Labour MP Michael Meacher is facing the threat of legal action after he took to his blog at the weekend to repeat some of the allegations made by now disgraced Labour MP Phil Woolas despite the court ruling that they were false.
Michael Meacher represents the neighbouring seat of Oldham West and Royton and claimed on his blog on Saturday that, “In the course of the one-week election court proceedings it appears that Watkins himself admitted that he had spent some £200,000 on the election, which is 7 times above the maximum permitted limit.”
Yet the court judgement (which appeared before Michael Meacher’s blog post) said, “We are therefore satisfied that the Statements made in [Labour campaign leaflets] the Examiner and the Labour Rose that the Petitioner had breached the law by not declaring his expenses … were untrue.” The Labour defence itself during the court case accepted that the claims were false, with the ruling pointed out that, “The Respondent therefore accepted that the Petitioner’s expenses were as declared.”
The Liberal Democrats have issued a statement to the press saying, “The Liberal Democrats are writing to Mr Meacher today to demand an apology and a retraction”.
Meanwhile, the courts have today rejected Phil Woolas’s application for a judicial review.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Survation now put Andy Burnham 10 points ahead in Makerfield
Michael Meadowcroft: A Liberal of Intellectual Rigour and Uncommon Integrity
Debt-ridden graduates claim they are seen as cash cows
Why non-fiction books need their indexes
Changes in status: Local Elections wrap up
Daniel Walker
David Raw
Jenny Barnes
Tom Bailey
Gill Travers
19 Comments
I do hope that Meacher issues a retraction and an apology. All this silliness has to stop.
But I do not have any sympathy for Meacher – as Wikipedia states:
“In 1988 he lost a libel action against the journalist Alan Watkins, who had pointed out that Meacher had invented working class origins by referring to his father as a farm labourer (he was in fact an accountant).”
I agree with others who have pointed out that being accused of breaking the law is more offensive than being accused of being middle class. I thought we were all middle class anyway. Except maybe Mr Meacher – how properties do you have to own before you’re upper-middle class? I should have been watching Downton Abbey for these class distinctions.
How dim of me not to notice the Watkins link – any relation to Elwyn??
Years ago, “Private Eye” highlighted Meacher’s record of brutality as head boy of Berkhamstead.
I’m unclear; did Watkins admit during the course of the court case that he spent £200,000 on the election or not? My understanding was that he did, and therefore (regardless of the outcome of the court case) there’s nothing libellous about Michael Meacher’s comments. I think it’s also misleading to describe it as the “Labour defence” when Labour have – quite rightly – taken the position that Phil Woolas’s actions were unacceptable and are not supporting him in this matter.
Rachel: I recommend you read Nick Thornsby’s piece at http://nickthornsby.wordpress.com/
But the judges said:
…it was a striking feature of the cross-examination of the Petitioner [Mr Watkins] that there was no challenge to the Petitioner’s election expenses having been as stated in the returns to the Electoral Commission. Mr. Millar [counsel to Phil Woolas] accepted during submissions that there had been no such challenge. The Respondent [Mr Woolas] therefore accepted that the Petitioner’s expenses were as declared to the Commission, namely, approximately £36,000…
Paras 184 & 185 refer Rachel.
I suppose the 200k figure was put there by Woolas for effect – Millar didn’t say what time scale it represented and it was agreed by Teare/Williams that the amount stated in the election returns for the `long` and `short` campaigns were within the election ceiling – ie a lot less than 200k.
I agree that Harriet Harman has distanced Labour by action and words from Woolas – however, the Labour defence phrase was qualified by the words `during the court case`
True, John. And a number of labour politicians are STILL backing Woolas – people like Michael Meacher, Graham Stringer, Tom Harris and John Healey, all of whom should no better.
Plus, we have yet to hear that Labour has suspended Woolas’ cronies, including agent Joseph Fitzpatrick and parliamentary employee Councillor John Battaye. Why so slow?
You can add Simon Danczuk to that list of Woolas supporters…
Rachel.
Watkins at no point “admitted” in court that he spent £200,000 or anything like it. This is a clear case of muddying the waters.
The judges’ ruling basically translates as the following. The figure of £200,000 was invented, it was invented by the Labour Party, they knew it not to be true, but (and it is a very tiny ‘but’) it was not proved beyond reasonable doubt that Mr Woolas did not believe it at the time and that he had reasonable grounds for doing so. This in turns translates as ‘my reasercher told me it was true and I believed him’.
The whole thing has been interpreted by the Labour Party as Watkins admitting to spending that much money.
The £ 200,000 figure and ruling was a case where a bit more incisive cross examination of Woolas in court could have resulted in a guilty verdict on this subject .
A brief search on google shows that even if you do not do your own printing , 5,000 A4 colour leaflets would cost without any haggling circa £ 140-150 , therefore 500,000 leaflets would cost less than a tenth of the figure mentioned . Woolas or any politician ought to know the basic evonomics of campaigning .
I reckon it was that exceedingly high “criminal” burden of proof. Proving people’s states of mind are not easy.
Which goes to show what a good job Elwyn’s legal team did to get Woolas on the other charges.
I think Michael Meacher may have misunderstood this bit-
‘There seems no reason to doubt that the Respondent’s election team were struck by the number and quality of election leaflets distributed by the Petitioner. The Petitioner accepted that his team had distributed well in excess of 500,000 leaflets whilst the number distributed by the Respondent’s team appears to have been significantly less. Indeed counsel for the Petitioner suggested to the Respondent that he had been “outgunned” by the Petitioner, with which he agreed. Mr. Battye, one of the Respondent’s election team, gave evidence that he estimated that the costs of producing, printing and distributing the Petitioner’s election leaflets was in the region of £200,000. Although no clear evidence was given as to precisely how this estimate was made we have no reason to doubt that such an estimate was made. Mr. Battye’s evidence was not challenged. The statement in the Examiner that an estimate of the Petitioner’s election expenses in the sum of “£200,000 +” had been made (our emphasis) was therefore true.’
