Complaint to The Labour Party

This is a letter I have today sent to Iain McNicol, The General Secretary of the Labour Party. I make no further comment at this stage save to say that just when you expect Sandwell Labour can't sink any lower:

Mr Iain McNicol                                                                                         

General Secretary                                                                                     

The Labour Party                                                                                      23rd August, 2017

Kings Manor

Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE1 6PA

FOR THE ATTENTION OF IAIN MCNICOL - GENERAL SECRETARY

Dear Mr McNicol,

THIS IS NOT A PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION

Please note that I am not a Labour Party member but I am writing as two Labour Councillors have sought to use me to smear Labour colleagues at Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council (SMBC).

You are officially the person I should write to but I do so with some trepidation as I am told you are a puppet of Tom Watson MP who features in the sorry saga. However, I am copying in a number of people mentioned in what follows and I am sure the solicitors of Cllrs Hussain and Ian Jones will take a keen interest in all this. I am also putting all this in the public domain as the secrecy prevalent in Sandwell Labour is wholly unacceptable.

I am the principal author of a blog about the fraud, corruption, cronyism and corruption of the Labour-controlled Council principally (although not exclusively) during the “leadership” of the late Darren Cooper. In his lifetime Cooper “hit back” at myself and my wife and his conduct was the subject of complaints to Labour’s former leader, Ed Miliband, which were duly ignored.

What is concerning me is that I have been fed information by two Councillors highly detrimental to Cllrs Hussain and Ian Jones whilst various court cases have been ongoing involving the Councillors both The Labour Party and Sandwell Council. I am concerned that evidence has been given by parties on oath that there has been no “bias” against Cllrs Hussain and Jones when this is patently untrue.

There are a couple of matters I should mention straight away. On the question of bias it should be noted that Jan Britton, the pathetic groveller who purports to be Chief Executive of Sandwell Council, is seemingly incapable of independent thought and action and has been more than willing (in return for high status and salary) to be a pawn doing exactly as ordered by Cllrs Cooper and Eling (that is the most generous scenario - it may be that the situation with this man is far, far, worse). He worked with Darren Cooper and, seemingly, former Assistant Chief Executive Melanie Dudley to protect Cllr Hussain eg his non-investigation into the circumstances surrounding the award of a part of a valuable taxi contract to Cllr Hussain’s firm.

It seems that neither Darren Cooper when he was alive nor Jan Britton and Melanie Dudley were interviewed under caution by West Midlands Police when they purported to investigate the widespread fraud and corruption within the Council. It seems that certain persons were determined to thwart the police investigation and they had allies within the police force. It is noteworthy that the terms of reference into the useless “Wragge Report” were very narrowly drawn by Jan Britton and Melanie Dudley - seemingly to please Darren Cooper who, at that stage, was most anxious to exonerate Cllrs Hussain and Jones.

The mood changed when the draft report came out and Cooper and Hussain fell out. Then various interested parties who had hidden under the blankets decided to declare “open season” on Cllrs Hussain, Ian Jones and the latter’s family.

It should be noted that Cllr Eling was Deputy Leader throughout all these matters. He was the “money man” within the Council and given that Cllr Cooper was intellectually-challenged Cllr Eling was highly involved in “everything”. Despite this he claims to have been totally unaware of the ongoing fraud and corruption. I understand that he has not been interviewed under caution in the police investigation as to what he did or did not know.

Of course, the mood changed completely upon Cooper’s death and Eling decided he wanted the top job. He was aided to that end by two MP’s, Spellar and Watson. Eling and his (now bankrupt) sidekick Cllr Richard Marshall declared war on Cllrs Hussain and Ian Jones (and anyone supporting them). What follows is just a vignette of what they were up to but they wanted to destroy these two and to say that there was no “bias” from the top against them is totally false. From the Council’s side Jan Britton has been more than willing to do their bidding and I am told that he was asked at the High Court about an allegation that he would be sacked if Cllr Jones beat Cllr Eling to the leadership.

I am not sure how long Councillor Marshall has been a member of the Labour Party but he has not been a Councillor for long and yet he has been appointed by Eling to the all-powerful Sandwell Council “Cabinet” where he remains respite his bankruptcy. He has been very diligent in trying to protect his own position and to damage Labour Councillors and members at will. In the most egregious example he said that a male Councillor had a trans partner or, as Cllr Marshall put it, “he’s got a cock in a frock.”

