EXCLUSIVE Iain McNicol’s Dirty Tricks Brigade Infiltrates Labour Against the Witchhunt Meeting

Brighton Councillor Caroline Penn Makes Bogus Accusations of Harassment in bid to Help McNicol’s Court Case

Right-wing Brighton Caroline Penn's bogus complaints of harassment, which the Police have refused to act upon, is now being used to try and prevent the disclosure of documents in my application under the Data Protection Act.  In Penn's world an accusation is tantamount to guilt - and it is guilty until proven innocent

 On March 18^th 2016 I was suspended from the Labour Party. I was given no details of what I was accused of and the first time I learnt about the charges was when those Labour supporting papers, The Telegraph and The Times printed spurious articles stating that I had been caught up in what had become Labour’s false anti-Semitism campaign, the latest victim of which is Israeli Professor Moshe Machover.  Both papers later retracted their allegations.

On May 30^th 2016 I was interviewed by Harry Gregson, Labour’s Regional Organiser as part of the ‘investigation’. The meeting was recorded and a transcript can be viewed here.

McNicol claims to have 'lost' this document - clearly it's not just the identity of the sender or  recipient that has been 

Soon after I submitted a Subject Access Request under the Data Protection Act 1998 for all the documentation they had one me.  On July 15^th, 20 days late, the Labour Party responded with a bundle of over 350 pages.  The identities of most correspondents were blacked out and some pages were entirely blacked out.

In March of this year I filed an application with Brighton County Court to force Iain McNicol and the Labour Party to unredact the documents under s.7(9) of the DPA.  A date was set for the hearing on August 8^th.  Unbeknown to me, the fools at Labour Party headquarters had forgotten that they had responded to my original SAR on July 15^th and they decided to send me a second bundle on November 10^th.  Not only that but they sent it to an address I hadn’t lived at for 14 years, so I didn’t receive it!

Caroline Penn has sent the  solicitor for Iain McNicol an email as part of an attempt to help keep secret the dealings of the Compliance Unit - I have redacted Penn's phone number

On the day before the hearing it dawned on me that we were talking about two different sets of documents.  McNicol’s legal team were unaware of the bundle of documents sent in July.  In some ways this has been a very useful exercise because it has been interesting to compare the two sets of documents.  On the retirement of Mike Creighton, who had been with the Labour Party for 23 years, a new set of bureaucrats had taken over who clearly had less scruples than Mike. 

They didn’t send me so many redacted documents because they decided not to send them at all.  Anyone applying for a SAR is to some extent reliant on the honesty of the Data Controller.  If they are dishonest and simply don’t reveal the existence of the documents there is little you can do unless you can persuade a court that a search warrant should be issued ex parte.  The Information Commissioner has done this on occasion but it is extremely rare.

This Twitter exchange is apparently proof of abuse - Poison Penn asks if I have a problem with Jewish people - a strange question from a non-Jewish Zionist and my response is no, just with racists like her

The result was that the hearing had to be postponed until next Monday 30^th October.  [see Don’t Ever Underestimate the Stupidity of McNicol’s Witch-hunters]  They had put in for £7,000 costs but I persuaded the Judge that they should be disallowed any costs for the last hearing. 

Given their duplicity it is clear that McNicol’s minions are feeling the heat.  There is clearly information in the documents that they will move heaven and earth to ensure isn’t revealed.  When all else fails it seems it’s time to bring in McNicol’s dirty tricks brigade.

Last Saturday the inaugural meeting of Labour Against the Witch-hunt held its first meeting.  An Executive of 4, including myself were elected.  Amongst our first tasks was the setting up of a Facebook group. [see Labour Against the Witchhunt Forms in Response to Expulsion of Moshe Machover – Join Us]

Imagine my surprise when I received an email from McNicol’s solicitor, Jai Sharda today.  Perhaps he wanted to agree to a settlement?  Unfortunately not.  He told me that he had received an email yesterday from a person whose identity had been redacted ‘for obvious reasons’ warning me that ‘your actions of intimidation and harassment are continuing to cause considerable distress. You are requested, once again, to immediately refrain from any engaging in further such conduct.’

