From Labour leader to independent, Jeremy Corbyn vows to work in the UK and Europe for a ceasefire in Gaza
Former Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn (C) joins pro-Palestinian supporters preparing to march through central London, on May 18, 2024, at a demonstration to commemorate the 76th anniversary of the Nakba and call for an end to arms sales to Israel.
by Muhammad Hussein
June 30, 2024
Rises and falls are all part and parcel of the life of many a political figure, often in numerous occurrences and often at the hands of forces too big to be beaten. Jeremy Corbyn is no exception to that rule. Having served as leader of the UK’s Labour Party from 2015 to 2020, to being exiled from that very same party, he now stands as an independent candidate for his parliamentary seat of Islington North.
The former prime ministerial candidate, if anything, is known for his adherence to certain principles – long-held over many decades but untested by national leadership – which include proclamations of justice, accountability, security reformation, and an opposition to war and conflict.
Speaking to Middle East Monitor, Corbyn recalled his avid involvement in local politics from an early age, having first become active in his school years over issues such as the Vietnam war and environmental sustainability, as well due to an interest in tackling injustice, poverty, and discrimination.
He then worked as a trade union organiser in London in his twenties, before becoming a councillor and then an MP for Islington North in 1983. With his worldview and interest in history having been significantly influenced by his early years in the Caribbean, he stated that his decades representing his local community have “been a learning journey, learning from people from all over the world who’ve made their homes here and trying to speak up for them in parliament”.
Corbyn stressed that “I hate war and the violence that goes with it, so I started life campaigning against the Vietnam war”, highlighting his advocacy for justice and his anti-colonial stance as prominent focal points in his political mission. “It’s also about global solidarity, and I have always spoken up on issues such as apartheid in South Africa, the cause of the Palestinian people, and the cause of people which are denied representation around the world”.
Having been a member of the Labour Party since the age of 16, in which he held multiple roles and positions throughout the decades, his leadership and candidacy for prime minister of the UK – after the defeats in the 2017 and 2019 elections – ended in 2020 when he stepped down, and culminated in his brief suspension from the party that same year over his interpretation of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.
He was reinstated three years later, and “that could and should have been the end of the matter”, but the party’s new leader Keir Starmer “decided I should be suspended from the parliamentary party and that dispute has gone on ever since.”
An independent focus on the constituency’s challenges
The new Labour then debarred from being a candidate in this year’s upcoming general election, to take place on July 4, as well as debarring Islington North “from selecting anybody else, or even having a chance to choose me, if that’s what they wanted to do. Then when they tried to impose a candidate I attempted to put my name forward they denied it and told me the rules of natural justice did not apply to the Labour Party”.
Jeremy Corbyn MP addresses demonstrators gathered at a rally in Whitehall in solidarity with the Palestinian people and to demand an immediate ceasefire to end the war on Gaza on the 76th anniversary of Nakba in London, United Kingdom on May 18, 2024. [Wiktor Szymanowicz – Anadolu Agency]d
With his own community and constituency at the forefront of his campaign, he said that Islington North “contains all the problems and joys of modern British society. It’s a diverse community, there are 70 different languages spoken in the constituency. It has, sadly, over 40 percent of our children living in degrees of poverty within society”, in addition to “some very rich people living in very big houses in certain parts of the constituency”.
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Amongst the main issues facing that community are “poverty and housing”, Corbyn said, highlighting the high mortgages, rent increases, low security of tenure, and bad energy efficiency that many in the constituency have suffered, despite the council’s best efforts to tackle such challenges. The high numbers of rough sleepers and homeless people are also a constant issue, he said, as elsewhere in the British capital.
Securing peace in the Middle East
Saying he is “passionate about the cause of peace in the Middle East”, Corbyn recounted that “I’ve been nine times to Palestine, to Israel, to the refugee camps, and all of the neighbouring countries – Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and so on.” Those trips have been a key factor in his long-held stance on the urgency of a resolution to the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the failure of which has led to the current ongoing Israeli offensive on Gaza and the destruction of the Strip, now entering its tenth month. “I’m just horrified, every day, as more horror stories of what went on and is going on now in Gaza on top of the events of October 7, and so I’m campaigning on that.”
