Ed: The letter below was sent in by Stanley Oram before the Sunday Rally and was thus subject to the moratorium of not publishing anything pro or con in the run-up. It can still be acted upon:
WE can still save UKIP
EGM
5.8 The Party Secretary shall call an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM), giving members a minimum of 28 days’ notice, if requested to do so by application in writing from at least twenty per cent (20%) of the Party’s duly registered and properly constituted constituency associations or branches, drawn from at least four regions.
Each such application shall include a written statement, signed by the respective branch or constituency association chairman as the case may be, certifying that the application was supported by a majority of members attending a properly convened Extraordinary General Meeting of the constituency association or branch.
Each such application shall set out the business to be dealt with at the EGM and the agenda of any such EGM shall be restricted to that business and to matters arising.
Each such application shall further be accompanied by payments to UKIP Head Office account for such sum as shall be determined by the NEC from time to time, drawn against the constituency association or branch bank account, as a contribution towards the cost of the meeting.
For the purposes of this Article, “constituency association” and “branch” shall bear the meaning ascribed to them under the Rules of the Party.
5.9 For the purposes of Article 5.8, a constituency association or branch is deemed to be duly registered only if it has been registered by the Party HQ (following approval by the NEC) for not less than six months before the date of application.
5.10 Upon receipt of a valid application or petition under Article 5.8 hereof, the Party Secretary shall call an Extraordinary General Meeting of the Party to be held within three months of such receipt.
Action to Save UKIP from extinction
The provisions from our constitution reproduced above are now much more onerous than they were when I first drafted such a provision included in our first ever constitution at our UKIP conference at the LSE way back in about 1995 or 1996 when Michael Harvey was our Party Secretary.
However, there is still such a provision and we can invoke it now to solve the crisis in UKIP.
I have requested the Party Chairman to enumerate how many branches amount to 20% of the Party’s duly registered and properly constituted constituency associations or branches and I call upon as many branches as possible to support the call for an EGM.
Among the many changes made to the provision which I first drafted there is the clause which gives the NEC the power to demand of branches an amount towards the cost of such an EGM (which I personally think is unconstitutional) and which means that we should urge the Party Secretary to arrange such an EGM in as low cost a venue as possible. My last act as Regional Organiser for the SE was to arrange the first ever UKIP Regional Conference (in Guildford) and in the course of such arrangements I investigated many venues including University meeting halls and I believe some such would fit the bill for visitor numbers, parking and reasonable road/rail access while being reasonably affordable.
If Party developments mean that we are all going to walk away from UKIP we may as well at least use our branch funds to try to avoid the apocalypse.
Time is short and the requirement for branches to supporting a Party EGM request to have held a branch EGM to approve that support means that, with time for branch committees to call a branch EGM and give the minimum 21 days notice, then for the Party Secretary to give the specified 28 days notice means that we cannot arrange an EGM within less than two months. However, if we set the ball rolling now we may well avoid such huge numbers of resignations among long standing members that we have no party left to save after all. And we may avoid the establishment of competing parties which may well be set up to continue the fight which UKIP was born to fight and which would so divide loyalties and yet not have a hope in hell of getting established quickly enough to have the required impact.
I believe the agenda for an EGM should be along the following lines:
This conference resolves that:
1 All party members who have resigned their UKIP membership within the last twelve months shall, for the purposes of this EGM, be considered to hold valid membership without a break, and shall in all respects be eligible to speak and to stand for election to any office which becomes vacant as a result of this conference.
2 The current Party Leader (Gerard Batten MEP) is bringing the party into disrepute and shall be removed as party leader with immediate effect.
3 Said Gerard Batten be dismissed from the party with immediate effect.
4 That applications from members for the post of Party Leader shall be accepted from the floor at this conference provided that the normal process of Proposer, Seconder and assenters is met and that if this proposal is adopted by this conference we should immediately hold an adjournment to elect a new leader. If no such candidate comes forward the normal party routine for the replacement of a departing leader shall be invoked.
5 that this conference reiterates the party provision for the exclusion of previous members of all banned political organisations.
While we may tidy up the above suggested agenda I sincerely believe that we should progress along these lines as expeditiously as possible. We need to take urgent and decisive action to stop the rot (internally), restore the electorate’s faith in UKIP and to give us any hope of making an impact at significant future elections (which applies the pressure we need to apply on the legacy parties in power).
Stan Oram, Member since December 1994 / 1995 (I’m not sure which!).
Thank you all for your comments – I can say little more than I’ve already said in the post itself and in my first two responses early on in this thread.
“WE can still DESTROY UKIP” Is what I see in this article.
I only hope, Mr Oram, that none of your family is ever set about by muslims. If you had read the Quo’ran and the Surras and seen what is in store for the indigenous people, you would be as “extreme” (oh dear there I go falling into BBC-speak) as Tommy Robinson. Tell me Mr Oram the difference you see between a patriot and an extreme activist?
Boring. You are in the wrong party, Nothing more to say.
Stan, I agree with you that the only issue of the moment is BREXIT.
At this time UKIP needs an EGM and change of leader like it needs a hole in the head!
Please be realistic, Stan:
1) Flouts the constitution and would not be valid.
4) Is problematic because 7.8 of the constitution requires you to ballot the entire membership, unless there is only one candidate. And O.3 of the rule book mandates “99 assentors drawn from at least ten branches” – is it realistic that a prospective new leader would achieve this ahead of said EGM, when it wouldn’t even be known whether Gerard was staying on, and who else might be intending to stand?
‘Designed to Fail’ indeed
“WE can still save UKIP”
Mr. Oram I’m not sure who’s in your WE, but you can count me out.