Pretty serious allegations, if true.  Indeed I wondered why this person hadn’t contacted the Police to have me arrested.  The problem was, of course that she had contacted the Police and they had sent her away with a flea in hear ear.  I am referring to Brighton Councillor Caroline ‘Poison’ Penn.  This blushing violet had made two complaints to the local constabulary. 

Caroline Penn, like Jeremy Newmark and all the Labour Party’s other witch hunters operate under the belief that if an accusation is made against the Left or anti-Zionists it must be believed.An accusation is itself proof of guilt.  The Jewish Labour Movement  even proposed a Rule Change to the last Labour Party conference to that effect.  The ‘victim’ is always right even when they aren’t a victim.

Here we seen 'Poison' Penn attacking people like Mel Melvin and Greg Hadfield who have been expelled or suspended.  She taunts Greg because he has been suspended twice -  'once in 2014 for intimidating behaviour'  yes but the allegation was dropped.  According to Penn, you are guilty of whatever she accuses you of until proven innocent.  The Compliance Unit however never clears someone they just drop the charges.  

Unfortunately for the JLM Shami Chakrabarti had to remind Jeremy Newmark that even bourgeois justice demands something in the way of evidence before you convict someone.  This isn’t Israel.  Labour can't implement the equivalent of Israel's Administrative Detention whereby someone can be detained for years on end without a trial on the basis of a secret policeman’s say so.

The Compliance Unit leaked the details of my suspension whilst refusing to tell me anything - below are the retractions of both papers

Of course it’s quite understandable why Penn and people like Brighton Council leader Warren Morgan are confused. When Brighton Labour Party was suspended on July 2^nd 2016 after the Left had won a majority of the officer posts, Warren Morgan, backed up by Penn made false allegations of spitting.  Immediately McNicol and his lackeys suspended the party, cancelled the elections and handed power back to the defeated candidates!

So it is no surprise that  Caroline Penn has sent an email alleging she is suffering ‘enormous distress’ that she has received ‘further abuse’ and is now concerned about her ‘personal safety and of others that have also complained about Mr Greenstein.’ She also finds it strange that I have not already been expelled.  The amazing thing is that this email says absolutely nothing about what this abuse constitutes.  It is totally vacuous, like its writer.

What is however interesting is that the email is accompanied by the minutes of Labour Against the Witch-hunt of last Saturday.  These minutes were only distributed to members of the Labour Against the Witch hunt Facebook group.  It is therefore clear that someone on the Labour Right, with whom Penn is in contact with, has taken it upon themselves to infiltrate LAW under false pretences.  There is nothing in the minutes that is at all damning and nor is there anything in a screenprint containing dialogue between members of the group.

In other words by her own admission Caroline Penn is party to the infiltration of a group set up to fight expulsions and suspension in the Party by someone who has been operating under false pretences.  And yet she has the audacity to complain of ‘abuse’ and ‘intimidation’.  If  you go to the Police Information Notice that I was issued with you can find out what her complaints are:

Poison Penn's Complains

1.      I have used social media to make contact with Ms Penn – well yes but she has also contacted me on social media.  That’s the nature of Twitter and isn’t in itself an offence.

2.      I have encouraged other people to send abusive messages to her.  What she means is I have tweeted responses to her Zionist nonsense and encouraged others to do so.  On no occasion have I asked anyone to be abusive to her.

3.      I have also ‘used anti-Semitic abuse towards her.’  This is a difficult one.  She is not Jewish unlike me.  How can I be anti-Semitic towards someone who is not Jewish?  There is something called associative discrimination which is where you believe someone to be Jewish when they are not.  For example in Israel there have been a number of times when Jews who look like Arabs have been attacked by those who believed them to be Arabs.  That is an example of anti-Arab racism.

Police Information Notice Detailing the Allegations Against Me but taking no view of the merits of the allegations

      However I have encouraged no one to consider Poison Penn Jewish!  She is without doubt a racist non-Jew a Zionist and an anti-Semite!

4.      Its true I have used the term Zio which is short for Zionist.  Many Zionists are non-Jewish, like Penn and many Jews are not Zionists like me. 

5.      It is true I have called her a racist since she is a member of the JLM.

6.      It is not true I have said she is a Nazi or a member of the BNP.  

      

      I don’t for one moment believe that the email in question was the work of Caroline Penn herself.  To put it bluntly she is not the brightest tool in the box.  Someone in Labour Party HQ realising how weak their case is, has decided to try and use Penn’s already existing false complaints against me to the Police despite the Police themselves turning them down.

[see Racist Labour Councillor, Caroline ‘Poison’ Penn, Complains of ‘Harassment’ on @Cllorcaroline @thepennydrops and Caroline ‘Poison’ Penn @Cllorcaroline @thepennydrops Complains Again

These two emails are from the Jewish Labour Movement, almost certainly Israeli state agent Jeremy Newmark, whining 'is it acceptable to publish a full transcript of a post-suspension interview in this manner?'  Newmark doesn't say what manner would be acceptable.

Don’t Ever Underestimate the Stupidity of McNicol’s Witch-hunters

Another Fine Mess 

Iain McNicol –v- Tony Greenstein

another fine mess

Having done his best to lose Labour the General Electon 'gormless' McNicol pursues a Witchhunt in his own shambolic way

Bogus letter that McNicol's legal team relied on 

Actual letter sent to Tony Greenstein with bundle of documents

As people should be aware, I was suspended from the Labour Party on March 18^th 2016.  I am still suspended.  At no time have any charges against me been formulated, although I learnt from The Telegraph and The Times on April 2^nd 2016 that my suspension was because of the false anti-Semitism campaign that was being waged by the Right and the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement in the Labour Party.

On the 30^th May I had an investigation meeting conducted by the Southern Regional Organiser Harry Gregson.  The Transcript of our Exchange can be viewed here.[See  also Labour’s Inquisition – from the banal to the mundane]  Suffice to say Gregson did not have a clue as to what it was that he was supposed to be investigating.

The JLM's whining plea that my criticism of them would 'further exasperate (sic!) the problem of anti-Semitism in the party.'

I therefore decided on 13^th May to apply, under the Data Protection Act, for copies of all documents relating to me to be disclosed by the Labour Party.  Suffice to say the 40 days allowed for by the DPA was exceeded and it was only on 15^th July, 60 days later, that I was supplied with about 300 pages of documents.   Many of these documents were either duplicates of each other or correspondence that I already had. 

A number of the documents were redacted, i.e. blacked out.  Correspondents’ names were deleted and often large chunks of text were deleted and in the case of 4 documents everything was blacked out.  What, I wondered, did they have to hide?  In some cases it was possible to guess the identity of the informant.  In other cases they blacked out a name in the header and then kindly left it at the end of the document.

McNicol's idea of disclosure

McNicol's idea of a full and frank disclosure - the question is what is he hiding?

At other times, it was obvious from the context and content who the correspondent was.  E.g. it is difficult not to recognise the whining voice of the Jewish Labour Movement’s Chair, Jeremy Newmark, complaining about my criticism of the little racists and urging McNicol to speed up the expulsion!

Nonetheless in a significant number of cases, it was impossible to discern what was being hidden.  It was also clear from some of the comments left in that many of the remarks were prejudicial asides from the very Labour Party staff who were supposed to be impartially administering the process.

I therefore wrote to the Labour Party demanding that there be full disclosure.  Suffice to say I received no response (Labour Party bureaucrats rarely engage in correspondence.  From some of the correspondence it is clear that they debate among themselves whether they should response. This is quite understandable as they don’t see themselves as accountable to anyone.