His plan to secure a ceasefire in Gaza, if re-elected, would include “working with colleagues in parliament”, which would reportedly be a continuation of his efforts during his past term. “For the whole of the last parliament, I’ve been a member of the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe… and I’ve constantly raised the issues of Gaza there. I will continue that work at the European level”.
He insisted that he would also continue to raise his voice at pro-Palestine demonstrations, as well as to further work with allies from various other parties in the UK “to demand an immediate and complete ceasefire, but above all, recognition of the State of Palestine”.
Read: UK carried out 200 spy missions over Gaza in support of Israel
A key factor facilitating the Israeli genocide in Gaza which Corbyn particularly highlighted, however, is the UK’s own complicity in supplying arms and military assistance to Tel Aviv. He plans to use “the platform in parliament to expose the arms trade, British military participation, the use of RAF Akrotiri [the British airbase in Cyprus], the supply of arms from this country to Israel, and also, of course, legal issues.” Corby insisted that “I won’t stop until we get a ceasefire, until we get justice for the Palestinian people”.
If he is re-elected back into parliament, he said, “I will be working with anyone in parliament that agrees with the need for immediate recognition [of Palestinian statehood], which would in turn encourage a peace process.” Recalling the recent recognition of Palestine by Ireland, Norway, and Spain, Corbyn stated that such a step was “very important, because having a significant bloc of European Union member states recognising Palestine makes it much harder for the other countries not to do so. The biggest stumbling blocks are Britain, France, and Germany at the present time”.
Labour’s fall from Palestine’s grace
With regards to any possibility of the Labour Party – as well as its leader Keir Starmer – reforming its stance on the Gaza conflict and recognising Palestinian statehood, Corbyn said “I would like to be optimistic and say they will”, but he reserves doubts that would be the case due to the party’s stance that recognition of the State of Palestine is part of a peace process. “No, it has to be an unconditional and immediate recognition of the state of Palestine”, he stressed. “The vast majority of the world’s nations have done that, in some cases many years ago.”
Throughout the past year, Labour’s weak stance on the Israeli bombardment of Gaza and its reluctance to recognise Palestine has disappointed many long-time members and supporters of the party, disillusioning them and leading significant voter blocs to refuse further support for Labour in this election.
Jeremy Corbyn (c), Independent candidate for Islington North, stands with supporters holding posters in Archway before a canvassing session in support of his General Election campaign on 29th June 2024 in London, United Kingdom. [Mark Kerrison/In Pictures via Getty Images]“It’s done enormous damage to the Labour standing”, Corbyn stated, lamenting that the party has ridden back from its pro-Palestinian stance when he held the leadership. “They are wrong. They’re wrong to put caveats on it [Palestinian statehood] and they’re wrong to…not to recognise in any sense that it is always completely illegal to deny people access to water, power, food, and medicine. Those are war crimes if you deny people those things.”
Emphasising the need for “real security” in international relations, which include rights to food, clean water, and other necessities, Corbyn said that “the issues facing this planet are inequality, poverty, environmental disaster, are the wars created in the greed of trying to get minerals”.
He further added that “real security comes in this world if you have food, you have education, you have a health service, and you have clean air and a clean environment. Those are the issues that we have to be concentrating on, not encouraging more wars by the development of the arms trade, and ensuring that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights means what it says, and children don’t get bombed in Gaza, in Yemen, in the Congo, or anywhere else in this world.”
Starmer’s ban on Corbyn may mean “irreparable” damage to Labour in Islington
From LabourHub
Over 70 members of Islington North Labour Party are today asking voters to vote for the independent candidate Jeremy Corbyn, including the overwhelming majority of the CLP’s executive committee. Further below we reproduce their letter in full. First, we publish an exclusive article from a group of Party activists who are bitterly angry at how have they have been treated.
