Labour forces Davis to erase ‘genocide’ from her manifesto

With Croydon’s Town Hall elections to be held one month today, one mayoral candidate has been ordered to censor her election brochure by party bosses, with MP Reed suspected of being behind move.

EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES

Labour’s candidate for Croydon Mayor, Rowenna Davis, has been ordered by party bosses to remove reference to Israel’s genocide in Gaza from her election manifesto.

The instruction followed a complaint made by one of Labour’s own council election candidates, thought to have been done with the backing of cabinet minister Steve Reed.

Reed, the MP for Streatham (and Croydon North if he can be bothered), has received generous donations from pro-Israel individuals.

Davis’s manifesto has been plagued with difficulties, not least the defection to the Green Party of the Labour councillor who was hired to assist in its drafting.

The 26-page document was finally released at the end of March, ahead of the local elections which are being held on May 7.

And there, on the 25th page, is a short section on “Ethical investment” which said, “There is a genocide happening in Gaza. I do not believe the council’s Pension Fund should be used to support arms companies that are supplying Israel at this time.”

It goes on to say, “I will campaign for all London boroughs to divest from arms companies operating in Palestine…”.

With more than 70,000 Palestinians killed since 2024, a slew of international bodies, from the United Nations to Amnesty International, and Israeli organisations B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, have taken the view that what has been going on in Gaza at the direction of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu constitutes a genocide.

But not the Labour Party of Steve Reed OBE.

At the end of last week, Davis’s mayoral manifesto was censored to remove the references to genocide and to Palestine.

Now it reads: “I believe the council’s Pension Fund should be reviewed to make sure it is ethical, including reviewing investments in arms companies.”

Croydon Council manages a pension fund of £1.98billion, with almost two-thirds of that used under a London councils pooling arrangement, where investments include arms companies with links to Israel.

A source close to Davis told Inside Croydon, “At this stage of the campaign, it was decided that the best course of action was to make the change.

“The important thing is for Rowenna to win the election and win back control of Croydon Council, so that the changes can be made for more ethical investment of the pension fund.”

Labour has been widely criticised for its silence and refusal to act against Israeli aggression in the Middle East generally, with large numbers of Muslim voters either not bothering to vote Labour or instead supporting the Green Party, as they did in the recent Gorton and Denton by-election.

The new Green MP, Hannah Spencer, spoke of Labour’s “complicity in genocide” in her first press conference after being elected.

Reed’s role in Croydon’s “Red on Red” action emerged today in the right-wing Zionist newspaper, The Jewish Chronicle, where Labour candidates were accused of “pandering to ‘sectarian agenda’.”

The article quotes Reed, as the local government minister, urging councils to “stay out of foreign conflicts and get on with the job of delivering local services”.

The censoring of Davis’s manifesto comes at the same time that one of Croydon Labour’s leading councillors, Chrishni Reshekaron, has stepped down from the role as agent for the party’s 70 Town Hall election candidates. “Family matters” has been given as the reason for Reshkaron standing down, though Labour sources suggest that there have been tensions over the politically ambitious young councillor’s membership of the controversial Labour Friends of Israel group.

Croydon Tories have as yet produced no manifesto for their mayoral candidate, Jason Perry, as they did in 2022 – possibly an acknowledgement that that document has become a checklist for all of the Conservative Mayor’s multitude of failures and broken promises.

Certainly, Davis’s manifesto has endured some problems prior to publication, including the loss of one of its principal authors, James McAsh. The councillor in Southwark defected to the Green Party in February, with Davis’s Croydon manifesto tantalisingly close to completion.

McAsh’s defection was at least partly in response to Labour Party national officials overruling his democratic election as leader of their Southwark Town Hall group. “Labour is no longer the vehicle for social justice I once thought it was,” McAsh said, presumably not long after giving up his role as Croydon manifesto writer.

There are no fewer than nine references in Davis’s Croydon manifesto to Southwark.

Labour are under threat of losing Southwark council to the Greens next month, with control of Lambeth, Hackney and Islington also seen as being at risk.

Because of the fear of such widespread losses – including Westminster and Wandsworth being retaken by the Conservatives – Labour’s London Region has been fighting a defensive local election campaign in the capital.

That has meant that Croydon has received no support from Labour regionally or nationally, though Davis might have reasonably hoped that she would not have come under such direct attack from one of the party’s MPs.

Reed more: MP Reed gets dragged into the scandal over Peter Mandelson

Reed more: Reed’s £2,400-a-seat cosy curry night with building lobbyists

Jason Perry, Croydon’s failed Mayor, has refused to give a pre-election interview to Inside Croydon, where he would face questions about his record in office

Paid-up subscribers to this website can listen to The Andrew Fisher Interview with Labour’s Rowenna Davis by clicking here

Andrew Fisher has also interviewed Liberal Democrat candidate Richard Howard and later this week we will be releasing a podcast with the Green Party’s Peter Underwood

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