I therefore decided, having taken legal advice via the Bar Pro Bono Unit that I would initiate legal proceedings on 8^th May against McNicol for full disclosure of the redacted documents.  On 22^nd June the case was listed for a hearing on August 8^th.

Leaks to the national press about my suspension - at the same time as telling me nothing

Until the 28^th July, just over a week before the hearing, I had heard nothing.  ‘Crooked’ McNicol was, I assumed, still recovering from the shock of the election result that he’d done so much to prevent. On  4^th August McNicol’s solicitors whacked in a 9 page witness statement, a bill of costs for £7,000 (McNicol’s legal beavers don’t come cheap) and two files containing some 350+ pages of exhibits. All were sent via 2 massive email files.  

I noticed on the tail of the email a  message ‘William Sturges LLP does not accept service of any court proceedings or other documents by email’.  I therefore sent them an email informing them that Tony Greenstein also doesn’t accept service of court documents by email, especially when there are 350 pages of them to print off.   Suffice to say they sent them by snail mail, arriving on 6^th August, i.e. less than 2 days before the hearing!

Satirical take on the logical implications of Labour's false anti-Semitism witch hunt is entirely lost on McNicol's humourless minions

Going through the witness statement I noticed a curious thing..  In Para. 8 it stated that ‘The Party replied to the SAR on 10 November 2016.’  This was rather curious since they had responded on 15^th July, some 4 months earlier.  Consulting their Bundle, there was a letter, not much different from the one I had received, dated 10.11.16.  Even more curious, it was addressed to me at an address I haven’t lived at for 14 years! 

When I first moved to this address in 1993 I had also been suspended from the Labour Party along with about 30 others.  After my one year suspension was up I briefly rejoined the party and received an agenda to a meeting of Woodingdean LP which announced that the Ward was supporting some local racist campaign to get rid of Gypsies from the local park.  Zionism in the Labour Party party is bad enough without a dose of anti-gypsy racism too. 

I know that the Progress Right and people like Cllrs. Poison Penn and Emma Daniels, who parade their opposition to ‘anti-Semitism’ (i.e. support for anti-Palestinian racism) are only too happy to go along with anti-Gypsy/Roma racism but I wasn’t prepared to remain a member of a party that tolerated this racism.  Although it is convenient to forget it today, since the Holocaust is treated as a Jewish only affair, but proportionately as many Gypsies/Roma were exterminated by the Nazis as Jews.  Clearly my old address had remained on file and equally clearly McNicol’s incompetent buffoons in the Compliance Unit had somehow managed to swap  my old for my current address, whilst forgetting that they had already mailed out a Bundle of Documents.

Letter to The Times

Either that or the Labour Party had simply forged the letter of 10 November as I initially suspected.  Either way Jay Sharda’s tortured explanation for why the documents were disclosed 4 months after they had actually been disclosed was pure waffle.  However it wasn’t until I emailed the letter to William Sturges and the Court that McNicol’s solicitors woke up to the fact that their whole case was based on the wrong set of documents!

Suffice to say that it was a rather shamefaced solicitor and barrister who approached me to agree on an adjournment which I had already indicated I would be applying for as even I find it difficult to assimilate 350 pages of documents and a torturous witness statement at less than 2 days notice.  In fact I did pen a response to a witness statement was dishonest and dissembling.

To give a flavour of Sharda’s witness statement take the following example from para. 21(b):

The Claimant also openly regards Muslims as "the route [sic] cause of our [the Party's] problems" [315] and talks with his followers about how it is "tempting" to shoot a Jewish Labour Movement staff member for being a Zionist [332 - 333].

A humorous exchange on Twitter becomes a plot to murder the fragrant Ella Rose

Not only am I an anti-Semite but I am also Islamaphobic and to cap it all I want to shoot a member of the JLM staff (its Director, the fragrant Ella Rose).  Clearly if these accusations are true then I deserve to be expelled.  Indeed ‘Crooked’ McNicol deserves to be censored for not having ensured that I was expelled months ago.  But what is the truth of these allegations?

