Campaign for Conservative Democracy

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

COPOV Forum 22nd February 2020

Do come and join us at the next COPOV Forum on 22nd February 20. Details at EVENTS Amongst other items we will be discussing Selection of Local Government Candidates, Brexit, Freedom of Speech and Climate Change. Should be an interesting meeting!

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Selection of Parliamentary Candidates - Is Democracy dying?

Selection of Parliamentary Candidates - is Democracy dying?

John E. Strafford

With the victory of the Conservative Party in the 2019 General Election we are witnessing the greatest advance for democracy in a generation. The commitment to withdraw from the European Union on 31^st January 2020 means that at last we are taking back control of our democracy. Once again Parliament will be in control of our legislation. Once again, the people will be able to vote for their representative in a parliament which legislates for the people of the United Kingdom, and once again it will be judges of the United Kingdom that determine what the law means.

With the 2019 General Election we have also witnessed the greatest distortion of democracy since before the Second World War, when rich Tory parliamentary candidates purchased their seats in Parliament – a practise stopped by Lord Woolton’s reform of the Conservative Party in 1948.

Both Labour and Conservative parties deliberately delayed choosing their candidates for the General Election in order that a small group of people in their headquarters could decide who their own parliamentary candidates should be. When the General Election was announced both Parties invoked “Emergency Procedures” to enable their HQs to take control of the process of selecting Parliamentary candidates. The Brexit Party followed their example and did not announce their candidates until two days before nominations closed. In addition the Brexit Party, which does not have any members, decided which constituencies should be contested. Who took those decisions? Party members of the two main Parties were effectively excluded from the process. In the case of the Labour Party this was done for the Trade Unions to have a larger say in the selections in order to get more trade unionists into Parliament. In the case of the Conservative Party it was done in order to get friends of Cabinet Ministers, special advisers, party officials and friends of the hierarchy into Parliament. In the case of the Brexit Party it was done to enable their Leader to determine who should be a candidate.

Beaconsfield Constituency Conservative Association (BCCA) had been trying to get the process of selecting a candidate started for over six months before the General Election. Our Member of Parliament, Dominic Grieve had lost two separate votes of confidence in General Meetings of the Association. At last, on 31^st October BCCA was given the go-ahead by CCHQ, but told it had to follow the “Rules for the selection of Parliamentary Candidates for a General Election in 2019” (Rules shown in bold) issued by CCHQ as an emergency overriding the Rules in the Party’s Constitution. A similar process had been implemented when the 2017 General Election was unexpectedly called.

As our Conservative MP, Dominic Grieve was not in receipt of the Conservative Whip he could not be re-selected so the following procedure had to be followed:

“The Party Chairman and Chairman of the National Conservative Convention (neither of which have been elected or are accountable to all Party Members) will nominate a shortlist of up to 3 applicants, (giving due regard to gender balance) after consultation with the Chief Agent, Director of Candidates, the Chairmen of the Candidates Committee (all of which are unelected and unaccountable) and the Chairman and two Deputies of the Association.

An Executive Council and a Special General Meeting were called to take place on Saturday 9^th November. Names of the candidates and a standard CV were given to Party members one hour before the meetings started. The meetings “will be run consecutively to save time. The meeting will begin with the Executive Council, but members who are not members of the Executive are permitted to be present as observers.

At the meeting of the Executive Council, members will simply be asked to agree that the shortlist shall be put to members for selection. The General meeting will then follow immediately, and the shortlist of candidates will be interviewed.

Voting is to be by exhaustive ballot until one candidate has more than 50% of the votes from those qualified members present and voting.

Occasionally, the Executive Council or the SGM are not satisfied with the choice of applicants put forward from the previous round. In these rare cases the proper procedure is to move that the matter be referred back. This must be done before the ballot is taken, but after the applicants have been heard. After the motion for reference back has been formally proposed and seconded it should be put to the vote by secret ballot without debate. If the reference back is defeated the proceedings must continue and proceed immediately to the ballot between the candidates. If passed the selection process will be halted and for this General Election the Chairman of the Conservative Party will nominate the candidate.

The Chairman of the Beaconsfield Association was a candidate and was one of the three names. Who decided that? How were the other two names chosen?

The BCCA officers were notified of the three names on Tuesday 5^th November with strict instructions not to disclose them. Nevertheless the following day supporters of the BCCA Chairman were campaigning for him. On Thursday 7^th November the female candidate pulled out and to ensure gender balance was replaced by another female candidate, so effectively two candidates had four days notice of the meeting and one candidate had two days notice.

The vast majority of members attending the selection meeting did not know who the candidates were until they arrived at the meeting so were unable to find out any information about them apart from the brief biographical details submitted to the selection meeting.

The Agent for Beaconsfield had assured me that he could run a full and fair selection process within one week as he did in 1997 in similar circumstances, so why was the Association forced to adopt this wholly undemocratic process? There was time for Beaconsfield to have a full, fair democratic process for the selection of their candidate. Nominations for the General Election closed on 14^th November.

