I joined the party in 2014. Almost immediately I was appointed to the Governance Review Working Group, which conference had voted to create to come up with changes to modernise the constitution.
In 2016, a job-share and I were elected unopposed to GPEx as Management Coordinators and stayed in post for two years, although my job-share resigned in despair at the end of the first year. These first years in the party introduced me to identity politics for the first time, and also to a clear understanding of the weaknesses in the party’s governance and management arrangements. I decided to stand as Chair of the Executive with the aim of professionalising the party. I served for four years, stepping down in 2022.
Just one male member has complained about me in ten years, submitting three complaints from 2016 to 2020 (alongside a fourth from ‘anonymous’). The first was dismissed by Disciplinary Committee as vexatious. In 2019, two further complaints were made and at a hearing held when I was chairing a GPEx meeting, Disciplinary Committee suspended me for three years. I lost my appeal against this decision.
I employed a solicitor and within three months, on the advice of the party’s lawyers, GPEx declared the decision against me null and void. I was re-elected as GPEx Chair with a large majority three months later.
“In September 2020, the same male member re-submitted the same complaints, with a multitude of added and un-evidenced extras. Three years and two months later (!), Disciplinary Committee heard these complaints – in a distinctly ill-disciplined way – and suspended me for four years in mid-December 2023..”
I waited a year for an appeal hearing to be arranged for 17th November 2024. In the meantime, to my astonishment, I was informed on 23rd October 2024 that I had been expelled by GPRC in July under its No Fault Suspension rules because I had helped deliver leaflets for Ellie Chowns’ campaign in North Herefordshire. Apparently volunteering to deliver leaflets is a breach of my suspension – whose conditions had not been shared with me. I was also told that I had the right to appeal, apparently in contravention of GPRC’s own NFS rules.
But not to worry, a week after the appeal hearing, I was informed by Appeals Committee that it had concluded that the sanction of four years’ suspension was inadequate and they increased the sanction to expulsion! Kafka-esque comes to mind.
So here I am with two overlapping expulsions, and a mountain of evidence for lawyers.
This woman will not go quietly into the night…
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