Letter to the Telegraph after article insinuating antiSemitism

Sharda referred to two documents, the first on pages 315-6.  This is an email of 3 May 2016 to Iain McNicol from me.  It was entitled ‘Rule Change re Anti-Semitism – Proposal Which Should Satisfy All Parties’.   I realise that McNicol’s minions are a few sandwiches short of a picnic, as well as being humourless, but a proposal from me which suggests that all applicants to the Labour Party should have their membership vetted by the Israeli Embassy might just alert them to the fact that this was satire.  Clearly not.

In the email I take McNicol and co. to task for the fact that their concern with ‘anti-Semitism’ revolves around the use of language.  They reduce the Holocaust to a set of acceptable phrases and use of terms like ‘Final Solution’ is verboten.  Their concern is not with the lessons of the Holocaust but treating it as some form of sacred icon.  In that way they never draw any parallels between Nazi Germany and European fascism and what is happening in Israel today.

Labour supporting Telegraph prints the Compliance Unit's leaks

The Telegraph has second thoughts

For example Naz Shah MP used the words ‘transport’ – apparently this is anti-Semitic as it might refer to the transport the Nazis used to deport Holocaust victims. Whilst the Labour Right turns a blind eye to actual living examples of racism in Israel, which they portray as a democratic state, they examine under the microscope any deviation from language norms for signs that they might be ‘anti-Semitic’. So a state where chants of ‘Death to the Arabs’ is a norm or where Palestinians have their houses and villages demolished for Jewish settlers is held out to be a paragon of western democracy.  But if you put a syllable wrong when it comes to the Holocaust, if you don’t pay due deference to language whilst ignoring the real lessons of what happened in Europe then you are classified as ‘anti-Semitic’ by these racist hypocrites.  One might have thought though that a well paid solicitor might have been put on notice that satire is used as a way of highlighing the idiocy of his client’s views.  Obviously not.

The second example is even more ludicrous (if that is possible).  Readers may remember the Al Jazeera programme, The Lobby, about dirty tricks by the Israeli Embassy, the JLM and Labour Friends of Israel in the Labour Party last January. In one of the clips the juvenile Director of the JLM Ella Rose is captured as saying ‘I’m a Zionist shoot me’.  On Twitter a few of us therefore agreed how tempting this invitation was!  Only a complete fool or idiot would take such a comment seriously.

The Times withdrew its insinuation of anti-Semitism

The Hearing

At the hearing yesterday, having received my response to their witness statement at 4 am, McNicol’s minions were suitably subdued having got everything including the documentation wrong.  At the hearing itself Directions were agreed for the filing of documents. The Labour Party legal representatives made themselves look pretty stupid because the Labour Party has no record of sending me a bundle of documents in May 2016!  So it is up to me to supply them with a list of what they sent to me.  Utterly absurd but McNicol’s witch hunters are not merely reactionary apologists for racism but extremely incompetent ones too. I therefore made an application that regardless of the eventual outcome of the case, the costs of the attendance of the Labour Party’s legal representatives should be borne by the Labour Party not me.  Although their barrister resisted my application the Judge agree with the application and she ruled that no order for costs would be made.  McNicol and co. will therefore pay at least £1,000 out of members’ subs because John Stolliday and the Compliance Unit are incompetent fools.

Despite the attempt of the Labour Party legal team prior to today’s hearing to have the whole application rejected, in the end they were forced to agree to a timetable over the next 3 months for the service and preparation of documents.

Thus the stage will be set by October 16^th or thereafter for battle to be joined on whether or not the Labour Party is allowed to drive a coach and horses through the Data Protection Act by supplying blacked out documents to protect the identity of its staff and informants.  Watch this space! 

And thanks to Becky and Anne from Brighton and Hove Momentum who accompanied me and provided me with moral support!

Tony Greenstein