Gorgeous George alleges fraud...

George Galloway, the Respect candidate in Bethnal Green and Bow, today called for a police inquiry into ballot fraud and ghost voting which the party has uncovered. He called it 'a brazen conspiracy to steal the election'. He also slated Toward Hamlets Council's electoral office for publishing an electoral roll which he said was 'so shot through with errors and anomalies, deliberate or not, as to be almost meaningless'. In particular he instanced more than 200 votes registered at an address which had been turned into offices more than a year ago. Voting fraud exposed in Bethnal Green and Bow, UK [see his letter to the Returning Officer Christine Gilbert ]

39 other constituencies across the UK, formal investigations continue into allegations of ballot abuse. The widespread use of postal voting, and the attendant risk of electoral fraud, has raised the prospect of a string of legal challenges to the results, court cases that could throw the outcome in many seats - and potentially the national election itself - into doubt for weeks or months. About six million of the 44 million people who were entitled to vote in yesterda's election were believed to have done so before the polling stations even opened. scotsman

'STASI' - Labour kicks out activists who backed Welsh rebel

Wednesday May 25, 2005 - NEC takes action after election rout in Nye Bevan's former home

Rex Herbert joined the Labour party in 1949 and holds an MBE for 52 years of loyal service as a councillor in south Wales.

But the retired teacher has become a victim of "auto-exclusion", the Labour hierarchy's phrase for the expulsion of party activists who helped former Labour mayor turned independent candidate Peter Law to a spectacular election victory Blaenau Gwent. The dismissal of 20 members accused of campaigning for Mr Law was set to be confirmed by the National Executive Committee last night in a move which activists predicted could tear the party apart in Wales. One member "auto-excluded" for writing a critical letter to the local paper said Labour was behaving "like the Stasi". Others said they were expelled for displaying Mr Law's posters or being photographed at his side in a covert surveillance operation against Labour rebels.

"After the election Tony Blair said he had learned to listen," said Mr Herbert, 78.

"In Blaenau Gwent, over 20,000 people shouted 'mend your ways Mr Blair' - local people will not be dictated to. I'm very hurt that I have to leave the party but if it means making the Labour party more democratic I'm happy to be thrown out."

Mr Law stood against his own party after Labour imposed an all-women shortlist on this proud Labour constituency, once home to Nye Bevan, the founder of the NHS, and later former leader Michael Foot. Maggie Jones, the official Labour candidate and a trade union official who still sits on the NEC, was supported by visits from David Blunkett, Peter Hain and John Prescott.

"She knows all the Labour cabinet ministers personally," wrote Gordon Brown in a special letter to local members. "Her voice will be heard in the places that matter."

But in a stunning outcome, Mr Law overturned Labour's 19,000 majority on May 5. He did so after announcing his candidacy following life-threatening brain surgery, barely two and a half weeks before polling day.

"What they tried to do was parachute in a new Labour clone," said Llew Smith, the former Labour MP who retired at the election. "They thought the people in Blaenau Gwent are a bunch of idiots and would accept anything, but the people showed they were not idiots. They had a bit of courage and rejected the clone.

"After this humiliating defeat, Labour should have had the good sense to sit back for a few days and think about it," said Mr Smith.

Mr Herbert remembers seeing Nye Bevan in tears when he was given a loyal welcome by local supporters after he was dismissed from the cabinet in a row over the NHS.

"He was a rebel. If he didn't agree he would say so. I think he would be utterly disgusted."

Mr Smith, who openly supports Mr Law but is still, so far, a Labour member, accused the party of breaking its own rules. He said he was told there would be an open candidate list - allowing Mr Law to stand - if he announced his retirement before December 2002, which he did.

According to Labour, there was no such guarantee.

"Some 20 members in Blaenau Gwent appear to have acted in ways that automatically exclude them from the Labour party," said a spokeswoman for the Welsh Labour party.

"This was reported to the NEC. All these people have signed nomination papers or appeared on leaflets or were [Mr Law's] guests at the count. They all supported an independent candidate against the Labour candidate."

One of those excluded was Elena Evans, 44, who said the party was "dying on its feet" in south Wales.

"The membership is getting older and the numbers are superficially boosted by people from the unions and professionals working for MPs. These are activists they are expelling. These are people who knock on doors and deliver leaflets in the rain."

But not every member is behind the rebels. Some argue that all-women shortlists were crucial in Wales, where only 12 women MPs have ever been elected. Megan Fox, an ordinary party member, said many loyal activists felt bitter at seeing Mr Law reject the party after all their work for him. She said the decision to exclude the 20 rebels was taken locally.

