​So she was right all along.
 
That pig-headed, infuriating, argumentative, sulphurous trouble-maker Liz Harvey was perfectly correct in arguing that the bans imposed on her and Andrew Harrison, were unlawful. She said that the process used by Ledbury Town Council to investigate and convict her and Andrew, was grossly unfair. She said that the Council's sanctions also infringed her human rights as an elected councillor.
 
The High Court judge agreed with her. Mrs Justice Sara Cockerill's judgement, first released in draft appropriately enough on the First of May, is comprehensive and emphatic. Liz Harvey is completely vindicated, while Ledbury Town Council is judged completely wrong since it embarked on its campaign to exclude and silence the two dissident councillors. There is no mitigation; the Council's defense has been obliterated.
 
So now the town's assorted right wing conformists, the establishment stooges and xenophobic nativists are foaming at the mouth, appalled at what they see as yet another left wing stitch up by outsiders. Hazy on the detail, the reaction of most ordinary people is surprise that the Council was prepared to go all the way on a project that seemed doubtful from the start, given the weight of legal opinion (and common sense) ranged against it.
 
Of more concern to tax payers is the two hundred thousand pounds of public money that the Gang of Four - Fieldhouse, Crowe, Barnes and Eager - have squirted up the wall on what now emerges as the flimsiest of pretexts.  Reading the judgment anybody with the most middling intelligence could not help exclaiming, is that really it?
 
Advice that dares not speak its name.
 
The vaunted legal advice was that the Council's case was 'cast iron', 'rock solid', 'as safe as houses' (I quote). It came first from Lynda Wilcox of Herefordshire Association of Local Councils, then the National Association of Local Council's chief legal officer Meera Tharmarajah, then from DF Legal LLP, the local Ledbury solicitors, and finally from the swanky London lawyers of Winkworth Sherwood LLP. Wow: that sounds impressive.  Except for over two years, this secret legal advice, the Council's killer card, has remained elusive.
 
You can imagine the mixture of hilarity and dismay when Harvey's team finally got sight of the Council's defence as its QC, Lisa Busch, revealed its long-awaited 'skeleton' legal argument before the court hearing. It was about as robust as a used kleenex, as convincing as a Bill Clinton stain removing kit. 
 
In poker, there's a particular bluff you can use at the start of a round called a Blind Steal. It's a preemptive move where you bet aggressively straight after the deal even though you have a dead hand. You use your ample financial resources, to convince your opponents that resistance is futile, they might as well drop out at the start. Your confidence blinds them. Military strategists refer to it as shock and awe. I'll give the ladies and gents of the town council's 'Standing Committee'  top marks for bluff. Fieldhouse in particular would make a spectacular poker player with her repertoire of diversions, evasions and distraction tactics, and her peerless ability to look you in the eye and lie through her teeth. When her business folds, perhaps poker could be her financial salvation? But who really cares? For now, alongside the other three resigned councillors, Elaine is bobbing helplessly in scalding hot water.
 
As predicted, this foolish adventure by the four grifters and their saps - Francis, Bradford, Eakin and Manns - means that Ledbury Town Council is now effectively ripped apart. Not only has the Clerk at the centre of the lies - Karen Mitchell - ditched her co-conspirators for a new job in Bromyard, but the temporary stand-in clerk has also resigned. Now the new Deputy Clerk has gone, citing 'personal reasons'. Lastly, the Mayor Fieldhouse joins the stinking, crumpled heap of Eager, Crowe and Barnes on the bench.  
 
Reactionaries.
 
This is not to say that their idiot fan club aren't still trying to spin the judgment as simply a 'procedural' error, some kind of minor technicality. Just because Harvey has won the JR, they say, doesn't mean she and Harrison didn't bully the staff. Yes it fucking does.
 
Reality check: Harvey and Harrison had already been cleared of bullying by the Monitoring Officer at Herefordshire Council two years ago. This judgment finally removes the legally indefensible sanctions imposed on them by hostile political opponents since then. It also means that parish councils everywhere else henceforth must comply with the terms of the Localism Act 2011 and hand over complaints about councillor conduct to their 'principal authority', the county or district council above them. Tin-pot, third-tier councils, like Ledbury's, are not competent in any sense of that word, to investigate councillor conduct. End of.
 
