THE ALBA FILES, Part 1: 'A McCarthyite atmosphere', 'trial by vagueness', 'the ugly lust for revenge of an authoritarian leadership' - read the full text of the defence document I submitted prior to my Alba disciplinary hearing in December

Welcome to a new series of articles on Scot Goes Pop entitled 'THE ALBA FILES' (before anyone panics, it's only a name).  Now that I'm irrevocably out of Alba and no longer owe any loyalty to the party, I'm going to try to help Alba members make up their own minds about the state of their own party by putting as much information as realistically possible into the public domain.  Baby steps to begin with - I'm going to start with the full text of my own defence document submitted in advance of my "disciplinary" hearing in early December.  For privacy reasons, I've made one very small alteration to the text - I've switched to using the name "Colin Alexander", because his real name (which I used in the submitted document) is not in the public domain as far as I know.  "Colin Alexander" was a pseudonym he used in the guest post he wrote for the late Iain Lawson's blog.  As it turned out, being involved in guest posts for the Iain Lawson blog was just about the most dangerous activity for Alba members - the suspension/expulsion rate as a result of doing so was exceptionally high.

WRITTEN SUBMISSION IN RESPONSE TO DISCIPLINARY REFERRAL 

My name is James Kelly and I have been a paid-up member of the Alba Party since it was created in the spring of 2021, almost four years ago now.  My monthly subscription fee has continued to be regularly deducted from my bank account, even though I have been arbitrarily suspended from the party at the whim of the General Secretary for the last two months, and denied absolutely all of the rights of membership that the fee is supposed to be in exchange for.  I cannot even access the party website.  That state of affairs is self-evidently outrageous and indefensible.

In happier days, I was an elected member of this party's National Executive Committee between September 2021 and October 2022, during which time I also served on the Finance & Audit Committee.  I was an elected member of the Appeals Committee between February 2023 and January 2024.  As far as I am aware, I am still to this day a member of the Disciplinary Committee and the Finance & Audit Committee, having been elected to those bodies in January of this year, although obviously that has been interrupted by Mr McEleny's decision to arbitrarily suspend my party membership.  I was also elected in January to the Constitution Review Group (CRG), although several weeks before my party membership was suspended, I was informed out of the blue by Mr McEleny that the NEC had removed me from that elected position - an unconstitutional decision that the NEC quite simply had no power to take.  Additionally, I was elected as the Organiser of North Lanarkshire LACU earlier this year.

Although I have strong suspicions about the real reasons for the remarkably casual decision to suspend me and refer me to the Disciplinary Committee (those suspicions relate to the leadership's determination to snuff out any serious talk of internal democratisation of the party, and also to an attempt by at least two well-connected individuals to abuse the disciplinary machinery as a way of furthering their campaign of bullying against me), I am none the wiser as to the 'official' reasons.  Other members of the Disciplinary Committee must be equally baffled - unless of course they have been supplied with information that has been withheld from me, in which case due process would dictate that they will be compelled to completely set aside that information in considering the complaint.  But assuming that they only possess the same document that I was sent, described variously as the "disciplinary report" or the "disciplinary referral", they like me will have next to no information on Mr McEleny's official reasons for thinking I should actually be facing this hearing.  The document is hopelessly deficient and defective in numerous respects - 

1) It alleges that I have breached the "social media policy" and specifically references a section of that policy about "being abusive", and yet not a single social media post is linked to or referred to.  There is not even the vaguest hint of what the content of the relevant social media posts was, or on what grounds Mr McEleny formed his alleged belief that they were "abusive".  Given that my Twitter profile states that I have posted more than 17,900 tweets since I joined the site in early 2009, Mr McEleny appears to be inviting members of the committee to play guessing games about what on earth he might be referring to, and even more disgracefully he appears to be inviting me to play guessing games in formulating my defence.  He is trying to set me a task he knows to be utterly impossible.  Realistically, this means that he is not being honest about having found abusive social media posts (if he had done, he would undoubtedly have quoted them or linked to them - it would have been the work of seconds), and is hoping committee members may fill in the gaps for him by trawling through my 17,900 tweets and "getting lucky" with one or two.  I am extremely confident that if they attempt to go down that road, they will not "get lucky", because to the very best of my recollection I have *never* been abusive on social media.  However, let me be clear - if by any chance I am ambushed at the hearing with questions about specific tweets that were not brought to my attention at any point before the hearing starts, I will refuse to engage with those questions, and quite rightly so.  Due process requires me to be fully informed of what I am actually accused of in advance so I can put together a proper and considered defence.  The committee will have no business upholding a complaint based on allegations that were not mentioned to me until a last second ambush.

