THE ASSEMBLED student volunteers in the car park of a boarded-up pub in
Gipton, Leeds, were hoping to do their small bit to avert Labour’s predicted
electoral meltdown.
The rundown suburb — a former Labour stronghold — is crucial in the party’s
fight to seize back control of the city council. Labour is only too aware
that heavy defeats in Thursday’s local elections will sour the expected
coronation of Gordon Brown as leader this summer.
Indeed, one of the politicians addressing the group of students was Graham
Hyde, a Labour councillor who works as a parliamentary aide to the local MP
George Mudie, a former whip and staunch Brown supporter.
Keith Wakefield, the Labour group’s leader, was also present in the car park,
underlining the importance of the Gipton and Harehills ward to the party.
He had emerged from his car with a young woman whom he believed to be a mature
student at Leeds University. She was, in fact, an undercover Sunday Times
reporter investigating electoral fraud, which experts now believe has become
endemic in Britain’s cities.
The secret tape recordings she made last week would appear to confirm many
people’s fears that senior Labour figures are carrying out sharp practices
which could have a decisive effect on the outcome of this week’s local
elections.
The purpose of the gathering in the car park was to instruct the students to
“chase” postal votes. Wakefield had told our reporter during the car
journey: “Our job... will be to make sure they [the voters] have either done
it [sent in their postal votes] or we will help them...If we can get back
these votes for Labour, we can win this.”
In the car park the students were told to trawl the surrounding streets
collecting postal ballot forms from voters and, if necessary, to help
residents to complete their ballots. Hyde warned: “Put the postal vote form
out of sight...Don’t get caught with any on you. We are not supposed to
collect them.”
He appeared well aware of the ramifications of what he was suggesting. One of
the students conspiratorially told the group he believed that what they were
doing was “illegal”. Hyde responded: “Yes it is. But we’ve done 25% already,
so...”
The Sunday Times is supplying a dossier to the police and the council’s
returning officer containing transcripts of the tape recordings as well as
interviews with voters. Any canvasser who solicits a postal ballot paper
from a voter or helps them to fill out the ballot paper would be breaking an
electoral code of conduct agreed by all the parties and may have broken
electoral law.
The dubious tactics are perhaps indicative of the desperation that is coursing
through Labour’s ranks as the local elections approach. Polls are predicting
that Labour is heading for its worst local election showing for more than
half a century. Its poll rating at local level is running at just 24%.
The election being fought in Leeds reflects Labour’s problems nationally.
Labour holds 40 of the 90 seats on Leeds city council, which is run by a
coalition of Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and the Green party. While
Labour will fight to regain control on Thursday, it may face a struggle just
to maintain its position. It was against this background that the
Labour-supporting students went to Gipton on Thursday.
The area, in eastern Leeds, is one of the rougher suburbs, made up largely of
council tower blocks and sprawling estates. Gangs of youths hang around on
street corners and the unemployment rate is high.
The suburb, whose residents are typically white working-class or poor Asian
families, was until recently solidly Labour. However, two of the three local
councillors are now Liberal Democrat, as Labour suffers from a large
antiIraq war vote among Muslim voters. Labour is also concerned about the
threat from the BNP, which is targeting white voters.
Last year Labour’s activities in the ward were the subject of complaints from
rival candidates. One said: “Local Labour voters were going door to door,
pressuring people to fill in their votes and then delivering sacks up to the
polling station.
“At the count, the ballot boxes were opened first and the Liberal Democrats
had a commanding lead. Then the postal votes were opened and they were
almost all Labour. everyone present had suspicions that something was afoot.”
Complaints about the activities of the Labour teams canvassing door-to-door
were made to the police, who wrote a strongly worded letter to all the
parties warning them to abide by the code of conduct.
Last week, however, little appeared to have changed. On Wednesday the
undercover reporter was summoned to meet Wakefield outside the constituency
office of Hilary Benn, the overseas development secretary and deputy
leadership candidate.
She was among a group of 12 students, mostly studying English, politics and
history, who were then driven to the car park of the Fairway pub in Gipton.
Waiting for them was Hyde.
Wakefield and Hyde then delivered their briefing. “Simply, what I want you to
do is to knock on the door, say you are from the Labour party,” instructed
Hyde.
“Have you received your postal vote?” he told the students to ask voters.
“Have you returned it? If they give it to you in your hand, you collect it
and put it in the post box.”
“If they haven’t, you say, ‘Have you got your postal vote?’” Wakefield chipped
in: “You’ve got to do it for them.”
Hyde then said: “And if you are knocking on the door and they have a postal
vote and they haven’t done it, ‘Would you like to do it? We’ll put it in the
post.’
“We also want to check they are voting Labour as well. Yeah? If they are
voting Liberal Dem, then don’t offer to put the postal vote in. We’ve found
10 so far out of all those we’ve done in Gipton.”
