My
name is David Beaumont. I have been a member of the trade union Amicus MSf
section and its predecessors MSF, TASS and ASTMS for twenty years. For most of this time I have been an active,
unpaid lay member, being elected secretary of my local branch, delegate to
London Regional Council, delegate to many annual conferences, treasurer of
London region, Chair of my local branch, and member of the London Region
Management Committee. I find the lay structures of my union, at least in
London, to be very democratic, open and participative.
It
is fair to say I am on the left of the union but I am not a member of or active
in any political party. In fact I am a
lapsed Labour party member.
I was expelled from my
union at a National Executive Committee meeting on Saturday 23rd
February this year. Ironically I was at that meeting, on another matter. I was excluded from most of the meeting
including the part at which I was expelled.
I was not told that my expulsion was being discussed and in fact didn’t
find out I had been expelled until the following Thursday. (The reason I was present for part of the
NEC meeting was that in 1999 I had submitted an appeal to the NEC about
previous disciplinary action against me.
I had obtained a declaration from the independent Trade Union
Certification Officer that they must hear my appeal. That appeal has not been completed to this day, three years
on). On hearing of my expulsion I
submitted a new appeal, (page 10 in my bundle).
I also submitted an
application to this Employment Tribunal for a declaration that my union had
used unjustifiable discipline against me (page 1 of the respondents’ bundle)
.
On 14th
September I was re-instated after nearly seven months of expulsion. This was not because of my appeal and Amicus
MSF have not withdrawn any of the charges against me as you will see.
Having argued the case at
each stage, including three applications for postponement, the respondents
wrote last Thursday to concede my complaint, one working day before this Tribunal
is to start. This does not arise from
any agreement between ourselves, indeed the respondents declined my offer to
settle (my bundle page 31).of last Monday.
As you can see my appeal
(page 10 in my bundle). was directly to
the union’s appeal Court, this is the correct procedure under rule 17- Appeals
Machinery (page 28 of my bundle). I
alleged breaches of rule by the NEC and general secretary in the manner of my
expulsion, therefore I did not appeal to the NEC. Rule 15 – Termination of Membership, part (l) (page 25 of my
bundle) clearly states that an appeal to the NEC should happen before, not
after, the NEC considered my expulsion.
Moreover I should have been given 14 days notice. Also it would be a breach of natural justice
for the NEC to sit in judgement on their own decision. In fact part of my Appeals Court case was
that the NEC had breached rule 17(l) in expelling we without me being able to
present my case. The Appeals Court is
made up of lay members of the union chosen in rotation and its decision in all
matters is final (rules 18 (e) and 17
(a) (v) respectively (page 28 and 29 of my bundle)).
A prior issue here is the
disciplinary meeting which I did not to attend, and which proceeded in my
absence. I had written (page 9 of my
bundle) to explain that their investigation and disciplinary were ultra vires
the rule book, that in fact my branch or Regional Council should conduct the
investigation (rule 16 (c) (page 26 of my bundle)). My branch had in fact instructed me not to attend.
Despite my clear wish to go
directly to an Appeal Court, the
general secretary persisted in inviting me to present my case to the very NEC
that had already passed judgement on me.
I had already had my non-attendance at the previous disciplinary meeting
held against me, so I agreed to attend the NEC meeting of 14th
September. I wrote to the general
secretary and all NEC members to put on record that this was not an appeal
(email page 18 in my bundle). I only intended to tell the NEC what I thought of
them. I turned up with my
representative Ian Rez at this meeting.
We were kept waiting and not allowed to speak to the NEC. Eventually the general secretary and
president came out to tell us that I had been re-instated. They said this was to do with my further and
better particulars and section 65 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations
Act.
There is no doubt in my mind
that I was re-instated solely because of the likelihood of Amicus MSF losing
this tribunal. Please refer to the only written report of that NEC meeting
available, page 19 of my bundle. This
makes clear (page 22 of my bundle) that the NEC have not withdrawn any charges
against me, they simply have been caught out by the law. I have also formed this opinion from talking
to 3 NEC members.
The fact that my appeal was
not actually heard is made clear by an email I received from the President of
Amicus MSF section and chair of the NEC meeting which re-instated me (page 24
of my bundle):
“the decision to rescind your expulsion was based on that
[legal] advice alone”.
It is nonsense to maintain
that I have been re-instated because of my appeal. My appeal has never been heard and in fact I am still waiting for
an appeal that I submitted in 1999 regarding previous disciplinary action to be
heard.
It is also clear to me that
Amicus MSF have pleaded guilty at this hearing to avoid discussion of the
assertions I have made and for which I have been expelled. These are listed in my further and better
particulars (page 8 of the respondents bundle). In short the respondents have treated the legal process with the
utmost cynicism, maintaining variously that my case was utterly without
foundation, that I was being vexatious, that seven months of expulsion was not
discipline and that I had been re-instated because of my appeal. They have also failed to meet any of the
dates set in the hearing for directions, refused a reasonable settlement that I
offered, submitted three applications for postponement without copying me on
any of them, including one on the same day that they conceded. Finally they have pushed this case right to
the wire, conceding one working day before the tribunal. For these reason I want to push for my costs
and will cover this in detail after the declaration.
Now I wish to discuss the
reasons for my expulsion.
The union’s disciplinary
report (page 25 of the respondents bundle) is the only written record I have of
the official reasons for my expulsion.
