The Wardman Wire

I’m getting tired of this.

Another one, and this one is even more ironic that the Welsh Assembly case.

Gawain Towler, The Press Officer for the Independent Europe Group (essentially UKIP and sister parties) in the European Parliament, whose job is to represent this group in criticising the EU has been forced to take his personal blog down for … er … criticising the EU. He’s employed by the European Parliament, and that means that he is subject to the employment regulations.

He runs .. sorry used to run … the England Expects website. You can read the detail on the site.

The precise circumstances are that his blog has been closed down under threat of disciplinary action from within the organisation after a complaint was made about a single post - which he had already edited to remove the particular issue that had been raised with him.

The complaint escalated through the organisation, and the sky subsequently fell in.

There has been some support from Jon Worth and Nosemonkey, as well as many others of a more EU-sceptic bent.

My comments

1 - It seems to me that Press Officers who are part of the Euro-Civil-Service equivalent employed to work as officers for Parliamentary Groups should have a clause in their contract that *specifically* requires them to represent their group and that exempts them from any sanctions for doing so. Any exemption should only be limited by Criminal Law, and advocacy of its breach - and that should be a police not a contractual matter (yes I know this would get complicated jurisdiction-wise).

2 - What do the European Parliament they think they are playing at, closing down comment by Press Officers reflecting the opinions of those they are contracted to represent? Is this the Moon?

3 - He fixed the problem with the particular post, which is entirely the correct way to have dealt with the issue. Such a heavy reaction is cackhanded, and highlights problems with the organisation itself.

John Worth comments:

First of all why does the EP have to be so damned heavy handed with this? Such a reaction plays right into UKIP’s hands. It’s not as if it’s the first time that something like this has happened - see the reaction in the RTL film for example. Towler removed the problematic passage from the blog, and a quiet word would probably have sufficed.

This is right.

4 - Jon also comments:

Secondly this episode shines a light on the grey area in the European Parliament - political group staff (of which Towler is one). These folks are paid for directly from EP funds (unlike MEPs’ assistants whose wages comes from MEPs’ staff allowances, and hence an assistant is contracted to a MEP, not the Parliament), but their role is political. So Towler, with a political job, ends up getting ticked off by Harald Rømer, the top official in the Parliament. Is that right?

If we are to have this type of complex arrangement (and I’m not going into the complexities here, but I note the controversy in the British Parliament around MPs employing their own staff and some advocating a move to a centralised “employee management service”) then there must be a TOTAL division between administration and politics. The EU Parliament is not delivering this.

5 - Ralf Grahn comments:

Creating free speech martyrs is not the way forward for the European Parliament, if it wants to become an institution respected by EU citizens.

The EP should take criticism constructively - by reforming, not repression.

Yep, but I won’t be holding my breath.

[Update 12pm:

6 - Looking at the regulations quoted by Gawain in his article, I think that there are serious questions around the ambiguity in the regulations, where an interpretation is possible that can be used to prevent awkward questions being asked. That also (in my opinion) seems to have been so in the case of the Welsh Civil Service Code and the Welsh Assembly Government, where we have simply seen "the Civil Service Code was broken" assertions, without (so far) any supporting evidence reaching the public domain.]

What to do Next?

I can see no reason why Gawain cannot simply recast his blog as - for example - a daily UKIP Press Release, and have it made an official political document. Would they close that down? That would chime with the UKIP approach of cocking a snook at “institutional Europe”, while highlighting the problems of the way the case has been handled.

UKIP could potentially do a service to the wider free expression cause here, in the same way that they were willing to do so when one of their MEPs repeated the Usmanov allegations in the European Parliament (Tim?).

If we need that style of guerilla tactics to maintain freedom of debate until the European Parliament and its supporting services catch up, then I’d support it - even though I still won’t be voting UKIP.

Or I suppose he could start using naval signal flags flying out of the window, like a mini-me Nelson.