What now remains is to investigate if criminal maladministration has taken place in the town council. What exactly were the compelling legal opinions which justified the Gang of Four's insistence on taking this dispute all the way to the High Court?  Were they within their powers to commit so much money to a legal cause of which the wider Town Council had no knowledge? Was the Standing Committee entitled to pay legal invoices exceeding £80 thousand to Winkworth Sherwood, in full awareness that there were no budgeted funds to cover it? Did they tell lies and misrepresent the situation to fellow councillors? Were crucial committee decisions suppressed and false minutes presented to council?
 
Now it is time for the police to launch a formal inquiry into these and other questions.
 
Meanwhile out in the street, the Mmes Crowe and Fieldhouse are still busy cooking up schemes and stratagems. Today they were allegedly spotted at the back door of the council while clerical assistant Mrs Jill Jupp (another ex-mayor's wife) ran around collecting paperwork for them. Were these nomination forms for the forthcoming election? Now it emerges, Keith Francis, the hapless deputy mayor who has eagerly participated in every stage of this unfolding scandal, is trying to argue that he was 'bullied' by Crowe and Eager. I was following orders, he says plaintively.

<eye-roll> 

Another longstanding council waste container, veteran councillor Tony Bradford, champion of the common man, is also claiming that he was bullied into acquiesence by Crowe and her chums. Sympathy for his plight is leavened because at Ledbury's recent irritable Annual Council meeting, Bradford continued to bemoan the awful bullying he was subject to by Harvey, Harrison, me and my 'team'. Has he got a persecution disorder, or does he just say whatever is expedient to make himself look good in the moment, or at least less bad?
 
Whatever their excuses, Bradford and Francis are as culpably foolish and malign as the other three ringleaders, Crowe, Fieldhouse and Barnes. Here they were prosecuting a ruinous legal campaign against Harvey (and Harrison) for bullying staff, while now claiming they were simultaneously being 'bullied' into going along with the three others; oh, the irony.

Time's up Gentlemen. 

Weak, cowardly, craven, morally bankrupt, manipulative, hypocritical, Mr Bradford and Mr Francis: your gutless excuses are nauseating and shameful. Get out of it.
 
So too, can young Matthew Eakin (another locally famous Lib-Dem) and Andy Manns, these two 'good guys' who eagerly voted for every illegal sanction, every vicious little act on Harvey and Harrison to be imposed, who ignored every protestation that the Council's actions were clearly unfair, who up to last week, have continued to support the bans until the two offending councillors 'begin behaving themselves', who have been regularly popping in and out of Crowe's and Fieldhouse's shops for political instruction.  There is a special type of contempt that is reserved for collaborationists. Unless they fess up that is. Being ignored.
 
Let's just end this by recalling the vile whining of the Nazi war-criminal Adolf Eichmann: I was only following orders.
 
No. He had a choice. The actions into which he was allegedly 'coerced' were so egregious and unreasonable from a moral and legal point of view, that his defense of 'superior orders' was rejected as impossible.

The Council miscreants always had a choice. They didn't have to do what they did. Their actions were calculated and deliberate. Now they must take the consequences.
 
I apologise to my readers for my intemperate language and biting opinions. When I have seen justice being done in Ledbury, and the real bullies of this town exposed and judged, my ire may subside. Right now, I'm with the rest of the mob, in wanting to see these shoddy little enemies of democracy, these petty tricksters, these power-thirsty narcissists, dealt with harshly in the court of public opinion. Let them be identified, their behaviour scrutinised and learned from, and then let them be forgotten.
 
Then we might put this tragedy behind us.
 
 
 
 

For a moment, and for the last time I promise, I want to talk about the sordid world of Martin Eager - the violent, paedophile councillor who has just resigned from Ledbury Town Council.
 
In his sickening resignation letter, Eager says he had seen 'town council staff coming to work with dread and in tears, because of a "toxic" climate... I did not join the council to witness staff crying their eyes out because they dreaded going into work.'
 
If he is to be believed, this would not be the first time this evil man has witnessed people crying their eyes out in fear and dread.
 
