Unite's Len McCluskey & the lucrative libel lawyers

THE current PRIVATE EYE's TUC NEWS column reminded the Unite union's membership of 1.1m that though they may be worried for their jobs or in fear of Covid-19, their union is assuring the libel lawyers that they can count on bounteous harvest of refreshers following the lucrative case of Turley v Unite the Union.  Totting-up the costs of the trial which took up 7-days of court time, legal experts have told Private Eye 'the premium would be around £200,000' and the 'final bill to its luckless members members [of Unite] may be not far short of £2m.'

The Eye concludes:  'London's libel lawyers won't be going hungry any time soon.'  


However, only last January Ms Anna Turley was claiming on twitter that:

'Unite and Skwawkbox have failed to pay the damages and costs following my libel trial last month as ordered by the court. My solicitors are starting enforcement proceedings in the morning.' pic.twitter.com/pS8wpwIekF

— Anna Turley (@annaturley) January 16, 2020

At that time Guido Fawkes reported these developments on his Blog:
'In the latest development, the former MP has published a letter from her solicitors declaring given Unite’s failure to pay up, “The only conclusion we can draw is that your clients have deliberately chosen to cause further distress to Ms Turley or they are incompetent. Which is it?”, going on to say'

“We have prepared enforcement papers that will permit bailiffs to attend at your clinets’ premises to enforce the two final judgements. We shall issue these when the Court opens on Monday morning if the full judgement debts, together with ongoing interest, have not been satisfied.”

Guido Fawkes claimed:
This is much more entertaining than the Labour leadership contest…
UPDATE: Unite and Skwawkbox have finally coughed up

And Private Eye described the squabble as 'even by Labour's internecine standards it was a vicious fight.'

And then Ms. Turley was to announce on twitter:

'Unite & Skwawkbox have belatedly paid the damages and costs as ordered by the court. Proving after all that they are not above the law. What an avoidable waste of members’ money. Lesson is... don’t break the law.'

— Anna Turley (@annaturley) January 21, 2020

The judgement of Justice Nicklin J held that Unite was responsible for the defamatory statement because its Director of Communications sent the Second Defendant [Skwawkbox] a press summary fully aware that he intended to publish an article which would identify the Claimant and contain substantially the same defamatory sting about her 'being dishonest'.

The Defendant's Unite and Skwawkbox had claimed the Claimant “should have known” she was ineligible for Unite Community membership, but his Lordship emphasised that, even if that had been so, “negligence is unlikely to provide an objective basis upon which to reasonably suspect dishonesty” [134].

Skwawkbox the website that published the offending report had claimed that Turley, then Labour MP for Redcar, had called the leader of Unite an 'arsehole' and had joined Unite at cut price rate reserved 'exclusively for the unwaged' so she could 'undermine Jeremy Corbyn'.  Steve Walker, who runs Skwawkbox  according to the Mail Online 'Mr Walker, .... is the sales director and CEO of a company called Foojit, which provides mailing solutions to the NHS.'

Meanwhile Ms. Turley managed to lose her Redcar seat at last December's general election when the Labour Party backers Unite had declared in the High Court that she was 'not fit to be an MP'.  The £84,500  paid to Turley in aggravated damages, should help ease the pain of this defeat.  Probably Unite and its leader, Len McCluskey, now wish they had settled out of court when Turley's solicitors offered a settlement last June, if Unite agreed to pay her £25,000.  Now because the union refused this compromise it must now pay interest of 8% on the costs.  By rejecting this offer, it also lost the right to demand that Turley's legal advisors prove their costs were reasonable.

Ms Turley, MP for Redcar before losing her seat in the General Election, has said she was 'thrilled and relieved' after winning the case

****************************

The lady doth protest too much, methinks

By Les May

TODAY I listened to the Labour MP Stella Creasey on the BBC2 Politics Live programme complaining that she is being harassed.  She based this upon the fact that an American group called the Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform (CBRUK) posted billboards showing a foetus, said to be at nine weeks gestation, around her constituency.  The foetus is clearly much older than 9 weeks at which time it would be only about 25mm long, though this is much larger than Creasey’s claim that it would be ‘poppy seed sized’.

