Below we publish a joint statement from leading Labour Party activists.

We the undersigned are active members of Leyton and Wanstead Constituency Labour Party (CLP). We have all been in the party for many years and some of us for decades. Many of us have been CLP and local branch officers, including CLP chairs and secretaries, and a general election agent.

We have watched with anger, frustration and astonishment as the current dishonest leadership has abandoned the principles the Labour Party should stand on. It has tried to solve the economic crisis at the expense of ordinary people who did nothing to cause it, while doing next to nothing to address unprecedented levels of inequality and poverty, including child poverty. This has had disastrous electoral results.

The Government’s shameful inaction and active complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza is intolerable. In the face of hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries, the total destruction of infrastructure, the deliberate starvation in Gaza and the state-sponsored settler violence in the West Bank, the Labour Government has limited itself to minimal, mainly symbolic, actions, taken far too late, while continuing with weapon sales and military co-operation with the Israeli regime. This will be a permanent stain on its reputation.

The proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist group is a terrifying extension of authoritarian state power and has led to the shocking and absurd arrests of hundreds of entirely peaceful demonstrators, many of whom are our friends and family members.

The Government is pandering to the fake patriotism and poisonous anti-migrant rhetoric of Reform UK in a doomed attempt to win their voters on that basis. It has savagely cut international aid and completely betrayed the interests of trans people. All this has led to intensified community conflict and is opening the door to a future Reform UK government.

This is not a complete list! And even many of the reforms that we would welcome have been weakened and watered down.

The leadership of the party at regional and national level, with their local supporters and their allies in the party apparatus have used shameless anti-democratic manoeuvres – tearing up the rule book – to prevent properly democratic selections of candidates for Parliament and local councils and have increasingly closed down any method by which party members can try to determine or influence local or national policy. They have created a climate of fear in the party to shut down opposition.

We have remained members of the Labour Party, despite being told to leave by Keir Starmer, and in spite of many good socialists being expelled or leaving in disgust. We have done this out of party loyalty; to ensure the removal of the Tory government; for the sake of unity with the main organisations of the Labour movement; and because no viable alternative presented itself.

But enough is enough. We now feel that we have no choice but to resign from the Labour Party and to help to build an alternative socialist party that we can be proud to be members of – one that can act in the interests of working class people and provide a real alternative to the “populist” authoritarian far right.

Signatories

Ray Goodspeed, former Leyton and Wanstead Constituency Labour Party (CLP) chair and joint CLP secretary

Tim Harris, former CLP secretary

Lizzy Ali, former CLP chair

Julia Kent, former CLP treasurer

Carol Riley, former CLP election agent and CLP campaigns coordinator

Liz Fenton, former CLP fundraising officer, branch secretary and branch chair

Richard Price, former CLP political education officer and branch chair

Steve Williams, former CLP vice chair (campaigns) and branch secretary

Jenny Kidman, former CLP disabilities officer

Stuart Howard, former CLP assistant secretary

Liz Floyd, former CLP disabilities officer

Sue Catten, former CLP vice chair (membership)

Ros Mykura, former general committee delegate

Paul Bonell, former general committee delegate

Susan Cueva, former general committee delegate

Paul McCarthy, former general committee delegate

Geoff Bryant, former general committee delegate

Victoria Jesper, former general committee delegate

Mary Byrne

Arfan Abrahim

Reem Bortcosh.

Image: Leyton Underground Station. © Copyright N Chadwick and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence. Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed