UKIP Uncovered

UKIP Uncovered
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Wednesday, April 14, 2004

Damian Hockney Letter on NEC Elections and Disciplinary Appeal

We have just received a copy of the following letter, upon which we will be commenting in due course.

14th April 2004

Dear Fellow NEC members

Unconstitutional interference in NEC Elections and Hockney Appeal

I need to place on record that the attempt by Acting Party Secretary Nikki Sinclaire to suspend the NEC elections is unconstitutional and that this attempt by her must be stopped. The papers must go out. The Returning Officer has already made this clear. The Acting Party Secretary is not in a position to flout the decision of the Returning Officer and the party constitution at the behest of the party leadership. She has already attempted to take over conduct of the elections on at least one occasion in the past six weeks. She cannot take power in this way, without consulting with those responsible for conducting the elections.

In a letter of Saturday 10th April 2004 (but incorrectly dated 6th April 2004), the Acting Party Secretary wrote to myself, to the Returning Officer and to the Appeals Chairman giving a series of reasons, all relating to my candidacy, why the NEC elections should be postponed. She then purported to be acting within her powers by having already suspended the NEC elections without consultation with the Returning Officer. Neither did she discuss with the Appeals Chairman her untrue and unchecked allegations against me in regard to the appeal process which she cites as the reasons to suspend the NEC elections.

There then followed a series of mildly hysterical e-mails to me - two of which have been fired off to me this morning, using words like "pathetic" and referring to me "jumping up and down", in which she lifts the lid on a number of personal grievances against me, including an incomprehensible statement about achieving a "hat-trick" of victories against my lawyers (when I can recall no one occasion on which this has been the case), challenges me to sue her, talks about my "case against her" (when there has never been a case against her) and returns to the scene of old grievances forgotten by all except herself.

The Acting Party Secretary claims to have 'consulted', but fails to say with whom. I have contacted several members of the NEC and they make clear that they were not consulted. I can only assume she means that she and others (ie those who voted to uphold my expulsion) have conspired to interfere with the elections, to achieve at all costs the end of ensuring that I am neither a candidate for the NEC Elections, nor for the GLA Elections. As you may have seen on a number of websites, and know from much internal discussion, stopping me from standing for the GLA Elections would appear to have become something of an obsession with a number of people.

Whatever the intentions of the act, the result is, in practical terms, to deny the party members their rights to fair elections and to also deny candidates their rights. The excuses used to postpone the elections - all relating to my candidacy - are unchecked by her and are contested, and the untrue allegations about me not co-operating with the appeals process were not checked with those involved in the process: the Acting Party Secretary and those she consulted even failed to involve or consult with the Appeals Chairman himself as to the truth or otherwise of her allegations. He has informed her that her allegations are untrue, but I have heard no word from her that she accepts this, other than challenging me to sue her when I have asked her to confirm that she is aware that her statement about me not co-operating is untrue. I cannot understand why I should sue her on this matter, or why she should see this as a matter for taking legal action against her. I am simply asking her to acknowledge that her reasons for suspending the NEC elections do not apply and that we can restore constitutional order to the party.

The allegations and assertions by the Acting Party Secretary have also not been placed properly before the Returning Officer in a timely manner, nor before the NEC. They have been issued in an arbitrary and dictatorial but confused and illogical manner, and no discussion has been allowed. There is much resort to incomprehensible legalese which, if designed to bamboozle, certainly achieves the desired end.

There is also the fact that the judge in the Sinclaire case (when Nikki Sinclaire took the party to court) made clear that Nikki was to be restored to the NEC until February 2004. His words were quite clear on this. The tortuous definition she has devised, in conjunction with those who voted to uphold my expulsion, to exclude me from the NEC would effectively exclude her also. Although I disagree with the tortuous definition, and the Returning Officer also made clear his own disagreement with her interpretation of the three-year rule in his report to the NEC on the NEC elections, it also makes her own position unclear. It is also manifestly unfair to continue to exclude mefrom the NEC on the basis of a distortion of our party rules, and then to deny me the right to stand for re-election, while simultaneously effectively unilaterally declaring that I am no longer a party member after consulting only with those who voted to uphold my expulsion.

The Appeals Chairman has responded immediately to the claims of the Acting Party Secretary in her letter of Saturday 10th April 2004 (dated 6th April 2004), making clear that she is incorrect in her statements. Failure of her and those with whom she consulted to respond properly, and to act and permit the NEC elections to go ahead, must inevitably give credence to the widely discussed other reasons as to why those who upheld my expulsion wish these again to be postponed.

As you may remember, the Party Chairman David Lott was responsible for the previous postponement of the NEC elections when he publicly attacked myself (a candidate), and then other candidates standing on a Reform UKIP ticket, in e-mails and statements. The Returning Officer made clear in a report to the NEC in February 2004 that David Lott's continued statements had made it difficult to conduct a fair election. In spite of the fact that the Returning Officer report must be included in the NEC minutes, the report has been censored from inclusion, and instead an incorrect statement about the postponement made in those minutes by the Party Chairman has been included, passing the blame elsewhere and failing to refer to the Returning Officer's official report which was placed before the NEC.

The timing of Nikki Sinclaire's unauthorised intervention - her letter of Saturday 10th April, wrongly dated 6th April 2004, was sent over the Easter weekend and just two days before despatch of the NEC election papers - is clearly unacceptable and gives rise to many unanswered questions. The tortuous explanation as to why incorrect information justifying the unconstitutional attempt by her to postpone the elections was sent out in a wrongly dated letter, is at the very least unsatisfactory and at worst intentionally misleading and deceitful.

Mike Nattrass and Nikki Sinclaire have bizarrely explained that Mike Nattrass himself e-mailed Nikki Sinclaire's letter following a delay brought on by overwork at Head Office, and that this accounts for the delay in despatch. This can only hold water if Mike Nattrass was with Nikki Sinclaire at the time and had access to her hotmail account. No explanation has been made as to how Mike Nattrass can have sent, by Nikki Sinclaire's hotmail address on the Saturday of Easter 10th April 2004, a letter dated 6th April 2004, which hotmail confirm was sent by her account on Saturday 10th April 2004. I have asked for an explanation of this strange behavour and the excuses given do not hold water. The excuses now in the latest e-mails relate to contact between Nikki and Mike earlier, but this proves nothing except that he was one of the people she consulted.

I therefore make quite clear that failure to proceed with the NEC elections in these circumstances will be a breach of the party's obligations to its members, and the fraudulent and false excuses given publicly to suspend the elections constitute a further attack upon myself. The NEC must order the Acting Party Secretary to withdraw the letter of Saturday 10th April 2004 (wrongly dated 6th April 2004) There is time to remedy this, as the newsletter with which the papers were to be despatched has not yet gone out. I think that John Harvey will confirm this. They can therefore go out immediately with the newsletter as planned.

Damian Hockney

posted by Martin |3:22 PM