Letter to National Executive Members of the Labour Party - 4 Democratic Demands

Reverse Progress's Attempt to Stop 25% of Labour's Membership Voting 4 Leader 

Stop the £25 Surcharge on Democracy

Don't Ban Labour Party Meetings

Reinstate Brighton & Hove District Labour Party

As you may know, the Labour Party National Executive Meeting last Tuesday voted, after Corbyn and others on the Left had left the meeting, to prevent 130,000 new members voting.  They also voted to increase the cost to registered supporters from £3 to £25 and in a final flourish voted to ban all party meetings for the duration of the campaign.

Last Thursday we learnt that Brighton and Hove Labour Party had been suspended and the Executive that had been voted out at the previous Saturday's AGM reinstated, despite the new Exec. receiving 66% of the vote.

A group of us who are currently suspended from membership are sending this letter to members of the NEC and, if you are members of the Labour Party, we would like to invite you to sign it.

If you agree to sign it please respond to me or the email address on the letter and also put your CLP after your name.

thanks

Tony Greenstein

Saturday, 16 July 2016

Dear National Executive Member,

We are writing to you in respect of this Tuesday’s National Executive Committee meeting. 

At last week’s meeting of the NEC a number of anti-democratic decisions were taken at the very end of the meeting, under Any Other Business.  These proposals were tabled without any notice have been given, when many members had already left the meeting.  The effect of these decisions were to prevent nearly 130,000 new members of the Labour Party from voting in the leadership elections. 

Registered supporters have also been prevented from voting unless they pay a £25 surcharge.  In addition all party meetings have been banned until the leadership election is over.

These measures demonstrate that the Right of the Party and Progress are opposed to the most basic democratic principles.  What possible justification can there be for preventing nearly a quarter of the membership voting to choose a new leader?  What justification is there for banning meetings or making it impossible for people living in poverty from voting?  What are they scared of?

We urge you to reverse all these proposals, as you are fully entitled to do, at the forthcoming National Executive Meeting.  We would also ask you to reverse the decision to flout the democratic will of party members in Brighton and Hove District Labour Party, whose party has been suspended and whose election results have been annulled, because of complaints from those who took part in but lost the elections for a new Executive.  The largest ever meeting in the history of the Brighton and Hove District Party voted by nearly 2-1 in favour of a new Executive.  To overturn this vote, without even a cursory investigation, on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations from Progress supporters is an affront to democracy.

In Solidarity,