The Wardman Wire

Three days ago I posted about instructions given to Gawain Towler, Press Officer for UKIP (the UK Independence Party) in the European Parliament.

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.

Since then, things have changed

Both Gawain Towler and Jon Worth appeared on the Radio 4 programme Pods and Blogs talking with Chris Vallance about the events. The clip is below.

Gawain reports:

The blog does not have to come down. Nor do I have to stop blogging. I have applied for permission to continue. (Yeah Right).

But here is the rub, any further blogging has to be a lo-cal variety. Any full fat items have to be expunged. Whether they might find themselves elsewhere in the blogosphere is a moot point, but I will not be blogging them myself. So there we have it. It is possible that the response of the political blogosphere has had a significant impact on this. The help and support that I have received from across the spectrum has been truly surprising but most welcome.

That’s a step forward: good.

But the devil - just like the dragon - will be in the detail.

In the European Parliament, the underlying problem remains that Political Officers are required to work to a non-political Code of Conduct. See my previous article for the detail.

Wrapping Up

I’m also going to claim a small amount of credit myself, since The Wardman Wire was one of the blogs where the BBC picked up the story: it makes the hard work of maintaining a blog seem more worthwhile.