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News and Comment October 2015

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19 October - Two councils in a panic to save Tuckley

The plan for today was to wade through 260 pages of email correspondence exchanged between Bexley and Tower Hamlets councils following the latter’s discovery that their favoured candidate for the vacant Chief Executive post might not be all they could wish for. Even though possibly half of it has been redacted and some is repetitive, anything beyond a simple summary of the fundamental issue is near impossible.

That fundamental issue is that Tuckley refused to conduct a proper investigation into a complaint and the written evidence that he did so is indisputable and published on this website. The police considered the correspondence for about six months; nine witnesses supplied evidence (eight interviewed) each taking between one and more than two hours each to make their statements. Never did the police suggest the case was frivolous and eventually decided it warranted a personal presentation to the CPS.

Bexley council’s aim was to portray the complaint as vexatious and politically motivated and to that end literally dozens of emails passed to and fro (and internally at Tower Hamlets) in the 48 hours preceding Tuckley’s formal adoption. Tower Hamlets HR department appears to have been in near panic while issuing desperate pleas to return phone calls immediately.

In Bexley both Teresa O’Neill and Will Tuckley were kept very busy. There was little defence to the basic allegation against Tuckley; councillor witnesses were known to be ready to confirm that Cheryl Bacon’s account of the night of 19th June 2013 was totally false yet Tuckley would listen only to Bacon. It was clearly irrational, unjust and ultimately became Misconduct in Public Office.

The only defence was to portray Mr. Barnbrook as a Vexatious Fascist Blogger although the F word appears to be a Tower Hamlet’s invention based on Mick’s one time membership of the BNP. If sympathy with the BNP’s anti-EU stance at the height of its brief period of popularity seven years ago is fascist then 27% of the voters of East Wickham ward were fascist too because that was Mick’s poll in the by-election, only eight votes short of the Conservative candidate. That result was held against Mick too, Bexley council described him as a failed election candidate.

Rather more was made by Tuckley and Co. of the ‘vexatious’ label and their emails include many examples of Mick’s questions relating to councillor Cheryl Bacon’s lies. What they do not reveal is that Tuckley’s replies were riddled with untruths because he steadfastly refused to broaden his horizons. What is one supposed to do when faced with a Chief Executive with responsibility for a complaint if he boldly states that he is not prepared to look at the evidence?

Will Tuckley told the Commissioners at Tower Hamlets on 25th August 2015 that “[a named police officer] based in Plumstead has for some time been looking at whether there is a case to answer”. Tuckley implied that the case had been dropped because the only contact with the police was in December 2014. Bexley council had sent a file to Plumstead, they showed it to me. It contained no new evidence and the police probably wanted it just for completeness.

More than four months before Tuckley wrote to Tower Hamlets that same police officer had written to me as follows…


As you are aware the matter was ready to go to the CPS for advice. I postponed the original appointment as Councillors [names redacted] contacted me and made arrangements to give statements. These statements have now been added to the file. Rather than send a paper report I have requested a face-to-face meeting with the CPS in order to ensure the matter is properly put to them without any chance of mis-reading or misinterpretation of the fairly voluminous papers.


By telephone, and perhaps as much as two months later, Mr. Barnbrook was advised that the file was indeed with the CPS but I did not get that advice in writing until 6th September. It is possible that Mr. Tuckley’s brief statement less than two weeks earlier was correct and that the case had made no progress since the previous April but it doesn’t seem very likely and he wouldn’t have known that if as stated he had had no contact with the police.

However the Commissioners were suitably reassured by Bexley council and Rachel Saunders, Tower Hamlets’ Deputy Mayor, duly dismissed Mick as a vexatious fascist. She emailed me to almost apologise that poor reporting by a local newspaper had caused the remark to be aimed at me, but the newspaper reporter and two other witnesses confirmed she had said it.

It is of course Tower Hamlets’ prerogative to appoint who they like and believe who they like but it is mine to expose the obfuscation and dishonesty that guided them. Michael Barnbrook merely wished to advise Tower Hamlets of Tuckley’s situation because he himself had not thought to mention it. Mick’s reference to the CPS was entirely factual. Somehow that simple fact got lost in the the fog of BNP membership, an electoral near miss, a history of complaining and that Mick (who currently hasn’t even got a net connection!) is the author of this website. Most of it is true but it doesn’t change the facts.

It could just as easily have been me who sent that first advisory email to Tower Hamlets, not Mick Barnbrook. If I had done so Bexley’s defence would have fallen apart. The only political party that I ever joined was the Conservatives. I have never considered standing for any election and my complaints against Bexley council have been few. I confine them to their criminal acts, not run of the mill mismanagement and whilst Tuckley threatened me with the vexatious nonsense he withdrew the threat after counting the complaints I had made and asked me to break my informal links with Mr. Barnbrook so he didn’t make the same mistake again.

 

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