Diane Abbott to be banned from standing for Labour

[IwantToRetire]

... Diane Abbott will not be allowed to stand as a Labour candidate in the forthcoming general election, in a move that is likely to end her 37-year career in parliament.

The MP for Hackney North & Stoke Newington — the first black woman elected to parliament — has been suspended from the party since April last year and the Labour leadership has concluded that there are no circumstances in which she will stand under its banner on July 4.

An announcement of the party’s position could come as early as today. There are discussions among senior aides to Sir Keir Starmer about restoring her to the Labour whip before the election to allow her to leave politics “with dignity”.

Last week the Labour leader promised a resolution to the case before June 4, his party’s deadline for candidate selection, which falls three days before the legal close of nominations.

On Tuesday morning the BBC reported that the party’s internal investigation into a letter by Abbott to The Observer, in which she likened the discrimination suffered by Jewish people, the Irish and Travellers to the bullying of redheads, had concluded six months ago, without any update on her status as an election candidate.
Abbott, 70, is said to have been issued with a formal warning by the party and was told to complete an “antisemitism awareness course”. She did so in February, having apologised publicly and withdrawn her remarks.

Sources close to the left-wing MP told the BBC that Labour leadership was deliberately “dragging out the process in order to block her from being a candidate at the election”. It is understood that the decision to exclude her is final and will not change even in the event she issues a further apology. ...

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/diane-abbott-mp-labour-general-election-2024-fvgnbprdm

(If this is true, irrespective of the rights and wrongs, that Labour should use such underhand tactics is just disgusting. In other words they could have told her this in February. Can only imagine how they will behave once in Government.)

Can also be read at https://archive.ph/orgiJ

I know there have been other threads but MNHQ search is useless and even searching by google didn't bring them up, except this one which I seem to have started. https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5029371-rally-of-support-for-diane-abbot-in-hackney-called-by-hackney-black-women

The letter is crass.
Within the UK, no other group has had a bloody Sunday other that Northern Irish Catholics, nor gerrymandering.
No group faces less acceptance of their culture than travellers.
Anti-black racism is a major thing and not diminished by other prejudices and discrimination.

That the debate has not bothered with discrimination against travellers shows they are the most marginalised group IMO.

Ash Sarkar (hardly anyone's idea of a right winger) said that when she was working in a pub the only group towards which the landlord was openly racist were the Travellers.

Even people like Owen Jones condemned the letter at the time. The "she didn't say anything wrong" crowd are off their heads.

A bit of a side issue but the refusal to engage with any actual argument they find difficult is a real problem with the modern Left (by which I mean people who would be considered Left wing within the Labour Party). It might seem easier when bashing away on Twitter but it kills you whenever you have to operate outside that environment. It's not just that it makes you look like an idiot - it also makes you hit out at the people who you know deep down are making a resonable argument, even if you disagree with it.

I saw her on TV last night and realised just how frail she was. For her health alone I don't think she needs to stand. Listening to people in her constituency she is popular .

One of the offensive details of Diane Abbott's letter is the degree to which it is ignorant of and minimizes real, historical persecution. So, for instance, she is technically correct in that Jewish people weren't required to sit at the back of the bus in America prior to the civil rights era, but doesn't mention the degree of persecution which they might face in the United States of America. Jews were, for instance (along with African Americans, freemasons, and Catholics), one of the four enemies of white America in the eyes of the Ku Klux Klan. This is, of course, why many American Jews supported the civil rights movements, as they had sympathy with the persecution of Black Americans, and also why a number of American Jews ended the victims of racist violence from white supremacists (such as with the murders of Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in Mississippi in 1964). The blithe dismissal of the possibility of Jews facing racism is, of course, offensive given the degree of discrimination and, on occasion, violence which American Jews faced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

And, of course, one can make similar points about Travelers, the Irish, slavery, and so on. Attempting to dismiss the racism that certain groups have suffered is always going to be insulting, as it requires ignoring a large amount of inconvenient evidence and, in many cases, brutal persecution.

I lived in a constituency where an MP was quite seriously ill - it definitely affected her work. She started out as very active and over time we saw less and less of her.

I really, really want to know who leaked the original story. It changes the whole thing if we knew what side it came from.

