In the current Labour Left Podcast, Labour Hub’s audio spin off, we explored Labour’s wonderful Worthing story with local activist Cllr Hilary Schan.  Bryn Griffiths can now update the story with another soul-destroying and disappointing twist.

To recap: during Jeremy Corbyn’s inspiring leadership of the Party, a political earthquake occurred in Worthing.  The key point to understand about Worthing is that they had not had a Labour councillor for over 40 years when the first one was elected in 2017. So, the transformation, which was completed in 2022, when Labour seized control of the council, was remarkable. This was all due to the influx of hundreds of members in the Corbyn era.

Cllr Hilary Schan, the Co-Chair of Momentum, told the inspiring story of just how effective a local Labour Party rooted in its community can be can be in our podcast here. 

More recently, the East Worthing and Shoreham Labour story took a turn for the worse when the dead hand of Labour officialdom gripped the local Party during the recent parliamentary selection process.  Labour officials showed no sentimentality for Labour’s achievements on the Sussex coast when they not only excluded left wing stalwart Cllr Carl Walker but also the more mainstream Cllr Cat Arnold from the long-list of candidates that local members could choose from. Labour officials could find no long-list places for any local people and instead they chose to present the local members with a menu of what Hilary called “cookie-cut-out Starmerites.”

Cllr Cat Arnold noted in her dignified statement to Party members that “it is incredibly sad that no local representatives are now in the running for the seat.”

I can now report that Lavinia O’Connor, Labour’s candidate in 2019, has had enough and left the Labour Party. In 2017 the local Labour Party had delivered a stunning 19.8% swing.  In the following 2019 election, despite the disastrous Get Brexit Done election, Lavinia and East Worthing and Shoreham Labour Party pretty much held up our vote securing 19,633 as against 20,882 in 2017. 

Given that Lavinia had played such an important role in Labour’s Sussex coast revival, she should have a found Labour a welcoming place for ever, but as you might suspect that is not how she feels.   She said,  “So after three years of separation, I have decided to divorce myself from the abusive relationship that I was in within the Labour Party as a socialist.”

Looking back, she said, “I have no regrets joining and we did some great things in the CLP [Constituency Labour Party], and the mass movement in 2019 showed us the need for a real change plus winning in Worthing.”

It hurts when people like Lavinia leave the party. I dearly wish they would stay but I cannot help feeling a great deal of empathy for them and how they feel.

Let us hope that even Starmer’s heavy handed authoritarianism cannot crush the spirit of the East Worthing and Shoreham Labour Party as we desperately need to kick the Tories out at the next General Election.

Bryn Griffiths is the host of the Labour Left podcast which he produces with Luke Robinson the podcast editor.  They are both activists in the labour movement, Momentum and The World Transformed in North Essex. Bryn writes regularly for Labour Hub. You can find all three episodes of the Labour left Podcast here.