Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Councillor Stanton Sent into Wilderness by Local Labour Group
The Labour whip was withdrawn from long serving Tottenham councillor, Alan Stanton last night.
A meeting of the local Haringey Council Labour group last night took the rarely used step of withdrawing the whip from one of its longest serving councillors. The official reason given was Councillor Stanton's voting in opposition to the appointment of new Council Chief Executive, Nick Walkley.
The action was taken by the Labour political group on the Council. It's party business, rather than official council business. However, I do wonder at the meaning of that distinction; when it's a decision by the ruling group over the issue of the appointment of the Council boss, it seems barely relevant to draw a line between the two.
Being deprived of the whip cuts a concillor off from the party’s support machine, labels them as a bad boy, and can lead to their being deselected as the party’s candidate for the next election. It's the grown up political equivalent of playground kids sending someone to Coventry.
So that must be awful for a serious councillor like Alan Stanton with fifteen years of office behind him, right? Wrong. Stanton made clear how he felt about it at 3:00AM this morning on Twitter:
Kober threw me in the briar patch. This is really gonna be fun!
— Alan Stanton (@AlanStanton_) December 7, 2012
(For those of you less familiar with Uncle Remus, Stanton's briar patch refers to an apparently awful thicket into which clever B'rer Rabbit tricked Bre’r Fox throwing him and from which he quickly escaped to make more mischief.)
In conversation with Alan, some hours before the briar patch tweet, Alan told me, "I'm so disillusioned with the level of secrecy in the local party, the need to control from the top, that I'm glad to be out of it".
The current censure applies to Alan for three months. Whist it's by no means certain whether the party want the independent minded Tottenham Councillor back amongst their number when that time is up, this Councillor is certainly not for turning. Alan told me, "No, I won't reapply to rejoin the Labour group that's enough for me." Their loss I'd say. Independent minded he may be, but he's a politician who is a serious thinker and has his heart in the right place. I have to question where a party who doesn't have room for someone like Alan is headed.
As for Alan's future, he has a big agenda he wants to get his teeth into with the big issues around making Tottenham a better place to live, short of simply allowing it to gentrify. He seems to think the chances of his serving as a councillor again are slim though since he sees little chance of an independent councillor ever being elected in his neighbourhood.
Let's not bid farewell to Alan yet, though. This is after all a rabbit that lives by its wits.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on
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Meanwhile Our Lady of Muswell & her Tar Baby are haunted by Br'er St Anton's chortles from N17: "Born an' bred in a briar patch! Bred an' born in a briar patch!" Ah reckon dat damn rabbit'll have the last laugh, Claire baby.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Here's an HoL thread where Cllr. Stanton calls for Mr Adje to resign (in my opinion, a person of Mr Adje's reputation should have no place in British public life. I sincerely hope he steps down as soon as possible).
Noteworthy in this thread are the comments of the council leader:
Cllr Claire Kober was quoted, saying that: "His conduct fell well below the standards expected of any Councillor but he has particularly failed to meet the high expectations that the Labour Party places on its members who hold elected office”. (As required by the Labour Party Rules, he has also had the Labour whip withdrawn.)
Mr Adje caused multi-million pound losses to the Borough through his conduct and judgement (I put it no stronger than that). By contrast, the crime of Alan Stanton - that precipitated his whip-withdrawal - was to disagree with an appointment and openly vote as he believed.
You couldn't make it up.
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Permalink Reply by David Schmitz on
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There have been a large number of views on this thread (572 at last count), and very few postings. Could this be due to people waiting for a response from Alan’s erstwhile political “friends”?
So far, all we have is a couple of pieces in the Haringey Independent. According to them,,“If he decides to return to the Labour party, he will have to enter a training programme to relearn his party's policies – which he likened to being ‘sent to the countryside to work with the peasants’.”
