NEW LIBERTARIAN PARTY - URGENT UPDATE

I've received the following message from Gavin Webb, who is heading up the current initiative to set up a new part that's fit for Libertarians to join:

Today my hosting provider suspended my account for alleged copyright violations. Upon contacting them it transpires that Ian Parker-Joseph on behalf of the Libertarian Party UK had made the complaint on the basis that by using the url libertarianparty.org.uk I was in fact passing off and trading as the Libertarian Party UK. Please can you now direct anyone interest in seeing a new registered libertarian political organisation on the scene to visit www.gavinwebb.com/libertarians. Thanks.

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Note from Stuart:  Gavin Webb is one of the more useful members the Libertarian Party has ever had, having been our only sitting councillor and one-time Communications Director.  Unlike the sleazy little gang that siezed control of the Party's assets last year, he has actually done a lot to promote Libertarianism through the democratic political process.  He's got the backing of what's left of the active membership of the Libertian Party, and if the lying conspiracy theorist Ian Parker-Joseph thinks that a cheap trick like this is going to stop the loyalist faction from establishing the new and more effective libertarian party that this country needs, he's even crazier than I think he is.

A NEW POLITICAL PARTY FOR LIBERTARIANS?

With the assets of the Libertarian Party still in the hands of an unelected gang of liars, conspiracy theorists and conmen, some of us who have been active in promoting Libertarian values via the electoral process in the past and don't intend seeing that effort going to waste are now interested in starting a new Libertian political party so that we can move forwards and do some actual politics. At the moment, the initiative is just at the level of finding out how many people would be interested in supporting such a venture. Gavin Webb - former Communications Director and the only councillor the Libertarian Party ever had - has set up a website where people can register their interest:

http://libertarianparty.org.uk/

If you understand that libertarians have to be involved with the political process in order for this country to progress in the right direction, please register your interest - you won't be committing yourself to anything.

Two More Questions To Ask Andrew Withers

Just in case I don't get there on time, here are two more questions for any loyalist Party members who are attending tomorrow's phony AGM to ask Andrew Withers:

Question 1: Andrew Withers was elected unopposed as a councillor in Clevedon last year. But he stood as in independent. Why did he choose to do this, instead of standing as a Libertarian Party candidate? That would have been an extremely easy win for the Party with no extra effort - our first elected councillor. Withers was still Party Leader when he submitted the nomination papers for his candidacy, and this was prior to the storm triggered by the Anna Raccoon blog. A party leader's job is to promote their party, and having people in elected office (even on parish councils) is generally thought of as being a good thing by small parties on the grounds that it enhances their credibility. So why did Whithers stand as an independent? I did send him a polite email at the time, asking him about this - the reply I got was rambling, incoherent and aggressive in tone. It did include the following statement: "My reasons for not standing as a Libertarian Party candidate in the local elections ? because I would not have secured a seat." And yet the election was unopposed, so what sense does that make?
Why would a party leader who sincerely wants to advance the interests of Libertarianism in this country not stand as a Libertarian candidate?

Question 2: During the run up to the local elections last year, in my capacity as North West Regional Coordinator (and therefore a member of the National Coordinating Committee), I asked how many candidates we had, who and where they were. After all, a small party needs to mobilise its members to support whatever candidates it has. Andrew Withers refused to disclose this information to the NCC. As a consequence of this, the information was not available to put on the Party website so that people could volunteer to help our candidate(s) by leafleting etc. And what else is a political party for, if it's not to support it's candidates? To this day I only have definite knowledge of one Libertarian Party candidate in last year's elections. Despite this betrayal by Andrew Withers, he actually got a fairly decent result.
Why did Andrew Withers betray our candidate(s) in this way?

Don't let Andrew Withers get away with his usual evasive replies and bully tactics. Get straight answers out of him for both these questions, it's your right to know. And don't forget to take a digital camera along to the "AGM" - I can put any digital video footage submitted to me on YouTube easily enough.

