Must watch to set context:
Part 5 covers the role regional staff played in disciplinary cases including initiating cases, proposing decisions on cases as well as investigating and progressing cases. It also covers the extent to which staff would stalk new members on social media in an attempt to remove people identified as from left wing factions.
17 August 2015
Danny Adilypour and Teddy Ryan discuss CLP nominations:
Danny Adilypour: “It was scary how many Trots turned up for the Streatham meeting last week”
Teddy Ryan: “how close was it”
Danny Adilypour:“Liz beat Corbyn by 2”
Teddy Ryan: “christ. That’s unreal”
Danny Adilypour:“Yeah it’s terrifying. That’s part of the reason we’re nervous about Vauxhall”
Teddy Ryan: “surely vauxhall will be fine”
Danny Adilypour:“I think it will be, but you just can’t take anything for granted at the moment”
14 September 2015(two days after Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader),
Regional Organisers discuss how Labour HQ view of Corbyn.
Ellie Buck: “if he hasnt gone within a few months a lot of staff will leave”Rob Sherrington: “John McDonald will be the catalyst for the plp to get rid of him.Ellie Buck: “Hopefully”
18 January 2016
Ellie Buck jokes that her role is about “fighting tories and trots by day, criminals by night”
December 2016
Fraser Welsh exclaims how part of his work involves “not conceding CLPs to Corbynite bullies”
November 2015
Welsh regional staff discuss “putting together a list of trots who want to come to the corbyn event tomorrow” and their disappointment that they couldn’t refuse them entry.
January 2016
Rob Sherrington and Ellie Buck discuss hand picking an audience for an upcoming Labour event and choosing only “sensible people”(i.e. no trots allowed).
Rob Sherrington: “bloody hell, that’s a task.”Ellie Buck:“innit”
October 2017
Teddy Ryan and Ciaran Tully express concern over Momentum’s job advert for new “regional organiser” positions. New appointments could “fuck up regions… basically doing our job but motivated”. At the same time they felt the appointees would not be “good enough”, describing the role as “very badly paid”. One of them remarked how the new staff would extremely motivated to “do the groundwork we cannot be arsed doing and they will engage the members in a way we cannot be fucked with.”
May 2015
After the 2015 election and during the run up to the Corbyn leadership campaign later that year a surge of people joined the Labour Party as full members, or as registered supporters, to vote in the leadership election. A number of senior and junior staff, including Dan Hogan started investigating new members and supporters, mainly by stalking them on social media, to identify and remove anyone they considered to be “trotty” or a “twat”. Staff even discussed “hunting out 1000s of trots” and used phrases like “trot busting”,“bashing trots”, “trot spotting”, “the trot hunt” and “trot hunting”. Senior staff like Simon Jackson were known to “go on about trot busting” another was said to be “celebrating every time he finds a trot”
Danny Adilypour referred to himself as “trot smasher in chief”. Cameron Scott declared that the “priority right now is trot hunting” and Dominic Murphy suggested they “call the purge ‘trot or not’”. Murphy and Katherine Buckingham even discussed how it felt like they were “playing trot or not” while the “real work is piling up”
22 July 2015
Dan Hogan remarks “for what it’s worth, anyone who writes in [to the policy team] who doesn’t sound like a trot-lodite, i’m giving to the membership team to see if they can convince them to sign up as a supporter [and get a vote].”
5 August 2015
Simon Jackson calls Guardian journalist Owen Jones “an arsehole” and talks about getting him off the panel of a Young Labour conference event and how people like Jones should be disallowed a vote in the leadership election.
Simon Jackson: “it seems to be reason for disallowing people a vote in the leadership election”
Sarah Mulholland:“that is for the saving of the Labour Party! not a vendetta against a mad person”
Simon Jackson: “Young Labour need to not be trots, that is not a vendetta”
Sarah Mulholland:“if only they weren’t, my life would be so much jollier. Rosie is going to speak to you about trot purge”
10 September 2015
Dan Hogan and Amy Fowler discussed “purging” someone for having “liked”some Facebook pages or retweeting the Green Party. Hogan also describes “perusing the Stop The Labour Purge FB page” and “getting even by just purging everyone who shared it” and “hunting through all the anarchists and trots who shared it to purge them too”. Fowler expressed concern that Hogan was “fixating” and even suggests “Can you maybe just try to let it go?”
