MARTIN MAYER has been a labour and trade union activist all his adult life.

He’s been a Labour Party member for 41 years — or was. On November 16 he was expelled from the Labour Party for a retrospective breach of rules — breaking a rule before it existed.

In 2018 he spoke as invited guest at a meeting of Labour Against the Witch Hunt, an organisation campaigning against wrongful allegations against party members, including those of anti-semitism levelled at Jeremy Corbyn.

Three years later Labour proscribed the organisation. A year later Mayer has been expelled for speaking at the 2018 meeting.

Leading trade union activists, locally and nationally, seem to be in the sights of Labour’s disciplinary panel.

Andrea Egan, president of public service union Unison, is another recent victim of a “retrospective” allegation — for sharing on social media a post from Socialist Appeal, another organisation since proscribed by the Labour Party.

Mayer’s own record of activity in the labour and trade union movement is impeccable.

He worked all his life as a bus driver and was shop steward, convener, national passenger transport rep on the national executive committee of the former Transport and General Workers’ Union — predecessor to Unite — and served for 20 years on Unite’s general executive council until his retirement in 2013.

He was delegate to the International Transport Federation and Unite rep on Labour’s NEC for six years until 2017.

Since 2013 Mayer, who is 69, has been secretary of Sheffield Trade Union Council (TUC) in South Yorkshire — one of the most active trades councils in the country, a tradition passed on by his predecessor at Sheffield TUC, the late Bill Ronksley of train drivers’ union Aslef.

With Mayer as secretary, Sheffield TUC was the first city in Britain to employ a full-time trade union organiser, funded jointly with the bakers’ union BFAWU, devoted to union recruitment, particularly of young workers.

Mayer and other Sheffield activists have this year been repeatedly on the picket lines with young strikers in the city’s gig economy, and providing financial and other practical help.

For Mayer, expulsion from Labour for a retrospective “offence” is indicative of the autocracy under which the Labour Party is now run from the party’s national headquarters at Southside in London.

His first heard of the retrospective accusation against him five months ago. It came as a complete shock.

“Back in July they sent me an allegation that I had broken a new rule about proscribed organisations,” he said. “That is the only charge against me.”

He saw unjust expulsions during his time on Labour’s NEC. He witnessed the “battle” between Jeremy Corbyn’s office and the then Labour Party general secretary Iain McNicol (now Baron McNicol of West Kilbride), and the waging of the “anti-semitism” tirade against Corbyn.

“From what I had seen of this battle with McNicol and Jeremy Corbyn’s office, I expected that McNicol’s office had engaged in this massive trawl of social media messages of Corbyn supporters, their social media accounts, in the run-up to the leadership election.

“They managed to suspend 6,000 members,” he said. “It didn’t make any difference, the majority was so large.”

He became caught up in the expulsions when a young, falsely accused member he had defended, who was later exonerated, was expelled.

Now there’s his own expulsion. He told the Morning Star: “I thought: ‘This is unacceptable — 41 years’ of service and activity in the trade union movement’.”

He believes the expulsion process is operating systematically and with little thought given to individuals or any kind of justice.

“I would think that the panel that dealt with me would probably have had 10 or 20 other cases that they just rubber-stamped,” he said.

“I have the right to appeal within 14 days. So far, messages of support have bowled me over. I was surprised. Many of them are from people who have left the Labour Party in disgust, or who have been expelled, but because they did not have a high profile nobody knows about it.”

His trades council is backing him unequivocally.

It said in a statement this week: “Sheffield TUC gives wholehearted support to Martin and calls upon the Labour Party to reinstate Martin to full membership of the party.”

His constituency party, Sheffield Heeley, condemned the retrospective expulsion on Thursday with a motion to the party’s NEC calling it “against natural justice and not in the spirit of a democratic party like the Labour Party. This has the potential of polluting other spheres of civic life, therefore [is] hugely damaging to the standing of the Labour Party.”

The motion want on: “The CLP asks the NEC to instruct the NEC disciplinary panel to discard all retrospective applications of rules, and take immediate remedial steps.”

He believes that winning his own appeal — if he does — would not be enough and that if resistance does not begin at the party’s grassroots level the national office attacks on members will continue.

“It is quite clear we have some thousands of people purged from the Labour Party and if anything it is accelerating,” he said. “Nearly everyone who has responded to me has been extremely angry about it.

“I have got more Labour Party values about me than the people running the Labour Party at the moment.

“I’m angry and bitter that I have done nothing wrong. I have been defending workers, fighting for justice, better terms and conditions for workers. I have done things at local, national and international level for the trade union movement and the Labour Party. What more do they want?

“Because I am from the left and supported Jeremy Corbyn I am being expelled. It’s the injustice that upsets me. Leaving me without membership of the party I have given my life to hurts me. Where is it going with this right-wing leadership? All the policies we developed under Jeremy Corbyn are being swept away and replaced with policies that mirror the Tories, but softer. It is depressing.

“The Labour Party is supposed to be a broad church. We did push the party to think more radically with ideas that would inspire people to vote for us. They don’t want that any more. They want to shut us out. That is a bad thing for British politics.”

He believes that it is time for Labour Party members to mobilise against the autocracy.

“I’m hoping that the Labour Party membership does take note of what is happening and starts to raise their objections and is self-confident about doing it. I’ve been overwhelmed by people who have come out in my support not just from the left spectrum but from the middle ground, people who are disgusted.

“The current problem is that there is such vicious retribution against any members or CLP that dare to raise it,” he said. “People are afraid to raise their heads above the parapet. That is the kind of autocracy that’s going on.

“I think it’s time now for people to stand up and be counted. I don’t see how the Labour Party can continue in this direction. We aren’t saying ‘Get Starmer out.’ We are saying ‘Get the party back to where it was — a broad church.’

“The enemy is the Tories and the big, bad bosses. I don’t think the Labour Party can survive and sustain itself if people with socialist views are excluded from it. What is the Labour Party for if that is the case? I think it is a bad position for democracy. People will be denied the hope of a party that stood up for what they believe in.”

He thinks formation of a new left party is a non-starter.

“The idea that there is a mass of people out there who would support a breakaway is pie in the sky,” he said. “We have to stop them, challenge them, stop this purge of leftwingers.”

The Labour Party was asked for a statement.