The AGM That Isn't, Run By The Leaders Who Aren't

Before the Libertarian Party website was taken down, supposedly “for maintenance”, it was announced – very quietly announced, in fact it was buried in the news section – that there was going to be an Annual General Meeting this coming Saturday. Here are the full details:

Party AGM 24th March 2012 10am
Committee Room 2 Clevedon Town Council
44 Old Street, Clevedon, North Somerset

Membership Card required for entry and £5 towards venue costs apply to membership@libertarianpartyuk.com

Federal Constitution to be approved

New Manifesto for 2012 In Process

There are several things wrong with this announcement:

1. The membership have not been directly informed – at least no member known to me has been emailed about this. Certainly I received no notification, which I certainly should have done being both a regional co-ordinator and long-standing member (Party Membership Number 12).


2. The last Libertarian Party AGM was held in late 2010. The Party Constitution says that AGM's must be held no further apart than 15 months.


3. The venue is extremely hard to get to.- the nearest railway station is nearly 4 miles away. Anyone would think the “leadership” didn't want ordinary members attending, especially in view of the early start time.


4. The requirement for membership cards to be produced. I know of only one member in the North West region who has received one. Have the majority of active and formerly active members been blacklisted?


5. The £5 entry fee. The group that is organising this event has no authority to ask for money.


6. “Federal Constitution to be approved”. Not debated, but approved. Again, the group calling the so-called AGM has no authority to do this. This has not even been discussed by the National Co-ordinating Committee – even then it would be up to a vote by the attending members.


7. “New Manifesto” - same as above. They have no authority.

Now the reason that the group organising this meeting has no authority to do any of this is that they're not the NCC. During the internal crisis that was triggered by the Anna Raccoon blog last year, former Party Leader Andrew Withers resigned and has never been re-instated. That's right, the man who currently claims to be both Party Leader and Treasurer isn't even a member. Withers was Party Treasurer until the last AGM, in 2010, then he was elected Party Leader and another member was elected Treasurer. Unfortunately – and for reasons best known to himself – Withers failed to turn over the accounts and control of the Party bank accounts to the new Treasurer. Why would he do this unless he has something to hide?

The upshot of all this is that control of the Libertarian Party bank accounts and – even more importantly – the membership list are no longer in the possession of the NCC. Instead they're in the hands of a small unelected group centred around Andrew Withers, Nic Coome and Ian Parker-Jospeph. This has left the Party completely paralysed since last year, and with no obvious prospects of recovery. People who really want to promote a libertarian alternative to mainstream politics would not act in this way – as a matter of fact, Withers' group did actually try to de-register the Party last year, without success.

So we have an unelected group holding a fake AGM in a place and time that most members will find it difficult to access. This looks very much like Withers and his gang trying to complete the coup they started last year. They won't profit from this.

Here's my advice to any Libertarian Party members who plan to attend this so-called AGM:

1. Don't pay the £5 they're asking for. Withers and his mob have no authority to ask you for any money, and there's no way of knowing how the money is going to be spent. The money raised by the Party prior to last year's implosion has not been properly accounted for, despite the best efforts of honest members to obtain this information.


2. Ask Withers for a full accounting of Party funds. It's YOUR money, you have the right to know how it's been spent.


3. Demand that Withers and his cronies surrender control of the bank accounts, financial records and membership lists to the legitimate NCC without delay.


4. Ask Withers why the IT contractor who was in charge of re-vamping the website doesn't seem to have been paid.


5. Make sure your questions, and any answers you receive, are properly recorded, preferably with a digital video camera. Andrew Withers, Nic Coome and Ian Parker-Joseph all have a history of dishonesty, so it's as well to record the proceedings. If there are two or three people with cameras and/or voice recorders present, so much the better.

I joined the Libertarian Party because I believed that it was necessary to have openly libertarian people taking part in the electoral process and promoting libertarian ideas in order to counteract the statist trend of the last century. I still believe this to be necessary – two years of relative inaction by the current government has shown that just getting rid of Labour was not enough. There's a lot of good work that can be done by an effective Libertarian Party, especially at local level. But the Libertarian Party will never be an effective organisation as long as it's resources are under the control of a gang of crooks.