Quite why this group have singled out Creasey I don’t know.  Many other MP’s voted in the same way she did on her amendment to extend abortion rights to Northern Ireland.  It passed 332 votes to 99. Certainly it must be a source of annoyance to her and if it happened to me I would not like it. But does it constitute harassment?

Home Office circular 018/2012 (A change to the Protection from Harassment Act 1997) gives some guidance to the police on what constitutes harassment. One thing is clear that the behaviour must occur on at least two occasions.  Does a poster do this? Is a poster sufficiently similar to any of the examples of what constitutes stalking to be construed as harassment?

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-change-to-the-protection-from-harassment-act-1997-introduction-of-two-new-specific-offences-of-stalking

This seems to me to be an extreme reaction and if we are going to express concern about the language MPs use and how its effect is to polarise opinions, we need to be concerned with how supposed ‘victims’ react. Creasey has form on this kind of exaggeration.

When Labour MP Clive Lewis made a joking comment at a Momentum event hosted by Novara Media at which Creasey was not present, she complained “It’s not OK.  Even if it’s meant as a joke, reinforces menace that men have the physical power to force compliance.” (Just to be clear the remark was addressed at another man and was in the context of a light hearted game.)

This is how the Guardian reported what someone who was there said:

Novara’s Ash Sarkar, who was compering the event, said:

“I asked the audience for a volunteer to keep score in a gameshow section we were doing. The guy who came up is well-known to us, he’s doing a podcast with us. I gave him the notebook to keep score, and asked him to kneel down so the audience and cameras could see the stage. He made a little face, and then Clive jokingly said ‘on your knees, bitch’, to him.

“The joke was delivered in a spirit of campy humour. It certainly wasn’t this kind of macho expression of sexual domination. It got forgotten as the gameshow went on.”
Sarkar said there was “a rich tradition of leftist, subversive counter-culture, which often has relied on treading lines between the politically correct, the puerile, the extravagant, flamboyant energy that comes with causing a bit of a stir, while also at the same time being inclusive, loving and affectionate”.
Lewis’s comment, she added, “was an expression of a boozy, raucous, party celebration, which was something which at the time made people feel quite close to the people who were on stage, that they weren’t these distant political or commentariat-type figures.
“It was part of an endearing, informal vibe. Had it been used in a way that had made either our audience members, or the volunteer in question, or anyone else on the stage uncomfortable, then I’d be like yeah, let’s have a conversation about its appropriateness. But we can’t mistake puritanism for meaningful action on oppression.
“There’s a certain irony in Guido Fawkes pushing this, when they’ve been one of the chief orchestrators of harassment against Diane Abbott, the most prominent black female politician in the UK.”

For an alternative take on it see:

https://www.spiked-online.com/2017/10/22/clive-lewiss-vile-misogyny/

In her own way Creasey is an extremist even though she always tries to grab the moral high ground. Policing other people’s speech is not a pleasant trait. It’s po-faced and puritanical. It may get praise from people who think like her, but does anyone think that Labour voters give a tinker’s cuss?

Guido Fawkes & Jewish News gang-up on David Ward

David Ward and Baroness Jenny Tonge

 ON the 25^th, April 2017, the Tory commentator Guido Fawkes wrote on his Blog:
'You’d have hoped David “The Jews” Ward’s career was over when he lost his seat at the last election. Alas not.  The LibDems, shamelessly even by their low standards, refused to boot him out of the party.  Knowing Ward’s views on ‘Zionists’ are popular among sections of the Bradford electorate, the LibDems – while criticising Labour over their anti-Semitism scandal – quietly appointed him as their parliamentary spokesman for the city.  Now they have selected him as their candidate there.  If Labour get completely creamed it is not impossible that Ward could make it back to parliament. Remember this the next time the LibDems ever take a stand on discrimination… '

On April 26th, 2017, the Jewish News publishesd the following story:

'Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron has barred controversial former MP David Ward from running for his old seat in Bradford East, after he was selected as the local party’s candidate.'