This is a strange election, but for some of us it is even stranger. We have been Labour Party members in Islington North for decades, and have loyally turned out to campaign for all sorts of deadbeats, no-hopers and right wingers. But this time, like most of the members of the constituency, we are not.
In May Cllr Anjna Khurana was elected Mayor of Islington for this year. Anjna represents the best of us: hardworking, principled and brave, she took legal action, challenging the sale of local GP surgeries to an American health care company. It’s convincing proof of how Islington Labour defends the vulnerable and sick, great to mention on the doorstep, as one of those surgeries returns to the local GP Federation at the beginning of July. Well, we are not on the doorstep and we doubt anyone who is canvassing for Labour is mentioning it.
Everyone knows what has happened to our MP of over 40 years, and that Jeremy Corbyn is now standing as an independent. Islington North members were presented with a shortlist of two by the NEC, and then told that even that ‘choice’ was denied them, and someone called Praful Nargund was to be the Labour candidate in this hitherto safe seat.
Most residents had never heard of him, but we Party members had. There were rumours about his ambitions to be an MP, ever since he was elected as a local councillor two years ago, after a ‘selection’ in which, unusually, only those selected stood, in a ward in the neighbouring constituency. He is alleged to have employed a PR or lobbying firm to further his ambitions, soon after buying a house in Barnsbury (a terraced house there will set you back over £4m today).
So who is Praful Nargund? According to the Daily Mail, he is a multi-millionaire private healthcare entrepreneur, who was educated at the now £25,000-per-year King’s College School in Wimbledon and holds more than £9.4million worth of shares in his family’s holding company. He is reported to have been a director of a US-owned private healthcare company, which made £16million profit in just nine months, from UK patients, and only left his role just prior to being publicly announced as Labour’s imposed Islington North candidate.
In spite of all those resources, however, he has been undistinguished as a councillor in the London Borough of Islington where he sat on only two council committees – the minimum. Unsurprisingly, Praful Nargund is refusing to take part in election hustings or talk to the local press, skewered by his comments in favour of the privatisation of health services.
His candidacy is in stark contrast to the hugely popular and hardworking MP whom he seeks to replace. Many local councillors and branch and constituency officers have chosen not to campaign for him, despite pressure to do so. Scores of activists have left the Party in disgust, including many branch organisers, chairs and even the chair of the CLP.
The constituency has had no access to Organise or Contact Creator for several months, making it difficult to organise campaigning for Sadiq Khan during the mayoral campaign. Seemingly, Sadiq’s victory was less important to some in the Party bureaucracy than the need to stop the local Party functioning. Yet we overcame the problems and turned out to campaign for him in spite of it. The shutdown was supposedly because of a data breach which prevented branch and constituency meetings. But miraculously now we can all get Party emails, and one of the first was from Nargund, asking for campaign donations.
The impact across the borough Party of the leadership’s persecution of Jeremy Corbyn has been profound. The Council and Party are both very divided and unhappy. As members leave, there is demoralization and drift. Beyond the Party, there is confusion and dismay among ordinary voters that a much-loved MP no longer has the official Labour label.
Whoever becomes the MP for Islington North, the damage to the local Party may be irreparable. Many of those who left may not return to a Party that is so tainted and is fast becoming home to a small group of bumptious, entitled right wingers and where what was once a pioneering progressive council is losing its values and its touch.
In the circumstances, it is important that those on the left who are staying in the Party do not dance to the tune of the right and seal themselves off from those who felt they had to leave. Member and ex-members, the left inside and out, need to work together and prepare for the battles to come.
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Media outlets are reporting today that 72 members including most CLP executive officers have signed an open letter calling on voters in the constituency to back Jeremy Corbyn, who is now standing as an independent. But few are publishing the letter in its entirety with all its signatories. Labour Hub reproduces this below.