Everyone will have an opinion on the letter from it being understandable based on her own experiences through to being poorly worded and all the way to it being outright offensive.

But if I had had an investigation into me at work starting in April 2023, lasting all the way to December, being asked to take action that was completed by February and then hearing nothing - that would not be acceptable. For my 'manager' to then outright lie about whether it was complete and then to get a partial but not full outcome would not be right. That strain she is under when the clock is ticking about whether you can stand again, the media pressure, the online abuse etc is going to have an impact. Whether there are health issues at play or not that is a woman who has been placed in an awful position and the emotion will come through, which is not a weakness.

And she isn't the only one. Seeing how little they cared about another candidate being barred from standing - who found out through social media - it becomes a pattern. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/c3ggv2jxz7go

Maybe people feel they have done the wrong thing and shouldn't be allowed to stand or maybe people feel that there is an over-reaction or even a plot to block candidates from one wing. But the lack of care and responsibility for people dedicating a lot of their lives to fighting for a party and via that for what they believe for the country cannot be right.

Starmer is purging the party of left wing MPs. Unfortunately Labour are the only party to vote for to get rid of the Tories. Unless you have a candidate from another party who will take the seat from the Tories (in my area the Lib Dems are more popular than Labour.) I see Labour now as Tory lite. Ideally they won't get a majority and will have to form a coalition with other parties. Not with the Tories obviously! I never thought I would have this view of the Labour party, I was a staunch supporter for years.

Dianne Abbott is not in a position to say whether I, as an Irish person, has experienced racism. That is for me to decide.

Also, black people aren't the only people who were taken as slaves. Irish people certainly were.

I saw a thread last night where a poster on MN had received a racist private message. Several PPs strongly noted that it's not for other people to dismiss or downplay someone's experience of racism, and said it was not up to other people to decide or tell someone that they overreacted or 'misunderstood' when it comes to what is perceived to be racism. It struck me this reasoning doesn't always seem to apply to Jewish people or Travellers. It should.

Cross posted with timenowplease who makes the same point as me.

Diane Abbott will be Labour candidate for Hackney.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-69078711

I agree, but it costs me nothing as an Irish person to acknowledge that being a white Irish person in the UK is a different experience from being Black.

There are 'fads' in these things, and us Irish are no longer No. 1 in the Hate Parade - believe me, I remember vividly when we were, when 'That's a bit Irish' meant stupid, and we lived under the threat of arrest, imprisonment, or death just for being Irish - 'innocent until proven Irish'.
So I would never argue with Diane Abbot that anti-Black racism is a different, more obvious, more direct experience than what I experience[d].

But it was offensive of her to suggest that the Irish experience is on the same level as red-haired people - glossing over centuries of colonisation, ethnic-cleansing, and massacres that could, under the current use of the word 'genocide', be classified as genocides - yes, plural, not just the Great Hunger.
And she should have paused to ask herself why having red hair is seen as negative - hint: which ethnic group has the most red-heads?

It also costs me nothing and detracts in no way from my history to say that Irish people were not slaves. They were ethnically-cleansed and transported to the West Indies and the USA to work in horrific conditions - but as indentured servants, not as 'chattel slaves', they were not owned, they were able to gain their freedom eventually, if they had children, their children were born free.

I'm OK with leaving the term 'slavery' to describe what happened specifically to African slaves, and the term 'holocaust' to what happened to the Jewish people [primarily], Irish history has its own terminology and its own horrors.

Ah they've caved in, interesting.

Of course they would. How would the Lisa Nandys of the party be expected to defend labour’s position otherwise? It would be cringeworthy.

Maybe, or maybe it was a comms SNAFU? Who knows

@MarieDeGournay You misunderstand me. When I say 'taken as slaves' I mean just that.

People seem to have short memories when it comes to historic events. The Jews were enslaved in Egypt. The Ottoman Empire was the biggest taker and user of slaves - vastly out-numbering anything white people did in more recent times.

There are more slaves in this country today and worldwide than ever were in previous times.

It serves no one to gloss over these things.

To a large extent, it concerns the legacy we live with today.
There are people alive today who knew people who were slaves in the USA and it maintained segregation until the 1960s.
While the Barbary pirates took slaves, it has very little impact on the Cornish population of today.

You're right about historical and modern slavery worldwide.

