Judge rules attempt ‘smacks of fishing expedition’
Former Labour staffer Emilie Oldknow has lost her bid to force Labour to release the identity of the former staff it thinks might have leaked the infamous internal report revealing WhatsApp conversations among senior HQ figures.
The judge ruled that the attempt to force disclosure ‘smacks of a fishing expedition’. Labour is seeking costs related to her application.
The party doesn’t know who leaked the documents, despite spending around £160,000 on ‘forensic’ computer specialists last year to pursue the whistleblowers, but Oldknow and her team wanted the names of people it thinks might be in the frame, presumably in order to pursue them legally. The former staff implicated in the report have claimed that the WhatsApp messages, which included phrases such as ‘fuck off pube head’ and a discussion hoping a Corbyn supporter might die in a fire, as well as talk of channelling campaign funds to a secret kitty staffers wanted to conceal from Corbyn’s team and right-wing staff’s horror at the 2017 general election ‘surge‘, were misleadingly presented.
The SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you can afford to without hardship, please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep bringing you information the Establishment would prefer you not to know about.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
Excellent news!!! More needed thick and fast 🎉🎉🎉
Skwawkbox.org –
1️⃣ – “hoping a Corbyn supporter might die in a fire,”
2️⃣ – “talk of channelling campaign funds to a secret kitty””
3️⃣ – “staffers wanted to conceal from Corbyn’s team”
We must assume Starmer approves of all the above. Has anyone heard the saboteur of TWO TRUE Labour GE victories 2017 AND 2019, even mildly spoken out against those serious wrongdoings? No. Because Starmer was and is a key part of the operation “Stop Corbyn” and crush TRUE Labour.
Of course ex DPP Keith Starmer has to date disgracefully failed to condemn unequivocally each aspect of gross wrongdoing above, and more. That’s the type the establishment thinks fit to be DPP. Starmer is a symptom of the sulphurous bubbling rot that is The Establishment. Stink. Stinking. Vile stench. Never be fooled by the masquerade of expensive suits and frocks. The thousands of pounds of clobber are transparent covers for utter filth beneath Starmer types.
In my considered opinion, it is overwhelmingly obvious that SIR Starmer is deceitful, disgraceful, treacherous and worse. Starmer continues the destruction of the Labour Party started by Kinnock, Mandelson, Campbell and the Weapons of Mass Destruction 45 MINUTES THREAT pathological liar creature called Anthony Blair the Hague, another Establishment disgrace which only chases mainly non European evildoers.
No good has ever come of any of those establishment wrong uns. Just look at history and the present.
No good will ever come of bad news Starmer. He is a wicked self-serving vacant dull dipstick. Ideal only for sinister forces to direct to protect the worst aspects of the same old same old. Starmer is beneath contempt determined to finish off what’s left of Labour. Correctly assessed by swiftly increasing numbers of people. The public CORRECTLY sees that Starmer is even worse for this country than Johnson. Fancy that. 122,000 needlessly dead. Starmer helped Johnson win. Bliar endorsed Johnson. BILLIONS down the chumocracy. Starmer is lock stock and barrel instep with THAT Johnson. TOTALLY behind Johnson, Starmer is keen to assure his masters at every opportunity. The public puts him totally behind Johnson also. Poetic justice.
Hodge the pantomime Dame. Starmer the pantomime pocket of johnnies for Johnson.
Suits them both. Something for the weekend and the week as well.
The public know from life experience and gut instinct that wannabes are DANGEROUS. Types like Starmer need no persuasion to do anything. Nothing is too embarrassing, unethical, too degenerate, nor off limits.
Starmer is an ex DPP dipstick and even as a dipstick Starmer is bad news. As far as improving the lives of the many, Starmer is useless for anything useful.
As the ex DPP and infinite dipstick, Starmer was and is cack at both. Keith cack at justice. Cack Keith dipstick. Useless shape. Better a bollard.
1️⃣ 2️⃣ 3️⃣
Salient points:
1-Around £160K spent in computer forensic auditors and still they couldn’t identify who done it.
2-the Labour Party didn’t mind to disclose but wanted authorisation from the High Court
Perhaps a right winger did leak the report expecting to frame unsuspected left member of staff and get ride Labour HQ of any left leaning staff.
So, glad that it has back fire and it has been exposed for what it is a fishing expedition.
Do we know to how much the legal costs to the LP are? I hope that the Party recovers every penny of these cost. Otherwise, it would appear to a lot of us that the Labour Party allows the right wingers to take the Party to court without fear of negative repercussions and in the process it would bring the General Secretary into further disrepute.