Let us picture the scene as he tightened his hands round the neck of his slightly built wife and shook her like a rag doll, and punched her repeatedly, telling her he was going to fucking kill her. She was probably crying her eyes out. Think about his thirteen year old ex-step daughter having to endure the most awful sexual abuse - she told the police he had done 'disgusting things' to her, that he was a 'perv', probably while crying her eyes out. Imagine the tears of shame and rage of that mother having to listen to her daughter explaining in horrifying detail to police officers and to the court how she had been defiled and degraded by this obese fifty year old man. She had to listen too while her young son's testimony was given; he too was invited into Eager's sex-games and invited to touch the man's penis.
 
These are the facts that were read out in court. But there are people in Ledbury who say that he did much more, terrible things that never saw the light. Yes we might spare a thought for the daughters' school friends who were party to the abuse, and to their parents having to listen to their harrowing, at that stage, unsubstantiated accounts of domestic physical and sexual abuse. Even now, a decade later there is a cloud of shame and guilt that hangs over these families, that they weren't able to do more to put a stop to the abuse and see Eager behind bars.
 
Let us now imagine the dread of this family, living in a foreign country, having to go to court each day and relive such unspeakable life-changing experiences in public, even while Eager's posse of Ledbury friends, some of them openly racist, were running round the town saying they were all liars, that the allegations were a pack of lies, that Eager's ex-wife deserved her fate.
 
Turning up to court on 30 October 2008, this wretched family was told by the judge to go home: the trial was aborted. As they walked from Worcester Crown Court on that chilly autumn day, we might visualise the mother trying her best to be strong, desperate to fight back the bitter tears of rage, injustice and grief so as not to make her children's pain any worse. Confused, she is dimly trying to make sense of a 'mistake' by the Crown Prosecution Service having charged Eager under the wrong legislation, causing the trial to collapse. Was it a genuine mistake? Or was it a deliberate perversion of justice, enacted by Eager's high-placed friends to let him off the hook? Could she face putting her family through a retrial?
 
Finally, let's try out the toxic climate in which these three vulnerable people had been immersed for months, possibly years: a bullying, abusive home life, a hostile, racist town, an incompetent - or possibly malevolent - judicial system unable, or unwilling, to offer redress. Just for a moment, imagine the parting glance of ex-Mrs Eager boarding the plane to go home, looking out over the bleak concrete expanse below, choking back the bitter tears. What would she be thinking about Ledbury? About her adoptive home, Britain?
 
These three lives were emotionally destroyed by a man who walked away scot-free, completely unrepentant, who was sheltered and later welcomed back into respectable society by his friends in the Ledbury establishment.
 
A few hundred voters in the North Ward of Ledbury voted for him at the 2015 election, many unaware of his crimes, but some, shamefully willing to condone his monstrous behaviour. In 2009 after the abortive trial, a previous town council had co-opted him back into its ranks amid warm words and friendly handshakes: Keith Francis, Mary Cooper, Clive Jupp, Paul Winter, Allen Conway, Rob Yeoman, Tony Bradford: you were all there to welcome him back.  And the town? Where was Ledbury when he took his seat as a committee chair in charge of play equipment, youth projects and family amenities? It took another decade to have his disgrace acknowledged.
 
In its most shameful act, Ledbury Town Council elected Eager Town Mayor in 2017. His cheerleaders included Bob Barnes, Annette Crowe, Tony Bradford, Elaine Fieldhouse, Jean Simpson, Debbie Baker, Matthew Eakin, Andy Manns. Each one of these people knew full well about Eager's past crimes. And yet it was to Liz Harvey whom they hurled abuse and cheered when Eager insulted in her in the most grossly misogynistic terms. He called her a smelly old cow, and said she was the most disgusting woman he had ever seen. Even writing this makes me feel sick.
 
Let us not forget the town council staff in this affair too, the Clerk, the Deputy Clerk, the various Clerical Assistants who have all fussed and fawned over Eager, a regular and welcome visitor to the town council offices.
 
