Husband of TV personality Nadia Sawalha is finally allowed to sit at Croydon Town Hall as an official Green Party councillor.
WALTER CRONXITE, Political Editor, reports
Vindicated: Mark Adderley announced the end of his suspension by the Green Party in an Instagram video
Croydon Council, as of this morning, now has eight councillors from the Green Party, after Mark Adderley, who was elected for Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood in May, had his suspension lifted by the Zack Polanski-led party.
Adderley was suspended in April after articles were published which accused him of posting anti-semitic comments on social media.
This morning, Adderley announced his re-acceptance into the Green Party fold with a social media video which was critical of how his case had been mishandled. According to Adderley, the decision was conveyed from Green Party HQ without any apology for the near six-month delay.
It was in July that Adderley and his wife, actress and presenter Nadia Sawalha, won an apology together with “substantial damages” and legal costs from the Daily Mail for libellous articles published by that title and Metro, which included several of the falsehoods which led to Adderley’s suspension just days before the local elections.
Complete capitulation: it is almost two months since the Daily Mail and Metro issued their apology
Despite being suspended, Adderley appeared on ballot papers as a Green candidate because his party’s disciplinary process began too late to alter the council’s democratic services’ print schedule.
The day had begun with Sawalha posting her own video with an impassioned attack against the Green Party leadership for its treatment of her husband. In her video, Sawalha named her own MP, Labour’s Steve Reed, as being responsible for some of the smears against her husband.
Less than a week before the local elections, Reed, the MP for Streatham (and Croydon North when he can be bothered) even provided the right-wing Mail – the British newspaper notorious for supporting Adolf Hitler in the 1930s – with a self-regarding opinion piece in which he made sweeping accusations of antisemitism against the Green Party. Much like the sweeping allegations of antisemitism Reed had made against his own party’s leadership under Jeremy Corbyn.
Both Sawalha and Adderley made reference to the mental health stress that they have had to endure over this period, something which Adderley had written about previously on Inside Croydon.
Duly elected: Adderley was third in Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood and elected to the council – while suspended by the Greens
In his video statement, Adderley said: “Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.
“I’ve literally just received a notification from the Green Party regarding my suspension. And wow, I mean, I literally — my head is afizz with everything we’ve gone through, how long it’s been, the lack of dialogue, the lack of discussion. And then, in one email — you get an email — and my suspension has been lifted.
“I haven’t received an apology. There is an acknowledgement of the extraordinary amount of time it’s taken to arrive at this decision. I was grateful and relieved to read that my appeal, my explanation, my description of how I feel I have been smeared and targeted by the mainstream media in this country… by political opponents, members of the Labour Party, targeted me and others, engaged in conflationary accusations, calling me a racist, calling me an antisemite.
“I have, and always will be, fiercely critical of the State of Israel and its genocide of the Palestinians.
“And the fact that, for whatever reasons — which will remain, I guess, unclear forever and a day — for whatever reason that the Green Party fell at that hurdle so early on.
Celebrity couple: Adderley and Nadia Sawalha
“Was it fear? Was it pressure? Was it some group or someone inside the Green Party that, obviously, according to my lifting-of-my-suspension letter, who didn’t follow due procedure? Due procedure wasn’t followed.
“So all I would say is this: Green Party, please ensure — and I will help to campaign for this — that whatever disciplinary process there was, or there still is, in the Green Party, it cannot work in the way that it’s worked with me — I don’t know — with many others.
“This has been one of the most stressful, challenging, mentally distressing… My mental health — I have had times where my mental health has been on the floor. And I’m not exaggerating when I say that this suspension has fuelled and fed into many of the other complications and distresses and huge hits on our lives as a family, careers, etc.
“This suspension helped fuel that.
“But today, I can say that my suspension has been lifted. Thank you to everyone for all of your support. Thank you to everyone in the Green Party who has supported me from afar. It hasn’t been easy reaching out for comfort, solidarity.
“I’d also like to thank the Croydon Green Party, who’ve been incredibly understanding and supportive, and they have never breached the rules in showing some kind of humanity to me.”
Since May, after being duly elected, Adderley has taken his seat at Croydon Town Hall technically as an independent. From today, he will be able to take the Green Party whip. Not that the Green Party believes in the whip system. But that’s a different story…
Read more: ‘It put my family at great risk and under huge mental anguish’
More Reed: Steve Reed’s aide blocks members’ vote on Mandelson scandal
More Reed: Reed group fined for slow declaration of £800,000 donations
Read more: #LocalElections2026: Greens make bigger inroads than Reform
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