Brighton & Hove Momentum AGM Overwhelmingly Supports Jackie Walker

Brighton Labour Rejects Racist Witch-hunts

Brighton & Hove Momentum AGM at the Friends Centre

Resolution adopted at AGM in support of Jackie Walker

Brighton & Hove Momentum held its first AGM last night.  About 70 people attended a lively but comradely meeting which mapped out the year ahead.  Greg Hadfield, Secretary of Brighton & Hove District Labour Party until it was suspended for electing the ‘wrong’ i.e. non-Progress candidates, gave us an account of the progress or lack of it in getting the party unsuspended.  He suggested that Labour Party headquarters, in the absence of any campaign, could leave the party suspended indefinitely since the Right knew that it could never obtain a majority in a fair election.

If the decision of Anne Black to suspend the party was outrageous, then it is all the more outrageous that it still remains suspended.  Karen Buckingham was appointed to conduct an ‘Inquiry’ a few weeks after the suspension.  By that time the new Executive had been removed and the old Executive had been reinstated.  When Greg Hadfield managed to persuade City College where the AGM was held to release video of the incident, guess what?  There was no spitting.  What was Buckingham’s reaction?  She refused to watch the video using the pretext of the Data Protection Act.  I don’t recall that the DPA being used to discipline members of the Compliance Unit when details of my suspension were leaked to the national press.

B&H Momentum AGM

The first item on the AGM agenda was a motion to support Jackie Walker, the Black-Jewish woman who was removed as Vice-Chair of Momentum by the Steering Committee as a result of false allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ by the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement.  After a good natured debate, including a contribution by a member of the Alliance for Workers Liberty, the group that helped Lansman achieve his majority on Monday night, the meeting voted overwhelmingly 56-6 with 6 abstentions, to support Jackie Walker and call for the immediate reversal of the decision to remove her as Vice Chair.  In other words 90% of those voting chose to back Jackie and disregarded the vacuous excuses of Momentum’s misleadership.

Labour Party AGM on July 2nd

There were a number of motions on the agenda and elections produced a large Steering Committee which will have its work cut out next year.  I was elected as part of a block of 8!

Momentum meeting prior to the 'cancelled' AGM of July 2nd

However it has been an enormously successful year in which a Momentum slate swept the board at the AGM elections on July 2^nd where candidates got on average 66% of the vote.  No one could have seen the utter dishonesty of the Right which was prepared to lie and deceive, with the back of the Right on the NEC, to ensure that the Party’s democratic choice was nullified.  Greg told us that the membership of the Brighton parties was now over 8,000.

The task now is to ensure that the victory of Jeremy Corbyn is carried through in terms of the rejuvenation of the Party as a whole.

B&H Momentum AM

What was particularly pleasing for me was that despite political divisions in Brighton & Hove Momentum in the past year, everyone came together in a spirit of comradeship and how all sections of Momentum were aghast at what   the leadership of Momentum has done to Jackie Walker in aiding the witch hunt of the racist Jewish Labour Movement.  Particular thanks were given to Clare Wadey who was absent tonight.

Tony Greenstein 

Announcement of Karen Buckingham's bogus inquiry