A northwest London Labour councillor has been expelled for reportedly speaking to a left-wing news-sheet — over a year before the party banned support for the outlet.
Harrow borough councillor Pamela Fitzpatrick gave an interview to Socialist Appeal in May 2020, 14 months before the faction around the publication was proscribed by Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) in July 2021.
She was notified of the disciplinary action against her the same month.
In a Facebook post on Saturday afternoon, Fitzpatrick said she went public about her expulsion after the party's decision was leaked to the pro-Labour Daily Mirror newspaper on Friday — and said she suspected a fellow Labour councillor or the leadership of her party branch.
"Last night I was contacted by the Senior Political correspondent of the Daily Mirror. She had been briefed that I had been expelled and wanted me to confirm or deny the story," she wrote.
"The other people notified of my expulsion yesterday, I am told, were the chair and secretary of Harrow West CLP as well as the chief whip of Harrow Labour Group," Fitzpatrick said.
Fitzpatrick was Labour's candidate for the Harrow East constituency at the 2019 general election, and was a member of the Parliamentary Social Security Advisory Committee until 2014, when she was elected to the Harrow council.
In a Sunday tweet, Fitzpatrick stressed her anger at what she felt were the retrospective enforcement of rule changes.
NEC members Nadia Jama and Laura Pidcock, the latter a former MP for North West Durham, also detailed on Sunday that they had tabled a motion for the ruling body's next meeting the following Thursday on the question of retrospective disciplinary action
Fitzpatrick suggested that it was ironic that Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer had called for more women to be elected to public bodies, as she had followed that path only to be expelled.
Left-wing Labour MPs and media figures have condemned Fitzpatrick's expulsion, a push led by former shadow chancellor of the exchequer John McDonnell — himself closely associated with Socialist Appeal.
One joked that the councillor could ask Starmer, a former director of public prosecutions (DPP), for legal advice.
The Food Workers' union, BFAWU, one the Labour's founding organisations in 1906, voted to disaffiliate from the party in September over the expulsion of its president, Ian Hodson, for his alleged association with Labour Against the Witch-Hunt. The vote at a special delegates' congress was timed to coincide with the climax of the annual Labour conference in Brighton.