Keir Starmer will come under fresh pressure on Sunday to restore the whip to Diane Abbott, as MPs and party activists stage protests demanding her return at the Labour conference.
A solidarity demonstration will be held in Liverpool by Labour Black Socialists and Momentum’s black caucus calling for the 70-year-old to be welcomed back after a six-month racism row.
In a pre-conference interview with the Observer, however, Starmer appeared to offer little hope of any reconciliation with the Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP, who had the whip withdrawn in April after she suggested in a letter to this newspaper that Jewish, Irish and Traveller people were not subject to racism “all their lives”.
Abbott quickly retracted the remarks after publication and apologised, while the party set up an internal investigation, which has not yet concluded. Abbott and her supporters say the inquiry is “fraudulent” and that she has not been called to give evidence in nearly six months.
Despite calls from many MPs on all wings of the party for a reconciliation, Starmer appeared dismissive in his interview: “I have not yet met anybody prepared to defend what Diane Abbott wrote. I am not sure Diane Abbott would.”
When it was put to him that everyone made mistakes and that she had apologised and retracted the remarks on the day of publication, Starmer said: “They do make mistakes. But this was a prepared letter.”
Kingsley Abrams, general secretary of Momentum’s black caucus, who has known Abbott since 1984, said the events in Liverpool were intended to show the level of support in the party for an MP who had been a “serious fighter against racism”.
One of the MPs expected to speak up for Abbott’s re-admission is Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the MP for Streatham.
Abrams said: “Let’s be clear, she should never have written the things she did. But she has apologised and people are shocked that this inquiry has taken so long. Diane has spent much of her life campaigning against racism.”
Momentum will also hold protests against moves by Labour’s ruling national executive committee (NEC) to take voting rights away from equality representatives (those pushing for more rights for disabled, black or LGBTQ+ people) on constituency party executives.
The action by the NEC is seen as part of Starmer’s wider attempt to purge the left in local parties.
Abbott, who became the UK’s first black female MP in 1987, recently accused the party of running a “fraudulent” inquiry that was directed from Labour HQ and was answerable to Starmer.
The former shadow home secretary said Labour’s London regional office has shut down the executive committee in her north London constituency and replaced its principal officers.
“In effect, the Labour apparatus has decapitated the elected leadership of the constituency party to install its own, handpicked personnel and replace me as the candidate prior to the next election,” she said.
Lucie Scott, who was on Abbott’s constituency executive before it was closed down, said she would be at the demonstration demanding a “fair hearing for Diane”, who did not seem to have been asked by the inquiry to put her case to it.
Former leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is also suspended from the whip for comments he made about antisemitism in the party, has said Abbott’s treatment is a “disgrace”.
Starmer suspended Corbyn as a Labour MP in 2020 after he said the scale of antisemitism within Labour had been “dramatically overstated” by his opponents in response to a highly critical report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission into the party’s handling of complaints under his leadership.
The NEC then readmitted Corbyn as a member in November 2020 - but he remains blocked from representing the party in parliament. In March this year, the NEC voted 22 to 12 to approve a motion from Starmer to prevent Labour endorsing Corbyn as an MP at the next election. There is no right of appeal.
