Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Voter fraud discovered in St Ann's, technicalities mean the result stands.
After the recent St Ann's ward Labour party selection meeting we lost our three standing councillors. Nilgun Canver stood down, and Zena Brabazon and David Browne were deselected. In 2009 this was the site of the rather startling deselection of the illustrious Brian Haley. Considering the quorum at the Harringay Labour party meeting to select three candidates in 2010, St Ann's have an active and diligent Labour Party.
Or do they?
The three candidates selected this year in St Ann's were Barbara Blake, Peter Morton (Head of Press at the Labour Party), and a local shopkeeper.
It was remarkable in 2009 when Brian Haley was deselected but what happened here was unprecedented. All three councillors in a safe Labour ward were replaced. It now transpires that the election to select these candidates was not as straight as it should have been. Nineteen people who were both outside the ward and had joined the Labour party after the cut-off date at the end of April had joined on one day in July. Just imagine if St Ann's councillors had to be mindful of Harringay traffic concerns to be selected? Would those bollards exist? Why was this allowed to happen?
The meeting was stacked with Haringey Labour members, not necessarily from St Ann's (26 in total) but loyal to Councillor Kober and perhaps other factions. Five people from outside of the ward voted in the election, this is all it took to swing it and come May next year your vote will be nearly worthless because this is a very safe Labour ward.
There are two things that bother me about this. The obvious and wilfully ignored corruption in the candidate selection - these people WILL be elected, just because they are the Labour candidates - these meetings are important, and the apparent barring from standing of a local Labour activist, Seema Chandwani.
To be allowed to stand in a selection meeting in Haringey you must go before a panel to be judged on your suitability as a candidate. In Haringey the panel was chaired by Luke Akehurst. Apparently he thought that Ms Chandwani would bring the Labour Party into disrepute, presumably because she embarrassed them over youth services in the borough (and I bet he was one of the people clapping loudly when Ed Milliband talked about lowering the voting age this week). Luke denied us the opportunity to vote for Seema as a councillor. As a keen follower of local politics I think this was quite nasty, I would have dropped leaflets and knocked on doors for Seema, and I'm not even a member. I wonder what he made of Charles Adje whom I see he allowed to stand for selection?
The second thing that bothers me is that rules in place to protect us from vested interests taking over our representation as residents were completely ignored in this selection process. As I've said, just imagine if a bunch of angry Harringay citizens could join the Labour party and go over and deselect anyone in St Ann's who supported the gating of the Gardens? I have looked into this myself and I know it's completely against the rules. Labour central office were alerted to this but were too busy planning their conference this week to care about it. The GRA are in shock.
Labour in Haringey do not deserve our votes because they are careless with the selection process.
Next week, on Monday the 30th, the selection meetings come to Harringay and I urge all Labour Party members to attend the meeting and vote for the best candidates, not to mention keep an eye on the voting. As much criticism as I level at the local Labour Party, at the end of the day it is up to members to take an active part in the selection process.
(Edited by site admin following legal advice)
Tags for Forum Posts: election2014, labour
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by pamish on
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My party card doesn't show my address or ward, just the constituency. So checking cards at meetings would not be much help - maybe the expense of reissuing cards every time someone moves is too much, especially where there's high churn as hereabouts.
Checking against electoral rolls will have to be the way to go (though they are out of date too) as defrauding that is a criminal offence (?), rather than simple cheating to give your mates a job and/or keep out the undesirables.
When is the freeze date? Does that get decided from ward to ward, or is it a national policy? I got letters in the spring that have long ago been in the shredder, from HQ inviting me (and all other members) to run, with a cutoff date.
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Permalink Reply by Julie on
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This is the declaration. The address that any member applies from must be the address at which they are registered to vote. An employee of a business cannot use the business address from which to apply to join the party.
Terms and conditions
I am aged 14 years or over. I am a subject or resident of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, or a citizen of Eire. If I am eligible I am registered as an elector at the address given above. I am not a member of any other political party. I agree to abide by the rules and constitution of the Labour Party.If I have added a donation to my membership subscription, I understand that, in compliance with party funding laws, my details may be checked to ensure I am registered on a UK electoral register. Donations above the current limits set by the Electoral Commission will be reported to the Electoral Commission for publication on their public register of donations to The Labour Party. For full details about the current limits please see the donations page of this web site.
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Permalink Reply by David Schmitz on
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The way in which other political parties organise their candidate selections is, of course, none of my business. However, if the process is contaminated in a way which could tend to bring politics in general into disrepute, then it is worth reminding those concerned that Secton 2 of the Fraud Act 2006 reads as follows:
2 Fraud by false representation
(1) A person is in breach of this section if he—
(a) dishonestly makes a false representation, and
(b) intends, by making the representation—
(i) to make a gain for himself or another, or
(ii) to cause loss to another or to expose another to a risk of loss.
(2) A representation is false if—
(a) it is untrue or misleading, and
(b) the person making it knows that it is, or might be, untrue or misleading.
(3) “Representation” means any representation as to fact or law, including a representation as to the state of mind of—
(a) the person making the representation, or
(b) any other person.
(4) A representation may be express or implied.
