The four Tower Hamlets election petitioners are due to defend a ‘strike-out’ application (submitted by Mayor Lutfur Rahman and Returning Officer John Williams) before a judge on July 28 but they way things are progressing they might literally be laughed out of court.
For very many people, the shambles around the count, the poison of the campaign, and the unusual campaigning methods used in Tower Hamlets on polling day (unusual to outsiders at least), meant there was a good argument to have a case heard in court. It would help clear the air, one way or another.
But amassing evidence of wrongdoing is a painstaking business and it certainly helps if you have people who have been there before. Gerald Shamash, the Labour party solicitor nationally, falls into that category.
It was he who helped Andy Erlam file his petition with the Election Court last month.
But a couple of weeks ago, he was sacked. Andy decided he wanted a new team. He won’t say why but it may be because Gerald was too expensive or because he took the initiative on certain matters.
Even prior to this, there had already been a degree of tension among the petitioners, whose number include a two Labour party members and a Ukip activist. But the sacking inflamed matters, largely because Andy did not, apparently, consult the others about it.
In the background, they have all been very busy compiling witness statements and there are, as I understand it, some potentially quite interesting pieces of evidence.
But credibility is also a powerful ingredient and that requires calm and sensible statements as to the facts and arguments.
Which brings me to the developing row between John Biggs and Andy Erlam.
Andy kicked all this off last week when he wrote an “open letter” to John urging him to declare his stance on their case. I’m told Andy never consulted John before sending this letter. I blogged about it on Wednesday when I also printed John’s reply to Andy. (In that blog post, I questioned Andy’s claim that up to 15,000 votes in the mayoral election were affected by forgery or intimidation; he now says that was an error and the 15,000 relates both the council and mayoral elections. Quite why the European polls are omitted is unclear.)
I thought, and so did most who read it, that John was pretty clear in his response…that he’d do all in his power to make the case work, including lodging a witness statement.
But in his reply, John also referred obliquely to the Gerald Shamash issue, something few knew about beforehand; I didn’t.
However, this reference seems to have riled Andy and yesterday he sent me another statement by way of reply to John. Again, John wasn’t consulted and he has in turn sent me his reply to that reply.
It’s great having such transparency from politicians and I wish far more discourse was made in public, but I do wonder whether this is the best way of securing the strongest case to put to a judge.
Andy’s (quite lengthy) statement below, I’m afraid to say, does somewhat tilt towards the truther lands of conspiracy theories, particularly over the ballot boxes and THEOs. I hope he doesn’t say that to a judge.
My personal view is they don’t have a hope on proving industrial scale electoral fraud, but if they were to focus their minds and arguments on the issue of “false statement”, ie the deliberate portrayal of John Biggs as a racist, then they have more of a chance. After all, this is what did for Phil Woolas in 2010: he breached s106 of the Representation of the People Act, which says it is an illegal practice to make a false statement about a candidate “for the purpose of affecting the return of any candidate at the election”. Funnily enough, Gerald Shamash does have experience of this: he was Woolas’s solicitor.
Anyway, here’s Andy’s reply to John’s reply from Wednesday (and for what it’s worth, you have to admire Andy and the others for putting their money where others’ mouths are by fighting this):
I find it incredible that John Biggs continues to disbelieve that there may have been an industrial-scale fraud in the Mayoral and Local Council elections on 22nd May, despite mounting of evidence which is steadily accumulating and being turned into statements fit for the court, which is in itself a massive task. Respectfully, I look forward to receiving John’s own promised statement please at the very earliest opportunity, namely this Sunday. It is the least he can do in the circumstances.
If true, the irregularities are so extensive that a scrutiny will show that the election results can not be relied upon and that a new election for Mayor will have to be held. Where that leaves the local election results is unknown legal territory. It is interesting that the Tower Hamlets Labour Group in the Council has been silent on the subject of the Petition.
Incidentally, there was an important error in my original article. It should have read: “I estimate that between 10,000 and 15,000 votes were forged or affected by intimidation across the Borough in the Mayoral and council elections.”