Tears. Dread. Toxic. Three little words which have cast a life sentence over so many innocent lives. Completely disregarded by the amoral guardians of Ledbury's civic affairs, Eager has survived and prospered because of his friends in the rotten, corrupt, sleazy establishment of this town. We must of course point the finger at the Freemasons whom we know are infused with notions of fraternal loyalty, even when confronting the most disgusting behaviour. But there are women too who have chosen to turn a blind eye. Shame on them too. 
 
The people who have given Eager succour over the years - including the local press - are guilty by association. By allowing this paedophile to roam free in public life, they have given solace to bullies, domestic abusers, child abusers, inept and/or corrupt officials everywhere. They have furthered the cause of cruelty, oppression and domination. They have sought to rewrite history in favour of the violent oppressor and cast anyone who challenges them as heinous liars. This is the rancid culture in which Ledbury Town Council has been steeped for ten or more years.
 
In time the stench of decay might fade. It is to be hoped that Eager crawls off into a dark place and is never heard from again. Nonce: not on communal exercise. Some of his cronies are gone, but a few cling on for now: Francis, Fieldhouse, Bradford in particular. They must go too.
 
It is fair to say that this affair is a stain on the reputation of Ledbury. At the very least, there needs to be an acknowledgement of the pain that the Town Council has visited on Eager's ex-family by its craven actions, and an apology offered by unanimous motion for sheltering and encouraging him. It must happen soon. It will begin the process of truth and reconciliation. 

It didn't take long. As Ledbury Town Council goes into meltdown, a ruthless damage limitation operation is already underway by elements of the town's old political guard, the conservative establishment.
 
Ledbury's shadowy burghers have done their best to shore up the hapless Elaine Fieldhouse during her bleak tenure as mayor after defenestrating their first choice for the job last year, self confessed domestic and child abuser, Martin Eager. The public outcry at his election almost threatened riots.
 
These upstanding brothers from the Eastnor Lodge who know what's best for the town, understand that stability is strength and continuity is control.
 
It is essential that the Liz Harvey tendency, that raucous, insolent, anti-patriotic rabble who have taken the Council to the brink of ruin, must be stopped before it has the chance to do anything to really upset the status quo. One thing is certain: they must never grasp the reins of power.
 
There was a foretaste of this at the Parish Meeting last Thursday, even before Crowe had flounced and Barnes had said his nasty little goodbye. Out of six 'distinguished citizens' that were recognised by the Town Council, three were Council cronies.
 
First up was Ken Davies, a former town mayor from bygone times. His most recent outing into Ledbury affairs was a letter denouncing the bullies in the town council, and expressing such sympathy for the awful treatment endured by council staff. Ken's most infamous contribution however was the proposal that Ledbury Park should be converted into a golf course, with the building of an accompanying holiday village. Ken has always had an interest in tourism with a keen eye for an opportunity; he owns Woodside Holiday Cottages. Next came Bob Barnes-acolyte Jennie Harrison, the amateur military activist and leading light in the Royal British Legion since her recent arrival in Ledbury.
 
As if the tang of dyspepsia from twenty long minutes of fawning and mutual back slapping was hard enough to take, the spectacle then got really bilious. One of last year's winners - Hilary Jones - stood up and to groans of disbelief, nominated ex-town councillor Clive Jupp for a distinguished citizen award. His face beamed with delight and gratitude, the audience not so much. She was presumably returning the favour to Clive who had nominated her last year.

CORRECTION: Hilary Jones's daughter has corrected me on the above information; apologies to Mrs Jones for any offence caused. She said: "Mum was in fact nominated in 2012,she was not one of last years winners as you stated,she was nominated for her voluntary work within the community over the past 40 years,this nomination was not in fact by Clive as you have suggested.
She chose to nominate Clive for the distinguished citizen award this year on behalf of many people who have appreciated his valued input to the local community.....not purely to ‘return the favour’ as you put it. She also doesn’t recall any groans of disbelief at the nomination.... ​"
 
It is important to pay attention to signs and symbols like these. Here we had the town council signalling its allegiance to an old, entrenched Tory establishment, to military values and service, and to the chivalric codes of deference, obedience, and reverence for authority, so admired by the town's old believers of Jupp, Conway, Winter, Yeoman et al. Remember those has-beens? Except they are not.
 