A plea from resigning and former members of Islington North Labour Party: vote for Jeremy Corbyn, Independent
Dear voters of Islington North,
We have been proud members of Islington North Labour Party for many years. Together, we have campaigned on a wide range of issues, from defending the local Number 4 bus route to saving the local hospital’s A&E. These campaigns have united members from all sides of our Party, and we are proud of the collegiate atmosphere that we have created. In many ways, Islington North CLP was the genuine broad church that the Labour Party claims to be.
This year, we have been denied the right to choose our own candidate for the General Election. Not a single person in Islington North has had a say. We believe in democracy – and the people of Islington North deserve an MP who believes in democracy too.
Jeremy Corbyn has dedicated his life to this constituency. We hear on a regular basis from people how Jeremy has been there for them in their time of need, whether that is housing, education or anything else. He has always worked in partnership with our progressive Labour Council, both as a Labour MP and as an Independent MP.
We have been proud to stand alongside Jeremy over the course of ten General Elections. This year, we will be campaigning for him as an independent candidate for Islington North. Many of us have already resigned or been expelled from the Labour Party as a result. Those of us who are still in the Party know our support for Jeremy will
result in the termination of our membership. We do not take this decision lightly, but it is time to take a stand in the name of democracy and justice.
We will campaign on the same principles we have always had. That includes ending all privatisation of our NHS in order to restore the principle of free, public and universal healthcare.
Jeremy has always been an honest, brave and principled voice. We need that voice now, more than ever. We implore Labour voters to support Jeremy Corbyn as an independent candidate, and vote for him on the 4th July.
Signed,
Alison McGarry (CLP Chair)
Bisi Williams (CLP Vice Chair Membership)
Gill Lawton (CLP Vice Chair Membership)
Ruth Clarke (CLP Women’s Section Secretary)
Steph Linkogle (CLP Vice Chair Campaigns)
Sarah Doyle (CLP Secretary)
Oliver Durose (CLP Assistant Secretary)
Martin Franklin (CLP Environment Officer,
Tufnell Park ward delegate)
Michael Rowan (CLP Communications and Social Media)
Simon Hinds (ex-CLP BAME Officer)
Terry Conway (CLP LGBT Officer, GM
delegate Unite LE 00014 branch)
Karen Shook (Finsbury Park Ward Executive Committee)
Nadine Finch (Union delegate from Unite LE 790 Branch, Chair of Arsenal Ward)
Mumtaz Khan (Union delegate from Unite LE 00014 branch)
Talal Karim (Union delegate from Unite LE 525 branch)
Gillian Dalley (Tollington Ward Chair)
Diane Reay (Vice Chair Tollington Ward)
Kate Buffery (Junction Ward GM delegate, Local Campaign Forum)
Peter Murray (Treasurer, Junction Ward)
Jonathan Gore (Ward Organiser, Highbury)
Cassie Mayer (Hillrise Ward GM delegate)
Sophie Maisey (Hillrise Ward GM delegate)
Ginette Williams (Hillrise GM Ward delegate)
Jan Whelan (Hillrise Ward GM delegate)
Mica Nava (Tufnell Park Ward GM delegate)
Dr Azhar Malik (Tufnell Park Ward GM delegate)
Jeremy Maher (Tufnell Park Ward GM delegate)
Annette Thomas (Tufnell Park Ward GM delegate)
Tony Graham (Highbury Ward GM delegate)
Stelios Foteinopoulos (Finsbury Park Ward GM delegate)
Minda Burgos-Lukes (Highbury Ward GM delegate)
Nick Davidson (Highbury Ward Treasurer, GM delegate)
Jan Whelan (Hillrise Ward GM delegate)
Dr Zohra Malik
Dr Rohi Malik
Sive Malik
Reem Abou-El-Fadl
Jan Pollock
Celie Hanson
William Murphy
Jenny Howell
Judy Garton-Sprenger
Tom Cockcroft
Juliette Mullin
Joei Silvester
- This was originally published by LabourHub here and we reproduce in full for information purposes.