I thought you were referring to the claim that the Irish were slaves the way Africans were slaves in the West Indies and the USA, which is historically inaccurate, and is used by racists in the US to minimise the effects of slavery on African-Americans up to the present day, e.g. 'The Irish were slaves too, and you don't see them claiming reparations'.
I hate to see Irish history hijacked like that; as I said in my previous post, our history has enough disasters and horrors without claiming we were victims of the Transatlantic slave trade as well.

I understand now that that's not the specific kind of slavery you were referring to, so sorry for jumping in!

“I have never been offered a seat in the Lords, and would not accept one if offered. I am the adopted Labour candidate for Hackney North & Stoke Newington. I intend to run and to win as Labour’s candidate”
5:47 PM · Jun 2, 2024
https://x.com/HackneyAbbott/status/1797309131574927548

This is the first time she has said this publicly, previously all she said was:

Naturally I am delighted to have the Labour Whip restored and to be a member of the PLP. Thank you to all those who supported me along the way. I will be campaigning for a Labour victory. But I am very dismayed that numerous reports suggest I have been barred as a candidate.

(And I think had said was waiting until this coming tuesday when Labour HQ confirms selected candidates, as they appeard not to want to say so she was the official candidate, only that the Whip had been restored. But obviously anger at the suggestion she could be bought off with a peerage.)

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/02/diane-abbott-still-weighing-options-says-friend-as-labour-allegedly-entices-leftwing-mps-to-leave

*Solrock" · 31/05/2024 08:35

One of the offensive details of Diane Abbott's letter is the degree to which it is ignorant of and minimizes real, historical persecution.

Right up the the 80s, many American golf clubs had "No Jews" rules. I seem to remember more recently that private members clubs had the same rule.

I have been aware of antiJewish racism in the USA and it confused and shocked me. The letter was in the context of the UK.
In the context of Britain, anti Irish Catholic racism is trivial (speaking as one). It does happen but it is just not a significant part of the culture.

I think this shows that Starmer doesn’t have the public control over the Labour Party that Blair did in 1997. What this means when it comes to forming a government we’ll see in July. Both Labour and Conservatives have lots of internal factions and in-fighting, but for whatever reason Conservatives have generally been much better over the last 50 years at holding the party line in public. The Tories keep their eyes on the prize and are disciplined and ruthless when they want to be (see Mrs T being dispatched as PM) - whereas Labour are much more susceptible to purity spirals and appalling HR processes. It pains me to say it but the shambolic approach to discipline within Labour doesn’t appear to have changed significantly from the Derek Hatton days.

Regarding Diane specifically - she’s been treated badly, especially when you consider she’s a senior trail blazing, well respected MP. However, I also saw her on the news and came to the conclusion that she is not a well woman like other posters. But I think in her mind and the minds of her supporters that she’s been forced into standing again by these events to protect her reputation and legacy. I also think Labour leadership thought she’d step back/retire due to health and thus the disciplinary over the letter would then just go away, rather than blowing up in their faces (see previous paragraph about them always being bad at this).

The Tories keep their eyes on the prize and are disciplined and ruthless when they want to be (see Mrs T being dispatched as PM) - whereas Labour are much more susceptible to purity spirals and appalling HR processes

😂
The Tories have had 3 prime ministers in the last 4 years, 2 unelected and are currently tearing themselves apart trying to appease the right wing. We got Brexit because of Tory infighting. Sunaks comms team appear to be doing their utmost to make him look like a plonker. "Disciplined and ruthless" 😂

Totally agree @CassieMaddox!

Maybe if you read the post again you’d see I’m talking about the bigger picture over the last 50 years or so. The Tories still managed to win the last election and hold onto nearly a full term in government, despite their internal chaos. That’s some achievement. Whereas Labour are in danger of throwing away a landslide into a more ordinary win and are coasting in on the FPTP system we have that virtually guarantees they will form the next election. They look shambolic, they are shambolic and rolling out Wes Streeting to look like an over eager NUS President at every opportunity won’t paper over the cracks when they start having to actually govern.

I think they look the opposite of shambolic. The Angela Rayner's house debacle just shows how desperate the Tories are to discredit them, if Labour were shambolic the Tories would not need to make stuff up.

We will see after the GE.