Beaconsfield is one of the largest Conservative Association in the country with approximately 1,500 members. The last time it had to select a new parliamentary candidate in 1997 it had over 200 applications.

There is one further point which does not affect Beaconsfield but may have affected other Associations where there is a sitting Conservative MP. If the sitting Member of Parliament has already been readopted by the Executive Council, no further action is required and so long as the MP still wishes to stand again the candidate is selected unless the whip has been removed. Every Constituency Association should hold an Adoption meeting to which all members are invited. This was the position prior to 2006 and should be re-instated to ensure democracy is openly seen to be working and all members of an Association take part in selecting their candidate.

After the debacle of the selection of candidates for the 2017 General Election it is unforgivable that we were put in the same position for the 2019 General Election. The Party Board and the Committee on Candidates have failed in their duty. It is time for the Party Chairman and the Chairman of the Candidates Committee to be elected by and accountable to the members of the Party at an Annual General Meeting to which all party members are invited.

Once again, the ordinary Party members have been treated with the utmost contempt by CCHQ, but the contempt goes further; effectively a small group of people are determining who the parliamentary candidates should be. From these candidates we will get our Members of Parliament. From our Members of Parliament, we will get our Government Ministers, so these decisions affect democracy.

The situation is now so serious that there should be a public inquiry seeking to clarify whether the undemocratic nature of our main political parties’ is distorting parliamentary democracy in the United Kingdom!

Postscript: The candidate eventually chosen by the Beaconsfield Association was Joy Morrissey who is proving to be excellent, and I am sure if the full democratic process had been followed would have topped the list of candidates in any case. Notwithstanding this exception the principle of having a democratic process for the selection of candidates still stands.

Monday, January 20, 2020

How Sir Graham Brady protected May

Interesting article in the Critic magazine raises the question "Who notified the Sunday Telegraph? - "Mea Culpa". I told a member of the 1922 Committee that the rules could be changed and sent a copy to them, at the same time copying in the Sunday Telegraph. They then took it up with Lords Hamilton and Spicer. The rest is history. Ironically the Rules were sent to me after my request to Gavin Barwell for a copy in 2005, at the time of the Leadership contest involving David Cameron.
After the Telegraph article I was inundated by MPs and journalists for a copy of the Rules. I did not realize they were so restricted!

Thursday, December 19, 2019

Speech - North Down Conservatives - 28th November 2019 Transcript. For video see below

Speech – North Down Conservatives – 28^th November2019

John Strafford

Ladies and Gentlemen – Good evening!

Friends

Conservative friends

Conservative friends of Northern Ireland

It is a great pleasure to be here and to support Mathew Robinson as your Conservative candidate in the General Election and I look forward to seeing him as the first of many Conservative MPs from Northern Ireland to sit in the House of Commons.

I have met Mathew before and I can tell you he is a great Conservative and a great believer in democracy including within the Conservative Party.

Of course, I have been to Northern Ireland before and each time when I arrive at Belfast International Airport and start to descend the steps from the plane, there on the ground before me I see a great big mat and on that mat are written the words: Welcome, Welcome home!

For that is how I feel. For many, many, years you have shown me friendship, kindness, hospitality. There is nowhere in the United Kingdom, except perhaps Sheffield in Yorkshire, where I was born, that has a bigger heart.

30 years ago, doesn’t time fly; at the Conservative Party conference a motion was passed to let the people of Northern Ireland be members of the Conservative Party. Sadly, many of those who worked so hard to bring that about are no longer with us, but I can still see their happy faces when that motion was passed. Happily, some of you are here today to remember that wonderful occasion.

Let me for a few moments indulge in a bit of nostalgia to explain to those who were not there what happened.

In April 1988 I was the Chairman of the Beaconsfield Constituency Conservative Association, one of the strongest associations in the country. It had 6,500 members and raised lots of money for the Party.

Out of the blue I received a letter from a lady in Northern Ireland writing on behalf of the “Tories for Equal Citizenship”. In the letter she put the following question:

Why is it that although I am a citizen of the United Kingdom I cannot join and be a member of the political party which forms the government of the United Kingdom? At the time I didn’t know that, so I took the question to the Executive Council of the Beaconsfield Association and asked them. They didn’t know either, but went on to say “write to the Party Chairman, who at the time was Peter Brooke, and ask him. So I did. His reply was not very satisfactory. He said it was all historical and the Ulster Unionists had been part of the Party but had left and it was all very difficult!

I began to get more and more involved with the North Down Model Conservative Association, and at the 1988 Party conference a petition was organised and got over 1200 signatures and there was a packed out fringe meeting.

In 1988 the Conservative Party launched a national membership drive and the last session of the conference was on Party organisation so I put my name in to speak. I was the last speaker in the session and having spoken about what we had done in Beaconsfield about membership I then went on to say “There is other way in which we can increase the membership of the Conservative Party and that is to allow the people of Northern Ireland to be members of it.” That got a big cheer. The lovely Teresa Gorman, do you remember Teresa, said to me “you have changed the course of history”. Nothing like a bit of flattery to get the adrenalin flowing!