North West Libertarians December Meetup

For those who haven't seen the notice on Facebook, there will be an informal meetup of libertarians in the Kro2 Bar, Oxford Road, Manchester on Sunday 11th December, starting about 1.00pm. This will be the last North West libertarian meetup of 2011, but hopefully not the last one ever.

This has been a bad year for the Libertarian Party. For those who aren't aware of what's been going on, a few months ago the Party's assets – mainly the bank account and membership records – fell into the hands of a small unelected group who have refused to hand these records over to the legitimate National Coordinating Committee. This group is headed by the former Treasurer, who failed to hand over the financial records to the incoming Treasurer. The former Treasurer had been elected Leader at last year's AGM, but later resigned following allegations of misconduct. Unfortunately he failed to register this fact with the Electoral Commission, for reasons which I can only speculate about, and gathered a group of his chronies about him to take control of the Party. In flagrant breach of the Party constitution, they have also failed to hold an AGM this year – I can only assume that this is because they don't want to face any awkward questions from the membership. At one point, they even tried to de-register the Party, but failed because they needed the cooperation of one member of the legitimate NCC, who naturally refused to do this. The situation at the moment is that, although the Libertarian Party still exists as a legal entity, there is no organisation and no internal communication.

Some people have said that this proves that a Libertarian Party is not a practical proposition. I disagree. Other countries have thriving Libertarian Parties, I see no reason for Britain to be different. The way I see it, the real problem is that we didn't give enough thought to how we should be organised when we were first setting up. There was never any real support for local activism. There was also not enough oversight of the leadership's activities. These are lessons we can learn from in the future. Because I believe that there is a place for an effective Libertarian Party in this country. It could be that the current party will end up being de-registered, in which case the way will be open for a group of ex-members with honest intentions to set up a successor organisation. Or maybe the cabal who have siezed control of our party will see sense and step aside.

Either way, a Libertarian Party of some kind will rise from the ashes.

Some useful Blogs

As it's gone quiet on here recently. I thought it would be useful to point our readers in the direction of some blogs by current and former LPUK members


Libertarian Party - http://www.libertarianpartyuk.com/

Thoughts on Morality - Rational Anarchist - http://thoughtsonmorality.blogspot.com/

Anna Raccoon - http://www.annaraccoon.com/

Stuart Heal's Sell a Man a Fishing Rod - http://sellamanafishingrod.blogspot.com/

Take care,

Daz

Let's expose another statist lie...

So Cigarettes and alcohol go up again in the budget - in tobacco's case a whopping 7% rise means paying £7 for a deck of 20 is a not unusual occurrence in the shops. Of course, our paternal big brother who always knows best has been telling us for years that this is to offset the costs to the precious 'sacred cow' of the NHS in terms of liver failure, lung cancer and what have you. However, I distinctly remember a buget 10 years ago where the price of cigarettes went up to around £4 for 20 when we were told the increased duty would pay for these expenses. Makes you wonder why the state never got off the escalator. The suspicion that the real intent was of course to change people's behaviour is clear, and there was just the faintest hint of his before the budget when Dave boasted about the reduction in the number of smokers nationally. It is of course no business of the state to use taxation to change a person's lawful behaviour patterns, and part of me wishes a government would actually have the balls to follow through its statist instincts and propose banning tobacco and alcoholic drink of all kinds. Then we could finally have an honest discussion about the kind of country we want to live in. Meanwhile, here's one for all those with private medical insurance - as your filthy drinking and smoking habits cost the NHS the square root of nothing, keep all your receipts for cigarettes, whiskey whatever and at the end of the financial year, write to your local HMRC asking for some kind of rebate. After all, it's your medical insurance, paid for out of your own pocket that is picking up the tab. £20 says their reply will be an admission that the it was never about money it was about behaviour control. Wouldn't it be nice to see the bullies and control freaks being honest with us about their agenda for once?