The Labour Party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) has allowed a banned, leading member of Militant Tendency to rejoin the party whilst a holocaust denier has still not been expelled.
The leak from Labour headquarters revealed the extent of the far-left’s control over the party after three Momentum members were voted onto the NEC in January, including the activist group’s founder Jon Lansman.
Those that have been allowed to rejoin include Alan Fogg, 76, from the Trotskyist group Militant Tendency which was proscribed by the Labour Party’s NEC in 1982.
Militant faction’s notable success was the group’s “entryist” policy which led to the infiltration and takeover of Liverpool’s city council in 1983. Several activists were banned from the party during the eighties.
Fogg was one of 47 Liverpool councillors banned from public office for five years after attempting to set an illegal budget in 1985, according to papers seen by The Sunday Times.
The Trotskyite said: “I had expected them to give me trouble, but I went for an interview and it all went fine… It’s about time people like us got back into the party.”
Others reportedly reinstated include “Marxist socialist-feminist” Janine Booth, 51, who is a member of the Trotskyist group, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty.
Britain’s opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn gives a speech from the top of a double-decker bus as Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) flags fly at a May Day rally in London on May 1, 2016. (Photo credit JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images)
Mike Sivier was suspended by the Labour Party last year for comments about Jewish people and Zionism. He had written on his website that it “may be entirely justified” to say that former prime minister Tony Blair had been “unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers”. It was also claimed that on whether millions of Jews died in the Holocaust he wrote:”I’m not going to comment. don’t know.”
The NEC voted 12-10 to issue Sivier a “warning”, but not to expel him. On Sunday, Labour MP for Redcar Anna Turley tweeted that the Times article was incorrect in saying Sivier had been re-admitted.
However, Sunday Times reporter Gabriel Pogrund, who has the NEC papers, responded that “Party sources have privately admitted the semantics of the ruling are ‘unclear’ – either way one thing is clear: NEC voted to not expel him.”
Since Jeremy Corbyn became party leader, Labour has faced a spate of anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist comments from a shortlisted council candidate, MP, and a former mayor amongst others, with far-left activists calling for the expulsion of Jewish and pro-Israel groups from the party.
Another document seen by The Sunday Times circulated amongst Momentum members is pushing for “all-member” votes to elect local government leaders – meaning all members of the local party can vote rather than just councillors – which could lead to the takeover of local councils by the far-left faction.
In March 2017, The Observer published a secret recording which revealed a plot by Momentum founder Jon Lansman to seize control of the Labour Party described as “entryism” by the party’s deputy leader Tom Watson.
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