Tuesday 26th September was a worrying day for people in a working-class district of Oxford. Barton and Sandhills residents took to the streets in defence of their councillor Jabu Nala-Hartley, who is being deselected by Labour officials. People brought bright umbrellas in an echo of the Hong Kong protests at the imposition of candidates chosen by Beijing.

The record of Cllr Jabu Nala-Hartley is impressive. She lives in Barton and has significant local support: in May 2021 she got the largest vote of the winning Labour candidates. She has been elected by Labour members across the city as the first ever black working-class Chair of Oxford & District Labour Party. She is a passionate and effective campaigner on housing, health and union rights. She chairs the Oxford Living Wage Campaign and is the founder of Mothers 4 Justice Ubuntu, and led a campaign to encourage people to take up Covid vaccinations. She enjoys the strong support of the two councillors who preceded her and of the elected leaders of the local party.

The celebrated Oxford professor, Danny Dorling, spoke up in her support. Officials claim she is being excluded because – as a result of illness – she did not attend some City Council meetings. Yet another councillor with a poorer attendance record is now standing as a Labour parliamentary candidate with the blessing of the party machine! Local members are questioning whether she is victim of the racism among Labour officials, as revealed in the Forde Report.

A number of other candidates for councillor candidate positions have also been blocked by South East Region Labour Party officials. One was successfully panelled – only subsequently to be removed from the list of approved candidates. Another local leader from the Kurdish community was rejected out of hand. Regional officials have usurped the democratic procedures of the Oxford Local Government Committee made up of local Party members, union representatives and councillors.

Later on the evening of the 26th September, Labour organised a selection meeting where Jabu Nala-Hartley was kept off the ballot paper for re-selection as the Labour candidate for Barton and Sandhills. Three hopeful replacement candidates turned up, strutted their stuff – and were roundly rejected. As one Labour member put it: “We are very, very happy with our fiery, campaigning, socialist councillor! We don’t need a puppet imposed from above.”

Supporters of Jabu and others who have been excluded will meet at St Mary’s Church, Barton, at 7pm on 5th October. Jabu will be speaking at a The World Transformed fringe meeting on the NHS at Labour Conference on Sunday 8th October from 6.30 pm.