Gerard is very handily saving UKIP already. Thank you.
This is quite the silliest proposal I’ve seen in quite a while and I’ve been around for long enough to have seen Kaunda destroy N. Rhodesia/Zambia, Mugabe destroy S. Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and the ANC picking S. Africa (by far the richest country in Africa) apart piece by piece.
And now back in Blighty I see all the usual suspects feverously doing their damnedest to do exactly the same thing here.
Once we’ve got ‘Brexit’ whether it’s May’s version or something similar do you really and honestly believe that UKIP should only then start talking about what we’ll do next?
The one trick pony has left. UKIP is no longer a one trick party.
Once we have whatever kind of Brexit our mendacious politicians have left us with we will then need to get our country back completely and get it back we WILL, one way or the other (hopefully the ‘one’ way!). After that we will need to sort out our little immigration problem, rebuild our military, our energy infrastructure, our manufacturing sector etc. (The list is long.)
To do that we need to get people to vote for us and to do that we need to convince them of our poste Brexit objectives and to see us as being capable of being the Government. We can’t do that by only banging on about Brexit.
The British people are not stupid. They can, as our friends across the pond are wont to say, walk and chew gum at the same time.
Stan, you ran as a parliamentary candidate in 2010 when Lord Pearson was the leader. Surely you have noticed that Gerard, TR and Pearson are the trinity in this cultural revolution within UKIP? And surely you know that the manifesto you ran on in 2010 had many anti-islam policies inserted by Pearson. But it seems that was OK for you then. However, now GB and TR work with Pearson, suddenly your attitude has changed. Could you explain this volte-face, why have you now turned against Pearson and his policies?
In 2010 we were not seen as an extremist party (though much of the press tried to paint us as such) and I honestly cannot remember what was in our 2010 manifesto. Our focus then was to threaten the legacy parties and standing as a candidate helped achieved that aim (eventually).
My attitude hasn’t changed – there is one primary issue and one only which currently should be 100% the focus of UKIP – Brexit.
If Nigel announces the establishment of a new party many UKIP members who have kept the ship afloat through many lean years will walk away, leaving more and more new members who are TR lookalikes, thus fulfilling the prediction that UKIP is becoming and extermist party.
That will not help the country.
The action proposed above would guarantee extinction within 18 months, if successful.
We have just had an coordinated departure of several party ‘names’. Most of them going noisily and not very being honest about why they are leaving. I notice that just about all of them put themselves forward for party leader at some stage and were rejected by the membership. Do we want them back? Err why? It was an exodus of the unexceptional.
As for holding an EGM to get rid of a very good leader at long last, for something that could be sorted out quite easily over the next few months, what does that sound like if not an attempt to destroy the party that would make Farage’s day.
One of the most annoying types of people I’ve met in life are those who want to destroy an organisation they have belonged to for years because they can’t bear to see it flourish after they have left. I’ve had to deal with several of those types in my life time, they get very bitter and destructive.
Tommy come, Tommy go, it doesn’t matter. Ukip will not survive without Gerard Batten staying put for a while. Party members should beware, there was quite a high percentage of people who supported Bolton even at the EGM. They want another Bolton to replace Gerard!
They won’t just quietly go and support the new, sharia compliant, Nigel Party. They want to damage us while they still can.
Batten is right in recognising the threat from Islam and Tommy Robinson likely knows more than most about the evil deeds of its followers. However, with May perpetrating acts of treason on a daily basis, now is not the time to divert attention away from securing the clean exit from the EU which we voted for.
Surely that is only common sense? (sadly a very rare attribute amongst politicians of all hues.)
You are right about the threat to our established way of life by Islam, and Gerard has very effectively and in a measured and calm way voiced that danger. However, to become so obsessed with Tommy Robinson, whose public persona – rightly or wrongly – is that of an extreme hard man, means that not only will the press have a field day in presenting UKIP as having become such an extremist party, led by a leader with such close association with TR, but the followers of TR, following him because of his reputation, who then join UKIP, will indeed move it in the direction of an extremist parry. This will sit ill with the wider electorate whose votes we must gather to threaten the legacy parties.
You are also spot on in that now is not the time to divert attention away from securing the clean exit from the EU which we voted for – but that is exactly what Gerard has done, and is doing.
There is only one issue, at the moment, which should take our undivided attention, and that is Brexit.
Someone else using the word ‘obsessed’ in regard to Gerard Batten and Tommy Robinson. A few others are also bandying around this like a buzzword, which makes me think something is being orchestrated here.
Let me make one thing clear: I have changed my mind about Mr Robinson, and I have doubts about his true intentions, and would probably vote against allowing him to join the party.
But while people have been leaving UKIP because of Mr Battens associations with Mr Robinson, and urging him to focus on Brexit, it was indeed Mr Batten who helped organise and speak at the Brexit Betrayal Rally yesterday, which was very much focused on the issue of Brexit.
And it was Tommy Robinson himself who addressed the very large crowd and urged as many people as possible to join UKIP and support the party in its fight for Brexit. Which is more than Nigel Farage has done for UKIP in the last two years.
Spot on Stuart. Stan, I’m afraid you have lost the plot and swallowed the rule book. If your plan was followed, we would be a)bankrupt and b) toast. Do you really think this party could survive yet another EGM/leadership election? And who is the great undiscovered leader you see waiting? GB said he would need to take risks for our future. He’s doing it, and the timing won’t always be perfect, but so what? Leaders lead. Who else proposed yesterday’s March for 10,000 at a time of national emergency? While the UKIP OLD GUARD sat on their backsides whinging about possible disrepute…