Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Labour Party Selection Fraud in St Ann's
After it was discovered at the St Ann's Labour Party selection candidate selection meeting that there were people present and voting who should not have been, I came home from the pub (where I'd heard about it) and wrote this article. It has subsequently been edited by site admins to remove the names of people who were embarrassed or in the final case where a journalist said it was potentially libellous. Well here I will attempt to summarise what we have subsequently found out and hopefully take people's attention away from my original appalling rant.
Back in May (The Ward AGM):
- The St Ann's Ward AGM was convened on Thursday the 23rd of May instead of the usual first Wednesday of June by the then Ward Secretary, Barbara Blake.
- Protests were made by members about this but they were rebuffed by the Ward Chairman.
- At this meeting The current Ward Secretary resigned and there was bloc voting to decide the new Ward Secretary.
- A person in the bloc opposing John Blake turned up late and was prevented from voting despite there being nothing about this in the Labour Party rules.
- John Blake was elected Ward Secretary by one vote.
The Selection Meeting:
- The meeting was run by The Secretary of the St Ann's Labour Party , and Steve Hart from Hornsey & Wood Green.
- A candidate who arrived early noticed the five members arrive with Ali Gul Ozbek, sensed that something was up and mentioned it to Barbara Blake. When the other candidate seemed unhelpful they mentioned it to Steve Hart. Then the candidate went looking for the five people but was barred from entering the room (3o minutes before the selection) by the Ward Secretary.
- By the time one member I have spoken to arrived, the five members were seated at the back of the room. Four men and one woman (who works in Ali Ozbek's Pharmacy).
- A blonde woman turned up before anyone had started speaking but was barred from entering the room by the Ward Secretary, despite remonstrating with him.
- Barbara Blake won in the first round (to select a female candidate) against Zena Brabazon and Emine Ibrahim by two votes. It was 11/1/14. Everybody voted.
- It is alleged that one candidate knew the questions in advance and had prepared answers.
- At the appropriate point in the meeting the secretary asked if everyone was OK with the others in the room and everybody laughed.
- There were various factions voting together in the room; the five new members, Charles Adje's family, Zena and David's people and the Ward Secretary's people.
- In the final round Ali Ozbek and Peter Morton were selected, beating Zena by one vote.
- Ali is a local chemist and businessman on Green Lanes who seemed very passionate about what should be done with St Ann's and spoke eloquently about the need to reduce business rates. He is also a property developer.
- At the time Peter worked as head of press for the Labour Party.
- Barbara is a trade union official and ex Ward Secretary.
After the Selection Meeting
- A fellow councillor calls David to commiserate with him.
- David Browne and Zena Brabazon did some investigation using the St Ann's Labour Party membership list and the electoral roll.
- They discovered that nineteen new members signed up that year did not actually live in St Ann's and that they had either given Green Lanes business addresses when they signed up or claimed addresses in the ward.
- Not one of these new members, many of whom were recruited on the 8th of July gave an address in the ward at which they are eligible to vote, which is required by party rules.
- Five of these members were "eligible" to vote because they signed up before the cut off date of the 30th of April, however they should have been barred from voting because they do not actually live in the ward.
- Zena and David wrote to their local Labour Party officials who sent their evidence on to the London Labour Party.
- Nobody can tell me for sure where Ali Ozbek lives but he claims an address in Finsbury Park Avenue.
- Ali Ozbek has donated money to the Labour Party.
- According to a twitter exchange with a Labour councillor in another ward, the membership list should have been gone through before the meeting by the person running it to make sure this kind of thing did not happen, it was certainly done in their ward.
- When one of the five members who voted was called at his home his partner informed the caller that he had been in Turkey for a while and was not due back yet.
- In Harringay several new Labour Party members were registered using Green Lanes business addresses but not before the cut off date.
- Barbara Blake has told local traders that it is OK to register as a member in the Labour Party from a business address (it is definitely not) and the Tottenham Membership Secretary has expressed a similar view in a meeting, only to be corrected.
The "Corruption in Haringey Labour" article.
- After I wrote the original article, in which I also made some allegations against Claire Kober, the only phone call to site admins was to remove the Secretary of the St Ann's Labour party's name from the discussion.
- There was a lot of comment on the original thread and as of Saturday the 12th of October it appears to have been viewed more than 7000 times, although I dispute that as a useful metric (I think the actual figure is much lower).
