Letter from Harold Beck : Published The Review, Thursday, 6 May 1976

'Party discipline blocked discussion'

THE HARPENDEN EAST WARD SAGA

From Councillor Harold Beck, Independent candidate for East Ward Harpenden

Dear Sir,

I would like to comment on some of the contributions on the East Ward saga contained in last week's Review.

The article in Mr Tarry's name consists of a long series of half-truths which have been presented and interpreted in a manner likely to mislead.  A point by point correction of the article, quoting relevant documents, is not only likely to try the patience of your readers but would also obscure the main issues.

I will therefore confine myself to some general comments.

1.       Mr Tarry is not a member of St Albans district council or of its Conservative Group.  He attended only one of the Harpenden Branch meetings referred to in my article. He did not attend the Boundary Commission inquiry.

All but a small percentage of his article is therefore based on information supplied to him by others and the story has the hall-marks of the many misleading statements made to Harpenden Branch Committee and its offshoots by a few councillors.

It was over such statements that I and other East Ward colleagues felt increasing disquiet.  If Mr Tarry had carried out quite a modest amount of checking in exercising the impartiality he claims, the account under his name would have been more in accord with mine.

The public will no doubt never see the confidential records which verify the bulk of my description of events.  All the more reason why Mr Tarry should have been painstaking in his research.

2.       We now have a very complex local government system involving not only electors and elected but also party organisations and party groups.  Much of the abuse of the system stems from the general lack of communication between its various parts.

My article aimed to bridge the gaps in communication and conveyed as accurately as possible what actually went on locally in respect of one particular issue.  I would like the process to be carried much further.  There are numerous items of party information which could and should be available to the electorate at large.

The letter from Brian Walters provides a good example of how excessive and unnecessary party discipline works to the detriment of good local government.

It is clear from Brian's remarks that he is not aware of a general principle specified by the Boundary Commission for application when drawing up the new boundary proposals.

Part 1 1(b) of their Notes on Boundary Making, under the heading "The process to be followed by Authorities when choosing boundaries" says:- "Boundaries should not sever local communities except for district wards where this is essential to achieve broad equality of representation."

The official Conservative proposal achieved broad equality of representation but the boundary severed Batford.  The East Ward Conservative modification achieved the same or closer equality of representation without severing Batford.  Which proposal is better in fact?

The point about the adverse effect of excessive discipline is that it resulted in our not being able to get our modification discussed.

Thus Brian and others did not learn of the basis of our proposal - equally we got no feedback on any drawback there might have been.

The party organisation acted with bureaucratic rigidity of the worst kind.