The report then goes on to explain how Hogan was so busy “Trot busting” that when, in 2017, at least 170 people (who had been identified as Labour members) were reported to GLU for antisemitism, they were simply not acted against. Hogan was one of two Disputes officers employed by the party to deal with these complaints at the time.
12 August 2015
A number of senior staff started to express concerns over some of the reasons people were being purged. NEC member Alice Perry expressed about some of the people staff had flagged. She noted how one individual (Tony Smart) had been flagged for donating to the People’s Assembly, while another (Caroline King) was flagged for some fairly innocuous Facebook likes… “We can’t block people just because they like the people’s assembly and UK uncut. I wouldn’t consider these to be far left either”
By the 21st August, the GLU had produced a list of 238 rejected members that included…
Someone who “Retweeted Class War”
Someone who “Retweets the [National Health Action] party and appears to have been a supporter of them”
Someone with a “Pattern of retweeting Green Party material and expressing support”
Someone who retweeted a Mark Thomas tweet saying “Dear Labour… get fucked” after many Labour MPs’ abstained on the welfare bill, which was opposed by many Labour members.
Some of the comments from the GLU included…
“green party supporter – likes on facebook”“likes a lotta greens on FB”
In fact, there were so many issues with the GLU list that the Head of Disputes, Katherine Buckingham, would later remark (in 2016) how “there were so many mistakes last year that the NEC essentially told us that everyone should get an appeal”.
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STAFF LIST
Ali Moussavi (Economic Advisor in the Leader’s Office)
Amy Fowler (Fundraising)
Anna Hutchinson (Regional Director, Labour North West)
Anna Wright (Press Officer)
Ben Murphy (Local Government Officer)
Cameron Scott (Eastern Regional Director)
Carol Linforth (Director of Conference and Events)Ciaran Tully (Regional Organiser)
Claire-Frances Fuller (Head of Internal Governance)
Colette Collins-Walsh (Education Policy Officer)
Dan Hogan (Policy Communications Officer / Investigations Officer in GLU)
Danny Adilypour (Campaigns Manager in the Contact Creator, Targeting & Analysis Team)
Dominic Murphy (Research Officer)Ellie Buck (Regional Organiser, South East)Emilie Oldknow (Executive Director – Governance, Membership and Party Services)
Fiona Stanton (Regional Director, Labour North)
Francis Grove-White (Labour International Policy Officer)
Fraser Welsh (Deputy General Secretary for Wales)
Greg Cook (Head of Political Strategy)
Hollie Ridley (Training Development and Community Organising Manager / Election Strategy Manager / Head of Elections and Campaign Support / Director, Eastern Region)
Holly Snyman (Director – Human Resources)
Iain McNicol (General Secretary)
James McBride (staff at Labour’s Policy Unit leading on economy and business policy)
John Stolliday (Director, Governance and Legal)Jo Green (Head of Broadcasting)Jo Greening (Head of International Liaison)
Julie Lawrence (Director, GSO)
Karie Murphy (Chief of Staff, LOTO)
Katherine Buckingham (GLU Head of Disputes)
Katy Dillon (Press Officer / Labour’s Broadcast Manager)
Kieren Walters (Broadcasting Manager / Head of Press & Broadcasting)
Laura Repton (Regional Administrator)
Lee Gingell (Membership Services and Correspondence)
Lisa Forsyth (Policy & Political Adviser, Leader’s Office)
Louise Withers-Green (GLU Disputes Officer)
Luke Akehurst (Former member of Labours NEC, Labour First Activist, currently Director at ‘We Believe in Israel’)
Mike Creighton (Director of Audit, Risk and Property)
Neil Fleming (Acting Head of Press and Broadcasting)
Patrick Heneghan (Executive Director – Elections, Campaigns and Organisation)
Rob Sherrington (Regional Organiser)
Sam Matthews (GLU’s Head of Disputes)
Sarah Brown (Press Officer)
Sarah Mulholland (PLP Secretary)
Sarah Waite (Education Policy Officer / Political Advisor to the Shadow Secretary of State for Education)
Seumas Milne (Executive Director – Strategy and Communication)
Simon Jackson (Director of Policy, Political Research and Messaging, Briefing and Rebuttal)
Simon Mills (Executive Director – Finance).
Teddy Ryan (Regional Organiser)
Tom Geldard (Director of Digital).
Tom Hamilton, Head of Briefing and Rebuttal
Tom Watson (Deputy Leader, Labour Party)
Tracey Allen (Manager, GSO)
