Labour was warned of 'vile' posts a year ago

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.

- Josh Halliday, Hannah Al-Othman, Peter Walker

It came as a cycling campaigner said he was "profoundly distressed" to learn that one of the MPs, Andrew Gwynne, had 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, was suspended yesterday after he was revealed to be a member of the group, which also featured misogynistic and classist messages.

The Guardian has seen previously undisclosed posts in the WhatsApp group, called Trigger Me Timbers, and can reveal that:

Gwynne, the MP for Gorton and Denton, described a constituent as "an illiterate retard" and a fellow councillor as a "fat middle aged useless thicket".

He called his neighbouring MP Nav Mishra a "splitter" for forming a group of leftwing Labour MPs in 2022.

A year after the death of Prince Philip, Gwynne's colleague Claire Reid, a senior Labour official, said her "go-to phrase" was: "You're so old. You're like a young Prince Philip." Gwynne replied: "But less dead."

Ryan, who was elected last July, described leftwing Labour supporters as "marxists [sic] loonies", while more than 100 messages refer to colleagues as "trots".