North West Amicus Unity Gazette

Position Statement - 8 October 2005

 

(amicus.cc comments in purple)

 

 

Gazette Constitution

We do not accept that the mandating of our regions delegates is contrary to the constitution of the Gazette.

So why do you feel the need to submit a change to the constitution, retrospectively justifying your expulsions?

 

Item 4 of the constitution was adopted following a wide ranging debate on the shape that national meetings should take. Views varied from quarterly to annual meetings and 3, 4, or all delegates having a vote. The issue of mandating (or not) was never part of the discussion. We believe that this is a cynical attempt to hijack the constitution with the targeted objective of creating disunity within the regions.

And illegally expelling 4 members of your own region, including 2 NEC members, was a unity and harmony measure was it?

 

We have no position regarding the 4 excluded North West members attending the National AUG meetings as individuals that is for the National meeting to determine; however they will not be welcomed back into the North West group until they are prepared to abide by the decisions of the group.

Hang on, the four you expelled broke your mandate in order to support the election of officers, which is one of the most cherished Gazette principles. Moreover the motion they supported was passed by the National Gazette: you should have let them back in immediately that your position was lost at the National Gazette meeting.

 

 

North West AUG in Perspective

The North West Region of the AUG is the largest and possibly the most active campaigning region.

If that were true, why even in your own home town can’t you muster enough supporters to put a dent in the rest of the Gazette supporters’ motions, let alone defeat them? And that’s with the application of mandating which the other areas don’t do?  The truth is NW Gazette is in sad decline: It is almost entirely old, white and male.  To quote an ex member ‘When we left the average age went up to 65’.  Another member told us many of the people who arrive at the National Gazette meeting don’t even attend their own regional meetings. A third, who broke mandate, told us he no longer went to  the NW regional meetings because he knew he would be mandated

 

Disassociation of the North West AUG with the National AUG would result in the demise of the National AUG as a meaningful broad left pressure group.

In the North West, quite possibly.  On the other hand perhaps there could be an open, honest and thriving NW region instead.

 

Where we stand on mandating delegates

Every member of North West AUG is encouraged to take part in the decision making of the group, every member exercises the right to influence the views of the group. Integral to this right to influence the group, is the responsibility to carry out the policy or action adopted by the majority. If the majority of North West AUG supporters disagreed with this policy they would change it.

Congratulations on having such a well disciplined region.  Must take some organisation from the top to keep it that way.

 

We do not believe we are on our own in trying to determine collective regional positions. For example Peter Gillard emailed an agenda to London Gazette members for a regional meeting held on 4 October 2005. Item 4 of the agenda reads:

 

“National Gazette Meeting

The next National Gazette Meeting will be held in Preston on October 8th at noon. What do we want to propose to the meeting. Do we support Gazette supporters being excluded from the NW Gazette because they opposed the NW Gazette line at a national meeting of supporters (where everyone is an individual?”

 

We are not raising this to criticise Peter. We believe that he is free to pose the question. What we seek to do is to underline that other groups are prompted to reach a collective position.

This point is rubbish, London region seek to agree motions to put to the National meetings as they should, what they don’t do is mandate all their members to vote for them.

 

We do not know if London did or did not accept a mandate on the outcome of their discussions and to be honest that is their business not ours, but we may get an indication if this issue is put to a vote.

How often does London region have to say this, they do not mandate, it is a free vote. Ask any London member. Plus, the democratic structure of the Gazette regions is the business of the National Gazette, that’s what’s known as a ‘constitution’.

 

Amicus.cc Website

The Amicus.cc website carries an “exclusive” story entitled ‘Simpson to Split up the ‘Gazette’. The story in part relates to the North West AUG. The story is so exclusive that none of us in the North West AUG were consulted on the story and it is also so exclusive that it reports our intentions on issues that we have not even considered.

Well this is weird because the source of our claim that NW membership is by invitation only was non other than Jimmy Barnes, editor of Trade Union Review, the very person who has drafted this ‘position statement’ of yours.  Up until now we had thought Jimmy Barnes a reliable enough source not to have to check. 

 

Being libelled by a website is bad enough, however when that same website carries the following statement without checking out the facts with the North West AUG officers, the editor is indicted by his own hypocrisy:

 

“Legal Notes..
Contrary to what the General Secretary told the amicus Executive last Wednesday, this website takes a great deal of care with the stories we publish. We are not an anonymous site and are painfully aware of the English libel laws, the strictest in the world. We check each story with at least one reliable source, we put the stories to the persons concerned to comment on or deny prior to publication, we correct errors and have published apologies on those inevitable occasions where we get it wrong.”

Well we’d have thought a definition of hypocrisy would be to tell us some fact and then write a 3 page diatribe denying it.

 

North West AUG therefore calls upon the editor of Amicus.cc to publish an unconditional apology

No

and publish this statement in full

Certainly, consider it done..

 

Given that items posted on National AUG and Regional AUG websites have to be cleared by the National AUG Editorial Board, is it not time we considered adopting a similar approach for individually owned websites that purport to be sources of knowledge of AUG and solicit amicus members to attend National AUG meetings? If this is not possible we should clearly disassociate ourselves with these websites.

No need to disassociate, amicus.cc is not a Gazette website and has never claimed to be, to suggest it should be censored by a body it’s not associated with is ridiculous.  Amicus.cc is in fact very similar to Trade Union Review magazine, could you imagine if that fiercely independent magazine were to give up control to one organisation or clique? (OK, OK bad example).

 

Unpicking the tangled web of deceit on the Amicus.CC website.

 

North West AUG strongly supports the election of all Full Time Officers, several of the North West AUG delegates at this year’s Policy Conference spoke in favour of the rule change that was adopted.