Yes. Superb. This will hopefully be a step on the way to
1. Taking whatever action we can against those in the Report shown to have been actively disrupting Labour’s 2017 election campaign, and against those possibly misappropriating Party funds to “Ergon House” , and against those possibly guilty of racially aggravated assault against Diane Abbott and other BAME individuals.
2. Getting this well-written instructive Report published in full as it is the object lesson in what Jeremy and his cohorts were confronted with at Labour HQ and a testament to the great work of Jennie Formby while she was fighting cancer.
Brian Precious and all, please collectively be alert these next few weeks. Cabals who believe – “September 11th is a GOOD DAY to bury bad news” and “Covid-19 is a GIFT that keeps giving” etc, cleave to such degenerate approach to politics, people’s lives and deaths. All that matters to them… even if their own relatives die, all that matters is money and lasting power.
Whenever any dramatic events occur, be more acutely alert.
ps, don’t rely only on excellent memories. Take notes. Digital and the old pen and paper way😉😉😉
📝📲📝📲📝📲
Indeed I am happy to say that former Central Asia Ambassador Craig Murray still links to the 851 page Report:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/04/that-leaked-labour-party-report/
Indeed Craig’s tweet containing this link is still up on Twitter.
As Craig says at the above page on his website, containing a link to the 851 page pdf, the Report is an important historical document on the failure of Northern European Social Democracy to re-establish itself.
Vital evidence.
Well-written. Seumas Milne, who furnished the WhatsApp conversations, I should think had a hand in writing the Report.
thanks 4 this Brian Precious 💐💐💐
I love this from Murray’s blog, “Senior members of staff were messaging each other opposing any increase in corporation tax and opposing re-nationalisation of the railways as “Trot” policies.”
Cough…. where’s SteveH, he was only the other day saying this wasn’t the right time to raise corporation tax.
Allan Johnson sees those as “Trot policies” also. The ex postman is against the multimillionaire Sunak’s proposals for tax rises. Sunak is no saint. VERY far from it. But the Allan Johnson type r the most despicable. Why? They pretend to be what they’re not. They deceive🆘🆘🆘
What? Eh?
Sienna Rodgers :
Oldknow’s QC criticises Labour for not serving evidence that would assist Oldknow in understanding what happened with the leak.
If Oldknow had not been “kept in the dark” by Labour, her QC says “this application could have been more targeted”.
Scratches head, furiously, trying to understand what this QC means.
Consider that Starmer is a QC as well.
All of a sudden, the meaningless-gibberish quality becomes plausible, eh?
Martin Odoni, Starmer isn’t a QC but rather a second rate barrister. This is why the Tories promoted him to Director of Public Prosecutions, a better barrister would have refused.
Somehow, I don’t believe Starmer would meet the criteria to qualify as a QC, as in order to qualify you need a level of professional ethics lacking in Starmer.
I don’t believe a QC even a Tory QC would have vote in favour or abstained in the vote on the Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill. I believe any QC would have developed a migraine, gastroenteritis or any other aliment to be absence from Parliament on the day.
They call him a QC on the Legal Action Group page.
https://www.lag.org.uk/profiles/203010/sir-keir-starmer-qc
Can we have some legal comment on this site please?
It is my understanding that if personal emails (including for example, trade union correspondence) are sent via a works email address then this is not ‘personal in legal sense. And if private WhatsAp correspondence ‘arrives’ or ‘appears’, by whatever route, on the employer’s server, then it ceases to be personal.
People have been sacked for using the employer’s email address etc for Labour Party business, or ‘inappropriate comments re the employer and managers.
You’re absolutely right and the point has been made here on more than one occasion, but it wasn’t directly relevant to the breaking news
As I understand it, ANYTHING you do in the employer’s time actually belongs to the employer. If you use the employer’s TIME (that they are paying for) then your use of that time is on their behalf.
Of course, most employers wouldn’t take that to extremes, but if these people were using their time to deman and insult other members of the employer’s organisation, then they have a case to answer. In this case racism.
Indeed, all those people ALLEGED to have committed AS on THEIR OWN devices, on THEIR OWN accounts, and in THEIR OWN time as private citizens and on commercial servers were thrown out of the party. This therefore begs the question …. why was Oldknow allowed back into the party?
………like Hilary Clinton. (Yes I know she never worked for the Labour Party, but she’d fit in right now?)
👍🏾Bulls eye.
JoeRobson … fine words. My twin-dismantling and public shaming of a range of Wirral and Cheshire Council senior directors was done during my lunch break. Honestly. If they ever bring a case, suing for the return of a huge chunk of my salary, I’m ready and waiting for the pompous, incompetent, self-important bastards.