"After all these years of membership, Mr Herbert knew the rules. You can't set down rules and then break them.

"We are loyal party workers and our loyalty is to the party. There are a great many in the party who feel that way." -

Patrick Barkham - The Guardian

Supporters of Law face expulsion from Labour party

How Labour used its election troops to fake popular support

Documentary shows activists writing letters to newspapers and posing as 'local people' to greet Blair on campaign trail

Sunday May 22, 2005 -

In America, they call it 'astroturfing': the faking of grassroots support for a politician or a product whose popularity is on the slide.

Now it emerges that a tactic invented by US pharmaceutical firms to promote drugs - and promptly adopted by the Republicans to shore up George Bush after 9/11 - was imported to Britain to help get Tony Blair re-elected.

A documentary to be screened on Channel 4 tomorrow, filmed by an undercover journalist who got a job in Labour's war room, reveals how party members and supporters were systematically used to create the impression of 'real people' passionately backing the government.

Model letters were drafted for them to 'write' to local papers, as if they had been spontaneously roused to complain about Michael Howard's tactics - while party staff were drafted in to represent 'local people' whom Tony Blair could meet on campaign visits. 'Spontaneous' demonstrations against rival politicians were also organised, with activists instructed to use handwritten homemade-looking placards.

Dispatches reporter Jenny Kleeman worked in Labour's London regional press office in the run-up to the election, then in its Victoria Street national war room - before her services were abruptly dispensed with. In the programme, she complains that the war room was 'one of the most macho places that I've ever worked', describing how Blair's former press chief Alastair Campbell strode across the room to give Cabinet minister Alan Milburn a high five while he was on the phone.

She was dispatched to a press conference addressed by Milburn to help 'fill out' the audience after embarrassingly few journalists turned up - and was filmed shaking hands with Tony Blair as an 'ordinary' person at a photocall. She also helped compile model letters for supporters to send to local papers, complaining that 'as someone who has worked for a number of years in the NHS', they found that Michael Howard's use of the case of pensioner Margaret Dixon - who had her shoulder operation repeatedly cancelled - had not 'accurately represented' the state of the health service. The letters later appeared virtually word for word in local newspapers, under the names of local party activists who did not declare their allegiances.

Such tactics are not entirely new to British politics: when Tony Blair was first elected in 1997, his route to Downing Street was lined with party supporters hastily organised to wave flags and cheer him in. But the Dispatches programme, The Dirty Tricks Election, is the first to show in detail how astroturfing works - and how sophisticated it has become. Campaign materials seen by Dispatches stress that 'more people trust the letters page than any other page of their local newspaper' and that local organisers should target it. The party also kept lists of professionals, such as doctors, senior police officers and teachers, who were not identifiable as Labour party members but could be relied on to speak supportively.

Among the American strategists drafted into the Labour campaign was Zach Exley, a Democrat and expert in internet campaigning who pioneered the use of emails to supporters appealing for money - copied by Labour, who persuaded the author John O'Farrell to put his name to them - and is closely associated with astroturfing.

The technique, which began with Bush's Republican party encouraging pro-war letters to local newspapers, and then by Democrats to push Kerry, is said to have originated with pharmaceutical firms encouraging patients to write letters praising the effects of certain drugs. It is now so widespread in the US that country singer Chely Wright was recently accused of astroturfing a record, when members of her fan club bombarded radio stations asking them to play her latest song.

Yesterday a Labour Party spokesman declined to comment, adding: 'We cannot comment on the documentary because we have not had an opportunity to see it.' However, party sources said Kleeman had been escorted from the building within days of the election campaign starting after officials became suspicious of her behaviour.

Labour's tactics were first detected when reporters noticed a distinctively dressed family appearing twice in events supposedly featuring 'real' local people across London. Rachel and Ben Virgo and their three children were not party members but had written to their MP Oona King when she helped with a constituency query and were asked to get involved. - Gaby Hinsliff, political editor - The Observer

Rachel & Ben Virgo - 'Nu-Labor Family for Hire' - 'We only work for croissants'

Undercover in New Labour

William Dinan, 24 May 2005

Jenny Kleeman, a Dispatches reporter, filmed much of this Channel 4 documentary while working undercover in New Labour's spin machine. Kleeman began working in Labour's London press office dealing with local and regional media early in 2005. She quickly uncovered a series of deceptive tactics used by the party to influence the local media. This was part of a wider New Labour communications strategy to by-pass the (often very critical) national press and attempt to speak directly to the electorate through regional and local media.

