roadmap for how local member democracy might ever be restored. Further, many in the local party have expressed considerable unease about the way that this broad discretion has been exercised by all white Party staff, and the way that they and their fellow( majority) Muslim members and voters have felt undermined and even discriminated against as a result.
It seems to me that whilst there may have been real concerns about the authenticity of new membership applications some years ago, modern banking and internet-based joining methods ought to make membership fraud easier to identify. Further, large-scale recruitment from minority or any other communities is not to be regarded as suspect per se. Far more worrying, in my view, is the enduring image of hundreds of BAME Labour members in one part of a city being denied democracy and autonomy, with little in the way of procedural protection, and the likely message this sends, whilst a handful of their white neighbours enjoy full membership rights down the road.
In light of the above:
- I recommend that the NEC gives urgent attention to any parts of the country that have been under " special measures " for more than six months.
- I recommend that going forward, no Labour Party unit in any part of the country should be subject to such a regime of executive control for more than six months without review by the NEC, and that within two weeks of any such administrative action, the local party in question is offered a plan as to how it might improve its practices and be allowed to return to full democracy, autonomy and status within the Party.
- As mentioned above, I further recommend that the Party reviews its Equal Opportunities Policies and their implementation and seeks to increase the ethnic diversity of its paid staff.
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