- After some badgering it was picked up by an overworked Stephen Moore at the Tottenham Journal, here.
Trying to get a re-run
- I have pushed the councillor who commiserated David on his loss on Twitter to join calls asking for a re-run of the election but they have resolutely refused, to the point where it's all a bit weird and "la la la, I can't hear you".
- As it stands the London Labour Party have agreed that the five people were not eligible to vote but they say that this was not picked up before or during the meeting so the result stands. Their investigation consisted of speaking to the Ward Secretary and Steve Hart. Steve Hart lied because someone did speak to him before the meeting.
- The London Labour Party have the attendance list and will not release it, presumably because it shows that people were not identified correctly and that at least two of the five were imposters.
- Appeals to the NEC have all been rebuffed, even with the full acknowledgement of what went on.
The Labour doorstep in Harringay
- The St Ann's Labour Party have a great deal of trouble getting members to help them out with canvassing. A photograph has been tweeted showing more than 20 people out in Harringay Ward above the same session in St Ann's, with just two.
- When David Lammy, after a lot of badgering apparently, stepped out in St Ann's for the Labour doorstep he was met by a picket of local men calling on him not to support the St Ann's fraudsters. As I understand it he will not be going out with them again.
The Police are involved
- On Monday the 10th of February Haringey MPS made a visit to me on behalf of the secretary of the St Ann's Labour Party and his partner.
- It was alleged that I had called him filth on Twitter (which I have not, that was someone else) and that I said "I know I'm hassling you but...". I was served with a Notice of Harassment Letter which will now appear in extended CRB checks.
*An individual has asked that their name be replaced with their function in this post on the grounds that they are not seeking public office. This has been done.
Tags for Forum Posts: election2014, labour, st ann's labour, stanns
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Alison P on
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"She found that they were registered at business addresses in the ward, rather than home addresses. This will be subject to investigation by the Regional Office, who will ensure that all members in the ward are resident there."
What does that last sentence mean? "Who will ensure" - how will they do that, exactly? If someone lives outside the ward and has registered from a business address inside the ward what will happen? My simple lay-person understanding of the rules is that only RESIDENTS of the ward can vote - but the next paragraph (copied below) seems to say that actually it doesn't matter if the rules get ignored, so long as nobody actually cottons on to it at the time. Great system...
"The complainant argues that her investigation invalidates the selection process. However, they were members on the freeze date for the ward at the time of the selection, and their membership was not challenged either during the meeting or in the weeks prior to the meeting. There was ample opportunity to investigate the members prior to the meeting. Members (including those complained of) were canvassed by the candidates and no issues were raised."
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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I can completely see the Labour Party's reasons for what they have said. They cannot run selection processes like this and accept complaints after the meeting. They would have to rerun hundreds of selection meetings if that were the case.
What we have here, and was not highlighted in this complaint, was a ward secretary and an independent invigilator actively working against some of the candidates. For instance Steve Hart's recollection of events is wrong. The person who complained to him was a candidate in the St Ann's meeting, nothing to do with the Seven Sister's meeting downstairs. The ward secretary has a lot to answer for too. He seems to have smuggled these people into the room quickly so the complainant could not find them, as well as stopping her from going into the room to check and not doing proper ID checks. I have not found a single person there who had their ID checked and this for me is the crux of the matter and where Zena's complaint pulls punches: John Blake deliberately did not check ID. Put this next to the fact that Claire Kober asked Matt Downie, who was invigilator for Noel Park's selection meeting, to allow an ineligible member to vote... We see why they are covering it up, no?
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Permalink Reply by Julie on
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If you don’t ask the right questions, you don’t get to the bottom of the issue, even if you want to. Those of us who think there were irregularities have several different concerns about the eligibility of some voters taking part in the selection process.
One person was definitely not on the freeze list given to candidates. This person appears to be employed by one of the successful candidates and has an address for the purposes of party membership which is a workplace one, a shopfront. So do eight others. This member is actually registered to vote from an address outside the constituency. It also follows that at least one candidate was able to lobby for support but most were not even aware of this member. It was impossible for other candidates to query this person’s membership or entitlement before the meeting.
