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 Julie on
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Yes, JT. I've thought about this since I posted and John Blake did say, 'Ladies and gentlemen. Does anybody know of any reason why anybody else present should not be here?' We all laughed.
And no. I didn't. (Neither did he, or you, I hope.) How could I, or he, possibly have known that five people in the room were not registered to vote from the addresses they claimed, or weren't members of the party from their home addresses, as required by our rules. How were we ever to have known that they did not live in the ward? I was puzzled by all the new, silent, members but I would not have assumed they were anything other than bona fide members. Their cards were checked at the door. I assumed others knew them and that they were legitimate.
However, we now do know that they did not live in the ward on the requisite dates, if indeed they ever did, and that even if they have since moved in, it is too late for them to take part in a rerun. Why would we not do have a rerun? The outcome was determined by people who were either dishonest or who had been persuaded it was OK for them take part in the process. It may have been a misunderstanding. Do we want any councillor to be elected by people who aren't eligible?
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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You mean members don't need to bring along a recent electricity bill etc, just like every other bureaucratic process? - a system open to fraud or, at the very least, mistakes.
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Permalink Reply by pamish on
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No. And it's sometimes hard to get such documents - eg if in a shared house (including with a spouse). Party membership cards are not dated or carry address, just constituency. So far it's depended on trust - like trusting that the interview questions will not be leaked to the candidates, which would give them a significant advantage during the Q&A.
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Nobody was expecting it. Usually we've at least met everybody else in the room. It's quite hard to challenge somebody who doesn't actually live at the address they've given, especially when you've never set eyes on them before.
Now we know, something has to be done. It's not fair on the candidates but how can they go through a term of office for four years with this being thrown in their faces every time there's a local problem? 'You only got elected because the meeting was packed'? Nobody wins.
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Obviously we will need to start getting DNA samples with membership applications, then we can match these to NSA info re residence.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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As you know, Pam, every Labour Party ward branch has an elected chair and secretary. At different times over the 30+ years I've lived in Tottenham I've had both (volunteer) jobs in three wards.
Now I can't, in all honesty, say that everyone on the membership list always lived in the ward. Some forgot to tell us they'd moved. The national membership staff made occasional mistakes. And, who knows, maybe somebody from a different part of London was so keen to come to our incredibly exciting meetings that they concealed their real address.
Even so, it really shouldn't be too difficult for a branch chair and secretary to spot what we have now been told - a surge of new members in the months before selection meetings. Especially, as we've now heard, signing up from local business addresses sometimes on the same day.
Of course, a surge in Party membership is welcome. There are two huge student hostels in Tottenham Hale. Let's say that two dozen eager Labour students actually resident in the hostels all sign-up. Maybe even a dozen on the same day. Had I been the ward branch secretary I'd have asked some questions, checked it was legit, and been very pleased.
But what if it later turned out that I was duped? That few if any of them actually lived in my ward. That they were registered to vote in other parts of Haringey and London. Then I'd feel a complete sucker. The patsy in someone else's rigged game.
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor 1998-May 2014. My partner Zena Brabazon is one of the deselected Labour councillors for St Ann's ward.)
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John has handed the records over but not to the people who requested them
Who knows? Maybe we would select exactly the same people if we ran it all again fair and square. This is the only honest course of action given the furore. Right now it would be hard to argue for Barbara, Ali and Peter on my neighbours' doorsteps. With a proper mandate, as legitimately selected candidates, I would be happy to.
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When you fly do you trust the large and impressive scales at the airport check-in to correctly weigh your baggage? The Daily Telegraph (9 October 2010) reported that Trading Standards found: "75 of a total 330 weighing scales at Gatwick Airport were inaccurate or broken for up to three years, resulting in “millions” of passengers being overcharged for their luggage."
Of course, there's a key difference between this situation and when Labour Party members go to their wards' selection meetings. Airport passengers can weigh their luggage at home and challenge a mistake.
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor. My partner Zena Brabazon was one of the two sitting councillors deselected as Labour candidates for St Ann's ward. The other is Cllr David Browne.)
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Enjoy everybody.
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I have just heard that the London Labour Party will not be rerunning the election. They do not deny that the five Kurdish men present at the election to vote for the man who drove them there, Ali the Chemist, were not eligible to vote. They merely say that the time to root them out was before or during the meeting. Essentially calling on StAnn's Labour members to run the risk of being called racists for asking those five men where they lived.
When a ward such as StAnn's goes so consistently with one party, then the place to "get elected" is at these selection meetings and not actually during the election. This was voter fraud by proxy.
Now how much do we care about this? What are we as "the electorate" prepared to do? Write to newspapers? Write to the Labour Party (on balance I wouldn't bother)? Make the rest of the electorate aware of what went on? It is completely up to us because the London Labour party are just seeing this as sour grapes by the losers. It's not that at all. It is the systematic take over of our representation on the council by single interest groups, Ali the Chemist will not owe his seat to the electorate but the five men he bussed in to vote for him. If it is allowed to happen this time, then it will be twice as bad next time.
Because all three councillors were dumped in this ward there has been an investigation but I presume that this trick was played out in other wards too, just not quite so spectacularly and in combination with any legitimate stacking done by the council leadership.
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It will be impossible for this man to be taken seriously, except by his five boosters. If he withdraws, who was the fourth (runner-up) candidate?
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Zena. She was the one that they were trying to oust because of some ridiculous internal schism over education. She should have been through in the first round between the three women but Barbara Blake beat her, by one vote I think.
The whole thing stinks and should be rerun but the only thing against the rules was those five guys. Charles Adje turned up, presumeably to settle scores, with his family, BUT he's perfectly entitled to! Those five guys should not have been there and they certainly should not have voted.
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