Whether that is the correct analogy, or whether it is more accurate to liken the “programme” to a Gulag for compulsory political reeducation, Alan’s fate does show his former party to be infected with intolerance and authoritarianism at the top and, at the very least, extreme caution further down. The presence of these characteristics in a major political party ought to worry everyone, whether they support that party or oppose it.
David Schmitz
Lib Dem Councillor for Harringay Ward
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A Tale of Two Training programmes
Interesting you mention re-training programmes, David.
Retraining Cllr. Adje: When Cllr. Adje was Found to have brought the council into disrepute, he was sentenced to four months full suspension PLUS retraining on the councillor code of conduct, under the auspices of the Borough Monitoring Officer (the head of legal services).
(Cllr Adje showed no contrition. The likelihood of the long-serving councillor, a two-term leader, benefiting from the privilege of such taxpayer-financed training, is another matter).
Even assuming that this penalty meant something, we heard no more about it. Shortly after the end of his suspension period, Mr Adje was back in the party fold and its not known if any training took place. His continuing presence is an affront to decency and an indictment of his local party.
Retraining Cllr. Stanton: How sincere was it that Cllr. Stanton was invited by his party to enter a retraining programme to relearn his party's policies? Was this not equivalent to saying: ... and don't come back?
When there's internal disagreement that spills out into the public arena, most of the major parties are mature enough to say that we are a "broad church". By this reckoning, the church of the local council majority group is a narrow sect, as well as perverted.
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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The Great Flapjack Scandal (16792 views) implying perhaps people are more concerned with saving on their shopping than Local Labour Scandals :)
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Permalink Reply by pamish on
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If/when this story makes it to The Guardian too, expect the numbers to climb.
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It's true that the Great Flapjack Scandal at Sainsbury's has been popular (it's close to 17,000 hits), but the withdrawal of the whip from Cllr. Stanton – while not in Flapjack league – has gone over 3,000 hits.
I would have thought that reflected an above-average level of interest and it is surely a respectable total by HoL standards.
I suspect an important reason that Alan was excommunicated was his Flickr blog, that remains up and where he asks inconvenient, nay embarassing, questions about Cllr. Charles Adje.
After his four month suspension, Cllr Adje returned to join the council Majoirty Group and retains the whip.
Is this not proof postiive, that party loyalty is rated above competence? I can think of no better example. Adje's shame is now partly shared by his colleagues, who are presumably, happy to have him back.
IMO, Alan should ask each of them, in turn, if they are happy to be a colleague of, and stand alongside this councillor, who has wrought so much damage to our Borough.
LINK - Cllr. Charles Adje and the "Independent" Solicitor.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Clive, while former councillor Harry Lister was, let's say, unhappy about my photos and comments on Flickr concerning Cllr Charkes Adje, interest in those almost completely dried up after 2009. And even then, only four of the fourteen pages had over one thousand hits. Most were well below that.
I can also assure you that the current Labour Chief Whip, Cllr Pat Egan, who was impeccably friendly, polite and fair in everything he did during my de-whipping process, never even gave a hint of a whisper that this was a relevant issue.
In fact I am sure it wasn't. Because when Cllr Adje appealed to the Party Region about having the whip suspended, Cllr Claire Kober asked me for my information and I was delighted to send her copies of my factual posts on Flickr. I don't recall for certain but I think I may also have suggested she consult the thoroughly researched document you supplied to Haringey's Standards Committee.
But my material is three years old. And my Flickr pages were written in ongoing instalments. I can't see too many people being interested now. So if Charles Adje is endorsed to stand again as a Labour candidate for White Hart Lane in May 2014, plainly there would be a need for an easy to read, accessible account of these past events, online and on paper. Both for the electors and for Labour candidates across Haringey. Perhaps you and I can co-operate on putting this together?
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)
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Sadly, I could co-operate in such a venture, in the public interest.
But there is, as you know, a great deal of information already available on Cllr. Adje's judgement over Alexandra Palace. In fact, for the casual observor, perhaps too much.