One of the students then said: “Yes, I’ll post that for you.”
Hyde laughed and added: “Yes, that’s it, and then it ends up in the toilet.”
The task was important. Labour’s intelligence is that 4,000 out of the ward’s
16,000 electorate are voting by post. Wakefied had earlier described it as
“make or break”.
He also told the students about the Asian voting networks — whereby senior
figures in the Asian community either collect and fill in postal voting
papers or press people to vote a certain way. The Labour candidate in the
ward is Asian.
“All the parties use the Muslim connections...while there is paranoia in the
country about the use of Asian voting systems... They have a brilliant
network: they pass it on; they all want to use the postal,” said Wakefield.
The students were then divided into two groups and given a list of all those
with postal votes. They began knocking on doors in local tower blocks.
Many of the properties are home to the elderly and the undercover reporter
found herself in the front room of one couple — Catherine and John — in
their eighties. The woman quickly produced her postal ballot and asked for
help in filling it in. She then handed the ballot paper to the reporter.
That form will now be passed to the council’s local returning officer so that
he can ask the woman whether she wishes to recast her vote.
When the reporter returned, Wakefield asked her where one of her fellow
canvassers was. “She is probably in someone’s house helping them fill out
the form,” said the reporter. Later, when the canvasser reemerged, Wakefield
inquired whether she “picked up the PV [postal vote].” She had.
In a conversation on Friday, the student said to the undercover reporter:
“Yeah, it is a little bit dodgy. It is a little bit open to allegation of
whatever. But all we are doing is trying to keep it pretty quiet.”
Last week residents of the area revealed that they felt pressured by Labour
canvassers. Margot Knight, a retired 69-year-old, recalled how she had been
visited by a “young woman” canvassing on behalf of Labour. “The young woman
asked if I needed any help,” said Knight, who had already filled in her form
but had yet to post it. “She
then asked, ‘Have you signed it?’ My granddaughter was with me at the time and
she was going to take my vote to the postbox.
“But the young woman offered to take my vote with her to post. She said she
was happy to post it. I was a bit doubtful about handing it over but you
have got to trust some people these days, haven’t you?”
The Electoral Commission, the official electoral watchdog, says canvassers
must not solicit postal votes and should post votes only if specifically
asked to do so. However, Maserat Ghafoor, a 39-year-old housewife, said she,
too, had felt under pressure when a Labour councillor was brought to her
home by a relative. She said the councillor asked her whether she needed
help filling out her postal vote.
“I said to them that I could do it on my own,” Ghafoor said. “Nobody tried to
force me but they explained to me how I should do it. They said, ‘It is up
to you.’ I said I didn’t need any help. They gave me a Labour leaflet to
stick on my window which I did but I took it off after they left.”
Another resident, who wishes to remain anonymous, said she had been approached
by her landlord and asked to apply for two postal votes. The landlord, who
owns a number of properties in the area, has told her he will take the
documents away unsigned when they arrive. “He said that I would get two
envelopes coming through for postal voting. He calls about once a week,
including today, to check if I have got the documents.”
A study by the Electoral Commission last year found that about 500,000 people
felt fraud was a “big” problem in local elections because of “first-hand
experience”.
The problems stem from Labour’s decision in 2000 to allow postal voting on
demand. This means anyone can apply to vote by post. Previously this was
open only to voters who could produce a compelling reason why they could not
use a polling station.
Despite repeated warnings, the government failed to introduce safeguards to
make the system secure. Political parties rushed to persuade hundreds of
thousands of people to sign up for postal votes and experts now fear fraud
is endemic.
Richard Price QC, an expert on electoral law, said: “I look at the situation
as like a large bowl of water. Previously there were a couple of holes in it
— isolated cases of fraud — but suddenly it has become a colander. It is a
completely unnecessary crisis. With postal voting you have abolished the
secret ballot, and your investigation is a classic example of this.”
Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, an academic expert on elections, added: “Postal
voting on demand is inherently unsatisfactory. The whole system is open to
abuse. Secret ballots were introduced in 1872 to stop exactly this sort of
problem and we now seem to be going back to the 19th century.”
Sir Alistair Graham, who stood down as chairman of the committee on standards
in public life last week, recently accused ministers of being in denial
about the “real and potent threat” facing the electoral system as a result
of fraud. He warned that the government could not ensure the forthcoming
local elections would be free, fair or secure.
The government has repeatedly refused to tighten up the system — by insisting
that people must provide National Insurance numbers when voting by post or
by specifically barring the worst excesses of canvassers. In the forthcoming
election, postal voters are simply asked to provide a signature and date of
birth, although fears are also mounting that new electronic verification
machines will be unable to cope.
After this week’s elections, the Association of Electoral Administrators will
again press for radical change. John Turner, who heads the association,
said: “Why did the major parties sign up to the code of conduct when they
apparently behave like this?
