Whilst I
was in Bayreuth, that hotbed of Trotskyite subversion, I heard that many
friends had received their electronic ballots for the Labour leadership
election. Mine did not arrive, but I was told that they were being sent out in
batches, for some technological reason I did not understand, and that there was
at least another week in which mine would. When it did not, I called the Labour
Party. I spoke to a very helpful, very pleasant woman in Newcastle, who told me
that my ballot had been sent out – note, she told me that it had, not that it
should have been – but that many people whose ballots had been sent out on one
particular date (26 August, I think) had not arrived, so they were reissuing
them on application. She would resend mine now, although, mysteriously, it
might not arrive until the beginning of this week. (What are they doing?
Printing out ballots and attempting to squeeze them down a cable?) Today came,
and still there was no ballot. I called again, and spoke to another very
helpful, very pleasant woman in Newcastle; I do not think it was the same one,
but maybe it was. She told me she would resend my ballot again. I wondered
whether the problem might have had something to do with my e-mail account, so
suggested that she send it to my work e-mail address instead. She said she
would do so. A couple of hours or so passed – again, rather odd, for so
instantaneous a form of communication – and then a message finally appeared. It
informed me:
Dear Mark,
You will shortly receive a letter in
the post regarding your application to the Labour Party. A copy is attached to
this email for your reference.
Best wishes
The Labour Party
I opened the attachment, which read as follows (click on it, if you need to enlarge):
So I have been suspended, for some unspecified offence(s). I will
not be informed of their nature. I will have no right to appeal. I will not
have a vote in the leadership election, despite having begun my attempt to join
on the day of Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader, almost a year ago,
What might I have done? My Facebook profile is not public,
although a friend discovered the following posting from me: ‘July 6 · London · Mark
Berry has just bought himself some
chocolate to celebrate Chilcot Day. The assistant said he had guessed I was “a champagne
truffles sort of guy”. Indeed I am, cognac too.’ Perhaps I was informed upon by the friendly assistant in
Charbonnel & Walker? No, of course I was not. I can only assume that my
alleged offence is to have said, on the day of the Chilcot Report, on Twitter,
that I hoped Tony Blair would now be expelled from the Labour Party. I bow to
no one in my judgement that Blair is a despicable war criminal, who has no
place in any ‘progressive’, let alone socialist political party. Many in the
Labour Party would agree with me; many would not. I am hardly alone in having
expressed such a view.
If not that, I suspect I must be the first person to have been
suspended from the Labour Party on account of a controversial – not that I knew
it was – opinion concerning the music of Webern. Perhaps you have too; if so,
do get in touch. We can form a support group.
I am not a politician. I am not a celebrity. I am not a remotely
influential person. None of that is false modesty; it is simply a statement of
what comes as near to empirical fact as anything will ever do. Whatever I might
have done or said that offended, it was certainly not ‘racist, abusive, or foul’.
If it were construed as such, it must have been discovered by someone who
either wished me personal ill, or wished to disqualify me from voting on
account of my political views. Someone looking at Twitter would discover pretty
quickly that I was – and am – a proud, although far from uncritical, supporter
of Jeremy Corbyn. That, we can all be sure, is why I have been suspended from
membership. Those whom the Labour Right term ‘Trots, rabble, dogs’, and are
nothing of the sort are, ironically, being treated in a fashion that would have
made Stalin blanch. He would at least have offered me a show trial. In fact,
let us be realistic: he would never have thought me a person worth bothering
about in the first place.
I am furious. I am also very hurt. This is the first time in my
life I have joined a political party. I, like many others, including many of my
students, were genuinely enthused by Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign last year. In the
aftermath of what was, to many of us, the catastrophe of a Conservative
election victory, there seemed at last to be some hope, however illusory. I
registered as a supporter then, and promised that, were Corbyn to be elected, I
should definitely join; if he were not, I should decided then. I applied, as
stated above, the day of Corbyn’s election, indeed within an hour of that.
After quite a lengthy wait, I received a letter from the Labour Party telling
me that my borough, Tower Hamlets, was undergoing ‘special measures’ – an interesting
euphemism for …? – and I should thus have to provide additional identification.
I was irritated by that and was about to leave for Vienna, to take
up a scholarship there for a month’s work at the dangerously Trotskyite Arnold
Schönberg Center. I left dealing with it until my return, by which time, when I
called, I was informed that my application had lapsed. I therefore had to start
all over again, and was eventually accepted as a member, something in which I
took a degree of pride. That, so far as I was concerned was it. Until, of
course, Labour MPs launched their coup against Corbyn and a barrage of legal
challenges, etc. followed. Owing to ‘special measures’, etc., I had therefore
not been a member before the arbitrarily imposed retroactive cut-off point
imposed by the Labour NEC. I was not happy about having to pay its £25
extortion fee to re-register as a supporter, but did so, determined that Corbyn
and the Left would not be defeated this way. That, again was apparently that,
until this…
I am writing this to show that this could happen to anyone. It is
indeed happening to anyone. The contempt for democracy, for natural justice,
for the slightest of common decency shocks me; I hope that it will shock some
of you too, whatever your political persuasion. This, I think, is one of the
reasons Corbyn must win. Would you trust the people who have done this? I
certainly would not.
