The icing on Labour’s poisonous cake

Leeds City Council has reminded the voting public that the party's problem with left-wing extremism is far too pervasive to be solved by the expulsion of 'only' a thousand members.

As Keir Starmer prepares to expel 1,000 ‘poisonous’ members from the Labour Party in a bid to make it electable, Leeds City Council has reminded the voting public that the party's problem with left-wing extremism is far too pervasive to be solved by the expulsion of 'only' 1,000 members. Yesterday, The Daily Telegraph revealed that the Labour-run Council is to investigate the links between parkin, a local ginger and treacle cake, and colonialism.

According to documents seen by the paper, the Council claims that ‘historically, some of the ingredients used to make these “local” products were gained through the triangular slave trade (for example, sugar)’. In addition to parkin, the colonial history of Yorkshire tea is also to be studied.

The investigation is apparently being influenced by ‘Black Lives Matter’ UK (BLMUK), whose members defaced the Cenotaph in London last year, and whose GoFundMe page (which raised over £1.2 million) called for reparations for black people, an end to capitalism and the abolition of the police.

One wonders how poisonous those thousand Labour Party members Mr Starmer wants to expel are, when councillors who have been prompted by BLMUK to investigate the racial connotations of cake were not embarrassing enough to be caught in the dragnet.

Ironically, until May this year, Leeds City Council was led by Judith Blake, who now sits in the House of Lords as Baroness Blake of Leeds after she was nominated by none other than Kier Starmer. Perhaps the Labour leader was impressed by Lady Blake’s decision in 2020 to spend Leeds taxpayer’s money on an investigation into whether Edward the Black Prince, who fought in the Battle of Crecy in 1346 as a sixteen-year-old, died in 1376, and of whom there is a magnificent statue in Leeds, was in any way racist.

The news that Leeds City Council is now directing scarce money and time to explore the colonial past of local cake and tea will come as a withering blow to the residents of Leeds, who for many years have suffered through significant problems with anti-social behaviour, fly-tipping and housing.

In 2020, West Yorkshire was, per capita, the second worst region in England and Wales for violent crimes such as murder, thefts and sex attacks. Given the serious issues facing the residents of Leeds, it is surely disgraceful that the Labour members of the Council think it appropriate to dedicate any resources whatsoever to explore whether certain foodstuffs might have a racist history.

However, the story is even more insidious than a frivolous investigation into whether sugar used in the local ginger cake originated on slave plantations. In fact, the Council intends to use the findings to indoctrinate school children.

According to a report by The Daily Telegraph: ‘The aim of the research project is to provide evidence of these connections which can be turned into teaching material for primary school pupils in Leeds. The Key Stage Two materials will be added to the local Leeds Curriculum set of teacher resources which already includes an “Empire and Colonialism” section covering Windrush, slavery, gender bias, and decolonisation.’

Leeds City Council is therefore specifically targeting local foods – which might ordinarily give the people of Yorkshire a sense of pride, and which weave into the tapestry of community spirt – in order to have a person of authority tell captive seven-year-olds that their culture is racist and oppressive.

Wayne Dixon, a resident of South Leeds who stood for the Social Democratic Party in the council elections in May, has been campaigning since March 2020 to find local school places for children in his area after Leeds City Council tried to force them into schools that would require cross-town trips.

Yesterday, he said:

‘In South Leeds, we find ourselves having several children who still have no school to go to over a year since we started our campaign. Yet instead of supporting the education of our children, the Council spends its money researching things like whether parkin is connected with slavery.

‘If we want to look at slavery, let’s talk about the Qatar World Cup next year, or the sweatshops and takeaways in this country. Better still, we could focus on finding South Leeds kids local schools to go to, rather than trawling up the injustices of the past.’

Mr Dixon is unlikely to be the only resident of Leeds angered by the Council’s spendthrift pursuit of pet far-left causes. However, it is also an important warning for other parents with children who attend schools run by Labour-led councils. Surely Leeds cannot be the only one more interested in indoctrinating children with the extremist ideology of Black Lives Matter and Critical Race Theory than it is in teaching them the three Rs and giving them a sense of local and national pride.

If Keir Starmer was interested in making Labour electable – or even respectable – again, he would instruct them to stop. Instead, he concentrates on PR stunts like expelling a thousand members. Nobody will be persuaded by such empty gestures when their children attend schools like those run by the Labour-led Leeds City Council.