“There are allegations of people being intimidated, of the ballot not being
secret. We are clearly going to talk about this at some length [reforming
the system] and we could well be coming up with some suggestions after
polling day.”
Yesterday Paul Rogerson, the returning officer for the Leeds elections, issued
a statement saying: “If we are made aware of any allegations disclosing the
possibility that criminal offences may have been committed by party workers
in the city’s Gipton and Harehills ward, we will refer them forthwith to the
West Yorkshire police.
“The allegations here relate to practices by party workers that do not adhere
to the code of conduct that the three largest political parties in England
have agreed should be observed by all of their candidates and canvassers at
the forthcoming elections.”
Wakefield yesterday denied he had ever instructed canvassers to solicit postal
votes. He said the ballot paper had new instructions this year and the
canvassers had merely been instructed to take details of anyone who was
having difficulty. Their details would be passed on, he said, to the
council’s electoral office, which could then help them.
“Not once did I bring a postal vote back. I am the last person, as the Labour
leader, who should be seen doing that,” he said. “All we are trying to do is
to encourage and ask people to send them [postal votes] off.”
Hyde said yesterday: “I have done nothing wrong. I have done nothing illegal.
It is not illegal to ask somebody if they have voted. It is illegal, in my
view, to actually assist somebody to fill in a ballot form.”
David Shaw, assistant chief constable of West Midlands, who is the Association
of Chief Police Officers’ co-ordinator on election fraud, said politicians
and their supporters should not be handling voters’ ballot papers.
“They know what the guidance and the law says, and they are taking a risk. Our
view would be that assisting voters to fill out their forms is against the
guidance, and if they are seeking to exert influence or pressure, that is
simply an offence.”
Insight: Claire Newell, Jonathan Calvert, Robert Winnett, Tom Baird
Secret orders for canvassers
Keith Wakefield, the leader of the Labour group on Leeds city council, drives
two students and an undercover reporter to Gipton and Harehills.
Wakefield: So our job, I believe, will be to make sure they have either
done it [their postal vote] or we help them...Now the reason why it’s
really, really important on this one: the average postal votes for a ward in
[the] city is 800 to 1,000, there’s 4,000 postal votes [in Gipton and
Harehills]... So it’s make or break...as you know, more people vote through
postal than not. If we can get back those votes for Labour we can win this.
So it’s really, really important that we chase the votes. I have never known
as many postal votes in any election in 20 years.
Student 2: Do you know why it’s so many?
Wakefield: Yes. We can speak amongst friends. It’s very much an Asian,
half Asian, half white working-class ward. And er, both, all the parties use
the Muslim connections, which probably some people would frown at, and
families to get everyone on postal.
Student 1: That’s exactly what we’ve done in our ward.
Wakefield: Oh right yes. So while there is paranoia in the country
about the use of Asian voting systems...as we all know, they have a
brilliant network; they pass it on; they all want to use the postal.
Wakefield, students and undercover reporter arrive in the car park at the
Fairway pub in Gipton and meet Graham Hyde, a Labour councillor. Hyde briefs
the group on what to do.
Hyde: Simply, what I want you to do is you knock on the door, say you
are from the Labour party...‘Have you received your postal votes?... These
are all Labour people. ‘Have you returned it?’ If they give it to you in
your hand, you collect it and put it in the postbox...If they haven’t, you
say: ‘Have you got your postal vote?’
Wakefield: You’ve got to do it for them.
Hyde: The thing is we want to know who has returned them. And if you
are knocking on the door and they have a postal vote and they haven’t done
it, ‘Would you like to do it? We’ll put it in the post?’ You have to do it
very careful...because they [the opposition or the authorities] are watching
everyone.
Wakefield: I know, I know.
Hyde: All these here are postal votes.
Wakefield: All we are doing is chasing the postal... Do you have to
seal it [the postal ballot] before posting?
Hyde: Yeah, seal it all up... We also want to check they are voting
Labour as well. Yeah? If they are voting Liberal Dem, then don’t offer to
put the postal vote in. We’ve found 10 so far out of all those we’ve done in
Gipton.
Student 3: ‘Yes, I’ll post that for you!’ [laughs]
Hyde: Yes that’s it, and then it ends up in the toilet [laughs]. I
know...Put the postal vote form out of sight, or if you are passing a
postbox throw it in it. Don’t get caught with any on you. We are not
supposed to collect them.
Student 4: Yes, it’s illegal to collect.
Hyde: Yeah.
Reporter: Is it? Why?
Student 4: It’s illegal to collect, isn’t it?
Hyde: Yes it is, but we’ve done 25% already, so...
The Electoral Commission code of conduct says canvassers must:
- Not solicit completed postal ballot papers from electors
- Hot handle or help voters complete their papers
- Ensure voters complete papers in secret and seal them personally
- Encourage voters to post or deliver ballot papers themselves
