Two Newham Councillors Resign the Whip in Protest at Reselection of Rokhsana Fiaz; “An Unfit Person to Hold Office”

Veteran councillor from Royal Docks, Patrick Murphy has resigned the whip in protest at the decision of the Labour Party to reimpose Rokhsana Fiaz as Labour’s candidate for mayor in the May 2022 local elections.

This is how the news was released. 

Actually, Murphy, a veteran councillor with 16 years’ experience behind him in Newham had resigned the Whip. He has not resigned from the Labour Party, though it seems that the Labour Party may be wishing to get rid of him anyway. 

His protest is at the failure of the Labour Party to investigate or take action against Fiaz for bullying of staff and of Labour colleagues. We have referred elsewhere to complaints made by Labour councillors to the Labour Party about both her bullying and her failure to address antisemitism inside the Newham Labour Group and party. In Murphy’s words, Fiaz is “an unfit person to hold public office”. 

When asked why the Labour Party has confirmed someone who had been the subject of complaints from almost half the Labour Group, he replied, “I fear that they are scared of accusations of being anti-Muslim. If they ditch a Muslim candidate, and a woman, they risk accusations of Islamophobia and probably misogyny to boot. The Party seems to have given up on good governance in favour of ticking the correct inclusion boxes”.

Murphy’s resignation of the whip was swiftly followed by the resignation of the whip by Councillor Quintin Peppiatt, who had been a councillor in East Ham South for 25 years. He resigned the whip citing two main areas in which he feels the incumbent has failed the party and the borough. 

The first is the failure to deal with antisemitism either locally or at a national level. Complaints made by Peppiatt and Manor Park councillor Ken Clark went unaddressed and unacknowledged. 

The second is the increasing disconnect between the Labour Party in Newham and the community. He cited the case of the closure of the City Farm. Here a local project with widespread community support is being cut to save funds when the council has failed to manage its own resources effectively.

The Labour Party has now informed the councillors that giving up the whip effectively means that they are expelled from the party. 

It seems that if an MP (Jeremy Corbyn) has the whip removed because he opposed the Labour Party tackling antisemitism nationally, he remains a member of the party. 

If local councillors resign the whip because the party fails to properly address the issue of antisemitism locally, they get kicked out of the party.