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 Alan Stanton on
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9am? Are you suggesting ? .... ?#*@!! How dare you! **@*#!
That's outrageous!!
Gently and mildly critical as I occasionally am about one or two of the Dear Leader's words and deeds, I would never ever stoop so low as to suggest that .... that pile of utter tosh and meaningless pasted together bits of gobbledegook could ever have been issued as a serious document.
Never mind as her Party Election Manifesto.
It's my April Fool joke.
John, your implied comment is not worthy of you. Go and wash your keyboard out with soap.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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To those of you wondering why the libdems and the conservatives are not making more of a fuss of this, I offer you this gem. A month before the election (so in two weeks) the candidates will be scrutinised by the Haringey CEO. At this stage if a prospective candidate is found to be wanting in some way then they are prevented from standing and there is a scramble to replace them on the ticket before the postal ballots go out. If this can't be done, for example, in a couple of very safe Labour wards in the borough, then the Labour party will only have two candidates on the ticket and so someone else will get in by default.
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They'd have to be approved by ward members. Expect other people in St Ann's to be polishing up their CVs too.
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Apparently I'm wrong. The NEC could just appoint a new candidate, which is what they effectively have done already by refusing to investigate the original selection properly.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Phil,
candidates will be scrutinised by the Haringey CEO. ... if a prospective candidate is found to be wanting in some way
This is John's literary flourish for the Nomination form.
All candidates must be nominated and seconded and I think a further number (eight?) need to sign also, by way of endorsement. This step obviously applies to the Labour St. Anns Three, who are alleged to have been selected as the result of a tainted process.
Disclosure:
am a prospective councillor candidate
Highgate Ward | Liberal Democrat Party
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Missed the point, Clive. Talk to the LibDem agent.
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Interesting stuff going on in the Labour Party in Croydon. I have wondered at the lack of action over St Ann's and thought that perhaps it was because the problem was endemic. Very brave local reporter there, he already has one Harassment Notice issued against him on behalf of a local fraudster...
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I suspect, John, that you're probably right. And guess about what happened when David Browne, Emine Ibrahim and my wife Zena Brabazon sent detailed evidence of the vote-rigging in St Ann's ward branch to the Regional and then National Labour Party.
The local complaints were probably sent at the same time as grumblings and protests were arriving from dozens (hundreds ?) of Labour Constituency parties across the country. Including of course, the Parliamentary selection scandal at Falkirk.
As we now know, there were shenanigans in some of the Labour Party selections in our neighbouring borough of Enfield - with re-runs for a few previously selected and deselected candidates.
If we are right, John, and this is widespread, we can imagine what happened when members of Labour's National Executive Committee read the emails from Haringey. Sighs and eye-rolling at one more example of grown-ups quarrelling like kids?
I've no direct information about Croydon. But it all sounds, well, unedifying. Who is going to have which Special Responsibility Allowances? And who is or isn't telling the whole story about paying their subs? To outsiders it all reads like greedy bickering.
Made worse by the utter complacency of the anonymous Croydon Labour "Source" reported as saying: "The saving grace is that the electorate doesn't tend to get too wound up about these things..." Croydon's Anon Labour Source went on: "But, win or lose, there needs to be a massive review of how the party is organised."
Well, anonymous "Source" is almost certainly wrong. There won't be any review - massive or otherwise. And some of the electorate do get wound up. Their response deepens public contempt for elected politicians, and even discourages people from voting. Except perhaps for protest parties like UKIP.
As set out in this HoL thread, the St Ann's Ward Labour Party scandal was different from Croydon in several respects.
It wasn't about who gets nominated for which "sweeties" - posts and extra cash in a new Council. Nor was it a he-said-she-said-they-said clash of opinions. In St Ann's there was clear, hard evidence of vote-rigging and rule-breaking.
