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 John McMullan on
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But the constituency secretary has the attendance records and ballots from Tottenham Green.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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As does Stuart McNamara, chair of Tottenham Constituency. And, I understand, every Tottenham ward branch passed these records to Stuart and Seema Chandwani, Constituency Secretary.
Apart, of course, from St Ann's branch, where it appears that Steve Hart instructed John Blake that he should not pass these on. Again, to the best of my knowledge, the London Regional Party received these records from St Ann's but - as far as I know - has refused to disclose them to anyone else in the Tottenham Constituency.
But a word of caution. Most of the people who attended the St Ann's selection meeting are known to one another. So the attendance record would simply confirm the names - real or claimed - by the few people who were not so known.
John, you commented that my partner Zena Brabazon "pulled her punches". That's true. And for a very good reason. Zena and David Browne in their complaints to the London Region, and Zena in her subsequent complaints to the Party's National Executive Committee (NEC) kept as strictly as possible to facts they are able to evidence.
A separate point about people signing-up (or being signed-up) from business addresses, this is against the Party Rules. No ifs; no buts. The key phrase in the Party's Rulebook is: "reside in the electoral area concerned". It's one of the rules which the Party's "Compliance Unit" has chosen to ignore. Perhaps it should be renamed the Complacency Unit ?
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)
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Alan, my beef with how you and Zena handled this is not that you stuck to the facts but that you did not alert the people you protested to that John Blake and Steve Hart were not to be trusted in an investigation.
Stop trying to protect the Labour Party and Labour Party members. Yours and Zena's loyalty to them has cost the electorate of St Ann's a chance to vote for three fairly selected candidates. If there is a turnaround now and they rerun the selection I will be gob-smacked.
Is it not now apparent to you that there has been a level of deception practised by Ali Gul Ozbek, Nora Mulready, Barbara Blake, Steve Hart and John Blake that defies "misremembering" and mistakes? These people are all Labour Party members. Dealing with politicians over this has seemed at times like dealing with the mob. The communication/obfusication and then sudden silence when I get close to the truth is creepy, like there is something more to this.
Now you have politicians out doorstepping in St Ann's and on Green Lanes telling very obvious lies to the electorate. How does this stand with Ed Miliband's comments about the Co-Op scandal: "What I am utterly confident about is the Labour party always acts w...."?
You obviously do not have the structures in place to deal with this level of corruption, despite the fact that because of such low memberships you are very exposed to it. Not just exposed, some of you take complete advantage of it yourselves. I notice that when the big guns like Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn are out on the #labourdoorstep in Harringay they are not signing up new members. Who knows who they might select eh?
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A few decades ago I took part in a small piece of research about abuse scandals involving children and young people in residential care. As part of this I read though both news items and official reports of the major published inquiries.
I quickly realised that many of the same issues came up in other Inquiries about different institutions: for young offenders; in older people's "homes"; places looking after disabled and learning disabled people; etc.
A common theme was that somebody always asked the question: "Why wasn't the abuse detected or exposed earlier?" 'Why didn't someone say something?" And then it became obvious that almost invariably, someone had said something. And for a long time been ignored. It may have been a family member. Or one of the professionals. Or in one case I've always remembered, a brave and persistent young student on placement who insisted on taking her knowledge to the "top" person.
Organisations pretend to welcome whistle-blowers. In fact they usually hate them.
It's trebly difficult when blowing the whistle loses people colleagues and friends. And when there's strong pressure to keep everything under wraps; to keep silent for the "good" of the organisation. And worse still if the whistleblower is not taken seriously; their claims not properly investigated; or dismissed. When they become "the problem".
If I don't know something I'm prepared to give someone the benefit of the doubt. I don't know what John Blake, Steve Hart etc knew or didn't know. But now, frankly, I don't really care.
What now matters to me is that since the St Ann's vote-rigging exposure none of these people; nor the "successful" candidates; nor the pathetic bunch at Labour Regional office and the Compliance Unit, have shown the slightest indication of courage or a moral compass. Even to say, at the very minimum, that - discounting all speculation, ignoring the personal aspects - there's enough hard evidence presented to necessitate a full and proper investigation.
There have been people in and outside the Labour Party who have been and still are standing up. Some speaking out publicly; others quietly but helpfully behind the scenes.