 

The North West Regional delegation, who were all AUG supporters voted unanimously for the change even though several of the delegates did not support the rule changes as individuals.

 

The irony being that had they not accepted the discipline and had they voted as individuals we would have lost the vote.

And had two people overslept that day or if their dog had been sick or if they got out of bed the wrong side etc…I’m sure we all appreciate the magnificent job NW did in single handedly getting election of officers through..

 

If we allowed North West AUG members to vote against collective decisions at National AUG meetings, we would be duplicitous in expecting that other members hold the line at other meetings.

This is nonsense, there are no National Gazette policies to mandate on until they have been passed at a national meeting.  You seem to presume that NW gazette policies are immediately national ones. Well here is news for you, national policies are decided by an open vote of members. 

 

What would be duplicitous is mandating your own members and then arguing against the mandating of NEC members to the Gazette policies. 

 

We believe that the NEC who proposed the rule change slipped up by not preparing adequately for the change being adopted.

Well firstly it is Simpson who should have prepared adequately, not the NEC.  The NEC just vote on these things (on a good day) they don’t implement them.  Secondly isn’t it obvious that Simpson didn’t prepare because he didn’t expect it to be passed?

 

Had the NEC explained the difficulties around the voluntary severance we believe that Conference would have accepted the implementation being delayed until January 2006.

Yes but there wasn’t a financial crisis then was there? It only appeared after the rule was passed.  Now the rule is buried, the crisis seems to have gone again. Strange. 

 

We are not run ‘Masonic’ style,

The ‘Masonic’ jibe was just a wind-up which obviously hit home with somebody

our website carries invitations for anyone wishing to attend our meetings to contact the Chair of North West AUG, similarly we carry an invitation for people wishing to join our mailing list to contact the Secretary of North West AUG.

We were told by Jimmy Barnes that membership is by invitation only.  Maybe that is wrong and Jimmy wasn’t aware that your new and expensive website (only registered at the end of July this year, just before you started expelling people) carries an ‘invitation’.  However we have investigated and we now know the procedure: you ask for an invitation to join, or you receive one anyway.  Then you attend the meeting and wait outside while your name is put to the other members, who can challenge your membership.  If you are accepted you are then permitted to enter.  There are no black balls in a bag and rolled up trousers but it’s not far off.  In London, anyone can turn up to a meeting and are welcome provided only that they are on the Left (in its broad sense) and are an amicus member.

Anyone can submit an article to our website (subject to the overall editorial control of the National AUG Editorial Board)

 i.e. no one can submit without it being vetted.

 

We do submit the names of prospective members to the next meeting of the full North West AUG group for completeness; although in practise we have never turned anyone down.

We have been reliably informed that prospective members’ names have been challenged.  But generally why would you invite people and them turn them down?  That would be stupid.

 

North West AUG has never discussed removing Jimmy Warne or Des Heemskerk from the Editorial Board.  We are outraged that this accusation has been made by Amicus.cc.

Actually what we said is ‘it is likely that NW would seek to remove them’.  This was based on reliable sources and we still believe that, given the chance, NW would make them stand down.  This is backed up by the fact that NW members as a block were the only people to abstain on the motion condemning the suspension of Cathie, Des and Jimmy.  In fact prominent NW member (and NEC and GPFC member) Brain Pemberton voted against the motion.- poor discipline, maybe you should expel him.

We believe that the likely reason this untruth has been placed on Amicus.cc is to poison the minds of other AUG members against North West AUG and the position we maintain regarding accountable democracy within our group. 

If you want to ‘poison the minds’ of national Gazette members against you, try not voting for a massively popular motion opposing the suspension of the key Gazette officers. Or try expelling two popular NEC members because they voted for Gazette policy.  Oh, you’ve already tried those. 

 

We have not prejudged the suspension of “the three” in any way,

Well one of your leading members seems to have done, read Jimmy Barnes’ latest Trade Union Review, it stops just short of libelling the three.

it would be absolutely inappropriate of us to do so until the facts are established and a decision is reached. We believe that a public debate around this issue prior to a decision being reached could prejudice “the three” and damage our union.

Again read the once respected Trade Union Review.

 

If the libellous content of Amicus.cc in regard to North West AUG is a reliable barometer of Amicus.cc’s integrity, it is little wonder that the Amicus General Secretary is more than a little annoyed by the harassment he continually receives from Amicus.cc.

A little annoyed? He’s absolutely hopping mad.  Hence the move to bankrupt us for ‘trademark infringement’.  But you should look at the facts and examine the scandal, not shoot at messengers or whistle blowers.

 

Perhaps one day (probably when it is to late and the damage is irreparable) the editor of Amicus.cc (and others) will realise that the time and effort that the General Secretary has to put into fighting off ‘mad dog’ attacks, is distracting him from doing the very things that they in turn accuse him of not doing!

Be honest, what he’s been doing lately is stalling the election of officers, preparing a witch hunt, paying off Lucy Anderson, and promoting Les Bayliss to run the merger.  We’re proud to be distracting him from that.

 

North West AUG wishes to leave here today with the following established:

 

  • Mandating of regional groups is an issue for the members of those groups to determine.

 

  • An awareness within AUG that misrepresenting the truth is childish, malicious and damaging to both AUG and Amicus.

 

  • That as an organisation we are going to put these differences behind us and act with unity and purpose in the best interest of truth, the members and the union.

 

Well what you left Preston with is the shame of not supporting the officers of the Gazette, the guilt of not un-expelling your own members and the smell of proposing a constitution change to retrospectively justify your expulsions. You should think on what you are doing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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