Is this a “wild” allegation? We know from Tower Hamlets First sources that each THF candidate was ordered to each obtain 250 postal votes by fair means or foul. Guess which technique was most used?
The reports and statements that we have so far received show that there were very many illegal practices with postal votes across the Borough. I mean bullying, stealing postal ballot papers and opening completed postal ballots, re-sealing envelopes and posting.
Added to that we know from the work of Andrew Gilligan and our own informants that postal ballot applications were made for people not in the UK at the time and for ghost voters who don’t exist.
Furthermore, there are reliable reports of crowds of THF activists systematically intimidating some voters, mostly Bangladeshi Brits, outside many and possibly most polling stations throughout election day.
There are also numerous reports of people, Bengali women in particular, being accompanied, bullied and intimidated to vote for Mayor Rahman and THF.
Even more allegations have now emerged about the use of council resources and staff in the election by THF and even the illegal access to voters’ private mobile numbers from council records.
At the same time, the police and polling station staff were unable or unwilling to control the situation. It is also alleged that the vast majority of Imans in the Borough told their flocks that to vote other than for Lutfur and THF would be “Un-Islamic”, which if proved is an illegal act.
The stream of allegations is endless and, in fact, the stream is turning into a river and the river a torrent.
John was at the count. Can he have failed to notice the hundreds of THF supporters, the chaotic conditions, the delays and the hugely varying figures in the votes counted in some wards, always changing the results from Labour to favour THF? Did he not see Mayor Rahman take control of the local council counts, often over-rulling the hapless John Williams, who was effectively humiliated as the Returning Officer. This was not chaos, it was organised chaos.
It doesn’t end there. Tower Hamlets Council refuses to answer Freedom of Information requests about the ballot boxes, on the false claim that Returning Officers are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The Information Commissioner doesn’t agree, but Tower Hamlets is desperately playing for time.
So LBTH won’t say where the ballot boxes were stored from the close of polls, how they were transported, by whom and whether they were guarded by the police. The lack of transparency and respect for the law of the country beggars belief, but it’s not new and it’s now getting more and more irrational in Tower Hamlets Council.
That leaves rumours to run wild. Some allege that the Theos accompanied the ballot boxes. These Tower Hamlets Enforcement Officers accountable to the Mayor, (the Mayor’s “private army of LBTH policemen”), are not impartial and, if true, their role in the election would be yet another deeply worrying matter. The council is also refusing to say exactly where in the town hall the ballot boxes were stored and whether the rooms were locked and if so, who had access via the swipe cards.
Further concerns have also emerged recently about the robustness of the police investigation currently taking place. It is known that suspected fraudulent votes have not been forwarded to the police and that complaints made to the police have not been followed up. Furthermore, even the very serious allegation that a car-load of postal ballot papers was discovered by the police seems to be being talked away by investigating police, incredible as it may seem. Andrew Gilligan reported that the car bootfull of forms were completed and has verified this fact but the policeman leading the investigations claims that the forms were blank and thus no criminal offences had been committed. It appears that the police are involved in a cover-up whether by inefficiency or worse. Was Andrew Gilligan wrong about Iraq?
And what is the Electoral Commission doing with its near £16 million budget? Disgracefully, it is looking the other way when it comes to Tower Hamlets.
John refers to accepting unpleasant results in a democracy. His comparison of Rahman with Thatcher is wholly inappropriate. A far better comparison is with the 2004 US Presidential Election which we now know had very extensive corruption that changed the course of American and indirectly international history. Ironically, Kerry was also a good looser.
The point is that if you live in Tower Hamlets, you don’t live in a democracy. How confident can we be that our votes in the next General Election will be respected? Given the likelihood of a very close General Election contest in 2015, this is of huge significance nationally.
