The General Secretary of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union, Sarah Woolley. issued the followed statement today on behalf of the Executive following media rumours that the Labour Party is poised to expel BFAWU's General Secretary.
The statement said:
Today the Labour Party has made a clear statement of intent in its aspiration to repair its relationship with the bosses but seems to be determined to widen the divide between the representatives of labour and those our movement represent.
The recent decision to proscribe organisations is seen as a divisive and a purely factional attack which will do nothing to unite the party or provide any real opportunity for the party to be able to unite to fight and defeat our real enemy The Tory Party.
We have decided to make this statement following recent media speculation in relation to the expulsion of our National President. Our executive have met to discuss the potential of this event occurring, and reaffirmed its position that our National President has only ever conducted himself in line with the policies and the decisions taken by this trade union.
The executive expressed dismay and anger at the idea the Labour Party should consider expelling the office of our nominated political lead in our organisation, and agreed that a firm response was required should the party take such actions.
The BFAWU executive unanimously agreed a timeline that would coincide with the leaders address to national Labour conference in September should such a situation arise and that from Wednesday 25th August communication to Branches would be initiated and would be formally issuing notification of our intention in preparedness to recall conference to debate the disaffiliation from the Labour party.
The Executive made it quite clear an attack on one of ours is an attack on all of us and stood in absolute solidarity with our Elected National President.
It’s also worth remembering that the recent survey of our membership returned a slight majority in favour of disaffiliation.
The feeling is should the decision to debate disaffiliation go ahead it would result in a break with the Labour party for the first time since we helped fund its creation in 1902. But we will not accept bullying from any bosses or a party that seems to be choosing to prefer to be on the bosses side.
John McDonnell tweeted
Each day brings with it yet another act of ludicrous targeting of respected socialists. Ian Hodson is the sort of working class trade unionist that the Labour Party was created by BFAWU and one of our party’s foundation stones. Message to Labour Drop this act of stupidity.
