The fix is in

The Greens are engaging in electoral shenanigans. Guest post by Stuart Campbell of Wings Over Scotland.

(Thanks to Stuart for this. If you are a Green Party member and have had a similar experience, please let me know.)

For many years now, whenever I've done one of those “Which Political Party Should You Be In?” online quiz things, it tells me that I'm a Green, which is weird because I really hate cyclists. Nevertheless, it was still the result when I did one most recently, just last month.

So I decided it was finally time to join a political party for the first time in my life. I went to the Green Party of England and Wales website, paid my first year's subscription and signed myself up, on the 18th of August. I got a confirmation email straight away.

Now, full disclosure: my primary motivation for joining was to vote for Shahrar Ali as the party's new leader, in the light of his views on the gender debate. It seemed the perfect opportunity to strike a blow for sanity and science on the left by the proper democratic route – becoming a member of a party and voting to shape its direction.

The rules of the leadership election were very clear: anyone who was a member before 27th August got a vote.

Over the next few days I received numerous emails from the party, all to the email address I'd signed up with.

But I didn't get any about voting in the election after the ballots opened on 2 September, so on 7 September I sent a very short email asking about it.

I got a form reply the same day saying “We're very busy, we'll get back to you.”

But two weeks later I'd still heard nothing and time was running out – the leadership ballot closed on the 23rd. So I searched the website and found I should have been sent a voting code. As I hadn't, I filled in the form to request one, and got a surprising response.

The party, which had emailed me numerous times, all at the same email address, now denied recognising that email address. It had, of course, sent the email telling me that to the very same address.

I quickly replied, providing the evidence above showing that I'd signed up and been accepted as a member. The same day I got a reply. 

I was curious as to why the unnamed person replying only had access to a “subset” of membership data, but to assist the Membership Team's investigation I sent some screenshots of the emails the party had sent to my email address. I got another reply with strange new information.

Now there was apparently a doubt over my membership's “good standing”, which was both news to me and quite weird as I'd only joined a month ago and had not interacted with the party in any way whatsoever. I'd done absolutely nothing to attract any sort of sanction. 

I pointed this out, and on the morning of 24 September – after voting had closed – was given the startling news that I'd been first suspended, and then expelled, from the party, for an unspecified reason (and without having my membership fee refunded).

I'd been suspended and expelled despite supposedly having been “refused” membership on 22 August, and even though I'd had an email inviting me to join the Bath branch's “Welcome Space” five days AFTER my membership had been “refused”.

As I write this I still await both the explanation and the refund. I cannot begin to imagine any reason, other than my well-known views on the transgender issue. That would mean that the party refused/suspended/cancelled my membership (their story keeps changing on which it was) – without telling me and therefore giving me any chance to challenge it while the leadership ballot was open – solely on the grounds that I was likely to vote for Shahrar Ali, who has the exact same views on the subject as I do but has NOT been expelled. Those views alone cannot therefore be grounds for expulsion.

It would be most interesting to find out how many other people this has happened to before the results of the election are published, don't you think?