Be interested to know what the costs are, whether they will be enforced and if they are, who will be paying them. Is anybody keeping a running total of how much members’ money has been (to coin a Bojoism) spaffed up the wall in legal fees, costs and payouts by Evans and Starmer since they launched their mendacious, menshevik takeover?
Dearie me, labrebisgalloise ! Since when have any of the Labour Right , in the entire history of Labour ever warranted the soubriquet of ‘Menshevik’ ? The ‘Menshevik’ faction of the Russian Social Democrat Party were still Marxists – still revolutionaries, – even though they disagreed with the Bolshevik faction under Lenin’s leadership that in Russia’s backward social and economic state a socialist revolution was possible without going through a bourgeois capitalist democratic stage. The Bolsheviks basically agreed with this too until 1917, as the position was a basic premise of all Marxists up to then – but the Bolshevik faction (or Lenin and that very recent joiner of the Bolshevik faction, Trotsky, in late 1917 anyway) considered that the then Europe-wide ‘Red Dawn’ of revolutions made it a special situation historically , in which a worker and peasant alliance revolution under the leadership of Marxist socialists could spark off a Europe-wide socialist revolution – hence leaping the entire stage of bourgeois capitalism in Russia, straight from Czarist semi feudalism with a small industrial base. History has tragically demonstrated that the utter disaster of the tragic Russian revolution , falling first into the stalinist murderous dictatorship, and then, today, a full restoration of private enterprise bourgeois capitalist oligarchy , that the orthodox Marxists of the Mensheviks (and Trotsky too until 1917) were quite correct in what would happen if a small socialist-led working class tried to build socialism in a backward state WITHOUT immediate revolutionary support from a German socialist revolution in particular.
Neither the Corbynistas (tame , cowardly, totally reformist Left Liberals, not actually socialists), or the Labour Right (straight pro capitalist, pro imperialist, corrupt careerists) are either ‘Bolsheviks’ or ‘Mensheviks’ in any meaningful way at all . Throwing irrelevant terms from 1917 around inappropriately serves only to confuse attempts to seriously analyse both the always craven Labour Left, or the always totally status quo supporting corrupt Labour Right.
I love it when your posts provide a rich and detailed historical context (as they often do). Thanks.. You remind us that our history is important.
BUT – just one small, pivotal point: – democratic socialists (like J Corbyn and most Skwawkbox visitors) ARE ‘actual’ socialists.
We are necessarily ‘reformists’ as we are working within the representational parliamentary system and work with what we’re given (instead of ‘over-powering it). True, our actions can sometimes seem ‘cowardly’ and even ‘tame’, they can even sometimes be indistinguishable from those of left-leaning liberals, but , I’d say that a belief in the class system and the necessary antagonism it applies makes even the most reformist democratic socialists nevertheless real ‘actual’ socialists.
Interesting points, qwertboi. I accept that , as old Bennite Lefties of the traditional reforming s, Labour Party-obsessed, socialist type, Jeremy , even the back-stabbing McDonnell, and a few , mainly older members , of the Socialist Campaign Group are indeed Socialists. However, tragically, the ideological dominance of neoliberalism over the last forty years has stripped out key aspects of core socialist theory and principle from the ideological ‘mindscape’ what passes for the overwhelming majority of what passes for the, overwhelmingly white collar middle class, UK ‘Left’. These core socialist concepts include , the centrality of state-led democratically determined comprehensive economic PLANNING, the crucial importance of the state ownership of those ‘Commanding heights’ of the economy, including BANKING, and a more general understanding of the massive difference between a society dominated by capitalist market forces, and one where the democratic state decisively intervenes to limit and re-direct the priorities of the profit-maximising capitalist market forces , for objectives seeking to maximise the widest society-wide benefit – even during the transitional phase of a society moving from domination to market forces – to a socialist one.
Most of what passes for the supposedly ‘socialist’ Left today has no interest whatsoever in the economic underpinnings of socialism – particularly economic planning – just in somehow securing a goodie bag of disconnected ‘nice things’ from the existing capitalist society . Most of today’s ‘Left’ accepts the capitalist system as fixed, immovable, and like all Left Liberals, just seeks to secure wider benefits for more people though, mainly Parliamentary, political means – leaving the system itself unthreatened. Today’s ‘Left’ is saturated with middle class identity politics and ‘virtue signaling’, individualistic obsessions. With little or no underlying socialist theory or historical knowledge to guide them, is prey to delusions , such as that the totally capitalist, neoliberal, EU, represents some sort of ‘workers internationalism’, or that , rather than fighting politically to ‘own the bakery’ via nationalisation – socialists should campaign for a regular minimal ‘ration’ for all , leaving the ownership inequalities of monopoly capitalism untouched, ie, ‘Citizens Income’.
