In the eighth of our video interview series #CanaryCandidates, we meet independent candidate Pamela Fitzpatrick – standing against Labour’s Gareth Thomas
Pamela Fitzpatrick is an independent running against Labour’s Gareth Thomas in Harrow West. She had spent many years in the Labour Party, in often prominent roles. But when she supported Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign to become leader of the party, the attacks against her from the right of the party began, and eventually pushed her out. Now, she is worried about the party under Keir Starmer. As she told the Canary:
it strikes me that Starmer is somebody who’s very weak, and with power, and with no ideas and principles, and that’s a really dangerous combination
Talking about how Labour expelled her for giving an interview to an organisation many months before Starmer and co went on to proscribe it, she said:
I work in the field of access to justice… and the way it’s done [in Labour], I mean it’s just appalling. So I did start legal action… but it came to a point more and more of what Starmer was doing that I thought ‘I don’t actually want to be in this party anymore’. It’s not Labour. There’s no way you can describe this as Labour. And so I stopped the action.
Pamela Fitzpatrick’s support for Corbyn, and the repercussions
In 2015, Pamela Fitzpatrick explained:
I set up with my son, one of my sons, and two other local people, ‘Harrow for Corbyn’ in an attempt to… get him elected because I always said at that time ‘if he got into the running in the race, I thought he would win’, because we already knew that people wanted something different. And this notion that… the cost of living has only just risen over the last few years is just nonsense. It’s been going on for years.
She continued:
The first meeting, we had just four people. And then we advertised it, just word of mouth. And the next time we went to the Labour CLP office, there was a queue round the block of people.
From that time on, she stressed:
I was constantly… subjected to false allegations, complaints, all coming from my fellow Labour councillors. I mean, you kind of expect it maybe from your opposition, but these are, you know, the Labour family.
Running for the constituency of Harrow East in 2017’s general election, she lost “in part due to the actions, I think, of my fellow Labour councillors in Harrow, where we had people telling us on the doorstep that they were telling people not to vote Labour. And we reported that. Nothing was done, of course.”
Starmergeddon, and the independent resistance
Speaking about how Labour has changed under Starmer, Pamela Fitzpatrick insisted:
There’s no democracy in Labour anymore. There’s absolutely none. And the disciplinary process is used purely on a factional basis. And so, my worry is, when he gets into government, as he no doubt will, how he’s going to behave. Because you need people who use rules in a neutral way, because people with power who use them in a factional way, it’s so dangerous.
So that’s one of the things. He’s taken the voice away from members, so members can’t speak on anything, they can’t go to certain things. You know, during the time he’s been leader, we’ve had various things, like Black Lives Matters protests, and we’ve been criticised for going to them. It’s quite incredible how Labour is now, because even during Tony Blair’s time it was never like this…
But the worst thing, really, is his lack of policies, or intention to do anything about resolving the many many problems that we have in society.
She didn’t want to stand in a general election as an independent previously, but as she stressed:
The final straw for me was Gaza, and just the way that our media, and in particular Keir Starmer, responded to it, when he is a trained lawyer… He is trained in the law and he knows that what he said would constitute unlawful action…
And I was asked by lots of people locally to stand, and it kind of started to gather a bit of momentum and then I decided I would. And it’s been really positive ever since. I’m actually really pleased that I did.
She added:
We’re kind of realistic and know it’s an uphill battle. It really is hard for independents to win. But it’s quite incredible, it’s quite inspiring, actually. I think we needed that. Because it’s been so grim for so long in, you know, left politics, basically. So we’re bringing lots more people on board, and it feels a bit of a revival of a movement, which is really good, which is the ultimate aim really.
For more on Fitzpatrick’s comments on the election and other issues, see the full interview on our YouTube channel:
Featured image via the Canary