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)
N.B I'm not writing on Zena's behalf. She is abroad for several days working with an early years education charity.)
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I don't disagree JohnT. But there's still a clear 6 months to go. Plenty of time to inform interested electors of the rule-breaking. And of which candidates choose to continue in embarrassed or smug silence about it - privately as well as publicly.
But currently there's a final attempt underway to nudge the Labour Party's National Executive Committee into living up to Ed Miliband's fine words about "speaking up for decency in British politics". At least to the extent of demanding a full and proper inquiry.
Incidentally I'm told that one person speaking up at a recent Labour Party meeting was the Mayor Cllr Sheila Peacock. Sadly, she appears to have spoken for ignorance; insisting that it was perfectly okay for people to join the Labour Party giving a business address.
This is specially worrying since, as far as I know, Sheila is the Membership Officer for the whole Tottenham Constituency Party. Fortunately, Tim Waters, one of the members present and a Party apparatchik, was able to set her straight on what the rules actually say.
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor. My partner Zena Brabazon was one of the deselected candidates in St Ann's ward. The other was Cllr David Browne.)
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Tim Waters is Peter Morton's flatmate. The two of them are the same age as and were at Oxford and involved in politics at the same time as the Secretary of the St Ann's branch of the Labour Party. You kept that quiet.
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Having investigated what happened to Nilgun Canver back in January a little further I think I'll have to remove the implications from this discussion that it was politically motivated.
I still don't think the Labour Party are off the hook for the way they gleefully cast her out though. Her salary has been cut by 75% (not sure how many of us could take that) so if you get an opportunity to buy her lunch, please do.
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This is just a small note of thanks to those of you that have contacted me privately to offer encouragement, bought me beer or stopped me in the street to say "good on ya, keep going".
By next week I expect this article to have been the most viewed on HarringayOnline ever, it is already the most viewed this year. There was a "featured posts" section when I first started this, at the top of the HoL main page but after several calls from members to have my post "featured" the siteadmin deleted it completely rather than feature it. I have also been told that I am the only person that cares about this (apart from the councillors who were deselected and their bloc vote) so thank you again for all those private words and it's nice to know that my neighbours care about local democracy too.
The driver from siteadmin to not feature this article is from their futile desire to remain to be seen as politically neutral. The local Labour Party operate a George W. Bush like policy of you're either with us, or you're against us so that will not work.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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The Featured posts section that used to be at the top of Page 1, John, was in fact a section to feature "news' type posts written by Liz and myself. It was set up to automatically include only posts from the Latest News and Stories rom HoL category, which only admin have permission to post to. It was put there because a few people said to me that they didn't know that HoL did news type stories.
It was removed in September because I currently don't have time to add the same level of contributions that I used to do and the level of up to date activity it featured in such a prominent position was just a bit embarrassing.
Should you not recall the exact wording on the section header, I'm including an old screenshot below.
So, no John, there's no driver not to feature this article. The removal of the Latest Posts by HoL section had nothing whatsoever to do with either you or the St Ann's issue.
As is the norm when heated political issues arise, HoL is never the winner. I have had intense pressure from the local Labour party about removing your posts and intense pressure from you about my removal of some of your potentially libellous statements. I have not succumbed to pressure from either of you. What I try to do is to allow the use of this platform for legitimate debate within our house rules and of a nature that won't expose Liz or I to legal action.
To be honest, it would be very much easier for me to just say that we don't do party political debate. You have no idea how unpleasant and time consuming these issues are for me and have been for Liz too. Posts like your last one just bring the time when I rule out party political debates a little bit closer.
And, for the record, the whole reason I started HoL was because I care about the local area, local democracy and the local community.
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Permalink Reply by Protheroe O'Shea on
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Had the Labour Party pop over today. I told the guy about the st Ann's debacle. He told me he walked out of the meeting.
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Permalink Reply by ant on
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Well in my book John gets a big gold star for all this.
Some of my posts ended up in the "Latest posts by HoL" section even though I'm not an admin, and i would have liked this one to be there. Or how about rename the section again to "Featured posts" which it was once called wasn't it? And what would happen if you posted the take down request you get? That could be funny, like Google includes the DMCA take down requests when your search gets there targets.
As much as you've had to edit and remove posts i think its a win for HoL too that its been able to help give something like this the exposure it wouldn't have otherwise got. So well done and thanks.
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