David Broder: did the AWL “harass” his mother?

Submitted by cathy n on 4 June, 2020 - 9:54 Author: Mark Osborn

In October 2016 a disgusting, anonymous allegation of serious criminal behaviour by myself appeared on the Stalinist Red London Facebook page.

Since there are no labour movement mechanisms to deal with Red London Facebook posts I immediately reported the libel to the police and encouraged them to vigorously investigate the post. Red London is a Red-Brown Stalinist trolling group.

Comrades investigated who might be responsible for making this allegation against me. In the course of this inquiry they discovered a fake Facebook page set up in my name. It had been set up by David Broder and a man called Bill Patterson with the apparent intention of having me expelled from the Labour Party.

(At the time thousands of socialists had being purged from the Party; the only content of this page was an enormous AWL logo).

At the time I had no idea who Patterson was and had not had any contact with Broder since he left the AWL many years previously. I have no idea why they attempted to get me expelled - presumably they thought it would be funny.

Patterson was connected to Red London and is a union bureaucrat.

I wanted the police to talk to Patterson, Broder and an ex-member of the AWL called Pat Smith in relation to the Red London post. Unfortunately we only knew how to find Patterson. The police spoke to Patterson, who was “unhelpful”.

I did want the police to speak to Broder but he was, apparently, abroad. So a comrade gave me Broder’s mother’s address. I wrote to her asking her to put me in touch with Broder so the police could speak to him about the Facebook libel against me.

This was not harassment of Broder’s mother, it was one action in a vigorous attempt to stop people lying about me.

The allegation against me was quickly removed from the Red London page.

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