LABOUR’S position on the EU risks a gap opening up between the party and the traditional labour movement, the director of a black and minority ethnic (BME) charity said at Merthyr Rising.

Voice4Change director Kunle Olulode told the Is Lexit Possible? meeting that he grew up in a family of Nigerian origin “steeped in Labour history.”

He also said that he remembered the 1975 EEC referendum, which demoted Britain’s relationship with the Commonwealth.

It had cut its trade links with Commonwealth countries and replaced them with trade deals with countries in the EEC.

Opposition to the EU was then mainstream for the working class in Britain, he added, while suggesting that Labour’s current position to remain in a customs union with the EU would hold Britain back from striking its own trade deals with non-EU countries.

Mr Olulode — former convener of the Unison union’s Camden Black Workers’ Group — also rejected the Remainers’ argument that the Leave position, which triumphed across all south Wales valleys, was based on racism and xenophobia.

He noted that all major parties had gained members since the referendum, stressing: “If immigration and racism issues were the driving force, we wouldn’t have seen only Ukip lose members.”

Labour AM Mark Drakeford stressed Labour had a duty to “respect the left-wing critique of the EU” and not to demonise Leave voters.

He had been happy to support Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s “remain to reform” position in the referendum and believed that the case for real reform “arises out of the vote.”

In his view, the Remain position lost because it was viewed as being David Cameron and George Osborne’s campaign, while Labour was seen as favouring the status quo because the “reform” part of its formulation was never heard.

Mr Drakeford argued, however, that there is “nothing more important than the election of a Corbyn government and prioritising issues that unite us rather than divide us.”