Always win when you’re singing

Over the past three years, members of the Watford constituency LibDems (of which I am a member) have suffered from a sustained campaign of harassment, intimidation and hate.

Today the Conservatives’ parliamentary candidate Ian Oakley, who stepped down only after he arrested and then charged two weeks ago, pleaded guilty to seven specimen offences and asked for a further 68 to be taken into consideration.

The police report said that Oakley admitted that he intentionally harassed LibDem activists with the intention of ‘leading to his own victory in the General Election’. He also admitted that he was ‘driven to change the political landscape of Watford to the benefit of the Conservative Party’.

Sentencing has been adjourned until 16th September (when many of us will be in Bournemouth!). However the senior magistrate stated that in sentencing he ‘could not ignore that [Oakley's] stated aim was to interfere with the democratic process’ and that the offences were ’so serious that a custodial sentence is an option’.

The incidents have included:

• anonymous leaflets, alleging that LibDem councillors and candidates were convicted child sex offenders;
• fake leaflets purporting to be from the LibDems, alleging that another mosque was to be built on public land, close to where the town’s second mosque had recently been erected. Another leaflet issued a ‘denial’ that a candidate was a convicted fraudster or that he had been convicted  for assaulting his ex-wife (he is happily married);
• repeated late-night silent phone calls;
• sexual and racist graffiti being sprayed on cars, walls, doors, fences and hedges;
• damage to cars, including slashed tyres, smashed lights and offensive graffiti;
• anonymous letters distributed to councillors, suggesting that the parliamentary candidate should be dropped;
• hard-core pornography sent to activists;
• poster boards broken and/or daubed with the words ‘f**k the LibDems’ or ‘c**ts’.

As you can imagine, it has been quite difficult at times for activists to keep campaigning normally, but we have done so - continuing to take council seats from the Conservatives, although failing to take one by 3 votes and another by 2. Who knows what effect those letters and leaflets had in those wards - it would be easy for the tide of lies to lose us those few votes. We have also had to waste so much time and money sorting out these incidents and giving statements to the police.

It has been more difficult to involve new activists and invite them to stand for the council, knowing that they may be the next to be targeted, but again we have refused to be cowed. At all times, we have acted with dignity, have not thrown accusations around and have not sought publicity, or to make political capital.

Some Conservatives have sought to allege that it was all in the minds of the LibDems, or that we had started it with our own dirty tricks. All I can say is that neither the LibDems nor the police have had any evidence of any campaign against any other party or its members.

Now we have some closure and we can get on with what we do best - winning.