EU Campaign.
“I’m in touch with some other party members in different parts of the country who have also been suspended in what appear to be unfair circumstances, so that if appropriate we can co-ordinate campaigns for reinstatement.”
White’s frustration with the apparent flaws in the Labour process – which has denied him any information about what he is alleged to have done, or who his accusers might be – has persuaded him to consider submitting evidence to the Chakrabarti inquiry, the Labour Party’s response to repeated and varied allegations accusing members of anti-semitism.
White said that he believes that, “… true instances of anti-semitism and other forms of racism must be opposed and rooted out”, while adding that “the issue of anti-semitism is being used at present by the Tories and some in the Labour Party for political purposes and in an attempt to undermine the Labour Party leadership”.
The letter from Jeremy Corbyn to David White at Croydon Central, thanking the CLP for its support for his candidacy for leader. White is the second member of the CLP to be suspended
White said, “The Labour Party should review its internal procedures so that people are not routinely suspended when anonymous accusations are made against them, and all investigations should conform to the principles of natural justice.”
White’s local party wrote to Iain McNicol, Labour’s general secretary, on May 11 stating that his suspension should be lifted immediately.
“I received an email from Mr McNicol on May 17 referring to this letter and saying, ‘An Administrative Suspension itself confers no blame or guilt on the recipient and is issued purely to protect the integrity of the Party. There will be an investigation and you will be contacted about this in due course’.”
To date, after nearly a month since being belatedly informed that he was suspended, that remains the only information about his case which White has received.
- Still Croydon’s only independent news source, and based in the heart of the borough: 1.97 million page views 2013-2015
- Inside Croydon: Named among best regional media campaigns, 2014
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, a residents’ or business association or local event to publicise, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
Sounds like something out of Kafka.
I t is obviously ludicrous to claim that Mr White is some kind of ideological antisemitic. The party should have either thrown him out ( which would make it a laughing stock) or supplied him with clear guidance as to how to clarify/retract his comments (which would probably also make it look silly but might draw a line under the incident). Instead he is consigned to limbo because actually they don’t know what to say either. Perhaps his real crime is simply having too high a profile?
It also shows why people are leaving Twitter and social media in droves. It has stopped being a forum for discussion and ideas and become in the words of Stephen Fry “a stalking ground for the sanctimonious and self righteous… ” …a board of bored people pumping out their worldview while taking offence at everything and data mining it for political ammunition or personal information. Besides which the place is now little more than an advertising board and the number of “promoted” and automated tweets increases exponentially as the management of Twitter who were always chimeric at the best of times dematerialises and the number of users goes into nosedive due to everyone blocking everyone else while decontextualising and abusing each other. That’s certainly the only use I could find for it.
Who wants to know what other people think anyway? I don’t. And I certainly don’t want people to know what I think. And I’m sure they don’t want to know either. And a good thing too. Indeed I don’t even want anyone reading this. Yet I am just stupid enough to have written it. So goes the internet… I think the rot set in when they allowed pictures and memes… When I first used it you have to actually write something in words and come up with content whereas now it has dissolved into a meme and content echoing service like Facebook.. Indeed you can now synchronise the two…. I wonder if they won’t eventually merge as they seem to echo each other so much….probably some 16 year old is working on the technology down Tech City as I type this … Not that any of it matters. Nothing really matters anymore. The great social media experiment is dead.
It was the best of memes
It was the worst of memes