General

Labour reinstates Palestine campaigner

Asa Winstanley 15 February 2020
After grassroots outrage at her suspension, Palestine solidarity campaigner and left-wing Jewish Labour councilor Jo Bird is back in the race to be elected to UK Labour’s ruling national executive.

The Electronic Intifada understands that Bird’s membership suspension, imposed last week, has now been reversed.
The Labour Party did not reply to a request for comment on Saturday, but its website confirms the news.
The news comes the same day The Skwawkbox reported that up to 90 percent of evidence in recent anti-Semitism investigations is rejected by a key Labour disciplinary committee as “flimsy or irrelevant.”
Labour’s online tally of local party nominations to the National Executive Committee now again lists Bird.
A copy of the same page from earlier this week omits Bird’s name.
Her current tally of 111 nominations puts her in fourth place. Before her suspension, Bird had been in joint first place.
Labour’s ruling national executive has the power to set the party’s rules and enact disciplinary measures against members. Three seats on the committee are up for election.
Voting will take place next week.
Bird was suspended earlier this month in what many members said was an attempt to rig the election against the left and Palestine solidarity campaigners.
Despite Bird’s suspension from the race, local Labour groups continued to nominate her.
This membership pressure on the party appears to have been successful.