This was followed by a cover-up by the Labour Party at local, regional and national level. People with responsibility to act ethically did nothing. Instead they adopted a hear-no-rule-breaking-see-no-rule-breaking stance. (I watched Angela Eagle MP on TV criticising Maria Miller and saying the public are entitled to politicians with "integrity". And I remembered her emails to Zena Brabazon "explaining" why - even though Ms Eagle was the chair of National Executive Committee of the Labour Party- she would do nothing about St Ann's.
I utterly loathe this Coalition Government. And fear the damage another five years will do to Britain. But the Labour Party will have only itself to blame if failure to follow its own rules and the cover-up, robs it of some of its moral standing - and some votes. If its candidates in Haringey make themselves complicit in wrongdoing by failing to stand up and speak out.
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor 1998-2014. Labour Party member over 40 years. Former Tottenham Constituency Labour Party Branch Secretary and ward branch secretary.)
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I utterly loathe this Coalition Government.
Alan I don't think the Coalition perfectly suits anyone, including the majority component, who would I'm sure prefer not to be coalesced with any other party. However, it was in effect what the great British public voted for.
However, to utterly loathe the government makes as much sense as utterly loathing the Fire Brigade for drenching a house in water, after a particular occupant started a fire through smoking in bed. If its any consolation, the other potential occupant at the time was if anything, more likely to start the fire, by alternating cigars with cigarettes (i.e. even more lax banking regulation).
There is, in my opinion, still much more to be done in banking reform so as to reduce the chances of another massive bank bail-out and attendant gigantic government borrowing, the need for which has damaged our economy and society for some time to come. We still have banks that are too big to (allow to) fail.
Disclosure:
am a prospective councillor candidate
Highgate Ward | Liberal Democrat Party
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Permalink Reply by 1sc9rygewokvc on
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Remind me again Clive why anyone should trust a word the LibDem's say, I agree with Alan i utterly loathe the Government, including Cameron's glove puppet Clegg !
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Permalink Reply by Cllr Emina Ibrahim on
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Oh Clive don't be so ridiculous! people do not go to the polls and vote for a coalition it is not on the ballot paper. There was no clear majority therefore a coalition was formed rather than a minority government. Please talk in the realms of reality.
You may enjoy pouring buckets of water over students, nurses, care workers, the disabled, families whose kids have grown up and now have a spare bedroom, teachers, police officers, fire fighters (the list is endless) but most people don't. However I am sure Haringey Liberal Democrats are heartened by the fact that you have been able to muster up people within a 50 mile radius of Haringey who are actually willing to stand for your party. Some of your current councillors have EVEN decided to stand again, although I haven't counted I think its barely in double digits.
Emine Ibrahim
Labour Party Candidate (Harringay Ward)
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Permalink Reply by David Barry on
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Of course both Clive and Emina are both right, but in different ways.
The formal position is that in this country we have a "Parliamentary Democracy", so we each in our seperate consitituencies choose MPs to represent us, and they go to the House of Commons and decide who should be in government, and then have the job of scrutinizing the Government, deciding which laws are made, and at any time, removing the government. So Clive is right. A coalition last election was the outcome, and it was the outcome because of who got to sit in parliament. At every general election the only thing to appear on the ballot paper is the names of the candidates, and the party, if any for which they stand. So, in form we never get to vote for a government, except as an outcome of our vote, we get one.
Emina is also right, cos in practice, in this country, almost always, one party wins, and in the election almost all voters see themselves as choosing between two alternative parties and when the Commons meets the choice of a government is a formality.
Clive's problem is that he is standing at LOCAL level for a party associated at NATIONAL level with breaking an absolutely categorical pledge at the last general election over tuition fees. (see above) So given that we know his party has a record of breaking pledges nationally, how do we then deal with any pledge made by the Liberal Democrats in Haringey?
(Actually I live in Islington, and ironically, in view of my above point, find myself unable to vote Lib Dem in my Ward because I profoundly disagree with a local pledge they have made....while still having a beef with them over breaking the tuition fees pledge.)
No pleasing me I suppose.
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