Not much to see, really. And certainly not much point in following the advice in the text, because it's obvious even to the most basic single-cell life-forms that my suspension is not warranted, and yet every email I've sent regarding the matter (four so far) has been totally ignored, no matter how many senior people in the party I've copied it to.
But even though I cannot access the website, that of course hasn't stopped Alba from collecting the direct debit payment for my membership. I checked my bank account, and with grim irony this month's payment was deducted a day or two after my suspension. Which begs the obvious question: what the hell am I actually getting in return for my money? I'm sure it's just a total coincidence that Chris McEleny timed my suspension to occur just a few days before I could have applied for a conference pass, allowing me to exercise my most important right as a paid-up party member, ie. to vote on party policy and in internal elections. I'm sure it's just a total coincidence that he timed my suspension to occur just a few days before I could start collecting nominations to stand in those elections, which I would otherwise be doing right now - I had intended to stand again for Membership Support Convener after coming within a 1% margin of being elected to the position last year, and also for one of the male slots on the NEC.
Mr McEleny has a history of getting extremely angry whenever anyone has used the phrase "rigged election", but when one man arbitrarily decides which party members will and will not be allowed to stand in internal elections, some people may well feel that the word "rigged" is objectively justified or even unavoidable. So far there has been no due process in my case. I remain suspended from the Alba Party and deprived of all my rights as a paid-up party member purely on the whim of one man: Christopher McEleny. He has provided no adequate explanation for that suspension, just ultra-vague waffle about "blogposts attacking the party". All of my attempts to seek further clarification have been deliberately ignored by him, by his deputy, by the party chair, and by the party leader.
In my most recent email on Tuesday, the key question that I asked was whether my "temporary suspension pending a hearing" would be allowed to drag on for an unacceptably long period of time, as has happened to others before me, or whether a Disciplinary Committee hearing would be held as soon as practically possible. The fact that even that question was ignored did not fill me with confidence, so I went back and had a look at Mr McEleny's original email, and noticed that there was not even a reference to my right to be told the date and time of the Disciplinary Committee meeting and to attend it if I wished to put my defence in person. That might be an oversight, but let me put it this way. As an elected member of the Disciplinary Committee myself, I am still bound by confidentiality rules and cannot comment on whether or not Mr McEleny has always abided by the requirement on him to allow defendants to attend hearings if they express a wish to do so. However, that is a subject covered by Alan Harris' recent guest post and I would recommend you read it with care if you haven't already. What I can comment on, because this has nothing to do with the work of the committee, is that someone who was expelled by the Disciplinary Committee a few months ago later left a comment on this blog to reveal that he had written to Mr McEleny to confirm that he wished to take up his right to an appeal to the Appeals Committee, and that Mr McEleny had totally ignored that email (how uncharacteristic!) and the appeal never took place. In other words, he was seemingly expelled from the party without due process - something which I believe could be challenged in court. If the Alba leadership keep doing this sort of thing, eventually their luck is going to run out and they're going to come up against someone who actually has the money to launch a legal challenge.
If I sound angry and cynical about this, there's a good reason. Most reasonable people would say that expulsions and suspensions from political parties should be reserved for the most serious wrongdoing, such as violence or racist outbursts, not for fatuous reasons such as "being a bit critical of the party leadership in a blogpost". One of the key reasons so many people flocked from the SNP to Alba is that the SNP disciplinary process was being abused and people like Neale Hanvey and Grouse Beater were being suspended or expelled on bogus or highly questionable accusations of anti-semitism. And yet now the leadership of the party that they flocked to as a refuge is abusing the disciplinary process in an even more extreme way. As many people have pointed out in recent days, Chris McEleny was a fierce critic of the Sturgeon leadership when he was an SNP member, certainly far more critical than I've ever been of the Alba leadership, and yet the SNP did not suspend or expel him or interfere in any way with his right to stand in internal elections. He would have been outraged if they had done, but they did not. It is absolute rank hypocrisy of him to arbitrarily impose an extreme standard on Alba members that he was never prepared to accept being imposed on him as an SNP member. The basic principles at stake do not change just because Mr McEleny currently happens to be the person given some power and no-one is preventing him from abusing it.
As you have been so studiously ignoring my emails for three weeks, Chris, you leave me no option but to say this to you publicly on this blog, which I know you are monitoring. If you are trying to pull a fast one on me, as you have done to other Alba members in the past, in the literal sense I cannot stop you doing that. But what I can prevent happening is you doing that in secret. This time the curtain is going to be pulled right back and Alba members are going to know exactly what you've done. Maybe they'll approve of your actions, maybe they won't. But they're certainly going to know.