One last point, the very big losers in the catastrophic Mayoral and local elections of 2014 are the Banglashi-Brits in Tower Hamlets. Culture, language, literacy problems, the community power structures, poor housing and difficult individual situations mean that the population is very vulnerable to bullying, intimidation and financial and other pressures. Tower Hamlets First does not represent the Bangali population, as it claims. It is a small clique, like any other, seeking power for its’ own reasons.
Lutfur was a Labour man and wants to be one again. He is a politician bred in the Labour Movement of East London. Presumably he knows a lot of what has happened over the years – the compromises and the errors of Labour and in the forthcoming trial much will come out.
Mayor Rahman, whom I’ve never met and have no personal opinion about, claims many good policies and achievements. Whether these are accurate or not, I can not judge. But what I do know is that the means never ever justifies the end and that, if morality is cast aside, the means become the end.
There needs to be a revolution in politics in the East End. Political corruption has been seen as the norm here for decades. But corruption is not normal. Nor is it unique to Tower Hamlets, it’s just that irregularities here have been so extensive and so arrogantly displayed that, this time, things have gone too far.
John Biggs knows perfectly well, although he would prefer otherwise, that Gerald Shamash, the Labour Party solicitor, is no longer our solicitor and that Gavin Miller is no longer our barrister and that Francis Hoar is. We do not wish to comment on this decision.
There are two points of principle here. We will not allow any donor, however large, to steer the Petition, nor will we allow any political party to pull the strings.
Given that John Biggs is the likely beneficiary of a re-election, as things stand, I’m surprised that he describes the Election Petitioners as “mavericks”. The dictionary definition of a maverick is: “an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party.” I guess I and the 3 other Petitioners, Azmal Hussain, Debbie Simone and Angela Moffat, will willingly plead guilty to that charge. Only with massive support from the good people of Tower Hamlets can we change the area for good. Further specific allegations must be sent very urgently to us to help us all win the case.
Andy Erlam
Tower Hamlets Election Petitioner
(Personal Capacity)
andyerlam@ymail.com
And here’s John’s reply:
Everything that Andy Erlam says about the election may be true but that doesn’t mean that it is true or that if it is true it is possible to prove that it is true in a court without sufficient evidence. But I am encouraging anyone with evidence of abuses to share this with the petitioners because theirs is a very serious series of allegations and must be properly examined. I am pleased the petition has been lodged in order that the allegations, widely believed to be true, can be examined.
I will be making my experiences known and will make a statement, particularly but not just looking at the allegations of racism levelled against me which I believe were deliberately invented to try to polarise opinion and particularly to encourage BAME voters to back Lutfur Rahman by spreading misinformation. This action was dishonest but also it was an action without principle or regard to the responsibility local politicians have to encourage and foster good relations.
I believe too that there were multiple abuses. But unlike Andy I do not believe in shooting from the hip without making statements that can be shown to be true. And I am also sensitive to the deep sense of victimhood that Lutfur Rahman likes to foster and which allegations without sufficient evidence will nourish. That will be no good for the East End.
In common with Andy, I do believe that the current mayor is bad news for East London. His inward looking culture rooted in patronage says nothing to the future and creates a vacuum while urgent leadership is needed. But I think he will ultimately be defeated by the proper and measured use of evidence and truth.
I do hope the petition leads to a thorough and good hearing and I do believe the result was improperly influenced and manipulated but in order for the truth to be found there must be more light and less heat. There must be a risk that an alternative tactic will achieve the opposite result to that it intends.
Yawn. Can I really be bothered reading these letters?
Go for it, Dan; it’ll add to your life.
Spats like this seem to paint Biggs in a very good light.
I had moderately high hopes for this election petition. My hopes aren’t dashed, but they are ebbing somewhat. Erlam’s letter would be simply superb if he had proof of the allegations he made, but I strongly suspect he doesn’t. Biggs seems to think the same, and is keen to stick to demonstrable facts.
Facts, procedure and the rule of law are what Rahman and THF are accused of abusing. Any action against him has to be very accurate on all of these three points and if Erlam can’t be so, he is (probably) doomed to failure.