(5) For the purposes of this section a representation may be regarded as made if it (or anything implying it) is submitted in any form to any system or device designed to receive, convey or respond to communications (with or without human intervention).
Section 5 of the Act reads thus:
5 “Gain” and “loss”
(1) The references to gain and loss in sections 2 to 4 are to be read in accordance with this section.
(2) “Gain” and “loss”—
(a) extend only to gain or loss in money or other property;
(b) include any such gain or loss whether temporary or permanent;
and “property” means any property whether real or personal (including things in action and other intangible property).
(3) “Gain” includes a gain by keeping what one has, as well as a gain by getting what one does not have.
(4) “Loss” includes a loss by not getting what one might get, as well as a loss by parting with what one has.
Anyone who knowingly misrepresents his entitlement to vote in a selection (or puts someone else up to doing so), is likely, therefore to have made a dishonest representation for the purposes of section 2 and is also likely (because Councillors receive an annual salary of £10,500) to have done so with the intention of making a gain for somebody for the purposes of section 2 and section 5.
Naturally, I have no idea as to what happened or did not happen. However, in view of the gravity of allegations, it would probably be best if the police were to investigate.
I would imagine that the Labour party, as a respectable organisation, is considering that course right now.
Our own rules with regard to selection are somewhat more straightforward. We select all of our candidates at a single meeting, at which all members of the Borough party have the right to vote in respect of the candidates for every Ward. Where the position is contested, we hold a hustings. Because the whole Borough party votes, we don’t suffer from the risk that any one group can pack a small selection meeting to its advantage.
Very often our candidates will have spent months, if not years, in taking an active part in the life of the Wards where they wish to stand.
Although we do hold panels which decide whether or not a potential candidate is suitable for selection, the purpose is mainly to ensure that candidates are up to the demands of office if they are elected, rather than for the purpose of ensuring ideological uniformity. That, perhaps, is why we’ve had the odd defection from time to time – which is a nuisance, but a price worth paying in exchange for achieving a group which is not, as our party constitution forfends, enslaved by conformity.
One final point. In 2010 our St. Ann’s candidates increased our vote by 5 fold. So don’t write us off even there.
David Schmitz
Liberal Democrat Councillor for Harringay Ward
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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An interesting suggestion David, although I think Haringey Police have many more important things to do.
I agree with you that a contaminated process: could tend to bring politics in general into disrepute". That's precisely what happened with the Parliamentary expenses scandal. In an important sense don't you think that makes it everyone's problem?
i don't mean as councillors. Nor as members of another political party. But as fellow citizens who carry at least some small responsibility for their own neighbourhood, city and state. You'll be very familiar with a quotation from the U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.
"The most important office, and the one which all of us can and should fill, is that of private citizen."
Alan
P.S. A fivefold increase in LibDem votes in St Ann's 2006-2010? Perhaps, David, it's time to change the batteries on your calculator?
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Permalink Reply by Ruth Valentine on
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I am a socialist but not a Labour Party member; and I'm really fed up with a system that seems hell bent on removing any half-way effective ward councillors we get, out of sight & certainly out of the control of local residents. As local activists we struggle to get the council as a whole to take notice of our concerns, and as soon as a councillor takes an interest s/he seems to vanish. There is nothing remotely resembling democracy in this process.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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I am beginning to think that after seeing things like this, people like you and I should be joining the Labour party, taking all the shit it gives to loud non-conformist voices, and lumping it. They are in trouble and so is our democracy.
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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They certainly are -UFOs sighted more often the Ed the Red. Maybe he should beam himself up to a faraway planet!
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Osbawn, the Labour Party rules are clear. If a member stands against the official candidate they automatically kick themself out of the Party.
True, no less a politician than Winston Churchill, as he put it, "ratted and re-ratted" between the Conservatives and Liberal Parties. But I doubt that this would be welcome today. (Even for former councillor Brian Haley. Who ratted from Labour to the Liberal Democrats having - according to the local Conservatives - been in parallel talks with them as well.)
As I suggested a few weeks ago, a useful way to see the issue is having the options of "Exit, Voice and Loyalty".
Exit and walk away. Voice: Speak up & Speak out. Loyalty: keep quiet and your head down. Personally, I've always tried (though not always succeeded) to find the backbone and courage for the second category.
Anyway why should I leave the Party I've been in for over forty years because some right-wing Blairites supporting Tory policies are temporarily calling the shots locally? Or because a few people were either too foolish or too careless to properly check the membership details of people pretending to live where they don't?
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)
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This all seems highly suspect.
The Labor Party has to answer for why 5 party members who live outside the ward, allow to take part in the selection process?
Clearly the process needs to be redone, this time legitimately.
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Even scarier, presumeably without any kind of corruption or cheating, tonight the Harringay Labour party members will meet to select three from a field of four candidates to stand next May for ward councillor. I predict that on top of these four candidates there will be another three to six people present. These people will, with a high level of probablility, decide who your councillors will be from May next year. Other than those standing, I have no idea who they are.
FYI, those standing are James Ryan (@jryan298), Charles Wright (@cwcomm1), Emine Ibrahim (@Emina_ibrahim) and Gina Adamou.
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