 2) In contrast to the complete absence of information about which social media posts are being referred to, the document does link in an "update" to five specific blogposts.  However, the only clue as to the relevance of mentioning these blogposts is the observation that "Mr Kelly took to...his blog to discuss internal party business".  None of the four sections of the Code of Conduct which have allegedly been breached even refer to (let alone forbid) the discussing of internal party business, so there is no clue whatsoever as to what part of the content of the blogposts Mr McEleny thinks are breaches, or in what way he is alleging they are breaches.  Once again, Mr McEleny is inviting committee members to play guessing games or to fill in the gaps for him, and once again I must point out that due process means that the committee simply cannot proceed in that way.  If I am suddenly ambushed with more specific allegations on the night of the hearing, I will refuse to engage, and the committee will have no right (or not if due process is applied) to uphold a complaint on the basis of a last-second infusion of specificity.

3) The narrative explanation of how the complaint came about begins with some members of the Constitution Review Group supposedly alleging that my April blogpost 'The case against a small political party treating its own members as the enemy' constituted a "breach of trust" and "undermined the work of the CRG".  But the narrative then swiftly moves on to the vaguer allegations about aspects of my conduct that supposedly occurred much later.  It is far from clear whether the present disciplinary referral relates only to the later vague allegations, or whether the "breach of trust" allegation also forms part of the case against me.  It is admittedly hard to see how it can do, because none of the four sections of the Code of Conduct alleged to have been breached mention anything at all about breaches of trust or confidentiality.  Nevertheless, the fact that I have been left unsure as to what is and what is not part of the present case against me is plainly an absurd situation.

4) If I am forced to err on the side of caution by assuming that the "breach of trust" allegation may form part of the current case against me, there is yet again no information provided to enable the committee to proceed with any meaningful deliberations on that issue or to enable me to put forward a meaningful defence.  It's extraordinary that I have to point this out, but Mr McEleny is alleging that I have disclosed confidential information, but hasn't actually bothered to specify what that confidential information is.  He does link to the blogpost in which the breach of confidentiality is alleged to have taken place, but that is of very little help, because the blogpost makes clear at the outset that I am bound by confidentiality rules and will therefore not be discussing the work of the CRG.  Nowhere in the blogpost do I make any statements about what was discussed at meetings of the CRG, or what decisions were reached at those meetings.  So the only possibility left is that Mr McEleny is alleging that I revealed confidential information by some extremely indirect means, but if that's the case the onus is on him to explain in what form I did that, what that information was, and what evidence he has that the information ever existed in the first place and was covered by confidentiality rules.  Does it for example appear in minutes of meetings of the CRG?  If so, why didn't he provide the relevant quotes from those minutes?  Does it feature in secret recordings of meetings that Mr McEleny can supply?  That is the kind of bar he would have to clear if he really wants to advance the "breach of trust" argument, but he has not even come close to clearing it.  It is frankly nothing short of astounding that he hasn't even bothered to mention what secret information the individuals who made the initial complaint felt I had disclosed.  Mr McEleny has literally provided zero supporting evidence to support the allegation of a breach of trust, and in those circumstances I must respectfully point out to committee members that they literally have no choice but to dismiss that allegation.  If they do not, they will have abandoned any semblance of due process and will have brought Alba's disciplinary procedures into disrepute.  And again, if the allegations suddenly and magically become more specific once the hearing is actually underway, that will make no difference, because I will not have had the proper opportunity to submit a considered defence.