Despite repeated requests for the prior report from NEC member Lucy
Anderson to the GPFC that gave rise to my disciplinary panel, I have never seen
it. I have never seen minutes of this
GPFC meeting. I have never even seen
the minutes of the NEC meeting at which I was expelled. I have never seen the minutes of the
disciplinary panel meeting of 18th October 2001 (point 2 of the
disciplinary panel report). I have
never seen the first complaint from Ms Leonie Cooper or the complaint of
anti-Semitism made against me.
Relying of the disciplinary
panel report then, there is the very serious allegation of Anti Semitism. My second witness statement covers this very
offensive and untrue allegation in full.
I note that the allegation has not been withdrawn.
The other main allegations
in the report relate to general
material on my two web sites www.rogerlyons.com
and www.msfweb.org . Report section 15 (3) (page 27 of the
respondents bundle) for example talks about my ‘publication of an extract from
a confidential internal document’.
Despite requests I have been unable to establish definitively to which
document they refer. Section 15 (2)
talks about ‘inaccurate and misleading articles appearing on the web site
designed to undermine the reputation of MSF.’.
Section 22 says
’Viewed over a
period of time when the complaints occurred [at least 7 months] there was a pattern
to the web that was intentionally designed to denigrate the union and its
senior lay officials and officers beyond the realms of reasonable comment’
.
From all this I conclude
that I have been expelled for my web sites in general. I am very careful in what I publish on the
web sites, I particularly want to avoid legal action against me. Mostly I take information from other
published sources, national newspapers, reports from the Trade Union
Certification Officer and from the union’s own auditors, H W Fisher & co.
The disciplinary report
contained numerous other injurious allegations against me: that I ‘designed to create a false
impression of events within MSF ‘; that I broke rules 15(a) (4 times and 1 potential) and 16(a)(ii) (4 times
and 1 potential), broke rule 5(c);
‘publishing misleading information on his web site’;broke rules 15(a) and
15(d); produced “misleading articles appearing on the web site designed to
undermine the reputation of MSF”. That
“information was used in a manner intended to denigrate the union”
and “create a false impression of
events within MSF”; broke rule 30 (in spirit); broke rule 43; broke rule
16(a)(v) (racism); carried out “actions …detrimental to the union” and “intentionally
designed to denigrate the union” None
of these allegations have been withdrawn, in fact according to NEC member Dave
Houliston (page 22 of my bundle)
“The NEC re-affrimed its
previous position that the correct factual decision was taken concerning Mr
Beaumont and that the allegations made against him were proper.”
Yet we are here at this
tribunal with the respondent’s pleading guilty to inflicting unjustifiable
discipline against me deriving directly from this report. They are not willing
to withdraw any of the allegations against
me and yet they do not want to contest a single one. I wish to pick just three items from my websites to illustrate
the actual things for which I was expelled.
I’d like to start with the
Guardian article ‘The all-expenses paid lifestyle of union leader Roger Lyons
(down to the 25p bun)’ (page 1 of my bundle).
Please read it. This article was
fundamental in starting my web pages and remained throughout the period of the
complains and to this day the main link on the front page of www.rogerlyons.com . Re-publication and promotion of this article
and the assertions made within it are, I believe, a major reason for my
expulsion from the union.
Secondly one of the most
serious allegations on the web site is that the Head of Finance of the union
was stealing £10,000 a year from the union.
This is documented in the article ‘Hunt for the invisible Mendes’ (page
4 of my bundle). It is an example of
something I would never dare to assert, even if I knew it to be true, unless it
had already been published by an authoritative source. I choose not to make my web site anonymous
and I would be terrified of a libel suit as you can imagine. In fact all this information, about theft
and lies by senior union officials, came from the Trade Union Certification
Officer and the auditors HW Fisher & Co, and I reference it all or link to
copies of their reports. I should add that none of these matters
“have been
dealt with inside the Union and by way of external investigation such as from
the Certification Officer”
as the letter from Mr
Pinder accepting a declaration maintains.
The ex- Head of Finance Mr Mendes was never prosecuted for his theft, he
has never returned the money (to my or members’ knowledge), the MSF officials
who lied to cover up for him have never been brought to account or indeed had
any disciplinary action taken against.
The general secretary Mr Lyons has never been brought to account for his
unauthorised loans and false expense claims and theft of union property.
The third article on my web
site is entitled ‘Secret Fisher Report’ (page 6 of my bunde). It is, I am guessing, the publication
referred to by the respondents as the
“confidential internal union
document” (MSF Disciplinary report last paragraph on page 27 of the respondents
bundle). It covers the same ground as
the previous article ‘Hunt for the
invisible Mendes’ but from the point of view of the auditors HW Fisher
& Co rather than the Certification
Officer. It draws heavily on the
auditors report which is now obtainable on personal application to the General
Secretary, albeit in heavily censored form; in particular the appendices have
been removed as has any reference to individuals who are implicated by it as
lying to cover up Mendes’ theft.
Conclusion
Given that the respondents
have consented to the Tribunal making a declaration that I was the victim of
unjustifiable discipline I don’t think I need to go into any further detail on
the events of my expulsion. I don’t
intend to call my witnesses. I do
however ask the tribunal to order that the documents I requested be disclosed
as part of the conclusion of this case.
My list of documents is to be found on page 12 and 13 of the
respondents’ bundle. Please note ‘i)
The report’ should in fact read ‘i) The minutes’. I believe many of these documents are essential to the proper
preparation of may case, and by pleading guilty the respondents should not be
able to avoid disclosure of these documents.
David Beaumont
13.10.2002