At the heart of the Determination Hearing decision, was the Finding that Adje had failed to share (in fact, deliberately concealed) vital information about the proposed Licence to Firoka. The information took the form of a "Chair's Briefing Note" that Adje himself had requested. Because he didn't like it, he concealed it from his fellow Trustees.
The Briefing Note was a strongly argued case that nothing like the proposed Licence should be entered into. The disastrous Licence conveyed a huge amount of tax payers' money to a private company and caused a loss to our Charity of at least £1,500,000 (a "conservative estimate") and it was likely £2,000,000. Adje's action may not have been corrupt, but for some, they did appear to be corrupt.
Adje was all but found to have compromised a council officer. The investigator reluctantly did not Find this; the Standards Committee reinstated this charge. In the end, it was not Found, but only by a narrow margin. If anyone wants to judge for themselves, the transcript of the public parts of the two day Hearing (the bulk of it) is available online here.
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In this case, Clive, too much information is precisely the problem. The material publicly available on the Ally Pally fiasco is comprehensive, factual, and very very lengthy.
By contrast the material about Charles Adje and the Welbourne Centre was far sketchier. Which ironically may now be an advantage.
The task might be a little easier if Haringey had an effective opposition. This isn't by any means a general criticism of all LibDem councillors. I know several who are committed, hard working, intelligent and thoughtful. But as long as their leadership chooses to focus on waste-bins and grit-bins (when it freezes) the Dear Maximum Council Leader hasn't much to worry about from that direction, has she?
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Let's please take care, Mr Hoyle. Nobody has said that anyone is "corrupt". That would be a very serious allegation and one which neither I nor Clive Carter made about any councillor from any party.
The comments we made about Cllr Charles Adje - and the information posted online - are based (mostly) on publicly available documents including the findings of Standards for England and Haringey Council's own Standards Committee.
I have in the past emailed Cllr Adje referring him to my posts on Flickr and inviting him to answer questions I posed. I offered to remove and correct any inaccurate facts and to apologise. Cllr Adje did not respond.
I agree with you that the Labour Party - both locally and at Regional level should properly regulate who it chooses as its representatives.
However, in our system it is also vital that we have a vigilant, effective and healthy opposition. A former leader of your own party once said: "no government can long be secure without a formidable Opposition".
To be fair to the LibDems, Cllr Neil Williams - who was their Leader at the time of the Walklate Reports on Charles Adje and Firoka - did a reasonable job at the few Council meetings. However, as a group they should have been far more effective. It was a 'wide-open goal'.
There's another reason why it's a problem for all parties when a councillor's conduct falls "well below the standards expected of any Councillor ..." . That reason is because it further undermines the remaining trust in politicians - and therefore in our democracy.
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Billy there is no evidence that Councillor Adje is corrupt, although it my belief that there are significant matters not investigated adequately, both as regards the Welbourne Centre and Adje's relationship with Firoka Ltd.
However, as far as whip withdrawal goes it hardly matters, as this individual has already been Found, after a two-day Standards Hearing, to have brought Haringey Council into disrepute.
How bad does it need to be? Was a £2,000,000 loss to our Charity not enough?
It is difficult to get a conviction of this kind, but Adje merited it in spades. Considering the financial damage done to the Borough, a four-month suspension was arguably not even the minimum penalty required.
Given this background, it is surprising that he was allowed back into the Majority Group and it is a reflection on them, as you suggest, and not on the Oppostion.
In Alan's post above (to which I cannot reply due to deep nesting), the good councillor engages in his classic deflection technique: in this case, the minority group is partly to blame for the majority group restoring the whip to Adje.
The whip restoral to Adje is the responsiblity of the majority group alone.
What are we to make of it?
Cllr. Adje must have some cronies, possibly of the same ilk, or Adje's got something on the group, or other majority group councillors think that people won't care, or they believe its not possible to bring Haringey's reputation into disrepute. It's democracy diseased. Take your pick.
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