It went on to trumpet:

'The dramatic move came just hours after a high-profile backlash from the prime minister, the Jewish community and senior figures within party, who were left appalled at the prospect of him once again becoming an MP.'

After his dismissal, David Ward said he believed he was being targeted because of his criticism of Israel.  'The antisemitic thing is a nonsense,' he said. 'It is just used, it’s a well-known tactic.  How do you avoid conversation or any criticism about Israel?  Just say people are antisemitic.  I am certainly not antisemitic.' 

  

Asked why he believed Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, had axed him, he said: 

'Just the pressure that they come under, all the party’s come under, and it works. The pressure works. It’s the fear of the electoral damage that can be done by being seen to oppose Israel.  It’s contaminating and infecting our own political system.'

Mr. Ward’s reselection appeared to take Lib Dem headquarters by surprise when news of it emerged on Tuesday night.  The party had selected the vast majority of its candidates over the past year in preparation for a snap election, but Bradford East was not among them.

Unite Union Machine Moves to Crown McCluskey

LAST week, with the start of nominations for the new General Secretary of Unite the Union, the Unite bureaucracy moved swiftly to back Leonard David  McCluskey (born 23 July 1950), who has been the General secretary of Unite since 2011.  According to his Wikipedia entry he previously spent some years working on the Liverpool Docks before to becoming a full-time union official.

On the 16th January 2017, Tim Lezard in Union News reported:

'Len McCluskey has swept the board in support from officers and reps in Unite in his bid to be re-election the union’s general secretary.

'McCluskey, who is standing against Gerard Coyne and Ian Allison, has won the backing of nine out of Unite’s ten regions as well as the vast majority of officers, sectoral and regional committee chairs and executive members.' 

Meanwhile, Guido Fawkes on December 22nd, 2016 wrote on his Blog that the 'Pro-Assad agitprop rag the Morning Star has endorsed Len McCluskey for the Unite leadership.'

Guido Fawkes added:  'Their floppy-haired, Oxford-educated editor Ben Chacko explains:  “Mr McCluskey’s support and advice has been of great value to us throughout his leadership”.'

Guido reminds us that 'Chacko’s (Morning Star) paper is in line to receive a good deal more than “advice” should Red Len be re-appointed General Secretary of Britain’s wealthiest union. During McCluskey’s current tenure “support” meant thousands of full-colour Morning Star subscription mail shots sent out to Unite branches across Britain at members’ expense.'

 It seems that in one leaflet Mr. McCluskey decreed:   'There is no substitute for reading the paper but you could also take out a shareholding in the Morning Star and send a regular monthly sum to the paper’s Fighting Fund.'

McCluskey became an officer of the TGWU on Merseyside in 1979, and was its campaign organiser throughout the 1980s, during that time he supported the Militant tendency, but was not a member of it.

McCluskey was elected as the National Secretary of the TGWU General Workers Group in 1990, and moved to London to work at the union headquarters.   In 2004 he became the TGWU's national organiser for the service industries.   In 2007, he was appointed as the Assistant General Secretary for Industrial Strategy of the newly merged Unite the Union.  He defines himself as being on the left of the union, and has been given the label of "Red Len" in the British press.

In 2010, McCluskey stood for election as General Secretary of Unite to replace joint-General Secretaries Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley, who had both announced their retirement.
On 21 November 2010, it was announced that McCluskey had won the election.^[
McCluskey took office as the General Secretary on 1 January 2011.  In 2013, McCluskey announced that he would be running for re-election as General Secretary.^[6] He was re-elected in 2013 with the following results posted. The full election results of those elections are as follows:
Len McCluskey: 144,570 votes.
Jerry Hicks: 79,819 votes.
Number of ballot papers found to be invalid: 1,412.
Total number of valid votes cast: 224,389.
Turnout: 15.2 per cent.

History of mishandling the Falkirk election & disaffiliation threat.

