This is a guest post by Andy Erlam, who was a candidate for the Red Flag Anti-Corruption party in Bow East on May 22 (he polled 129 votes).
[I’ve thought hard about hosting this post, and it is in no way an endorsement of the petition. I was asked whether I could publicise it, given this site’s audience. Andy Erlam says he would cite various grounds for a petition (which effectively calls on a court to conduct a judicial review of the result/count), including alleged voter intimidation. It would be for an Election Court to decide on any merits. A petition needs funds behind it and there are risks associated with it. Andy can explain directly. The initial costs of £10,000 are being met by Andy and he says arrangements are being put in place to limit any liability thereafter.]
Dear Ted,
I am presenting an Election Petition about the Mayoral Elections to the courts. We urgently need additional voters to sign and formally support the petition. The matter is urgent and I need other Tower Hamlets voters and, ideally, who voted in the 22nd May elections to join the petition.
The initial costs of £10,000 will be met by myself and arrangements are being put in place to limit liability, if any, thereafter.
Please get in touch with myself on 07795 547033 or andyerlam@ymail.com soonest. Petitioners must contact me urgently ideally before end of business Thursday 5th June please.
Witness statements from other voters are also needed and can be gathered later.
Several people have kindly donated to the legal fund. The fund details are as follows:
Account name: Steel and Shamash
Account number: 69524020
Sort Code: 15-99-00
IBAN number: GB48HOAB15990069524020
Reference ERLAM PETITION
Solicitors’ address:
Steel and Shamash,
12, Baylis Road
Waterloo
London, SE1 7AA
Please note that in the event of an underspend of the fund, contributors will be repaid their contribution proportionately, or in the unlikely event of not proceeding entirely.
Trial by Jeory 
Could someone not use one of the online crowdfunding sites such as GoFundMe http://www.gofundme.com/
And link it to this bank account? and then advertise it on twitter facebook etc etc
Steel and Shamash must know Tower Hamlets rather well, being the Labour Party’s official solicitors.
Also worthy of note that they represented Phil Woolas against the rare successful election petition that saw him barred from office for illegal practices.
These Nigerian fraud emails are getting sophisticated
V good!
How racist of you. You should have a brick through your window, your car burned, your kids mocked and lose your job for that. I am so, so offended on behalf of the whole Nigerian race you naughty man.
Ho ho ho
A time wasting Trot with nowt to say. An ex-Labour Parliamentary candidate (Cheltenham, 2001) – God, I’d hate to have been a member of that CLP.
WHSmith, it would have been better if this trot had nowt to say. But, it seems he has lots to say. He is prepared to put his money where his mouth is although he could buy a Citroen DS with that kind of money.
The French for lemon is citron. Which is what Citroens are. Far better to spend £10k on cash strapped legal system.
A lemon is better than flushing 10 grand down the toilet.
Also, you can always recoup some of your outlay from those nice guys at webuyanycar dot com.
Hmmm. I’m not quite convinced about this course of action. What actual evidence could be taken to the court? Polling station intimidation is unlikely to have swung it. Vote buying or postal vote snaffling maybe, but the Met haven’t found enough evidence to do anything as yet, and most people would expect them to act against people from ethnic minorities if there’s any chance to do so.
So what’s this going to achieve? Most realistically, further deepen the divisions and breakdown of trust between parts of the Bengali community and everyone else. The narrative will be that the white people can’t handle the Bengali person having won it, to the extent that they’re trying to overturn the result.
Without clear evidence on the table, I don’t think this is a good idea.
And ten grand of your own money? Have you talked this through with your friends and family? You could get a Citroen DS for that kind of money, or 20 photovoltaic panels, or go travelling in South America for a year.
What we need in TH is to rebuild trust between the different parts of the community. I don’t think this petition will help towards this aim.
There’s a statement from the Met here http://www.met.police.uk/pressbureau/Bur04/page10.htm about the allegations they are currently investigating. There seem to be a few, but it seems like it will be a month or two before they’ll be concluded.
There is something wrong with Stringer and the Tower Hamlets division. They’re paralysed when it comes to dealing with one particular community and we see their frankly craven attitude time and again in relation to under reporting or simply not reporting black on white hate crime and religiously or culturally motivated homophobic attacks. They’ve also done nothing about Anjem Choudhury’s activities in the borough and seem to Ostrich their way through life… I wouldn’t expect much from Stringer I really wouldn’t.
The police had a ‘strong prescience’ on polling day! If only they had.
GT – the problem with the police on polling day at the polling stations was that they had had no training. They knew nothing about electoral law and basically just sat there waiting for someone to do their job for them, using none of their own initiative. The police on duty should have been given a copy of the most recent version of the representation of the people’s act (RPA) and the best practise guidance issued by the Electoral Commission and made sure that no intimidation could take place. They failed to do their jobs with any degree of competency once again.
There always will be Winners and Losers. What separates Winners from the Losers is that Losers live in the past. The losers’ scorn for the award is pure sour grapes. Their tendency to call a foul on everything is preposterous!
Winners ignore the Losers and ask people to judge them on their actions!
Rather like the extremist-linked Mayor, except he just calls everyone a racist for no good reason.
This bloke came last in Bow East. He polled less than 1% of the votes.
He came third in Cheltenham when he stood as a Labour candidate in 2001. You would have thought that he was quite used to losing by now. But no, he goes and gets Labour party’s solicitors to try to overturn the TH election result.
Andy Erlam, stop wasting your time. Ask Cameron to send in the army to blitz the town hall and take control.
