• AT the general committee of the Holborn & St Pancras party on the 26th Mike Katz (chair of the Labour Campaign Forum, the body responsible for screening prospective councillors) gave a somewhat partial report of the work of his committee.

As someone who had been elected to, and then resigned from, the Katz committee, I was the second person to signal my wish to speak. (It is one of the beneficial quirks of Zoom that people appear in the order in which the signal they wish to speak.) As had happened before, I wasn’t called.

I was at every general meeting of the LCF but unlike other meetings no minutes are kept or checked. I asked both by email and at a meeting for basic information on numbers of applicants, number of interviews, number of rejections.

I discovered at the constituency meeting, where Mr Katz answered just three questions, that there had been eight appeals, all unsuccessful.

I have found out more from reading the CNJ than I ever did as a member of the committee.

The membership of the committee had been very tightly managed by one faction of the party but I had escaped this by being elected as the sole representative of socialist societies and trade unions.

They dealt with this by not inviting me take part in interviews or anything else of significance. I don’t even have any idea of how many members took part or how many interviews they attended.

At the first meeting I tried to raise the issue of lack of trade union involvement but found not one person willing to support me.

The party branches have been denied any meaningful choice. The outcome is well known and much discussed in your paper.

Our new councillors will be a tight-knit group from one narrow section of the party, many with little or no experience.

We have lost experienced people, strong campaigners, and people willing to stand up for their constituents and test the policies and proposals of the executive. The level of secrecy and lack of accountability to Camden Labour Party is a major concern.

Worse, if the council executive won’t allow itself to be tested and scrutinised and shuts off fraternal criticism, the electorate will look to others to do these things, perhaps not generally in May because of Boris Johnson’s behaviour but eventually.

LINDA LEFEVRE
Dartmouth Park Road, NW5