Four years as a local councillor

I was elected as a local councillor for Bromborough four years ago.

In the last eventful year, the Labour Party kicked me out for speaking up and I was welcomed into the Green Party. We voted for saving libraries and leisure services, while Labour and Tory councillors voted to cut them.

Here are some key landmarks of my fourth year.

1. I led a collective complaint against the Jewish Chronicle to the press regulator, IPSO, On the eve of the IPSO’s decision, the JC’s editor resigned. IPSO has not launched a Standards Investigation, but nor has the JC published any further hit pieces against me nor other people that complained or won libel cases. Success!

2. The Labour Party expelled me for speaking up for justice, three years earlier. That was last November and I try not to look back. Every day I feel happy to be out of that hostile and racist environment, after many years of harassing Jewish socialists like me – as well as sad about what the Labour Party has become. The Labour leader and General Secretary pointed the finger at Jewish members for the Labour leadership’s restrictions on members’ human and democratic rights – this is antisemitism.

3. Labour and Tory councillors voted to exclude only me from all policy committees. A Labour Councillor, white and Christian, said I should resign and she is “not a racist”!

4. I served for four months as a sole independent councillor and tried in vain to convince more people on the Wirral to stand as independent candidates for election.

5. It was a privilege to visit Derry to mark the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday murder of 14 innocent civil rights protestors by the British Army.

6. Trade unions, the Wirral Green leader and I worked to consider divestment of Merseyside Pension funds from companies trading in the occupied Palestinian territories.

7. I researched, wrote and spoke to a series of user friendly charts and articles that show cuts to council services are a political choice, Wirral Council’s income is underforecast by 10% each year, how a no cuts balanced budget is possible. We exposed the Labour-Tory coalition on the Wirral and reversed the narrative of budget cuts.

8. By moving a legal amendment to the Council budget, we showed that another Wirral is possible. Green and LibDem councillors voted for saving libraries and leisure services, while Labour and Tory councillors voted to cut them.

9. I joined the Green Party because its better for Bromborough and better for me. 16 former Labour councillors have moved Green, as the Labour Party leader, Sir Keir Starmer lurches to the far right.

10. Thousands of fellow eco-socialists walked up kinder scout, 90 years after my great uncle Wolfie mass trespassed with many Jewish and non-Jewish workers.

11. Resistance is fertile I said at the brilliant Resistance Street festival.

12. Local elections last May resulted in nine Wirral Green councillors, up from one, four years ago.

13. Greens appointed me to the most powerful Council policy committee, where only the Green councillors voted for the Real Living Wage for all Council-contracted workers.

14. Our awesome Green Team is working all year round for my re-election as a Green councillor in May 2023 local elections. Our local newsletters report a wide range of issues tackled and resolved. I am talking about the causes of antisocial behaviour, inequality and cost of living crises, like extreme big oil corporate profits.