Few have been more indulgent of Jeremy Corbyn than Andrew Slaughter, the Labour MP for Hammersmith. For instance Slaughter is a fellow apologist for Hamas.

But now even Slaughter has had enough and resigned from the Labour front bench, Good for him. But some of his Hammersmith Labour comrades are not happy.

June 28 STATEMENT by Stan Keable and Scott Reeve

Hammersmith old guard does not reflect pro-Corbyn membership

By his decision yesterday to resign as shadow justice minister, Hammersmith MP Andy Slaughter succumbed to the Tory media and Labour rightwing clamour for Jeremy Corbyn to hand control of the Party from the membership back to the MPs.

Andy’s resignation letter says that his decision was taken after consultation with CLP “officers, other members and Councillors”. In fact the consultation, emailed on Sunday ostensibly to “elected members of the General Committee”, but actually not sent to trade union delegates (including Unison delegate Stan Keable), was a “Confidence Vote Consultation” about whether Andy should support today’s ‘no confidence in Corbyn’ vote in the PLP. There was no meeting of the CLP General Committee, which has not met since February. The Labour councillors met yesterday, and were overwhelmingly in favour of the no confidence motion. But there was no all-members meeting, and the GC chair declined Scott Reeves’ request to email the “Confidence Vote Consultation” to the whole membership.

The majority of GC Delegates and Labour Councillors supported Yvette Cooper in last years leadership election (as did Andy Slaughter). They never have been reconciled to the election of Jeremy Corbyn. The current ward delegates were chosen a few days after Jeremy announced he was standing for Leader and before the close of nominations for Leader and Deputy leader. Since then, and because of Jeremy Corbyn, Labour membership has more than doubled in Hammersmith.

The opinions of the present officers and councillors cannot be assumed to reflect the views of the changed party membership. Half of the present members joined the party to help the new leadership transform Labour into an anti-war, anti-austerity party, and most of the other half have been glad to see the end of ‘New Labour’. The present officers and councillors represent the old guard, who were too willing to put up with the warmonger, Tony Blair, and his careerist collaborators.

Stan Keable, Unison GC delegate (personal capacity)
Scott Reeve, Addison ward delegate (personal capacity)

What a shambles.