Gerald Cooney, former leader of Tameside council, says he warned regional officials about Trigger Me Timbers group. Labour was warned more than a year ago about a “vile” WhatsApp group involving two of the party’s MPs, local councillors and a series of offensive messages, the Guardian has been told. It came as a cycling campaigner said he was “profoundly distressed” to learn that one of the MPs, Andrew Gwynne, joked about him being “mown down” by a lorry.
Gwynne was sacked as a health minister on Saturday and suspended by Labour after he was accused of posting messages containing racist and sexist comments. A second Labour MP, Oliver Ryan, is waiting to learn his fate after he was also revealed to be a member of the group, which also featured misogynistic and classist messages. The cycling campaigner, who did not want to be named, told the Guardian: “I’m shocked and upset, and not just myself [but] my family, my partner, my children, have been profoundly distressed by this.
“It’s a death wish. I’m not quite sure where the boundary lies on what the police will see as a hate crime, but … how much more hateful can you get than not just: ‘I wish this person were dead’, but: ‘I’d like them to die a gruesome death.’”. Gwynne also said he hoped a 72-year-old woman would soon be dead after she wrote to her local councillor about bin collections, according to the Mail on Sunday. After complaints to Greater Manchester police this weekend in relation to the messages, the force said it had recorded a non-crime hate incident.
Gerald Cooney, the former Labour leader of Tameside council in Greater Manchester, said he had told senior party officials multiple times about the WhatsApp group, which was called Trigger Me Timbers. Cooney said he had informed Labour’s then regional director for north-west England, Liam Didsbury, about the group “well over a year ago”. He said he told Didsbury “ages ago” that Gwynne was “leading” the group and said he had reported it “more than once” in recent months to Andy Smith, Labour’s current head of regional governance in the north-west of England.
Cooney told the Guardian: “I’ve never been a member of it. I did raise it with the region some time ago … I reported it to Liam Didsbury and I reported it to Andy Smith a good while ago; I also reported it over a month ago to Andy Smith again.”. In October last year, Labour HQ announced it was sending in a team to oversee a culture change in Tameside Labour Group due to what it called “unacceptable working practices”.
Cooney said he had been forced by senior local officials, including Smith, to step down as council leader that month amid accusations of bullying, which Cooney denies. “I said to [Smith]: ‘You’ve done me in, yet you’re aware of a vile WhatsApp group from Denton [a town in Tameside]’ and he’s not done a thing about it,” he said. Cooney said he was made aware of an offensive exchange in the group in March 2021 when Gwynne allegedly reposted a tweet about Angela Rayner buying Apple AirPods, which read: “I don’t see what the problem is. It’s literally impossible to give [a] blowjob while wearing wired headphones. Anyone with a similar background to Angela would understand this.”.
He said: “I was shown by someone who was fuming the picture of Angela Rayner with her AirPods. We were aware of that. I wasn’t aware of the other stuff [but] what I was told though is that the [group] is vile, it’s misogynistic … and it’s racist. That’s why I then referred it to Liam Didsbury.”. Approached about Cooney’s claims, a Labour source said the party did not receive any formal complaint about the WhatsApp group.
Cooney said it was known within Labour circles locally that Gwynne, the MP for Gorton and Denton, and a number of councillors were part of the group. One of the messages involved Gwynne joking about the unnamed cycling campaigner being “mown down” by a lorry while riding his bike, adding: “We couldn’t be that lucky!”. The cyclist said on Monday: “I think what’s caused me a lot of distress, and what has caused a lot of active travel campaigners a lot of distress is that … in that group were a whole load of local councillors, many of whom are still in office as local councillors, and not one of them seems to have challenged what he said.”.
Three senior Labour councillors stepped down from their roles on Tameside council’s cabinet on Monday pending an investigation into the messages. Claire Reid, a senior caseworker in Gwynne’s office and a representative on Labour’s north-west National Policy Forum, was one of those to step down, alongside Jack Naylor and George Newton. Kaleel Khan, an independent councillor on Tameside borough council, said he had made a hate crime report to police on Sunday after constituents contacted him with concerns about some of the messages. He told the BBC: “What worries me is when you have an elected official mocking women, or mocking black people, Jewish people, and constituents, too.”.