Most of the PLP Socialist Campaign Group are merely Left Liberals , not socialists, and most of the Momentum Membership also were and are just Left Liberals (as anyone who read the turgid radical Liberal discussions on the short-lived Momentum Member MV Discussion Site will recall ) !
It’s fine being a socialist reformist – in an era when radical change never mind revolution isn’t on the cards – I’m a radical socialist reformist myself in the current era . But we are entering a new era of global capitalist crisis – with no route out via reformist methods. The best socialists can do is campaign to ‘build up our collective muscle’ via limited ongoing resistance – including solid attempts to break through to the poorer working class who have now deserted Labour forever. I do not, with the utter (very easy) failure of Corbynism, think the Labour Party can ever again be a vehicle for building mass resistance – for that a new radical Left Party is needed – led by socialists, not stalinists still in love with Stalinist tyranny – or well-meaning but confused Left Liberals.
Socialism works best when it provides a clear path from the bottom to the top
A safety net/trampoline that catches you when you fall then at the right moment wangs you back into the mainstream
Acts when governments and markets fail
Is democrati but ruthless when threatened, provides moral hazard and creative destruction to deliver the Green Revolution
None of this will happen until the Labour party is cleaned out
Bad Penny
Its a good debate, which countries come close or at least could be considered a stepping stone, from Sweden to Cuba
Penny, I enjoyed reading your post. I don’t agree completely but it was neat and tidy. Regards ☮️ wobbly
The members will always pay.
I am a life long Trade Unionist – an elected Branch officer , not a full time official -and have represented members over the years who have misused their employers IT facilities. However I have never represented anybody who used the the facilities to undermine and damage the employer so seriously or whose emails were so crass and so crude as in this case. In my experience this would be regarded as gross misconduct which would lead to disciplinary action probably resulting in dismissal.
Additionally any email created on the employers system in the employers time is the property of the employer. It is my understanding that the emails were sent in the context of work and the vulgar name calling related to other workers. The person who released the report into the public domain leaked the whole report not just the part concerning Oldknow. Therefore In my opinion Emilie Oldknow has no case against the Party and while the Party may have been able to take action against the person who released this document – it not being their document- she has no legal entitlement to do so. She must have significant financial backing to undertake this hopeless action
Superb. Thank you for this.
“Go to Jail”
“Do not pass GO”
“Do not collect your share of £600,000”
I think that would work nicely………..
Smartboy, the fact that Unison still employs her point towards the possibility of Unison financing her case. You are right in your assertion that as a trade union rep you have never seeing anything so openly prejudicial towards the employer, I haven’t seeing either.
That Unison despite members on its EC complaining about her employment in writing and she is still employed confused me. The language used by Oldknow amounts to harassment has she used this language openly in front of her targeted victims. That a trade union still employees her beggars believe.
Unison members need to ask questions as to why this vile woman still working for Unison and if their Trade Union is financing her case.
Keep checking that the Labour party hit her for the costs but d9nt hold 6our breath
Reply to Maria Vazquez
I couldn’t agree with you more Maria about Unison. The fact that they have an individual like this in a senior position says all you need to know about them.
I don’t know if they are footing the bill for her legal and other costs – as a full time official she can’t be a member of the union that employs her and unions can only fund members in legal cases BUT she may have been a Unison member when she was in Southside when the report was released so you could be right. My own opinion (based solely on past experience and low expectations )is that she is backed by somebody like Tony Blair either openly or via somebody else. I’m sure we’ll find out eventually as things like this never stay secret for long.
Hideous creature. Pass me a crucifix.
What a bizarre situation. Emilie Oldknow applies to a court for a ruling that the Labour Party should disclose speculation about who leaked a document that showed disgraceful behaviour by someone or other (now remind me who it was who was shown to have behaved disgracefully). The Labour Party defends the action and wins. Presumably the party is pleased, including all shadow ministers? I wonder what Jon Ashworth is thinking – bet he’s not saying.
I wonder what Jon Ashworth is thinking – bet he’s not saying.
Probably too busy cowering in the cupboard while his harpy of a missus gnaws the furniture in a rage…
This woman and her husband have 2 children – what kind of rearing are these children getting? They are growing up with a mother who has behaved appallingly and who thinks its Ok to be spiteful and vicious towards those with whom we disagree, who thinks its OK to group bully individuals for the same reasons and who thinks foul and abusive language is normal. Instead of hanging her head in shame their mother is brazening it out wanting to take legal action against the person who released the report in which she shows herself to be a vile and nasty person.
