Labour’s Deputy Leadership Struggle Exposes Community Tensions. “I’ll Piss on your Face.”
On Tuesday Oct 7th aspirant deputy leader, Lucy Powell came to Green St to meet with local Labour party members. She wanted to hear the voices of local activists.
Of course, if she could garner the support of one or two in the process, that would be no bad thing.
Following the meeting at Café Adda in Green St, Labour luminaries were joined by an uninvited and highly vocal group which appeared to consist of Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and Newham Independent people. The economy, Russia, immigration might all have been issues that members wanted to discuss with Ms Powell. But locally there was only one issue and it wasn’t the 400,000 killed in Sudan.
The police attended what became an increasingly acrimonious exchange, attempting to diffuse the situation. As the video shows, they did not have much luck.
The most prominent Labour member there appeared to be Cllr Anam Islam. Cllr Islam was the previous Chief Whip. Responding to accusations that he was “hiding in the toilet” from one of the more vociferous campaigners, (we don’t know this but suspect that she was from the Trotskyist fringe of the PSC). Although it is difficult to hear it, it appears that he said that he would “piss on your face”.
If this is true, it is unacceptable. We should expect more from experienced politicians, even if subject to protestors. Is this a matter that the Labour Party will take up or will “I’ll piss on your face” become the new put-down from Labour candidates to hecklers.
Surely Labour has some guidelines about what their candidates can and cannot say. It’s not quite in the same league as threatening to cut the throats of your political opponents, but the new Whip of the Labour Group at Newham Council might like to consider Cllr Islam’s position, at least until the facts become clear.
Viewing the video, the only person to come out with any degree of credit appears to be Newham Independent’s Cllr Mirza who seems to have sought to diffuse the situation.
There has got to be some irony in that Cllr Islam who is known to be a strong supporter of the Palestinians to the extent of being anti-Israel is the one that fell out with the PSC campaigners (at least we think that they were PSC-any details, please let us know).