Tim.
It gets worse.
How exactly do you intimidate a person outside a polling station in a way that can work – ‘Vote for us or die!’ How will that work when the person then walks, on their own, into the polling station and then into the booth unaccompanied?
‘All imans told their flock to vote THF’. I forget all Bengalis are sheep (never mind those who never go to a mosque) so I’m sure Rushanara Ali must also have voted for THF too then, particularly as she is also Bengali woman and who are little above robots – or so Erlam appears to think.
Where there really “hundreds of THF supporters” at the Count (as opposed to nearby). Did the council really just ignore the rules about the small number of passes that are allowedto be given to candidates/agents to observe this event?
The stuff about the transportation of the votes. Is ballot box switching being suggested? If so, how did they get round the rule that the seals on these are broken in front of agents – fake seals? Or maybe they think they were stuffed with extra ballot papers or ballot boxes ‘lost’ but then how did they tally this with the record of votes cast made by staff at the polling station – false papers and maybe the assassination of the staff who initially recorded this information to ensure their silence?
Where does it stop? Is there a vast conspiracy? Am I part of a vast conspiracy? Is Ted Jeory part of that conspiracy in criticising parts of Erlam’s case? But how can we know this is the real blog of Ted Jeory? How can we be sure there even is a real Ted Jeory?
I am a little surprised that Erlam didn’t finish his superbly hyperbolic “The stream of allegations is endless and, in fact, the stream is turning into a river and the river a torrent” with some mention of oceans, a flood and maybe even Noah.
Hi Ted,Where is your comment page?Andy Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone. From: Trial by JeorySent: Saturday, 19 July 2014 10:08To: andy@redflagac.orgReply To: Trial by JeorySubject: [New post] Is Tower Hamlets election petition in trouble? Petitioner sacks lawyer Gerald Shamash, then attacks John Biggs
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trialbyjeory posted: “The four Tower Hamlets election petitioners are due to defend a ‘strike-out’ application (submitted by Mayor Lutfur Rahman and Returning Officer John Williams) before a judge on July 28 but they way things are progressing they might literally be laughed o”
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“a:hover { color: red; } a { text-decoration: none; color: #0088cc; } etc”
Hilarious. Is that how your case will be organised, Erlam? It appears so from your statement in the article.
As you can see from my Twitter feed, if I had a vote in TH., I would have voted for TUSC or maybe even for for you. I’m not the Labour/LD/Tory or even THF types who are the usual commentators.
So, comrade, you are going to get nowhere with this petition, unless, just possibly, you take up the ‘false statement’ argument as mentioned by Jeory (and I have no knowledge of whether there was such or not).
When an amateur does an election petition, the petitioner will find there is a strict time limit in which to submit the application (which can be extended but only if one knows the legal Mumbo Jumbo).
Then is the £££££ COSTS donation to the court (which can be avoided but only if one knows the scarce legal Mumbo Jumbo).
The largely secretive – meaning not universally known and not clearly documented everywhere – procedure including applications to Masters, is daunting for the ordinary passenger on a Clapham to Wandsworth trolly bus clasping their freshly punched 2d ticket).
Lots of the UK’s election laws and processes are unsatisfactory if not actually unfair.
Whether Andy Erlam and others will succeed is debatable. What is essential is providing a very clear and concise pleading specifically tailored to the relevant bits of the law.
Usually the police are lazy and disinterested, especially if the petitioner is an nobody, an ordinary member of the public. However if the Election Petition is heard (open Public meeting) and the Election Commissioner (a lawyer appointed by High Court judges) determines there have been irregularities, then the full weight of the law will descend upon the guilty.
Brave Mr Erlam & Co. for doing what many other noisy vessels lack the courage to do.
Curious Cat
Andy Erlam – I suspect your submissions to the judge resemble the gobbledygook you typed here.
You’ve sacked Shamash. You’re having an almighty public spat with Biggs. Jeory suspects that you’ll be laughed out of the court.
