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 Stephen Moore on
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And with good reason, John, which I was at pains to explain in an email to both you and Hugh.
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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Interestingly the BBC News website took a long time to come around to inserting links. They're still a bit rubbish. The National newspapers are certainly better at this now. Bloggers changed this link culture without particularly intending to (at least not at first) - Google often rated bloggers on a topic higher in their page rankings than the big news corporations because Google was (originally) about openness and sharing of information (inserting links). Those Google libertarians, what a laugh - now they're extremely rich!
...................
We Come 1 - Live Alexandra Palace
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Printed it on their website and got it significantly wrong.
Nobody was"parachuted in at the last minute" And nobody is complaining that's what happened.
I gave what as far as I knew were the accurate facts in my first posting on this thread. I accept that the Labour Party's Rulebook is not a gripping, can't-put-down, best-seller. So please let me try to restate the position more clearly if possible.
As far as I am aware, five people took part in the St Ann's ward branch selection meeting who had been listed as members for the requisite period, but who do not live in that ward as required by the Labour Party's Rules. Nor, as far as I am aware, were they on the Electoral Register for St Ann's ward - again required by the Party's rules. That's why they were were not eligible to attend and vote.
As well as the five, in recent months - NOT at the last minute - an additional fourteen people had signed-up as members who, it is highly likely, do not live in St Ann's ward. But they were not invited to the meeting which selected the Labour Party's candidates because they joined the party after the required "freeze date,"
This is how it works in my own case. I've been a Labour Party member in Tottenham for over thirty years. My home is in Tottenham Hale ward and so I'm a member of the Tottenham Hale Labour Party branch. Because I am standing down as a councillor next year, this year I took part in the shortlisting and selection meetings for the Party's three candidates for my own ward. If you went along to the Civic Centre and asked to see the Electoral Register you'd find it's where I'm registered to vote. My home isn't somewhere else; and I'm not on the Electoral Register somewhere else. Sounds logical, obvious and dull, doesn't it?
When I first met Zena I lived in Islington and was a member of Islington Labour Party. When I moved to Tottenham I transferred my membership. I must admit that it never occurred to me to tell the Party that I was still in Islington and attend meetings there, including selecting candidates for Islington Council elections.
It seems that according to the Labour Party's London Region, that would have been perfectly okay — provided nobody found out until after the meeting.
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor. My partner Zena Brabazon is one of the deselected candidates for St Ann's ward.)
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My mistake. I'll take a look at it now.
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Permalink Reply by Protheroe O'Shea on
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McMullan, just thought I'd let you know that you have become a local hero!
Labour, sadly you have just lost my vote. I am disgusted. If it were the Tories or Lib-Dems you'd would be screaming corruption and campaigning for a re-run. Do the right thing and perhaps it won't just be my vote you will lose.
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Well said Tunbridge, try living in St Anns Ward with this lot in charge. UKIP are going to capitalise on this mess in both the European elections and the general election if they don't get their act together and modernise. There is a complacency here that is self destructive.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Apart from the cheating by one candidate (potentially with the tacit approval of the Labour Party) I don't have a problem with the other two. If it was Labour's intention to pull in some high powered councillors to shake up the council then it seems rather vindictive to choose St Ann's though. Surely there are bed blockers east of us and wards ripe for the picking by a decent candidate to the west (including Harringay) that they could start on. I'm not taking anything away from the two people running with Gina in Harringay, I think they look good, but they'll have a hell of a job combating the job our libdems have done for us locally. Why might they be worth it? Look what having cabinet members consistently over the years has done for St Ann's. Are any of our Labour candidates capable of being cabinet members in the next four years?
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Thanks, Stephen for amending the Tottenham Journal online report. Also for adding the link to Haringey online.
I’d now query only one aspect of the story as published on the Journal’s website. And that’s not down to your reporting, but the response you got from the Labour Party’s London Regional office to your Press Enquiry.
The London Region told you it has: “… investigated claims that the five voters breached the Party’s eligibility requirements for voting as they lived outside the ward and were not registered to vote in the ward.”
Their spokesperson added that: “The Labour Party has carefully considered suggestions of irregularities and after carefully considering all the facts is satisfied that the selection was safe and run in accordance with Labour Party rules”.
To be clear, I have not seen lists of names and addresses. Nor did I personally search Electoral Registers. Nor those internet sites which, as you know, can now pinpoint with a high degree of certainty where people live and where they are registered to vote. However, that work has been done. As I understand it, those details were passed to the Labour Party’s London Region Office. Listing: names, addresses, wards; constituencies; and where relevant, other London Boroughs where people actually appear to have their homes.
Of course, information about someone’s address on a website may be inaccurate or become outdated. But it appears to me that, at the very least, entries on Electoral Registers in Haringey and elsewhere are facts; rather than a “claim” or a “suggestion of irregularity”. Perhaps the London Region staff, in the course of “carefully considering all the facts”, double-checked this hard evidence and discovered that it is wrong? If so they haven’t said so.
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor. Zena Brabazon one of the deselected councillors for St Ann’s ward is my partner. The other deselected councillor is David Browne. N.B. This is a repost since there was glitch first time round. Thanks to Hugh for sorting it out.)
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Indeed, and I have asked them for specific details (well, as specific as they're likely to give me considering data protection issues) of the information they've found which contradicts the residency/electoral register issues. No reply as yet.
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That will be like trying to find hens teeth or horse feathers
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