“Expelled for being a socialist”

It appears I've been expelled from the Labour Party... again. I first joined the party in 2006, and was a member continuously until almost exactly a year ago when I was summarily expelled. I was formally reinstated a few months later, and have been active member ever since. Until now.

Like the last time, I wasn't directly informed of my expulsion. I only found out when, beginning to wonder about the whereabouts of my ballot papers for the leadership election, I rang the party and was informed that my membership had been "cancelled", and that a letter would be on its way to me at some point.

As I haven't received any official communication from the party, I can only speculate as to why I've been expelled. I assume that, like last time, my "crime" is association with the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, a revolutionary socialist organisation I joined in 2002. I do not deny the charge; I do deny that it should be an expellable offence.

The AWL is no longer a separately-registered political party. We have not stood or supported candidates against Labour since 2010. Our members actively campaign for Labour in elections, and argue for affiliation to Labour in our unions. Why should membership of the AWL be incompatible with membership of Labour? Yes, we are revolutionary socialists - but Labour has always encompassed both revolutionary and reformist socialists. Indeed, some of the party's founding members and organisations were from a revolutionary tradition.

The point's been made before, but these expulsions are a huge affront to any basic principles of justice. People are "sentenced" before even being told what we've been "accused" of, without any opportunity to defend ourselves. In my particular case I appear to have been expelled for the same "crime" twice; when I appealed my first expulsion, I said then that I didn't deny the "charge", and was reinstated anyway. Now I've been expelled again. The Compliance Unit, under the direction of Iain McNicol, is clearly expelling people on a completely arbitrary basis (others have been expelled for things they posted on social media on 2014!), as part of a factional war against Corbyn's leadership and the left in the party.

I don't want to see any more summary expulsions, even of people on the right, but it is somewhat galling that Lord David Sainsbury, an arch-capitalist who funds the Lib Dems to the tune of £2 million; Michael Foster, who uses the pages of the Daily Mail to denounce Corbyn supporters as "Nazi Stormtroopers"; and John McTernan, who uses the pages of the Daily Telegraph to call on the Tories to "crush the rail unions" are all unchallenged in their membership of the party, whereas grassroots socialists are expelled without even a pretence of due process.

I will obviously be appealing my expulsion, or at least attempting to, and I'm trying not to be too disheartened about this. There are many other comrades — such as Ronnie Draper, lifelong Labour supporter and General Secretary of the Bakers' union — in a similar position.

The way I see it, there are two Labour Parties: there is the decaying zombie of New Labour, the party of Blair and Brown, committed to neo-liberal economics; and there is the embryo of a different Labour Party, a radical socialist party that acts in politics to express the interests of the working class and which is directly accountable to the broad labour movement. I've been expelled by former because they know they're losing power to the latter, and it terrifies them.

No-one should be disheartened about this; we should be angry. We should use expulsions like mine as motivation to redouble our efforts to transform the party. We need a campaign to radically democratise the party, to stop the purge and reinstate those expelled, as just one part of a top-to-bottom process of democratic reform and renewal.

The first step in that process is ensuring we re-elect Jeremy Corbyn as leader.