FIREFIGHTERS in the North East have stopped campaigning for the Labour Party after a top union official was allegedly “attacked and targeted” over his social media activity.

The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has announced that it is standing down its local support for Labour.

The union published a letter on Friday afternoon claiming that an unnamed senior regional official has been “attacked and investigated by the Labour Party for liking tweets relating to his socialist beliefs and pointing out the abhorrent treatment of striking nurses”.

It marks the latest dispute in a series of rows over Labour’s treatment of left-wing members, including the recent furore that saw sitting North of Tyne mayor Jamie Driscoll barred from a selection contest and then quit the party to run as an independent in 2024’s historic North East mayor election.

The FBU is affiliated with Labour at a national level and sources told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that there was no suggestion that it would seek to sever that link.

But the union’s North East regional office tweeted on Friday that Labour had “overstepped the mark” and had “attacked members with socialist values for too long”.

The FBU’s local leadership wrote: “The official in question has been an activist and campaigner for the Labour Party for many years, they have actively campaigned for Labour MPs, councillors and a Labour government and has spent thousands of hours on the campaign trail for many Labour Party candidates.”

They added: “We shall not stand back and let one of our most senior trade union officials in the North East be attacked and targeted in this way. We urge you to support the FBU in this matter and ask for your solidarity, something which our union has offered to members of Parliament and local CLP candidates for many years.

“We write to inform you that in the short term we will be standing down from all campaigning and attendance at Labour Party events. We do this not only in support of our official but also in direct dispute with the continued attack on members of socialist values and especially trade union members.”

The FBU’s North East arm covers brigades in Tyne and Wear, Northumberland, Durham and Darlington, and Cleveland.

The Labour Party was contacted for a response on Monday and declined to comment.

Mr Driscoll, meanwhile, praised the FBU for “taking a stand”.

He said: “In the 2020 leadership campaign Keir Starmer said ‘disciplining people to be united is going nowhere’. I agree. You don’t build a broad-based movement that can deliver for working-class communities by vindictively sidelining dedicated party members and unions.”

The mayor dramatically quit the Labour Party last month and has since raised almost £130,000 for his independent election campaign.

Left-wing Northumberland councillor Holly Waddell was expelled from the Labour Party in 2022 for allegedly being a member of the “openly communist” Socialist Appeal group, but has maintained that she never was and merely liked Facebook posts from friends who were deemed to be connected to the group.