5) The four sections of the Code of Conduct allegedly breached refer to "injuring the party" or members of the party.  Mr McEleny has wholly failed to explain in what way he believes I have caused "injury".  They refer to an expectation that Alba members will conduct themselves to "high standards of decency".  Mr McEleny has wholly failed to explain in what way he believes I have fallen short of high standards of decency.  They refer to a requirement that Alba members should use social media "responsibly".  Mr McEleny has wholly failed to explain in what way he believes I have used social media "irresponsibly".

Mr McEleny is essentially inviting the Disciplinary Committee to conduct a "trial by vagueness" and to overlook the almost total lack of detail and supporting evidence, simply because of a nod and a wink from him and the rest of the leadership (perhaps considerably more than a nod and a wink) that they want the complaint upheld and will be displeased with committee members if it is not.  The committee should tell Mr McEleny in no uncertain terms that they refuse to play that game.  Unfortunately, though, as a member of the Disciplinary Committee myself, I know as well as any other committee member that 2024 has seen extraordinarily severe punishments meted out for minor infractions or even in cases where there has been no discernible wrongdoing whatsoever.  In the last few months, there have been at least two outright expulsions from Alba and at least one suspension of six months.  That contrasts with Alex Salmond's twenty years as leader of the SNP in which by all accounts only one expulsion occurred, and that was for the extremely serious reason of the individual in question being found to have committed decades of domestic violence and abuse.  To put it mildly, that is not a favourable comparison for the Alba Party, and is not one that we as members of the Disciplinary Committee can take any pride in.  

A McCarthyite atmosphere has taken grip of the committee under its present composition, and to some extent that has been fostered by the ongoing attitude of Mr McEleny himself.  At the start of this year, he explicitly demanded that the committee expel Colin Alexander from the party because of an utterly harmless Twitter joke at the expense of Mr McEleny (touchy, much?), and because Mr Alexander had written a blogpost raising legitimate concerns about the conduct of Alba's internal elections in autumn 2023.  Extraordinarily, the committee caved in to Mr McEleny's wholly inappropriate demand and expelled Mr Alexander.  Mr McEleny then demanded that punitive action be taken against the brave whistleblower Denise Somerville, who had uncovered potential evidence of irregularities in the same internal elections.  Shamefully, the committee caved in to Mr McEleny's outrageous demand and suspended Ms Somerville for six months, without even backdating that penalty to take into account the period of arbitrary suspension she had already suffered at Mr McEleny's whim.  And then Mr McEleny demanded punitive action against Geoff Bush for giving an entirely inoffensive interview to The National about the need for cooperation and ecumenicism between pro-independence parties.  To my absolute astonishment, the convener of the committee "spontaneously" announced midway during the hearing, after a painfully long pause, that he thought Mr Bush should be expelled from the party.  Members of the committee may recall that my shock at hearing the word "expulsion" was both immediate and audible.  And yet mysteriously the majority of the committee instantly fell into line with the convener's wish, in spite of the fact that none of them seemed to be able to articulate why they were doing so.  A cynic might almost wonder if some sort of informal 'briefing' had occurred before the meeting.

The pattern is clear: the disciplinary procedure is not being used in the proper manner to tackle genuine wrongdoing, but is instead being cynically abused to crack down on legitimate dissent against the leadership and individuals close to the leadership.  This state of affairs need not have been allowed to develop if members of the Disciplinary Committee had actually fulfilled their roles conscientiously, but instead the leadership seem to have some sort of improper hold over some (not all) of them.  This dismal pattern is continuing in my own case, where the leadership's underlying aim seems to be to take extreme revenge against me because I took a prolonged stand in favour of internal democratisation of the party, and publicly called into question whether the repeated boasts that Alba in its current form is a "member-led party" really stack up.  That is, frankly, a point that Alba members have every right to ponder and debate.  I suspect there's also a strong element of Ms Shannon Donoghue and her partner Mr Chris Cullen seeking revenge against me for more personal reasons, because I stood up to their repeated bullying attempts at the in-person CRG meetings, and subsequently on Twitter.