Well, thank you for giving us all a good laugh. Things have been rather despondent at times, but, I have to admit that you’ve done your bit to provide us with some entertainment.
Andy, take a deep breath and steady the ship. You have enormous support and many agree with what you are doing. Concentrate on the case and don’t go wibbly wobbly. Lots of us have had experience of the dodgy aspects of Lutfur’s administration, but proving it is something else. Concentrate on that.
I can’t agree more. Spot on JohnJee.
Hoho hoho. It’s time for my Santa’s laugh again. Just as Santa is fantasy so are the “wild” and untrue allegations made by Andy Erlam. He is nothing but a clown. He should seriously consider taking bookings for children’s birthday parties. He might recoup some of that £10k he spent on this petition.
That is unkind and unwarranted. Never kick a man when he is down or in difficulties.
CC.
Time will tell who is right or wrong, one thing for sure there are to many people sitting on the fence and not acting on there beliefs. Andy Erlam has had 40 years experience at this and his judgement is second to none. As I understand there is strong support for this petition and it will be a winner. The way we vote in this country will be changed for the better , this is history in the making.
No wonder you are called easy Lee. You’re easily fooled.
And can we recoup the huge amounts that TH have spent on dubious causes?
John Wright, launch another court case. Put your own £10k. Keep your fingers crossed. You might recoup the huge amount of money spent on ‘dubious’ causes. Just do not bother with any evidence. This is the formula to follow. If you don’t trust me, talk to Andy Erlam.
Local and European Parliament election in England are neither fair nor democratic in their operation. However that is for another day.
I would love to read, at my leisure, the wording of the election petition and also the wording of the mayor’s strike-out application. Can anyone assist ? (contact form: u22.net/cat)
What time is the application due to be heard? Will it be in the West Wing and, presumably, it is a non-chambers hearing open to the PUBLIC ??
Curious Cat
If you click notice of the presentation of an election petition on this page http://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/lgnl/council_and_democracy/elections__voting.aspx
you can see the petition.
=> Aym
Thank you.
I note page 16 of the bundle is omitted. That page would show the name of the judge or master making the order.
I will peruse this claim later.
Curious Cat
Ha ha ha. What a load of old nonsense. This petition hasn’t a hope and quite right too. The way to get rid of Lutfur – whose administration is a disgrace and who deserves to be removed – is to convince Pickles that him and his cronies shovelling money at Bengali-only or Muslim-only organisations is, basically, corrupt and leads to Lutfur winning elections through buying votes, and then get Pickles to do something. Not go to a court to pretend the election didn’t happen.
Man on the Clapham Omnibus – Do you believe in democracy? Practically every comment you post implies that TH are whiter than white. I note you don’t comment on the obviously devious sale of Poplar Town Hall. Perhaps you will now? I voted for a Mayor with executive powers, there was always a fear that any Mayor “could” misuse these powers. In the case of our Mayor, there is a suggestion that he “may” have misused them. Do you genuinely think that TH residents don’t deserve the truth?
If the Royal London Hospital misspent vital funds, the population would demand an inquiry, would they be wrong?
The complexity of the election/grants fixing process makes it difficult to prove guilt in court outside of explicit smoking gun evidence. And when its intentionally being made difficult to find any wrongdoing, when the people involved are slick and incredibly dirty, it becomes even more difficult to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
Theres a stench of corruption and some form of well-connected local government clique in Tower Hamlets, and unless you are a member you won’t get in (grants, properties, jobs, contracts etc). The control of a directly elected mayor combined with the power of general competence is a dangerous cocktail and has unleashed a local government mafia over the residents of this borough.
The biggest criminal in Tower Hamlets is the council, led by Mayor Lutfur Rahmen, its time to send in a no-nonsense Jo Miller type to clean up this sorry mess.
Crooks, and I am not accusing anyone although I have my opinion, never usually leave incrimination evidence about.
The more skilful and experienced a crook is, the less opportunity for others, including law enforcement, to find admissible evidence.