If Emilie Oldknow was a single mother in a housing estate Social Services would be all over her case. The fact that she is now a highly placed Unison Official and her husband is a member of the shadow cabinet does not mean that they are fit parents and I have serious concerns about the example they, especially the mother, are setting the children. How will the kids ever learn about decent behaviour if they see bad behaviour from their mother which their father condones. I feel sorry for them because they will probably turn out the same as their parents because they won’t know any better.
Ex Misses by all accounts.
Suppose it will just be like the case of the late Tessa Jowell – when her husband got into major legal trouble they “separated” only to reconcile when things were OK.
Great news!! Next on the agenda is to drive her and toxic friends out of the party for good!!
I would like to think this will cost her dearly. I wonder if Unison provided any assistance to her .
This is from her Linked in page –
Assistant Secretary General – Resource and Organisation (COO)
Unison
Jun 2018 – Present2 years 10 months
130 Euston Road, London
Responsibility for Finance (162m annual budget), Human Resources (1200 staff across 14 locations), Legal Services, Membership and Systems Management including technology, infrastructure, property and procurement.
How do we end up with such awful corporate shills at the top of these unions? The way seems to be paved for them.
The same staffers who deliberately ignored their legal obligations under General Data Protection Requirements are using the same piece of legislation to try and find out who blew the whistle on their law breaking.
The same staffers who scraped social media to find “incriminating evidence” on members. They then stored that information without the knowledge and consent of those members (against GDPR) and then lied at disciplinary hearings to have those members expelled.
Excerpt from the ICO page, the Right to be Informed.
“Individuals have the right to be informed about the collection and use of their personal data. This is a key transparency requirement under the UK GDPR.
You must provide individuals with information including: your purposes for processing their personal data, your retention periods for that personal data, and who it will be shared with. We call this ‘privacy information’.
You must provide privacy information to individuals at the time you collect their personal data from them.
If you obtain personal data from other sources, you must provide individuals with privacy information within a reasonable period of obtaining the data and no later than one month”.
None of this was followed by these staffers but they have the audacity to try and use GDPR legislation, that they were so dismissive of, to further their own vindictive political agenda.
I hope there will be a nice big fine at the end of the ICOs current investigation into the Labour party.
I must be paying too much in my Unison dues if this waste of space can afford £160k for forensic computer wallahs.
Don’t kid yourself – she’ll not be out a penny. This has Blair’s ( or one of his loyal followers) fingerprints all over it.
Word has it that the party has been awarded costs. I’m trying to find out how much.
Apparently the party only defended the action because Unite (the union) lawyers Carter Ruck wrote to the party: Lawyers for Unite had written to Labour’s lawyers that “on the face of it your client appears to be simply seeking to wash its hands of its responsibilities, by attempting to throw the burden on ‘the court’”. https://skwawkbox.org/2021/03/01/breaking-oldknow-loses-bid-to-force-labour-to-disclose-uncertain-identity-of-report-leakers/#comments
Good old Sterner, true to form would have paid Oldknow off.
When I blew the whistle on a financial scam at Wirral Council, I kept a written, A4 dossier on the resultant bullying and gaslighting of me by managers and colleagues. When handing it to my UNISON rep, I glued some of the pages together at the top. Three months into my suspension, I physically dropped into the UNISON office in Birkenhead, demanding the return of the dossier. All the pages were still glued together. They’d left it to gather dust. I joined UNITE and I won my case, got another job and resigned.
Emilie … you too are a disgrace. I’m OLD, and I KNOW.
We could have won Unison with a bit of the ruthlessness shown by the RW
Its not fucking rocket science folks
The ‘former staff’ could at any time have simply explained the ‘true’ context of their foul comments, and corrected the “misleadingly presented” version in the report. They didn’t – not one of them – ever.
Politicians in difficulty always claim facts have been taken/quoted out of context.
One day I hope to see a journalist ask “How long would it take to explain the correct context – five minutes? It’s a slow news day so we can accommodate that. Please proceed.”
On a positive note it is another example of how entitled they feel they should and equally how bloody useless they are
Repetition
We should be wiping the floor with these f7ckers
Word is that it is £80k plus. Oh, joy! No holidays in Tuscany this year then.
Her costs are thought to be at least 50% more than the £80k you suggest goldbach.. It’s worth reading the Zelo Street article on her.
I guess you’re right. My info. was just in relation to the costs of UNISON and LP legal expenses.
Her partner Red Tory Jonathan Ashworth staged the hatchet job during 2019 GE in cahoots with his Tory best mate Warwick Hunt
“Warwick Hunt” – is that Cockney rhyming slang?