Dismayed councillors staged a walkout when a Newcastle politician suspended by the Labour Party over an Islamophobia scandal was spotted at a council meeting.
Joyce McCarty was seen at Wednesday night’s meeting of Newcastle City Council, the first time she has attended a public meeting since being suspended over claims of a “Muslim plot” against former city Labour leader Nick Forbes earlier this year. Former lord mayor of Newcastle Habib Rahman dramatically left the council chamber after seeing Coun McCarty, who is sitting as an independent during a 12-month ban from her party, at the back of the room and was followed by fellow Labour councillors Shumel Rahman, Nicu Ion and Abdul Samad.
Coun Habib Rahman told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that it was “difficult and painful” to see the former deputy council leader at the meeting and sat on the Labour side of the chamber, rather than in the section reserved for independents.
The Elswick ward councillor said: “I could not feel comfortable remaining in the chamber last night, after spending all of my life standing against racism in all forms. How could I sit there when there is a perpetrator of racism there?”
The Show Racism the Red Card campaigner added: “It was a great show of solidarity from my colleagues and I commend them. We demonstrated to every victim of hate crime, race crime, Islamophobic crime, that we support them and stand against perpetrators.”
The walkout came as new council leader Nick Kemp was delivering his first annual report to the authority. Coun McCarty has been contacted for a response.
Labour launched an investigation earlier this year over claims of a “Muslim plot” surrounding the dramatic removal of Coun Forbes from his Arthur’s Hill seat in February. In a text message seen by the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), Coun McCarty said she had heard that her friend’s ousting in his Arthur’s Hill ward had been orchestrated by councillors in the West End of the city in order to get more black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) candidates selected.
She was initially suspended in late March and then given a formal 12 month suspension in July, after being “found guilty through investigation of Islamophobia”. In the meantime, she had been comfortably re-elected in her Wingrove ward at May’s local elections, where she had remained a Labour candidate on ballot papers.
Labour indicated that the 12 month ban included the four already served since her initial suspension in March. Coun McCarty has been a city councillor since 1994, was Labour’s deputy leader in the city from 2007 to 2021, and deputy leader of the council from 2011 to 2021.
Prior to Wednesday night, she was approaching six months without having attended a council meeting – a cut-off point at which councillors automatically forfeit their seat. She had last been present at the civic centre for a cabinet meeting on March 21, just over a week before her suspension.
