Judgement day at the tea dance hall

Oldham will go down in history books as the town where an MP was kicked out for lying in 2010 for the first time in almost 100 years.

Hundreds of people at Friday’s election court at Saddleworth Civic Hall more used to hosting tea dances and brass band concerts, sat in stunned silence as two High Court judges ended the career of Labour’s rising star Phil Woolas because, their ruling made clear, he won his Oldham East and Saddleworth seat in May by lying to voters.

The explosive decision came on Bonfire Night, and puts a rocket up future political campaigning.

Mr Woolas’s defeated election rival Elwyn Watkins heard his Election Petition was a success and that he had made legal history.

The decision now also goes to the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, who will study if any criminal laws have been broken.

Mr Watkins went to the specially convened election court in September alleging Mr Woolas made five false statements about him in election literature knowing they were not true.

The judges studied the Labour Rose leaflet, the Examiner newspaper produced by Mr Woolas and his team, and other election leaflets, and agreed that Mr Woolas, — then the immigration minister in a town which suffered race riots in 2001— knowingly misled voters when he claimed Mr Watkins had wooed Muslim extremists, and refused to condemn those who advocated violence against Mr Woolas. They said it was false and he knew it was false.

Mr Woolas was alleged to have received death threats, and the court had been told the intention was to make the white vote angry and “get the vote out” because the MP believed he was going to lose.

The judges also ruled Mr Woolas knew it was not true when he said Mr Watkins had gone back on a promise to live in the constituency.

Two other claims, that Mr Watkins breached election laws by spending £200,000 on his campaign, busting the spending limit, and that the money had come from a wealthy Arabian sheikh who employs Mr Watkins, were not accepted as breaches of election law because the judges were not clear that Mr Woolas did know they were untrue.

They also ruled Mr Woolas must pay Mr Watkins’s costs, despite a plea from Mr Woolas’s counsel, Gavin Millar, that they should be split 60/40 because two of the five allegations were not upheld.

Pleaded
Mr Millar also pleaded for the High Court Judges, Mr Justice Nigel Teare and Mr John Griffth Williams, to delay sending their judgement to the Speaker of the Commons John Bercow, so Mr Woolas could make his application for an appeal, called a judicial review.

But the judges told him the law said it had to be done “forthwith” and revealed they had sent their judgement to Mr Bercow under embargo, to be read only at 11am when they handed down their decision.

That decision means the election result, only confirmed after two lengthy recounts and a tiny 103 vote majority on May 6, is void, and a by election must follow. Mr Bercow was due to make a statement to the Commons this morning.

What happens now is uncharted territory. Mr Woolas will get no backing from the Labour party to pursue his legal case, and has launched an appeal to pay for his judicial review.

He will need all the knowledge of his BA degree in philosophy from Manchester University in 1981 as he fights for his political and personal future.

Oldham Council's Director of Legal Servcies, Paul Entwistle, was in the hall for the result but said the authority will have to wait for the Speaker's decision before planning the by-election.

Voters in Oldham East and Saddleworth today have no MP and Mr Woolas cannot continue work he was doing for constituents. It is not even clear what happens to his office in Church Lane, which he shares with Michael Meacher, MP for Oldham West and Royton, or his paid staff.

The Parliamentary Standards Authority is also believed to be looking at Mr Woolas' pay and benefits since he was elected in May.

Oldham Councillor John Battye, one of Mr Woolas's Church Lane, staff said: "We will carry on working until someone tells us otherwise.”