Cathall Labour Councillor Jonathan O’Dea dropped as a candidate at next year’s local elections: is it because he has spoken publicly about the Whitefield child abuse scandal?

In the past few weeks, the Waltham Forest Echo has reported extensively on the deselection of longstanding Cathall Councillor Jonathan O’Dea.

Earlier this year, the paper reveals, Cllr. O’Dea applied to stand again for Labour in next year’s local elections, but on the advice of the party’s Chief Whip, Cllr. Steve Terry, was turned down.

Cllr. O’Dea was told that what counted against him was his poor campaigning record, and the fact that he had submitted a motion to the local Labour Party calling for a ceasefire in Gaza at a time when this was frowned upon.

Cllr. O’Dea believed that the evidence fully refuted both these points, and so appealed, but was again rejected.

Reflecting on these events, it should be said straightway that such spats in the Labour Party over selection are far from unusual, and often are the result of infighting between rival left and right factions. 

In fact, a well-informed contributor to Labour Hub recently claimed that the Labour Party in Waltham Forest was indeed ‘strikingly factional’, with a leadership that wanted power at all costs, and brooked no ‘scrutiny of or amendment to their policies’.

It might be assumed, then, that Cllr. O’Dea’s case is just one more example of the rather unsavoury norm.

But on closer inspection, such an explanation doesn’t seem to fit.

Cllr. O’Dea first stood as a Labour candidate in Valley Ward at the 2014 elections, and though he lost, he increased the party’s votes. From 2018 onwards, he has represented Cathall.  

Cllr. O’Dea is not an ideologue, nor is he a member of a left-leaning grouping like Momentum. On the contrary, he has friends across the Labour Party spectrum.

Over the years, he has also served on a series of important scrutiny committees.

Thus, it is difficult to see his deselection as being solely the result of internecine politicking.

Perhaps the following offers a more relevant clue.

In 2024 Cllr. O’Dea was a member of the Children and Families Scrutiny Committee, and at its meeting of 14 May he recommended that given the emerging evidence of historic child abuse at Whitefield School, LBWF should refer the matter to the Equality and Human Rights Commission for a ‘possible breach of the equalities act, specifically around disability discrimination, and possible ethnic discrimination’.

This elicited some discussion, and was then agreed as an action.

Subsequently, when the committee minutes appeared, Cllr. O’Dea was astonished to find that there was no reference to his recommendation at all, and this led him to push for a re-write, which, after some back and forth, was partially successful, with the new version including these two paragraphs:

‘Cllr Jonathan O’Dea recommended that the issue be referred to the Equality and Human Rights Commission as a matter arising from the use of restraint and seclusion in schools as a priority if not already done so.

The Committee recommended that the next Committee Chair would include a review of the investigation [into Whitefield] as part of the next municipal year, inviting the school and some of the parents to attend the Committee’.

The foregoing might appear to be a relatively trivial matter, but it is important to remember the context.

The scandal at Whitefield was revealed in stages by successive BBC investigations, and LBWF has always struggled to keep up, and in particular justify its actions as a key safeguarding partner.

It is also true that though the scandal was first exposed in 2017, the Children and Families Scrutiny Committee meeting of May 2024 – astonishingly – stands out as the only time councillors, in any forum, of any kind, have ever discussed it.

Could it be that Cllr. O’Dea’s deselection is in part pay back for raising a matter that clearly causes the LBWF leadership palpable discomfort?