Following Cooper’s death an intermediary approached me and said that Councillor Steve Eling wished to meet with me as he was planning to root out the corruption of the Cooper years (which he had allegedly failed to notice himself). Thus a meeting was arranged on 29th June, 2016 at The Windsor Public House in central Birmingham. I attended with the intermediary and Cllr Eling attended with Cllr Richard Marshall.

It should be noted that prior to this meeting I had written extensively in the blog about what I considered to be “wrongdoing” by a number of Sandwell Labour Councillors including Cllrs Mahboob Hussain, Ian Jones and Olwen Jones.

Cllr Eling spun me the line that he wanted to “drain the swamp” as he put it. Corrupt councillors and officials would face the consequences of their actions during the Cooper years. Cllr Marshall was to be his “enforcer” and would be in contact with me if I was prepared to “come on board” with the alleged clean-up project. For the corruption to be rooted out it was essential that Cllr Eling defeated his opponents so as to consolidate his leadership of Sandwell Labour and, thus, the Council. Accordingly, I was invited to use my energies to attack his opponents as much as possible. They would hand me ammunition to fire.

I was very concerned that Cllr Eling himself had been at the helm of the Council throughout the long period of corrupt practice but had totally failed to suppress it. I was particularly exercised about his significant personal involvement in the “IceStink” affair - an extremely bent deal to build an ice rink in West Bromwich. In the pub, Cllr Eling assured me that it had all been a terrible mistake and gave me his word that the corrupt transaction would not be going ahead.

I said that I would not be silenced and would point out wrongdoing wherever it occurred in the “rotten borough”. However, I could see merit in a new administration attempting to clean-up the Council and I was prepared to give Eling the benefit of the not inconsiderable doubt. As he was merely asking me to attack Councillors that I was already attempting to expose anyway I was happy to continue to “put the boot in” and if Eling and Marshall could assist, then all well and good. Cllr Marshall would be the principal point of contact.

Following the meeting, Cllrs Eling and Marshall fed me information about Eling’s opponents and, in particular, the three councillors mentioned. Eling himself rarely contacted me directly but was fully behind this activity. It is down to The Party what disciplinary action you intend to take against these two but I urge you to pass this correspondence to the Party’s lawyers to ensure that no false or misleading evidence has already been submitted to the courts and that none will be in the future.

Please also note that what follows is simply evidence of the vicious attacks made by Cllrs Eling and Marshall on Cllrs Hussain, Ian Jones and others. I have no intention of defaming any of the individuals mentioned and do not say that any of the allegations are actually true. Indeed, Cllrs Eling and Marshall have singularly failed to produce any evidence supporting their allegations - perhaps a clear indication that they were prepared to smear people without robust corroborative evidence?

One small matter also arises. Cllrs Eling and Marshall imply that they used contacts to obtain strictly private information from within the DWP concerning Cllr Hussain. It may well be that you will wish to investigate that potential illegality as a matter of urgency.

Please now refer to the following technical blogs which contain the matters complained of:

http://thesandwellskidder.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/the-elingmarshall-files-2016-technical.html


http://thesandwellskidder.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/the-elingmarshall-files-2017-technical.html

Yours faithfully.

Julian Saunders

Cc

Private Eye Magazine

Adrian Bailey MP

Cllr Zahoor Ahmed

Cllr Peter Allen

Cllr Babu Bawa

Cllr Elaine Costigan

Cllr Maria Crompton

Cllr Yvonne Davies

Cllr Steve Eling

Cllr Steven Frear

Cllr Joanne Hadley

Cllr Amhadul Haque

Cllr Linda Horton

Cllr Roger Horton

Cllr Peter Hughes

Cllr Mahboob Hussain

Cllr Ian Jones

Cllr Olwen Jones

Cllr Steven Jones

Cllr Bob Lloyd

Cllr Richard Marshall

Cllr Mohammad Rouf

THE SANDWELL SKIDDER - COMMUNITY NEWS - READ THE SKIDDER, KIDDER!