Chapter 24
Nasty Politics
I resigned as chair of the Forum in October 2001 after three years in post. The next Forum meeting did not take place for three months and was chaired by Cathy Dell. She had obviously done a lot of work and rejuvenated the Forum. She resigned shortly afterwards and there has not been a chair for three years.
When I chaired the Forum we had displayed our activities each year at the Life and Times Exhibition which is part of the annual Carnival Day in June at the Memorial Park. This had given us good exposure and we made many contacts. I organised the booking of the pitch and did the donkey work like carting all the equipment to site and back in my car or van. Mike ran the web site and we considered the effort well worth while.
The first year we borrowed display boards but later we decided to get our own boards. I shopped around and found the prices prohibitive. So I went out and found the materials and built six board for the Forum at my own expense. They were about 20% of the price of commercially similar boards.
The 2000 event was so successful that when the local radio came round interviewing people we introduced ourselves as Lord Colin of Spon and Mayor Mike of Spon. This was just a joke but in indicated the passion we felt for what we were doing and achieving in the area.
The 2002 exhibition was reasonably successful but afterwards it was noticeable that I was left to clear away and return home the considerable amount of equipment alone. I made no comment but took note. This was in June 2002 just as the problems were about to start and the reasons are now quite clear. At the time they were just different to what had gone before. There was no Forum representation at Life & Times in 2003 or since.
Mike Scrimp has run the Forum as acting chair since Cathy Dell resigned but the only thing it has achieved is to ratify the Area Plan that was produced almost entirely by Area Co-ordination. There have been few Forum meetings and they have been attended only by Scrimp and his friends. The general membership and individuals in the area have virtually abandoned the Forum.
It is not hard to see why. The distributed membership list includes twenty one voting members. Most of them can hardly be considered representative of the local community organisations.
The members for one local Residents Association have never been elected and their appointment is dealt with only in passing in a minute over 15 months ago. The only entry in the whole of the minutes of that organisation is in those for 20 November 2002 where it implied that Mick, Levi, Jade and Clare were appointed but the method of choice and appointment is unclear. There has been no mention in the minutes since then.
In the Forum database produced by Scrimp in October 2002 the delegates were listed as Mick, Clare, Levi and Shelley.
In his capacity build leaflet of 9th April 2003 he announced they were Mick, Jade, Cathy and Shelley, which list is repeated in the issue for the January 2004 meeting.
Shelley has not attended a the association meeting since July 2002 and has not lived in the Forum area since late January 2003. How she can be considered eligible to represent the interests of Chapelfields to the Forum is not clear. As there has never been any debate or election of delegates within the association at any time It is perfectly clear that Scrimp, as acting chair of the Forum, has chosen his friends as delegates to suit his personal agenda.
This is not the mark of a democratic organisation, especially not one supported by City Council services and money given for the encouragement of community participation.
Cathy Dell introduced Dick Chorlton, who has never had any connection with community and has often expressed views radically and forcefully opposed to community groups, to the September 2003 meeting of the association. The only purpose of his speech was to tell a series of lies about me because I had asked the association to deal with the situation that I had been placed in by the threat of violence against me reported to me by Keith Capper. Capper phoned me at 21:27 hours on 8th October 2002 and told me that Dick Chorlton had threatened “there would be violence if I went in the Three Provinces”. Cathy Dell gave Chorlton a stage within the association to further his violent attitude towards me. She then resigned from the association and stated that she was resigning from the Forum and all community involvement. Now, four months later, she is still offered as a the association representative to the Forum. This is pure fascism.
The Old Space Community Association is another suspect case. In his capacity build leaflet of 9th April 2003 Scrimp announced the representatives were Judy Jones, Jane Somerset, Rod Harris and Ann Pearson. The same list appears in January 2004.
Ann Pearson was a receptionist at the medical centre and left some months ago and has no connection with the area. I have spoken with the other three named representatives. Judy Jones does not wish to be associated with the Forum in this manner. Jane Somerset considers the Forum did not support her regarding the stadium and considers us all to be adventurers and is really not happy to be associated with the Forum in this way. Rod Harris walked out of the Forum in 2002 following a dispute with Mike Scrimp and wishes to be no part it.
The Old Space Community Association has not met for three, or perhaps four, years and, in reality, does not exist. The inclusion of these people in the Forum membership is simply Mike Scrimp gerrymandering the Forum boundaries.
The Space End and Retford Trader’s Association was set up with the help of Area Co-ordination NW and later became the Retford Trader’s association as there was only one member in Spon End. Later it changed its name to the Retford Business Group and has now lapsed and has been subsumed into the Jobs and Training PDG of Area Co-ordination NW. Eric Smith can hardly be said to hold the vote of an interest group as he effectively represents only himself.