In July 2013, McCluskey accused the Labour Party of 'picking the wrong fight' over the selection of a prospective candidate in the Falkirk constituency.  He described Labour party headquarters' handling of the matter as 'nothing short of disgraceful'.^[8]
In November 2013, McCluskey denied fresh claims that his Unite Union had tried to prevent a Labour Party investigation into alleged vote rigging in Falkirk.
In March 2015, McCluskey threatened to disaffiliate Unite from Labour and launch a new workers' party if Labour lost the 2015 General Election.
After moving to London as part of the T&GWU national operation in 1991 whilst still married, his partner Jennie Formby (née Sandle), gave birth to a child at Princess Anne Hospital in Southampton.

In 1994, McCluskey made headlines after it was revealed that he had received a subsidized loan of £90,000 to buy a house with Formby in NW10, London.  Mr. McCluskey lives with his partner Paula Lace.   In 2013, Jennie Formby was appointed Unite's political director on £75,000, replacing Steve (Stephen) Hart, who was the son of Judith Hart, Baroness Hart of South Lanark.

 Clashes in the current Election for General Secretary

McCluskey and one of the other candidates Kevin Coyne have clashed over the airwaves.  Speaking on the BBC’s Pienaar’s Politics, McCluskey accused his challenger of being a 'puppet of Labour’s hard right'.  Coyne responded, saying:

'Absolutely I am not a puppet.  The reality is I have a vision and a change agenda for our union that is about putting in back in the hand of the members and making the union focus on the issues that are important to them.'

Meanwhile, Ian Allinson in December criticised McCluskey for suggesting that workers could benefit from reforms to the free movement of people when Britain leaves the European Union.


 Princess Anne Hospital in Southampton.^[1][3][11] In 1994, McCluskey made headlines after it was revealed that he had received a subsidized loan of £90,000 to buy a house with Formby in NW10, London.^[12] McCluskey lives with his partner Paula Lace. In 2013, Jennie Formby was appointed Unite's political director on £75,000, replacing Steve (Stephen) Hart, who was the son of Judith Hart, Baroness Hart of South Lanark


TGWU General Workers Group in 1990, and moved to London to work in the union's national headquarters.^[1][3]
TGWU in Merseyside in 1979 and was its campaign organiser throughout the 1980s,^[3][5] during which he supported Militant tendency, but was not a member of it.^[1]

He

McCluskey was elected as the National Secretary of the TGWU General Workers Group in 1990, and moved to London to work in the union's national headquarters.^[1][3] In 2004 he became the TGWU's national organiser for the service industries.^[3] In 2007, he was appointed as the Assistant General Secretary for Industrial Strategy of the newly merged Unite the Union.^[3] He defines himself as being on the left of the union, and has been given the label of "Red Len" in the British press because of his involvement in Unite's dispute with British Airways.^[5]
In 2010, McCluskey stood for election as General Secretary of Unite to replace joint-General Secretaries Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley, who had both announced their retirement. On 21 November 2010, it was announced that McCluskey had won the election.^[3] Derek Simpson retired a few weeks later, in December 2010, and Tony Woodley followed shortly after that, leaving McCluskey to take office as the General Secretary on 1 January 2011.^[5] In 2013, McCluskey announced that he would be running for re-election as General Secretary.^[6] He was re-elected in 2013 with the following results posted. The full election results are as follows:
Len McCluskey: 144,570 votes.
Jerry Hicks: 79,819 votes.
Number of ballot papers found to be invalid: 1,412.
Total number of valid votes cast: 224,389.
Turnout: 15.2 per cent.

'Pro-Assad agitprop rag the Morning Star has endorsed Len McCluskey for the Unite leadership. Their floppy-haired, Oxford-educated editor Ben Chacko explains:

“Mr McCluskey’s support and advice has been of great value to us throughout his leadership.”