At the conclusion of one of the disciplinary hearings earlier this year, the committee convener tried to wrap things up with a little monologue, insisting we all had to remember that whatever disagreements might occur between us during meetings, we were all united by being independence supporters and that was the really important thing.  As I said to him at the time, those words rang extremely hollow, because he had only just cruelly trampled all over decent independence supporters by expelling or suspending them, for no good reason other than to satisfy the ugly lust for revenge of an authoritarian leadership. I trust the convener will have enough sense of shame to refrain from launching into a similar monologue if he plays any part in upholding the farcically vague complaint against me, one that is so insubstantial that it practically ceases to exist the more you look at it.

But my even fonder hope is that the scenario will not even arise, because the committee will at long last take a stand against the prolonged pattern of injustice by refusing to uphold this latest bogus and maliciously-motivated complaint.  That way Alba might belatedly start to become a worthy successor to the Salmond-era SNP, in which all decent independence supporters were welcome, in which nobody was expelled without exceptionally good cause, and in which all members could express their views freely without constant fear of arbitrary punishment.  

In closing, I want to make some general observations about Alba's social media policy, which is an inspiring document due to its fearless commitment to freedom of speech - 

"We want debate and discussion to flourish on our channels and will encourage feedback wherever appropriate"

That could not be further removed from Christina Hendry's and Chris Cullen's oft-rehearsed conception of Alba as a sort of secret society in which members have an absolute duty to remain silent about their own views at all times, except possibly behind closed doors (but even there conditions would apply).  I must be honest here and say I much prefer the social media policy's more liberal vision of what Alba is, and I'm relieved that's the one that has been given constitutional force.  But it's little wonder that there's so much puzzlement and consternation in Alba's ranks that Mr McEleny and the Disciplinary Committee have repeatedly breached both the spirit and the letter of the social media policy by taking extreme steps, up to and including expulsion, to prevent members from exercising their right to engage in "flourishing debate and discussion". 

Mr McEleny's reply might be that the social media policy to some extent contradicts itself by also giving examples of how freedom of speech might in some cases be limited.  But that being the case, the devil is obviously in the interpretation.  The simplest way to judge how the social media policy is being interpreted in practice, and where the true balance lies between freedom of speech and any restrictions, is to look at the example set by leading members of the party.  Here are some tweets posted by very senior Alba members in recent months - 

Zulfikar Sheikh, 3rd October 2024: "Zionist J talks such garbage."

(Note: "J" is a reference to the journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer.)

Zulfikar Sheikh, 8th September 2024: "It all started when her wee gang couldn't get their way."

(Note: The 'her' referred to is Denise Findlay, who was the elected Organisation Convener of the Alba Party less than a year prior to Mr Sheikh posting his tweet.  The 'wee gang' seemingly refers to other prominent and highly respected former members of our party.)

Zulfikar Sheikh, 11th September 2024: "Truth is coming out now for the wee gang of malcontents...they were obviously planning all along, totally disgraceful."

Zulfikar Sheikh, 11th September 2024: "When all fails this is the special language they adopt...ignore the wee gang."

Zulfikar Sheikh, 11th September 2024: "It's always the usual suspects of the wee gang of malcontents.  They obviously have too much free time."

Zulfikar Sheikh, 30th October 2024: "This man has no shame, no compassion for the man that he talks about, without Alex, Swinney & his wee gang would be nobody's.  We haven't forgotten what you & your pals try to do to him, just will be done very very soon."

Chris McEleny, 21st November 2024: "Define irony: Mhairi Black, who spent 10 years at Westminster with her snout in the Kit Kat trough"

Chris McEleny, 14th November 2024: "How creepy.  Some wee social media weirdo at the Scottish Parliament actually zooms in on women's footwear to brief the press."

