To the members of the Notts Trades Union Council:

We are writing as union, community, and political organisation members to express our opposition to your choice to give a May Day platform to Richard Buckwell, UNISON East Midlands national Housing Forum representative.

He is a supporter of the Socialist Workers Party Central Committee’s recent series of widely criticized decisions, including but not limited to the assessment of a rape claim by a young female party member against a seasoned male party leader through a disciplinary committee laced with the accused’s close friends, the complete silencing of the voice of the accuser, and the labelling of mass party and community opposition to the proceedings as “unpolitical,” “feminist creep,” and seeking to set back the momentum of class struggle.

Buckwell did not simply remain a general member of an organisation that perpetrated such a vicious attack on the principles of the movement and its members as women, but is a signatory of an open letter in full support of the Central Committee’s decisions.

We seek this redress not to make political capital but in order to help the process of facilitating spaces for women to safely participate in. Women continue to remain a minority within political organisations and we have a collective responsibility to rectify this situation.