These people might have bowed out of actual council meetings, but let us not forget that they still run things. The oligarchy in Ledbury - as in the wider county - is complemented by a sprinkling of high-ranking masons, conservative grandees, ex-councillors and county gentry.  'Here' you do as you're told.
 
Barely had the unctuous words of praise and gracious acceptance speeches faded, than Crowe was slating Harvey (and me) for years of bullying, intimidation, abuse and victimisation - of her. Somebody shouted 'look in the mirror'.
 
Annette's jeremiad was fulsomely backed up by former arch-enemy Tony Bradford, who continued from the platform to insult and berate members of the audience and fellow councillors.
 
It was a typically undignified and ugly display. But it served its purpose. Counterpointed by Ledbury's little awards ceremony - we're calling them the LAFTAs by the way - the rancourous exchanges created an even more poisonous atmosphere.
 
Then and now. Now, it is all chaos and anarchy. Then, it was smooth, purposeful, and controlled. Now it is bitterness and hatred. Then it was camaraderie and civility. Then it was us. Now, horrifyingly, it might be them.
 
The Vulgarians are at the gate.
 
Today (Monday) they were gathered in the town council offices, joined by a few unknown faces: Bradford, Eager, Fieldhouse, Barnes and Crowe - though why these two should be in private conference within the town council is concerning since they are no longer elected councillors. Papers and files were being scrutinised amid much pursing of brows.  It was agreed that Fieldhouse would, like her friend Crowe, use her mayoral speech of thanks to launch another vicious assault on Liz Harvey et al. Then she will storm out casting the chains of office down histrionically. And there will be a dreadful scene. And the 'people' will call for the Council to stand down, and then the council can start afresh - preferably shorn of its reformist faction.
 
The 'new blood' narrative is designed to ensure that the dissident councillors, the ones that have been calling out incompetence, nepotism, maladministration, and possible corruption for the last three years, will also be swept away on a populist tide. The intake of 'new faces' will be the better to have their strings tweaked just like the gullible fools from 2015 did: Andy Manns, Matthew Eakin, Jean Simpson, Debbie Baker.
 
So on Voice of Ledbury yet another ex-mayor from long ago crawls out and says he wants a town council he can be proud of. The lot of them should resign, he says craftily. One of the town's pillars of charitable virtue, a mason's wife and Rotarian, says that it is such a pity that despite everything Crowe and Barnes have not been formally thanked for their wonderful voluntary work in the town. Obtusely, she says has lost track of all the rights and wrongs of the matter. A serving councillor - one of Crowe's vegetables - is upset that here he is trying to 'deffuse (sic) the situation and others [are] fanning the flames'. Forget it.
 
The blaze is raging out of control and things are becoming dangerously unpredictable. One of Barnes' attack dogs drove his car straight at Cllr Andrew Warmington while he was walking his dog. In the Bye Street loos, Liz Harvey, who has been cleaning them single-handed since the reopening, had to contend with a pile of human excrement carefully deposited in the middle of the toilet floor. This follows on from gluing up of the locks, and trashing of the floral display. There have been a string of nuisance phone calls, and David Fieldhouse, the mayor's optician husband, has been officially cautioned by police for making a threatening and abusive telephone call to a serving councillor's house. There is violence in the air.
 
No. Let there be a fresh start for the town council in May 2019 at the appointed time. In the meantime, let us undertake the hard task of truth and reconciliation. Ledbury Town Council - and its residents - need to reflect on what has happened and understand how to ensure this obscene abuse of power, privilege and precious resources can never happen again. The Council needs to be reformed in the way it does business. But more than anything, councillors - or rather those who remain after the ringleaders of the vendetta against Harvey have resigned - need to agree how they treat each other, how disputes are resolved, and how a culture of decency can be restored. A rebuilt Ledbury Town Council needs to commit itself to an exemplary ethical framework. From being one of the worst parish councils in England, it should and can aspire to being a leader and a role model. 
 
More than anything Ledbury needs honesty and openness. Let there be no sweeping the filth and decayed matter under the carpet.
 
Then it was lies. Now is the time for truth.