Shannon Donoghue, 19th May 2024: "No it's not wrong, and if I'm really honest, I'm sick of the wee victim act.  I've seen Eva first hand at conferences with the wee gang.  She was privy to info being on NEC that Grangemouth was a key seat for them.  The only one lacking unity is her."

(Note: "Eva" is a reference to Eva Comrie, who was our party's elected Equalities Convener just weeks before Ms Donoghue posted her tweet.)

Shannon Donoghue, 6th July 2024: "You, is the simple answer. You and the wee gangs attempt to tarnish the party. You do more damage to Indy than good. Disgraceful."

(Note: The above was a *direct reply* to Denise Findlay, our party's former elected Organisation Convener.)

Shannon Donoghue, 6th July 2024: "James Kelly really tweeting about self-awareness. The gift that keeps on giving."

Yvonne Ridley, 10th September 2024: "A "wee gang of malcontents" that's one way of describing a treacherous bunch of mean girls & frit blokes whose ambitions far outweighed their abilities. You're all fighting like ferrets in a sack right now, threatening to sue each other over an App that involves dodgy dealings & Israeli technology."

Yvonne Ridley, 10th September 2024: "The Aye App - @gracebrod1e @Scotpol1314 @mickbrick54 @geoffbush they all invested in it. I think @LeanneTervit Schemes for Indy was supposed to be the first beneficiary but she reckons she was shafted. Apart from sleepless nights over treachery, I lost nothing."

Yvonne Ridley also notoriously posted a shameful tweet in early 2023 claiming that a vote for the SNP was a vote for Jimmy Savile - admittedly she later seemed to delete it, but she certainly didn't face any disciplinary action for it.

All of the above tweets would technically, on a literal reading, fall foul of the line in the social media policy about the "targeting of individuals", and I must admit none of the tweets are remotely to my own taste.  The kind of nasty language these people have used is just not my cup of tea, and I personally do take pride in maintaining a much higher standard of respectful behaviour on social media than that of Ms Ridley, Ms Donoghue, Mr McEleny and Mr Sheikh.  That said, I think Alba have been extremely wise in using a minimalist interpretation of the "abusive behaviour"/"targeting of individuals" language, thus allowing these four senior people to be deemed to have stayed within the strictures of the social media policy.  It's entirely sensible that Alba's interpretation of the policy has given far greater weight to the provision guaranteeing freedom of speech.  However, that does mean that Mr McEleny's risible attempts to apply a completely different standard to lowlier figures such as myself must by definition be doomed to failure.

We also mustn't lose sight of the even more colourful example of social media behaviour that has been set by Mr Stuart Campbell, who is technically not an Alba member, but is the celebrated author of the party's very own "Wee Alba Book" and is regarded by many as the party's de facto spiritual godfather.  The Alba leadership have regularly praised him to the skies as a moral lodestar and shining example to us all, describing him on one memorable occasion without any apparent sense of irony as a "man of unimpeachable integrity".  So let's take a quick look at Mr Campbell's standard of behaviour on social media, which it's safe to assume the Alba leadership must regard as effortlessly consistent with the party's social media policy.  

Stuart Campbell, 16th November 2024: "I don't keep having to delete my tweets because I've made an absolute c*nt of myself like Narinder does."

Stuart Campbell, 18th November 2024: "F*ck off, *unt."

Stuart Campbell, 11th November 2024: "I've repeatedly said it's a genocide. He's a liar as well as a stupid c*nt."

Stuart Campbell, 15th October 2024: "He admitted no such thing, ever, you repellent cowardly scumbag c*nt."

Stuart Campbell, 13th October 2024: "You know f*ck-all about him, so maybe YOU should stop being a c*nt and shut up."

Ah.  OK.  If this kind of thing is Mr McEleny's idea of excellence on social media (and it really does appear to be), then his claim that I have fallen short of the appropriate standards is going to be just a trifle tough to maintain with a straight face.  Perhaps he thinks I just don't use the C-word often enough - is that it?!

(submitted 25th November 2024)