Guido concluded his critique:  'Len’s “support” has indeed been of “great value” to the Morning Star, least they can do is repay the favour…'

“We’re backing Len” – McCluskey sweeps board with endorsements from officers and reps

16th January 2017 Tim Lezard   News   No comments

An advert in the Morning Star, showing the nominations received by Len McCluskey

An advert in the Morning Star, showing the nominations received by Len McCluskey

An advert in the Morning Star, showing the nominations received by Len McCluskey

Len McCluskey has swept the board in support from officers and reps in Unite in his bid to be re-election the union’s general secretary.

McCluskey, who is standing against Gerard Coyne and Ian Allison, has won the backing of nine out of Unite’s ten regions as well as the vast majority of officers, sectoral and regional committee chairs and executive members.

He said: “I am deeply honoured to have received the over-whelming support of the people who give their time to build this great union and defend our members.

“Their vote of confidence in me is phenomenal.  It sends a signal to our members that despite what one of my opponents may say, this union has gone from strength to strength under my leadership.

“This sends a clear signal to Unite members that their union is stable and united, determined to deliver for them in our workplaces – and wants to stay on this course.

“I hope now that this will persuade one general secretary candidate to desist from the nonsense claims he is making about our union, assisted all too eagerly by parts of the media who are openly hostile to this movement.

“The truth about Unite is that it is proudly united, democratic, progressive and will never, as long as I lead it, ever turn its back on its members.”

Meanwhile, McCluskey and Coyne clashed yesterday over the airwaves. Speaking on the BBC’s Pienaar’s Politics, McCluskey accused his challenger of being a “puppet of Labour’s hard right”. Coyne responded, saying: “Absolutely I am not a puppet. The reality is I have a vision and a change agenda for our union that is about putting in back in the hand of the members and making the union focus on the issues that are important to them.”

Getting Rid of Corbyn!

by Les May

RECENTLY at a fund raising event John McDonnell, Labour Shadow Chancellor is reported to have denounced those seeking to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn saying, 'They have been plotting and conniving. The only good thing about it, as plotters they are fucking useless'.

Now having said much the same thing myself a couple of days ago I am unlikely to disagree with this sentiment, though I would not have given the media a stick to be me with by using those exact words!

Just how useless they are can best be seen by watching them toy with the idea that the best way to proceed is to field a second candidate and so split the anti- Corbyn vote.  But as a Labour voter happy with the direction in which Corbyn is trying to lead the party I would say that wouldn't I?.

So what do other people think?

Two days ago Matthew Norman writing for the Independent attached the sobriquet 'Tiny Tears' to Angela Eagle and yesterday Richard Godwin wrote in the Evening Standard:
 'With the best will in the world, if the answer to Labour’s woes is Angela Eagle in a fuchsia blazer — capable and honourable politician though she may be — then you have to wonder at the phrasing of the question.'

As for Owen Smith, who is being talked up as a 'soft left' candidate by people who think we Labour voters are soft headed, this is what Guido Fawkes had to say, 'Owen Smith is hoodwinking people on the left of the Labour Party into believing he is one of their own. Nothing could be further from the truth. Smith’s nickname when he worked as a corporate lobbyist at Pfizer was “Oily Smith” because everyone was wise to his habit of telling people what he thought they wanted to hear.'

Time to remind the plotters of Denis Healey’s first law of politics: 'when you’re in a hole, stop digging.'
http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/richard-godwin-labour-must-get-real-if-it-wants-to-fight-the-tories-a3294761.html
http://order-order.com/2016/07/13/241581/
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/oct/03/denis-healeys-10-most-celebrated-quotes-former-labour-chancellor

Guido Fawkes & Little Miss Cleavage

June 9th, 2014

Bags of Fun at Danczuk’s Deli

Guido doesn’t normally do free advertising on the blog, but he thought he would make an exception for Danczuk’s Deli. Rochdale’s finest coffee shop has shelves stacked full of traditional baps, toasties, cakes, paninis, soups, salads and a Miliband-trolling “easier to eat” bacon butty which was helpfully launched after an unfortunate incident involving Ed Miliband.

The deli is run by Labour MP Simon Danczuk’s missus Karen, who is also a Labour councillor in the area. For some reason Karen has been racking up Twitter followers in recent weeks…