Lawrence Kennedy and others were watching the conference in a TV rental shop, because they were not allowed into the Conference centre and immediately found me and asked if I would come to Northern Ireland and address a meeting. I said “when?” He said “next Friday”. “OK” I said, and so I came to Northern Ireland for the first time. I was expecting a meeting with perhaps a dozen people. No, the hall was packed out. I had never seen so much enthusiasm from people wanting to join the Conservative Party. I was given a standing ovation.

A report of the meeting went to Ian Gow MP, a great man who promptly wrote to Pater Brooke and described the meeting and told Peter Brooke that he now had to take action. I was given a copy of the letter.

The next month I got the National Union Executive Committee, which I sat on, to support a motion to affiliate the North Down Conservatives to the Conservative Party and I then went on to get a similar motion agreed by the Wessex Area Regional Council.

It was therefore a big disappointment when in November 1988 the National Union announced the rejection of the application.

What now I thought? Maybe the answer was to alter the Constitution of the Conservative Party. Big shock – the Conservative Party did not have a Constitution. The Party was not a legal entity! At that time the Conservative Party consisted of three separate entities; they were the Leader’s Office, the Parliamentary Party and the Voluntary Party which was the National Union of Conservative Associations. Now fortunately the National Union did have a Constitution and in that Constitution it spoke about England and Wales so I put down a motion to alter the Constitution by inserting “and Northern Ireland” everywhere after “England and Wales” and tabled it for the Central Council meeting of the National Union in Scarborough in March 1989.

That really caused consternation in CCHQ. Their first reaction was that I couldn’t do that, but I showed them that it was my right to do it.

Next I received an invitation to dinner with Sir Peter Lane, later Lord Lane, who was the Chairman of the National Union and Peter Brooke, the Party Chairman at Peter Lane’s home in Woking.

It was a very enjoyable dinner. Peter Brooke was concerned that my motion would dominate the Agenda and detract from the media coverage they hoped to get for the elections to the European Parliament which were coming up. I agreed that I would drop the motion if they undertook to have a motion at the Party Conference in October and would publicly announce this at the Central Council meeting. They agreed and they stuck to their word. I was delighted because now I was convinced that it would pass at the Party conference. It did!

So, ladies and gentlemen that is briefly what happened. I have not been able to include in this summary details of all the help that was given by people like Myrtle Boal, Lawrence Kennedy, James O’Fee, Barbara Finney, Paul McGarritty and many many others, the media coverage by the Telegraph, the Spectator whose editor was Charles Moore and Deputy Editor Simon Heffer; or the bomb threat I received at my house in Gerrards Cross which meant I had protection by the Royal Protection Squad based in Windsor for a couple of years; or the fact that this led to the Conservative Party getting a Constitution in 1998.

Let me just briefly comment on what happened after this and then I will sit down and take questions.

Lawrence Kennedy fought the General Election in North down in 1992 and came within 4,000 votes of winning it. The Conservatives in Northern Ireland got virtually no help or assistance from Conservative Central Office. It was only later that we found out the reason for this. The Conservative government were in negotiation with the IRA and the Dublin government to try and reach a peace agreement and the Dublin government were putting huge pressure on John Major not to give any support to the Conservatives in order not to jeopardise this. That situation continued throughout the nineties. Then in 1997 we got Tony Blair and eventually the Good Friday Agreement.

My view is that the people grasped at the Good Friday Agreement because it offered a reduction in the violence in Northern Ireland and it did. However, I said at the time it was fundamentally flawed. It had a democratic fault line running right through it.

Democracy is a system of government in which the people exercise power through their representatives by a process in which the will of the majority is determined. In a democratic society the majority will take into account the views of the minority when exercising their will and so govern for all the people. What it cannot do is give a minority a veto on the will of the majority. This is where the Good Friday agreement fell down and what we see today at Stormont is the result.

Today, politics is in turmoil. We are taking back power from an undemocratic European Union; a body where legislation is put forward by an unelected, unaccountable European Commission, a parliament where you can only vote for a party and not an individual to represent you, a Council of Minister which meets in secret, a system of voting where a vote in Luxembourg is worth four times a vote in the United Kingdom because the constituencies do not have a vote of equal value.

The road to democracy has been hard fought and tough. From the Levellers of the 1640s to the Chartists to the riots in 1832 when the great Reform Act was passed the going has been hard and there was no greater suffering than when the suffragettes were fighting for votes for women.

Today the baton of freedom and democracy has been passed to a new generation. I know you will carry that baton with all the fervour and enthusiasm our predecessors have done. Let us now ride this rainbow of opportunity and grab that pot of gold containing those precious stones. Freedom, Democracy, Liberty and Justice.

So my message to the people of Northern Ireland is:

You may say I am a dreamer

But I am not the only one

I hope someday you’ll join us

And the world will live as one

That is why we have to win this General Election on December 12, because when we do we will take our nation back and begin to build once again a great nation for the future and the World will be our oyster. Vote Conservative and we will give you back your country.