Kleeman was first tasked to work on media monitoring. In this job she was part of an orchestrated effort to influence the content of local newspaper letters pages. Working from an internal New Labour manual titled 'Making the Media Work for You' the idea was to exploit readers' high trust in the letters pages as a way of pushing New Labour's message. The tactic here was to get 'unobtrusive party members' to put their name to pre-scripted letters defending Labour's policies on the NHS and education. The sample of published letters the research team uncovered, all bearing the same phrases concocted by New Labour's spin doctors, suggests that this cynical exercise met with some success.

The mendacity and spin that is now routinely associated with New Labour was also in evidence during Blair's electioneering tour of the UK. This campaign was not designed for the national dailies, who often complained that they didn't know where the Prime Minister was (unless tipped off by broadcast colleagues), and were not invited to the carefully orchestrated 'meet the people' events whose sole purpose was to generate television pictures and positive publicity in the local press.

Kleeman's efforts on local media were rewarded when she was promoted to the head office in March. There she discovered a wholesale importation of US political campaigning techniques by New Labour. One tactic was to find what are termed 'endorsers' and place them behind Blair as he addressed various rallies across the nation. Endorsers look good on television, and purportedly represent a cross section of the ordinary voting public. Unsurprisingly these people were carefully chosen. They were party members and only selected if their political views match those of the leadership.

This human backdrop for the New Labour campaign was supposedly evidence of Blair meeting the people and hearing public concerns. Sky's Adam Boulton described this as a 'clinically sterile' campaign. Blair's pledge upon re-election that he had listened to the electorate and would act on what he heard during the new Parliament appears as yet another example of deeply cynical spin. This documentary revealed Blair in a bubble, deliberately avoiding the real people and never hearing anything deemed off-message by the New Labour spin machine.

New Labour were also happy to use dirty tricks pioneered in the US. "Astroturf" campaigning (ie fake grass roots) was in evidence during "spontaneous" flash-mob protests at Tory and Lib Dem events. "Home-made" placards and posters, all echoing New Labour slogans, all apparently written by the same hand, using the same black marker, were prominent at many of these sabotage demonstrations. During the last week of the campaign a group of Labour supporters dressed in Grim Reaper costume and wearing Michael Howard masks shadowed the Tory leader's campaign, heckling and disrupting when they could.

A feature of New Labour's campaign was the use of party members to help spin the media. The complicity of members, admittedly often young student types, but also senior and experienced professionals like doctors and police officers, gives the lie to the notion that New Labour's corruption of public communication is simply the product of a few unscrupulous spin doctors. What this film showed is that this cancer in the body politic is spreading.

Dirty tricks were not only confined to the streets - New Labour took the negative campaign into cyber-space too. Kleeman found a document misplaced into her in-tray one morning which revealed details of a website, NewGoldDream registered to New Labour spin doctor Adrian McMenamin, whose contents included material attacking Charles Kennedy for suggesting that prisoners should be allowed a vote. McMenamin has a history of dirty tricks on the net stretching back to the election in 2001 . New Labour refused to comment on this programme before it was broadcast. It will be interesting to see if they try to spin their way out of the series of documented charges contained in this film. My guess is that they ignore it and hope it goes away, much like they did with issues like Iraq, trust and accountability, pensions and climate change during the recent election. - Spinwatch

Cabinet reshuffle

The new Cabinet

Tony Blair has announced the first Cabinet of his third term as prime minister.

PRIME MINISTER
Tony Blair

DEPUTY PM AND FIRST SECRETARY OF STATE
John Prescott

CHANCELLOR
Gordon Brown

CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS
Lord Falconer

CHIEF WHIP
Hilary Armstrong

COMMONS LEADER
Geoff Hoon

COMMUNITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT
David Miliband

CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT
Tessa Jowell

DEFENCE
Dr John Reid

DUCHY OF LANCASTER
John Hutton

EDUCATION AND SKILLS
Ruth Kelly

ENVIRONMENT, FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS
Margaret Beckett

FOREIGN SECRETARY
Jack Straw

HEALTH
Patricia Hewitt

HOME SECRETARY
Charles Clarke

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Hilary Benn

LEADER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS
Baroness Amos

NORTHERN IRELAND
Peter Hain

PRODUCTIVITY, ENERGY AND INDUSTRY
Alan Johnson

TRANSPORT
Alistair Darling

TREASURY CHIEF SECRETARY
Des Browne

WITHOUT PORTFOLIO
Ian McCartney

WORK AND PENSIONS
David Blunkett