Carol Henshaw is a Preston City Councillor who recently resigned from the Labour Party and joined Preston Independents. Michael Lavalette spoke to her about Labour’s silencing of Palestine solidarity and where she thinks Your Party can go.

Can you tell us a little about your background in politics?

The first time I went canvassing for Labour, I was literally in my pushchair! My mum was a member and took me out with her in the village of New Longton (a Tory hotspot near Preston). So I was born into a political family in that sense.

As a teenager, I went on a few CND marches. When I was eighteen, I became a nurse and joined the union. and was on the picket lines during strikes and in support of the miners.

But then life, family, work and, to be honest, political disillusionment (with the mainstream parties) crept in and I was far less active.

It was the campaign to get Jeremy Corbyn in as Labour leader that reinvigorated me and gave me hope. My mum, my daughter and myself all joined and rejoined Labour at that point. Under Corbyn, I remember mum went canvassing again for the first time since she was a young woman with babies. She was registered blind by this time and said as long as she could feel for the doorbell, she should be fine!

I was then asked to stand as a councillor to Preston City Council. There weren’t enough women elected and I was approached. I became a cabinet member a couple of years later.

I think we all had high hopes for Corbyn as leader and that he would bring an end to the years of Tory cruelty. But that dream was broken by the Labour right’s attacks.

I was terribly disappointed in Starmer. My mum and daughter resigned from the party. If I hadn’t been a councillor and cabinet member, I would have resigned then too.

I was also clinging on to the hope that you can’t change something if you’re not a member of it. But that position has become increasingly difficult to hold to, especially with the horror in Gaza.

Can you tell us a little about the pressures on you, as a councillor, from the Labour Party, over the last couple of years?

The ongoing genocide in Gaza is horrific. What we are watching is almost beyond belief, and the hatred directed against Palestinians breaks my heart.

I have attended a few of the Preston pro-Palestine rallies and I’ve been to London to the nationals. But it’s stressful, constantly worrying that I might be seen and, as a result, might be suspended by Labour for marching for Palestinian rights. It is a huge, unseen pressure on Labour councillors, large numbers of whom are horrified by what Israel is doing, but the pressure is always to keep silent and keep your head down.

I spoke about some of this in a Labour group WhatsApp. As a result, I was labelled an antisemite and suspended for months ‘pending enquiries’.

To me this is an example of the lack of democracy within the Labour Party.

Can you tell us a little more about your suspension?

In March this year, comments and questions made by me in a private WhatsApp group of twenty or so fellow Labour councillors was leaked to a Zionist member of Preston Labour Party. It was shared by other pro-Israeli activists. They made a complaint accusing me of antisemitism.

I tried to diffuse the situation. I met with a couple of local Zionists, one who told me: ‘if one of my children was kidnapped and hurt or worse killed by someone in Blackpool, she felt sure I would want to destroy all of Blackpool.’

I was stunned by this. The mentality was horrific!

Following this, I knew I would resign from Labour once I had been cleared of these malicious allegations.

But then things changed! The announcement of the formation of Your Party reignited my fire!

I think this new movement is proving so popular because the current political system is broken. Starmer’s influence has made many socialists politically homeless. This new party is attracting so much popularity because of the hope Jeremy Corbyn inspires.

So what are your hopes for Your Party?

I am feeling as excited about this new party as I did campaigning for Jeremy’s Labour Party. I am a firm believer that the power at the top should come from its grassroots. It has to be a truly symbiotic movement to differentiate it from the existing political parties.

It will need local branches, voting for representatives to take their issues and ideas higher up, and people must be accountable. It can’t become a male-dominated talking shop (like Momentum did in my opinion).

I hope lessons from Jeremy’s leadership will be learned and acted upon. We need to be strong and principled, but we need to be able to talk and listen, to each other and to the vast number of disillusioned people in working-class communities.

From this month’s Counterfire freesheet