Four other members attended who may or may not have been matched to names on the list. Of these, there are strong suspicions that one was taking the place of a member registered as a party member at an estate agents but registered as a voter from a residential address in another ward. He is not known at the estate agents and I was told by people who do know him, from the shop he co-owned, that he moved out of the area some time ago (as in years rather than months.)
A third member is registered as a party member at the same estate agents though he owns a shop on the other side of the road, in Harringay ward and lives many miles away. I believe he attended the meeting but I don’t know him from a hole in the ground.
The fourth and fifth people were not known at all to any of those of us complaining now. There are two longstanding members who have never attended any meetings and they are party members at residential addresses (as opposed to shops.) They could possibly have decided to turn up and vote in a selection for the first time, but the candidates I have spoken to knocked at their addresses many times to canvass them. Nobody was ever home. Even they, however, are registered to vote from addresses elsewhere, which suggests they don’t live, or no longer live, at the address held for them by the party. Like I say, we don’t know. And it matters to residents so we should find out.
The whole issue has become very feverish, understandably. It’s not as simple as five people mistakenly wandering into a meeting to support their friend and innocently getting caught up in something controversial. There was a very suspicious spike in membership in the summer which the secretary of Harringay ward noticed and reported. An awful lot of actually ineligible people may have joined the Labour party believing that they could take part in the selection in either ward. They will be able to next time but were too late this time. It’s not exactly stretching things to suspect that their disappointment may have led to them to look for other ways to play a part in local democracy, sooner rather than later, say. Not everybody is a stickler for rules and the Labour Party Rulebook isn’t everybody’s idea of a page-turner.
It is an offence, for example, under party rules, to purchase membership for another person, or to join at the unwaged rate when you are in work. It is a requirement to register to vote if you are eligible and it is against the rules to use a workplace address for the purposes of membership. I’ve never broken any of these rules. However I am concerned to hear assertions that that some of my comrades may have. Surely any political party would want to produce a thorough report.
Rival parties don’t have this controversy mainly but then they don’t, with respect, have safe seats either. That’s why we have to take all of this very seriously indeed.
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Permalink Reply by Ceri on
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Julie, Along with other previously Labour voting friends and neighbours in St Ann's Ward I strongly feel that the Labour Party Compliance Unit investigating the complaint should be interviewing you, as you were at the meeting, and not just those people who ran the meeting. And that anyone who still claims the process was fair and correct should be prepared to give a satisfactory answer to each one of your points and observations above. Without that real investigation the elections in this ward will be tainted until there is a new selection round or a rerun.
Those of us who weren't there can't of course know the truth, but until the investigators actually investigate all the allegations properly, or agree to a rerun, we can only presume they have no answers and that the allegations of personation etc are true.
Is there any further appeal route beyond the appeal to the NEC?
The botched investigation is ridiculous anyway as the truth will inevitably come out in due course, and will be compromising to the Labour party, which some of think is a pity.
In my view opposing the terrible and damaging policies of the current Coalition government should be engaging everyone's energies, and so it's a huge diversion of time to have to be caught up in this silly mess of local skullduggery. However, in my experience unless you stand up against corruption where and when you meet it, worse stuff then happens. Good luck to all who are keeping on at this until it is sorted with a rerun.
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So apart from Ant, nobody has had an opportunity to bring this up on the doorstep with a Labour Politician?
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They've not been by our road as of yet.
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So you're in the "voted Labour last time, definitely will again this time" column.
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Permalink Reply by Cllr Emina Ibrahim on
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Hi Alison
We are hand delivering letters introducing ourselves to all residents and we also regularly knock on doors too. We would like residents to get in touch with us with any issues you have in the local area and we will get back to you. We know it's often difficult for residents to come along to surgeries and want to ensure that you have the opportunity and information on how to contact us.
Emine Ibrahim
The Labour Party Candidate (Harringay Ward)
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I have it on very good authority that Nora Mulready has insisted to at least one of the local traders that they took passport ID at the selection meeting (not from anyone I have spoken to) and now I hear that Barbara Blake has told a very well known local trader that it is perfectly OK to register in the Labour Party from a business address.
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Permalink Reply by pamish on
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It may be useful to ask in other wards about ID proof. We weren't asked for this in Tottenham Green - maybe all those present were known personally to officers present. Half of them weren't known to me as regular attenders from about the previous year of monthly ward meetings.
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