I was a delegate to the Forum for several years, for three of which I chaired the Forum and took it from minor beginnings into one of the most respected non-aligned political groups in Coventry. I have been removed as a delegate from Blackbrick without minuted record - and probably without discussion. No doubt the excuse would be that I have left the area. True, but so has Shelley Grey left the Forum area. Again, Scrimp has chosen the delegates to suit his own agenda.
The the new trust development trust is wholly owned by the Forum and yet returns a delegate. It is hard to see how it can send a delegate to its owner. This is more gerrymandering by Scrimp.
Nine of the twenty listed members are quite invalid. Several others are personal friends of Scrimp. This presents a distinctly different picture of the Forum membership to that derived from a cursory glance at the membership list. Half of the membership is suspect, illegitimate or does not exist.
The Forum has not distributed a set of accounts since I resigned as chair, a task I did annually and on time and quite publicly. As a guardian of public funds I considered it my duty to have clear, accurate and timely accounts published every year.
The new trust, supposedly wholly owned by the Forum, has not made worthwhile public report since its inception three year ago. The situation is such that I believe no member of the public can find out who are the members of the new trust. This is not a satisfactory situation for an alleged Community Trust.
During a period of eighteen months, two members of the Forum and the association have threatened violence against me, one assaulted me twice, five have spread lies about me, six have shunned me, prevented me attending community meetings and other functions and refused to send me minutes or agenda for community meetings.
If these people wish to run a private organisation that excludes certain people then they are perfectly entitled to do so. But they are thereby turning community organisations, which are open to everyone, into political parties. If they wish to run a political party, they are entitled to do so but they cannot use civic funds to do so. The Forum has had substantial funding from Area Co-ordination and continues to have both financial and clerical support that is quite explicit in the Forum agenda and minutes. the new trust has had funding from the Forum and much support from Area Co-ordination.
I am not sure quite how the City can justify spending public funds to support a private political parties but that is what appears to be happening. This is certainly illegal.
You may ask why I just do not walk away. The answer is both simple and complex. The simple answer is that I value human rights above all things. Without them we are not human. But rights are fairly complicated intellectual constructions and have to be carefully defined and jealously guarded. This is a massive task and it took us several thousand years to arrive at a system that comes anywhere near delivering our individual rights to us. We call this system Constitutional Democracy and the one we have in this country is pretty good. But it requires eternal vigilance. The present government has seen fit to try to overcome growing voter apathy by encouraging and directly financing community participation in local politics. Scrimp and his thugs have hijacked the local political groups because they could not stand the heat of party politics.
Instead of getting out of the kitchen, or leading a face to face political fight they have instigated a filthy personal vendetta to eliminate me from participation in the community. This campaign and their groups have been financed, supported, encouraged and empowered by the Cabinet Office and financed by Area Co-ordination of Coventry City Council.
Another reason Scrimp turned on me was that I moved out of the area in which he lived. My motivation throughout the four years I supported Scrimp was to preserve and enhance the area in which I lived. When I moved I was no longer any use to Scrimp so he could safely discard me. My motivation involved working in a manner such as to help all the people in the area. Scrimp’s motivation is clearly his extreme left wing politics. He left the Labour Party because he could not get his own way within it. He will not join the Socialist Alliance despite the fact that I had to warn him not to place its leader’s name on his email address list because it was associating our efforts with the loony left.
This is what they call community. Their names are Mike Scrimp, Walter Davies, Jane Booker, Shelley Grey, Dick Chorlton, Keith Capper, Cathy Dell, Lydia Walters, Jade Mountford, Kate Helmet and Fred Forman.
Mike Scrimp, acting chair of the Forum, trespassed on property under my management, interfered with my legitimate management of the Black Swan building and told lies about me and the licence. He deliberately refused to sign the licence in order to use it a weapon. The licence was funded by the City of Coventry. He also bent over backwards to exclude me from participation in the Forum and has refused directly to supply me with information about the Forum. He has gerrymandered the constituency and membership of the Forum in a blatant manner.
Walter Davies, active member of the trust and the Forum and the association, stabbed me in the back by supporting Scrimp’s lies within the trust. Other members of the trust acted in a cowardly manner by supporting Scrimp rather that recognising the honest truth that I was acting in accordance with the law and the interests of the trust and could not legally act in any other manner.
Jane Booker deliberately excluded me from another trust by a series of dirty tricks. Shelley Grey wrote that I had terrorised Booker in her own home. Exactly where that rubbish came from I do not know but it is indicative of the vile motives and actions of both Booker and Grey.
