This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Labour activists are calling for an inquiry after an Iranian state-backed TV station which is banned in the UK carried footage of a local party meeting passing a vote of no confidence in the Enfield North MP, Joan Ryan.

The Press TV footage, which appeared to have been filmed inside the meeting, was carried on the station’s Twitter feed and referred to Ryan, who is the chair of Labour Friends of Israel, as a “pro-Israel MP”. It included the hashtag #WeAreEnfieldNorth.

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The local party chairman, Siddo Dwyer, said that filming was not allowed in the room and that he would be making a formal complaint to the channel. “Warnings were issued about filming, including a direct warning to the member in question,” he wrote on Twitter. “It didn’t occur to any of us at the time that they were from a state broadcaster.”

But Roshan Salih, a journalist at Press TV, disputed that account. He told the Guardian: “No general warnings issued, no posters, no approach to person we obtained footage from.”

In a statement, a Labour spokesperson said: “Filming of local Labour Party meetings is not permitted, and Enfield North will be reminded of this fact.”

Press TV had its licence to broadcast in the UK revoked by the media regulator, Ofcom, in 2012, over claims that editorial decisions were being made in Tehran.

In an interview with the Telegraph, Ryan, a Labour MP since 1997, said that Iranian journalists had “infiltrated” the party and had targeted her because of her support for Israel: “I’m horrified that they’ve infiltrated the Labour party in this way and I think it needs to be investigated, because it is incredibly serious.”

The chair of the Enfield North constituency Labour party (CLP) tweeted that he had informed Labour party headquarters about Press TV’s apparent access to the meeting, and an investigation would take place.

Richard Angell, of the centrist campaign group Progress, said: “Labour meetings are open to all members, not the press. It appears that Press TV were inside the Enfield North meeting and reporting a blow-by-blow account of proceedings with the filming of attendees, presumably without their consent.”

Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, said the filming made a farce of the proceedings and “is not how the modern Labour party should conduct its affairs”.

Tom Watson (@tom_watson) Impossible to fathom how Iran State TV was able to live-tweet the Joan Ryan no confidence vote at Enfield North - from inside the CLP meeting. This disorder makes a farce of the proceedings and is not how the modern Labour Party should conduct its affairs. https://t.co/gbauEEw2sq

Ryan was critical of the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, over his stance on antisemitismduring the row that has preoccupied the party for much of the summer.

She said remarks he made in 2013 suggesting a group of Zionists did not understand “English irony” were “highly offensive to British Jews” and “should not be defended but unequivocally condemned”.

After the meeting she attributed her loss by a narrow margin to “Trots, Stalinists Communists, and assorted hard left” in a tweet.

Joan Ryan MP (@joanryanEnfield) So lost 92 to 94 votes hardly decisive victory and it never occurred to me that Trots Stalinists Communists and assorted hard left would gave confidence in me. I have none in them.

A vote of no confidence by the members of a sitting MP’s constituency Labour party is not binding. Ryan said in a statement on Friday: “Labour needs to decide. It’s either an aspiring party of government, focused laser-like on the priorities of the British people: Brexit, an economy which works for everyone, and rebuilding our austerity-starved public services.

“Or it’s a party fighting with itself about ideological purity, arguing with the Jewish community about what constitutes antisemitism, and going down a rabbit warren of deselection, purges and harassment. It can’t be both.”

A spokesperson for London Labour said: “Filming of local Labour party meetings is not permitted, and Enfield North will be reminded of this fact.”

Another MP critical of Corbyn’s leadership, Gavin Shuker, who represents Luton South, was also the subject of a vote of no confidence from his CLP on Thursday night, but he said he would continue to serve his constituents.

Labour’s internal fighting was further inflamed on Friday by remarks from the former prime minister Tony Blair, who said the party had “profoundly changed” under Corbyn’s leadership.

“It is a different type of Labour party. Can it be taken back? I don’t know,” he said on the BBC’s Political Thinking podcast.

The Momentum founder, Jon Lansman, a member of Labour’s national executive committee and staunch backer of Corbyn, shot back that Blair was “never in the right party and there will never be a return to his politics in Labour”.

Momentum is keen for grassroots party members to play more of a role in selecting, and removing, Labour’s candidates for parliament.

Frank Field, the MP for Birkenhead, resigned the Labour whip last week after his CLP members passed a vote of no confidence in him. He cited the antisemitism row and what he called a culture of “nastiness” among some members for his action.

Field has since been informed by Labour’s general secretary, Jennie Formby, that through his actions he has in effect resigned from the party.

Corbyn was in Leicester on Friday to renew Labour’s campaign for England’s and Wales’ privatised water industries to be brought back under government control.

• This article was amended on 10 September 2018 because Labour’s campaign relates to water industries in England and Wales, not in Britain as an earlier version said.