Gerry Downing, a key member of the Trotskyist revolutionary group Socialist Fight, says he has won an appeal to be reinstated to the Labour Party after he was excluded last year. A self-confessed “Trotskyist with ambitions to end capitalism on the planet by socialist revolution”, Downing was kicked out for publicly supporting a different party. He then appealed to the Corbynista-controlled NEC, and now claims they have found in his favour. Downing says this is what the Labour Compliance Unit told him:

“The NEC panel has reviewed your appeal against the rejection of your membership and made the decision to accept the appeal… it has been decided that you should be re-joined as a member”

Downing himself has defended the 9/11 hijackers, writing:

“it is the justified outrage of the oppressed as opposed to the outrage of the oppressor, one violence is that of the slave and the other is that of the slave-owner. One is progressive, no matter how distorted its actions are, and must never be ‘condemned’… That is the entirely understandable motivation for 9/11 and suicide bombers… not understanding the mind-cast of the 9/11 hijackers, refusing to examine the causes that drove them on and still drives the likes of ISIS means you can never tackle the problems as serious Marxists”

And who are Downing’s organisation Socialist Fight? The group openly apologises for ISIS on its website:

“We defend the ‘Islamic State’ in Syria and Iraq against the bombing of US imperialism but do not ally with them against the Kurdish defenders of Kobane and Rojava (Western Kurdistan).”

They then go further, apparently calling for “tactical military assistance” in defence of ISIS:

“Whilst giving no political support to the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Sunni and Shia militias in Iraq, Hamas or Fatah in Palestine, Gaddafi (as was) in Libya, Assad in Syria, the ‘Islamic State’ in Syria and Iraq, the theocratic regime in Iran or the Donbass leadership in Eastern Ukraine we recognise US-led world imperialism as the main enemy of humanity and so advocate critical support and tactical military assistance from the working class to all those fighting for the defeat of imperialism”

A Labour spokesman has been approached for comment on whether the NEC did indeed find in Downing’s favour, and whether he has been reinstated. His local Brent CLP are said to be fighting against his membership tooth and nail…