David Beaumont

July 5^th 2001

Roger Lyons

MSF General Secretary

lyonsr@msf.org.uk

Dear Roger,

2001 NEC Elections - National Women's By-Election (Canvassing)

[text relating to other issues deleted]…I wish to submit three complaints on the same issue. I attach evidence for these complaints.

Firstly I wish to complain that Ms Leonie Cooper, Mr Paul Matz, and Mr Alex McKenna have breached rule 30 and Regulation to Rule 30 of my union. Ms Cooper has a web site that was advertised to all voting members in her election address, exceeds the 200 words limit and promotes herself. Mr Matz produced a glossy colour brochure that was widely distributed and contained a photo of Ms Cooper along with text designed to promote her. Mr McKenna's name appears at the bottom of a document that promotes Ms Cooper and was widely circulated. I believe all three breaches of Rule 30 were completed using MSF funds and/or resources, in breach of Regulation to Rule 30. You will also be aware that where I believe my union has breached its own rules in relation to an election I can apply to the Certification Officer under section 108A(1) of the TULR Act 1992.

Secondly and even more seriously, I wish to complain that the union has breached the TULR Act 1999 with respect to section 48 (3) (a) and (b) and 48 (6), reproduced below:

48 (3) The trade union may provide that election addresses submitted to it for distribution—

 (a) must not exceed such length, not being less than one hundred words, as may be determined by the union, and

 (b) may, as regards photographs and other matter not in words, incorporate only such matter as the union may determine.

48 (6) The trade union shall, so far as reasonably practicable, secure that the same facilities and restrictions with respect to the preparation, submission, length or modification of an election address, and with respect to the incorporation of photographs or other matter not in words, are provided or applied equally to each of the candidates.

I believe the breaches are that MSF included a web address in the election statement for one candidate without pre-determining this issue, that by doing so effectively exceeded the 200 words limit, and that MSF provided facilities for the promotion, registration, hosting and construction of this web site, for one candidate only.

Thirdly I wish to complain that some branches that nominated Ms Cooper, not least London SM, either do not exist or did not remotely follow the correct procedure for nominations. Also that some branches which nominated Ms Stewart, e.g. Hounslow and Feltham and West London Medical, did not appear on the list of her nominating branches. This is just plain fraud, I’ll need to look up the relevant Acts to identify the exact illegality.

In summary then it is my opinion that the recent NEC women’s seat election has been comprehensively rigged, and I look forward to your response before I take the matter further. There may be innocent explanations, so before I consider progressing the matter outside of MSF please would you:

1) Tell me when and in what manner the union determined that a web site address may be included in an election address. To have not so pre-determined is a clear breach of the Act.

2) To explain how it is that the web site www.leoniecooper.com resides on the same computer server (195.72.164.141) as the official MSF website.

3) To account for the fact that the domain name “leoniecooper.com” was registered by William Martin Productions who produce 'MSFworks' magazine and overhauled MSF's own web site, and to declare any monies or assistance that MSF gave to Ms Cooper in registering or setting up or hosting her website.

4) To account for the remarkable similarity of the source code of the web site www.leoniecooper.com and of www.msf.org.uk , which indicates to me that they have been written by the same person and/or by the same development tool.

5) To account for the appearance of LondonSM branch on the list of nominating branches for Ms Cooper.

6) To confirm that MSF have appropriate documentation from every other branch that appeared to nominate Ms Cooper.

7) To list all the branches whose nominations were rejected for each candidate.

I attach the following evidence

A. Link to www.leoniecooper.com showing 376 words of self promotion.

B. Link to registration details for the domain www.leoniecooper.com showing William Martin Productions as the registering company

C. Link to the web site of William Martin Productions showing they produce 'MSFworks' magazine

D. Link to the web site of William Martin Productions showing they overhauled the MSF web site

E. A link to a copy of two letters sent out in support of Ms Cooper

F. Two Word documents showing both www.leoniecooper.com and www.msf.org.uk to be hosted on ‘Community Internet’

G. A word document showing the host server IP address for www.msf.org.uk and www.leoniecooper.com to be the same.

H. A Word document of the first lines of source code for the two web sites showing remarkable similarity

I. Link to a copy of a glossy colour brochure produced by Mr Paul Matz complete with photo of Ms Cooper and promotional text

Sincerely,

David Beaumont