Some might interpret that as saying ‘Watkin’s team didn’t challenge the sum of £200,000’, rather than (as I’ve read it) ‘Watkin’s team didn’t challenge the fact that an estimate of that sum had been made’. Which doesn’t mean the estimate was close to the truth.
Looking at the ruling, it’s shocking the kind of correspondence that went on among Woolas’ team. They knew full well what they were doing.
I think that both sides are slightly over egging their respective puddings here.
The judges ruled that as long as there was no challenge to the expense return they regarded it as essentially a statement of fact and therefore the allegation of over spending to be false.
(Though had it proven important to the guilty verdict, this would potentially have been one of the more arguable elements of the judgement – Phil Woolas might simply have said that he didn’t challenge it because he won, or that it required criminal burden of proof when he only needed reasonable grounds to make the accusation, or any other reason. I’ve known plenty of elections where parties think the other(s) have wildly over spend but wouldn’t legally challenge it.)
However, they also found that there were “reasonable grounds” for Woolas to believe it was true. This was not entirely based on a back of envelope figure, there was also evidence from another witness, who was a former Liberal Democrat campaign worker. She had fallen out with the Lib Dem campaign over her pay and then gone to the other parties with her story. The judges essentially dismissed her evidence as someone with a grudge, but felt that it, together with Woolas’ team’s own calculations, was sufficient to show that he had reasonable grounds to believe it was true, even though in their view it wasn’t.
They also mentioned in this section of the judgement that Watkins’ lawyers could have cross examined the defence witnesses from Woolas’ campaign team about this but chose not to and thus had essentially passed up the opportunity to show that there were not reasonable grounds.
In general, this (and the accusations about not living in the constituency) was a lot less significant for the judges than the stuff about Muslim extremism – the judgement pretty much says that that was the deciding factor, probably (though they don’t spell this out) because of the internal Woolas team emails in which they say that this strategy is working, a tacit admission that it has “materially affected” the election itself. Without that, the judges indicated that they would’ve let the election stand.
At any rate, Meacher has got the wrong end of the stick if he thinks that Watkins admitted over-spending in a legal sense. I imagine that a “clarification” will be forthcoming shortly if he has any sense. (Some may think that a big if!)
I’m not entirely sure, however, what Mark means by legal action. It’s doubtful that s106 would apply to this, to my mind. Watkins could sue for libel I imagine, but I’m not sure that the Liberal Democratic Party could, and Watkins chose not to seek that particular legal remedy against Woolas.
Admittedly, “Meacher makes himself look a bit silly” might not be as a good a headline, but it would be nice if we could aim for slightly higher standards than the Daily Mail subs. Perhaps Mark could clarify what legal action he is referring to?
The key point here is that Meacher has more to say about the wronged Lib Dem candidate than he does about the fact that his Labour colleague told deliberate and serious lies about his opponent as part of a plan to ‘make white voters angry’.
That he also continues to defame the Lib Dem candidate makes this even worse.
The barmy £200,000 figure is based on a labour activists estimating how much it would cost to pay for the delivery of 500,000 leaflets, without any evidence that the Lib Dems did so.
In fact there are probably 200 Lib Dem volunteers who will line up to tell you that they delivered their local area repeatedly, because that is how the Lib Dems run their campaigns.
Rather than “Meacher makes himself look a bit silly”, “Meacher fails to criticise campaign to raise racial tensions in Oldham” would be more accurate.
Jack – In respect of libel you said “Watkins chose not to seek that particular legal remedy against Woolas.” He has not yet done so. He still can do so and indeed may well do so as the right of action won’t prescribe for some time.
Jack: libel is what I had in mind.
“The barmy £200,000 figure is based on a labour activists estimating how much it would cost to pay for the delivery of 500,000 leaflets”
It’s well in excess (10 times!) of any commercial delivery rate I’ve ever paid!
So Labour think it costs £400 per thousand to print and deliver leaflets? Can I have their printing contract please?
Only joking, I wouldn’t work for them for /any/ money.
13. Jack is right about this little bit of the official ‘Judgment’. The Judge said in open court, while delivering the Summary Judgment, that Elwyn’s team had the opportunity to cross-examine the Labour witnesses about the way in which they estimated the #200,000 figure. Since they didn’t do this, there had been no challenge made in the action to the presumption that these estimates which Woolas’ leaflets quoted were honestly arrived at, even if stupid.
There is no reason to believe that Elwyn will not sue for defamation. The present court case involves a completely different piece of law (as would be the criminal actions which the CPS may or may not pursue against Woolas and Fitzpatrick now for RPA breaches). On the face of it, Elwyn will have an open and shut libel case against both Phil Woolas and Joe Fitzpatrick. He has a couple of years to commence his action so he has no great hurry.
Perhaps Mr Meacher should be placed under some pressure locally to say where he stands on the issue of ‘making the Whites Angry’. I am sure the voters of Coldhurst, Medlock Vale and Werneth wards in particular would be interested to hear.
Has anyone heard the basis of the Woolas application for leave to bring a Judicial Review? I have actually won a JR in the High Court – it is a scary process, as well as being very expensive if you lose.