Chris McEleny told me last week that the clerk of the Appeals Committee would be in touch "in due course" about the details of my appeal, and I did wonder when he said that whether the clerk of the Appeals Committee would turn out to be exactly the same person as the clerk of the Disciplinary Committee, who is also exactly the same person as Mr McEleny's own deputy as General Secretary. The answer is yes. It's like the Holy Trinity: they're three different roles and yet somehow all the same. When I was growing up, my uncle, who had been in a Catholic brotherhood for a few years, explained the concept of the Holy Trinity to me and then asked whether I understood it. I said that I did. He said: "No you don't. Nobody understands it. If you think you've understood it, that means you haven't." Which, to be fair, could also apply to just about every Kafkaesque twist and turn in the Alba Party's internal procedures.
My appeal hearing will be on the evening of the 8th of January, which I think might be just about within the 30-day rule that I remember reading somewhere (I can't find it in the main text of the party constitution so it's probably in a separate set of rules governing the Appeals Committee itself). I was hoping it was going to be a bit earlier than that, because this has been an incredibly stressful and downright nasty process and I want it over. I'm not going to mince words anymore - it's been an utterly bogus, baseless, malicious, evidence-free "disciplinary" action brought by a vindictive leadership due simply to a personal vendetta against me, which they probably hold for three principal reasons: a) the persistent stand I took in favour of internal democratisation of the party, b) my refusal to meekly put up with low-grade bullying attempts from two very well-connected individuals at in-person meetings of the Constitution Review Group during the spring and subsequently on Twitter, and c) my calling out of blatantly false information provided by the General Secretary during meetings of the Disciplinary Committee at the start of this year (yes, ironically I was an elected member of the Disciplinary Committee until my expulsion).
At least now the end is in sight - either the Appeals Committee will do the right thing and overturn the upholding of Mr McEleny's malicious action against me, and I can resume my party membership and return to pressing for change to try to ensure that this can never happen to anyone else again, or they will not do the right thing, my expulsion will become irrevocable, and I can finally draw a line under my hellish experience within Alba and look to the future, either in a different party, or as an independent or as a supporter of independents.
It's likely that I'll have a great deal more to say in the coming weeks and months about the blatant and cynical abuse of power on the part of the General Secretary, and possibly the party chair, that has led to the malicious action against me and against so many other Alba members. But for now I want to say a few general words about the bankruptcy of Alba's disciplinary process, which I've experienced from both sides.
The essence of the problem, I would suggest, is the hopeless lack of independence of the Disciplinary Committee. This is an example of the Alba set-up actually being inferior to the SNP's, because on my reading of the SNP constitution the Conduct Committee in that party is genuinely independent of the NEC (at least on paper). By contrast, Alba's Disciplinary Committee functions effectively as a subcommittee of the NEC. Although there are six elected members, those are topped up by two NEC appointees (effectively people directly appointed by the party leader), of which one is nominated by the NEC to be the committee's convener. OK, you might say, that still means the committee is three-quarters elected, but in practice the appointed convener controls the committee to a quite extraordinary degree. Not only does he or she have the casting vote in the event of a tie, they also determine the format of meetings, can ensure the rights of 'defendants' are interpreted as narrowly as possible, and can prevent committee members from expressing 'undesirable' viewpoints or asking 'unwanted' questions. So to a large extent, the Disciplinary Committee is under the NEC's direct control.
But even that level of control wasn't enough for the leadership, who at the start of this year (coinciding with my own election to the committee) introduced a set of draconian new rules which shifted power over the disciplinary process away from the Disciplinary Committee and firmly into the hands of the unelected General Secretary and to a lesser extent the unelected party chair. A new "clerk to the committee" was imposed, who of course just happens to be the same person as the Deputy General Secretary, and who is now present throughout all meetings regardless of whether the committee wants her there or not. She therefore becomes a brooding presence which is bound to inhibit the free expression of views - because it's an open secret that she'll be reporting back to her boss the General Secretary, to the party chair and probably to half a dozen other people besides. In the first meeting I took part in, it became obvious that Mr McEleny had told us a direct lie in the paperwork - he had told us that the member who was the subject of the complaint had not expressed any wish to attend the hearing, whereas in fact I knew that wasn't true, because the member in question had contacted me to say that he did wish to attend but that Mr McEleny had ignored his emails. During the meeting I said something along the lines of "it looks to me like the General Secretary has been playing games", which of course I knew full well that "the clerk to the committee" would report straight back to her boss. That may well have been the moment when the seeds were first sown for Mr McEleny's vendetta against me.
But the much more important effect of the new rules is the total power they give to the General Secretary in determining what complaints reach the Disciplinary Committee. Mr McEleny, despite being an entirely unelected party employee, has an absolute right to lodge a complaint against a party member himself and compel the Disciplinary Committee to hear it, but he also has an absolute right to reject any complaint submitted by anyone else and to prevent the committee from even considering it. Let's be blunt - Mr McEleny has not only been making full use of that dictatorial power, he's been abusing it for all it's worth. Every single complaint that was heard during my time on the committee could be very easily traced back to Mr McEleny's own vested interests, or the vested interests of the wider leadership group. In at least two cases, it was ultimately about a wish to hush up the strong and probably well-founded suspicions that the 2023 internal elections were at least partly rigged. By contrast, complaints submitted by ordinary party members with no connection to the party leadership seem to be of no interest whatever to Mr McEleny, and he routinely dismisses them out of hand. Which is highly convenient when those complaints are about prominent figures in the party.
It's also worth noting that the right of the 'defendant' to be present at the hearing is largely a sham. You might remember that my sense was that I had only been allowed to be present at the hearing about me for around seven or eight minutes. I was later able to work out that it had actually been twelve minutes. Assuming the hearing probably lasted for an hour or so, that means I was only actually there for 20% of it. I have a fair idea of what was going on in my absence for the first half-hour of the meeting, and that was something I certainly should have been present for and been allowed to hear - but that would have involved me being made aware of what I was actually being accused of and being allowed to answer it. And that would never have done, would it?
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