Obviously the English mayoral system (invented by Tony Blair circa LGA 2002), excluding the GLA, is in urgent need of reform. Genuine accountability and full transparency are conspicuously absent.
When will Pickles improve the law ?
Curious Cat.
What a bunch of jokers. Rahman must the pissing his pants with laughter.
Had respect for Biggs before the election; my comments here are clearly evident that I liked him. But for him to suggest there was orginised fraud at the count is shameful. I hope he passes his concerns and evidence to the police and the electoral commission. And if it turns out there is no case to answer he publicly appologises to those who did the count.
These cry babies are a disgrace to local democracy and their utter disresprct to the TH voters is shameful. I did not expect this from Biggs who I thought was an honourable man.
During his campaign, I once walked upto him, shook his hand and wished him good luck. If I saw him now, I would walk upto him and say I voted for Rahman, deal with it!
=< Imran,
Being realistic, putting the votes in the wrong pile is a very plausible method of cheating. The votes are usually segregated quickly so one needs to concentrate without distraction to try to detect the votes going in the wrong pile.
The petitioners want a re-count. If everything is perfectly accurate, and thus lawful, what plausible objection can a reasonable person have to a re-count ?
Counts are done with people chosen by unelected and unaccountable to the public, council officials. I would like counters not connected to the local authority.
Your "cry babies" taut is unreasonable. How can a request for a recount be a "disgrace to local democracy" ? To the contrary, it is proof that the local democracy really does exist. Only those that want to conceal hanky panky would utter such a "Shut-up and don't dare challenge anything you don't like" taut. I associate that type of remark with bullying.
Why so angry? Isn't it supposed to be about democracy and PUBLIC TRANSPARENCY and reassuring the public everything is genuinely OK ?
Curious Cat
Cat, I understand one of the reasons why the TH count took so long was the endless requests for recount. If Biggs was concerned he should have challenged it then or gone to the police as soon as he realised after the declaration. Not waited for an open letter from a clearly desperate man to trying gather evidence of malpractice.
=> Imran,
At election counts people sometimes fail to think rationally.
If you were a defeated candidate, you would know what it can feel like.
A re-count should, if granted, end all the speculation about counting fiddles. Surely the resulting clarity is worth the effort of a re-count ?
One of several TH problems, is no effective and co-ordinated opposition to Mr Rahman & Co. Instead a lot of hot air and little on the ground activity – except at the last moment because someone remembered there is going to be an election.
I have not seen one detailed opposition plan how to improve the lives of all the TH residents. Lots of anti Mr Rahman but no actual detailed vision for the future that the public – of all races, ages, religions, skin colours etc. – can enthusiastically support.
Its the general quality of the opposition people and the conspicuous lack of strong and dynamic leadership that perpetuates the current turmoil.
Curious Cat.
The election petition’s claim and the relevant laws, as mentioned in the petition, are on view at
http://acparty.uk/ac37/ac37p01.php
My personal reservations, expressed as my personal opinion, are:
1. The pleading looks amateurish. It is not concise enough, seems a bit rambling. No one these days “prays” to the King or to the Court for fairness and justice.
2. If I were a judge, and I have no legal training, I would not grant anything based solely on the pleading (or in modern language, The Statement of Claim). There is no substance just ambiguous assertions lacking, in my opinion, credibility.
3. If I had done the pleading I would have made definite statements supported by factual detail rather than generalised detached allegations.
Clearly a great deal of work needs to be done to substantially improve the Statement of Claim or, if one prefers, the Election Petition. The problem now arises is will the Mayor’s attempt to strike-out the Petition prevent the Petition being revitalised. The Claimants, or Petitioners, can ask for extra time to improve their petition.
At the moment the petition looks weak. Sorry to upset anyone but it is not impressive. The petition has got to convince the judge the case is worth the court’s time and effort. Was it really drafted by an expert lawyer ?
Can anyone supply the Mayor’s application ?
Curious Cat.
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