I am very dissapointed like most people in the Labour camp as to another humiliating election defeat. Was quite refreashing to read in Gibbs rather long post that some serious soul searching has begun in the Labour leadership circle. However I thinks it’s far too little too late and one wonders who will actually take some responsibility for the dismall / uninspiring election campaign strategy we put up against the well planned and well oiled Lutfur election machine.
It’s time for a complete re-think and change in tactics and focussing our efforts in reconnecting with grassroot labour supporters rather than supporting useless court petitions to overturn an election that we had already lost long before 22nd May.
“… and it is in no way an endorsement of the petition.” Ted, this isn’t a journalistic report on a petition – you’ve published it in full, including the bank details. Of course it’s an endorsement.
Nope, it’s not. Sorry to disappoint.
Ted Jeory does not endorse this petition.
Who does?
TJ is showing the accommodating of different views, including those that are bonkers!
Good on you!
Grave Maurice – I think that the comment from Sirius was very tongue-in-cheek. BUT I do think that we are bombarded from all directions with scams and must be careful The scams emanating from Nigeria are the butt of a lot of jokes but should be taken seriously. I lived and worked in West Africa for 14 years, I loved it, and miss it like hell. But I do not miss the corruption. If you are Nigerian – be proud of it, but please don’t be proud of the scams emanating from there.
PS. I.m definitely not saying this petition is a scam.
This petition is not a scam? Nobody has been willing to come forward to endorse it. Why?
This petition has backing from less than 1% of the voting population in TH.
Let me know if the Court does not treat it as a scam with Steel and Shamash laughing all the all the way to the nearest Citroen showroom.
I was joking JW 🙂
HIlarious.
Breaking News: Council’s lawyers stoop to new low + we find 1000 better ways spend your money
Not the first time a losing candidate from Bow has launched an election petition. The last one left the appellant bankrupt, but led to a change in the law.
Pls elaborate Mr Graham Taylor.
LF and TH1st does not have total monopoly on Bangladeshi population in TH! Look at BD Labour candidates (and other parties) and BD party workers. Please don’t polarise this so completely.
What will be interesting is if it is successfully argued on behalf of Mr Erlam that the payments Rahman has made to ‘community groups’ in effect constitute a ‘corrupt practice’ within the meaning of the relevant Acts, as they were so closely linked to his re-election. This might be a more significant argument that lots of smaller pieces of evidence about intimidation at the polling station and the obvious severe problems with the count. Might be a game changer and see not only the result vacated but Rahman disbarred from standing for public office again for 5 years. Stranger things have happened.
Wouldn’t that make it a corrupt practice for the government to cut the top rate of tax in order to solicit the votes of top-rate taxpayers? It’d be an unbelievable precedent.
Not sure you know as much about election petitions as you make out…
All democratically elected governments’ policies relating to distribution of wealth are by definition closely linked to re-election!
Please don’t be offended! It’s not that you know about ‘election petitions’ but you DO have a great deal of wishful thinking!
Intimidation
Bribes
Corrupt practice
Bengalis
……..
The fact is he has won and we all have a lot of mud on our faces!
It’s really not about who is the ‘winner’ and who is the ‘loser’, it’s more about the FAIRNESS OF THE COMPETITION. We live in a democracy, obviously flawed by inequalities, etc,but a democracy nonetheless. We expect elections to be fair.
There are many people who know that what has happened in Tower Hamlets has not been fair and just. When you know that things are not right what do you do? just sit there and say “Oh well, never mind, lets try again in 4 years time”?
No way – you fight for justice and don’t give up. Hopefully this petition will gather a lot of support and momentum as weeks go on, I know from conversations on the doorstep that there is a real strength of feeling about these things, we just need to channel that sentiment into action and achievement.
Hello nice person, hopefully you are right and the so called ‘anti Lutfur brigade’ is kept busy gathering support and momentum as the weeks go on.
Meanwhile, Lutfur can concentrate on the difficult job of running Tower Hamlets.
Ive stood on the Bow West polling station at every election since 1993 and it has always been a good atmosphere with people putting aside their political differences and helping each other out. However after an hour there on 22nd May I didnt feel safe, having been shouted and had someone wave his finger in my face. Even though its probably true that the bad behaviour did not materially affect the result, the polling stations will be left to the bullies in future.
Did you mention this to the police there or the presiding officer, Jane? Not at all an admonishment or anything like that if you didn’t; I’m just interested to know what stopped people raising their concerns.
Ms Preston, are you saying that the elections in 2010 were fair; that there were no intimidation then? How interesting!
When Luthfur first got elected, the ‘Labour Losers’ were shouting foul at everything! More so then 2014.
To Vocal my recollection is that the rules were obeyed in the past that is no canvassing, only 2 members of each party outside. In previous years the police have stopped anyone standing at the gate and made them stand a distance of a few yards away. I’ve never felt intimidated before. Ted when I was there (5-7 pm) there was one police officer who came out from inside the polling station 3 times and told people not to canvass as there had been complaints from voters going in, I said there should only be 2 people from each party but he didn’t seem to know about that, I counted 9 Th1st at one point and when I objected the first time they said they were having a meeting, the second time one of them came up to me and waved his finger in my face at which point the policeman took him away to the end of the street and told him off, then he went, but by that time I’d had enough. So yes I did complain but it’s no good if the police don’t know the rules themselves.
That is totally appalling if they had police on duty who didn’t have a clue about the rules.
Please report this to the Electoral Commission. It’s only if people like you report and indicate how things have changed that we stand half a chance of people actually understanding the level of intimidation felt by people in Tower Hamlets.