Shelley Grey published a photograph of me before September 2002 that Dick Chorlton told me implied I was a paedophile. She admitted in writing to my solicitor that she had published the photograph but did not apologise. She later wrote at length trying to justify her abominable action.
Dick Chorlton also published the same photograph around March 2002 and admitted so in writing to my solicitor. He did not apologise. Later, in November 2002 he assaulted me in my home and in July 2003 he assaulted me in the Old Road from the forecourt of the Three Provinces. Later Cathy Dell told me “That was just Dick being drunk”.
Keith Capper, at the time a member of the association, phoned me at 21:27 hours on 8th October 2002 and told me that Dick Chorlton had threatened “there would be violence if I went in the Three Provinces”. He then barred me from the Three Provinces. The basis for his perverse decision was no doubt that Chorlton drank several pints of beer in there quite often, while I drank the occasional lemonade. This act prevented me attending meetings of the association that at that time were held in that pub. It is not only an insult to me but a perversion of the landlord’s power.Cathy Dell acted as described previously to deliberately facilitate a thug to tell lies about me within a community meeting. Her action was disgraceful and fascist.
Lydia Walters, currently chair of the association, has refused to give me any information about the group and tried to exclude me from its affairs. She took advantage of my gentlemanly demeanour to eject me from a meeting by physically forcing herself upon me. If a man had done that to me I would have hit him hard. She physically assaulted me.
Jade Mountford has repeated, in public, lies about me told to her by Shelley Grey. When my solicitor wrote to her she asked the police to investigate my solicitor but, of course, to no avail. She has not apologised for spreading the lies about me.
Kate Helmet has shunned me and lied to me to try to prevent me participating in the local Neighbourhood Watch.
Fred Forman has also repeated Mountford’s lies and without any evidence whatever, as no such evidence exists, nor has he any reason, other than prejudiced hatred, to believe the lies.
On 17th September 2004 Fred Forman wrote to my son about me “…. Causing distress to people in the area – particularly women… following in a car ”. Total fabrication without evidence of any kind.
About two years later while working on the roof of my factory I suddenly had a memory flash. One night driving home I approached the lights at the bottom of Hearsall lane to find a long line of traffic. I flashed a glance in my mirror and pulled left to take the almost empty Hearsall Lane. I drove up the Lane and realised half way up that I was following Jade Mountford's car. She lives in a street adjacent to mine. I followed her until our natural routes diverged and she took her road and I took mine. I believe this to be the source of the dirty allegation that I "followed in a car". There was certainly no other incident that could have been so misinterpreted. This was typical of the dirty allegations made against me and used to prompt Fred Forman to commit one of the filthiest trick I have ever encountered - to involve my son, daughter and best friend in this by secretly making obscene and un provable allegations against me.
On 22 September 2004 Fred Forman wrote to my son about me “ ….still some stalking … one woman is disturbed by his presence …” . All heresay bullshit.
My Brother had died on the 12th September so the family had plenty of other things to keep it occupied.
At some time about here Fred also phoned my daughter and my best friend and met them to make foul allegations of various types. He basically got a flea in his ear.
On 24th October 2004 Shelley Grey emailed my son to make nasty allegations that police were preparing a case of harassment against me. Perhaps we have two different police forces in this country but the one I know never came near me. Perhaps she was just fantacising. God knows.
On 27th October two others together with my friend Paul held a meeting in Black Swan to discuss the problems with respect to the another organisation. Paul effectively demolished their implied accusations and the matter was then effectively dropped.
On 25th November 2004 my son replied to Fred and arranged a meeting which Fred never attended. He chickened out when challenged to present evidence. He had none. There was none. It was all fabrication by Scrimp’s friends.
The actions of Grey and Forman were a conspiracy to harass me. They could not both have got my son’s email address without association – and that is a conspiracy. They committed a foul criminal attack against me.
Many of these people meet regularly in the Three Provinces to hatch their nasty plots. So be it. I fight for human rights. They are fighting against me. You must judge for yourself for what they are fighting. They call their actions Community. I call it fascism.
Mike Scrimp and I had built the Forum with the help of a few others. He had supplied the political expertise and I the leg-work. Although he was only a year older than my son, I respected him enormously and he is the only man on earth whom I have ever described my relationship with as that of love. I trusted him completely and he betrayed me completely.
All this is now ancient history but it should never be buried. It might be a good history lesson to anyone intent on participating in politics. Those who will not learn from history are doomed to relive it. So if you want to be a politician learn from my experience and be prepared to be a right bastard – or die. I very nearly did.
All the names in this chapter have been changed and every reference which could identify any person has been changed. After ten years I have no intention of reopening this fight but neither will I forget it or forgive it. It was not the result of mistakes but was a deliberate politically motivated attempt to destroy me. cgw 14th November 2012