A Southport councillor at the centre of a bullying storm has been described as “desperately scrabbling for lame excuses” after claiming there was a “smear” campaign against him.
A review of Sefton Council’s code of conduct for councillors and mandatory retraining has been recommended after several members of the Liberal Democrat group were named in a number of complaints following a meeting of the Southport Area Committee last September.
Two young mums from the Kew Playground Campaign attended the meeting to request that ward funds be released by Kew Ward’s three Lib Dem councillors to assist in saving the playground. Instead of receiving the help they wanted the women say they were rounded on by members of the political group and were left feeling “bullied, intimidated and humiliated” by councillors shouting at them and berating them.
The Kew mums themselves stood largely in stunned silence as the incident occurred and it took members of the public to eventually interject from the galleries to demand in a heated exchange with the councillors that the shouting and derision stop.
A number of complaints to Sefton Council followed and a further complaint was made after a local councillor then went through the private Facebook account of one of the women to re-post, without permission, an image of her with her six-year-old son to make a political accusation, an act described as “unforgivable and deplorable” by the campaigners. The councillors all denied any bullying claims.
No action taken was against individuals but several recommendations resulted including the reviewed code, compulsory retraining on it and further training specifically on appropriate social media use. The sub-committee which looked into the events and made the recommendations stated it was “saddened” to learn of how the women were made to feel and “disappointed” to hear of the online incident.
Kew Ward Councillor Fred Weavers, one of those named in the complaints, has now claimed that it was down to a “smear” orchestrated by the Labour group in Southport because he is standing for re-election in May, saying:
“Nearly all of the complaints against us were exactly the same in their wording, just copied and pasted multiple times, it was horribly obvious what was happening.”
He complained of since being shouted at and insulted because of the incident and stated that the recommendations were a matter of the council having to show it was doing something.
His claim has been firmly rejected, however, by Southport Labour Party Chair, Mhairi Doyle MBE:
” Fred Weavers was just one of a number of councillors complained about by a number of individuals including the women from the playground group themselves, so to claim it’s some sort of campaign targeted against him rather reminds me of Kenneth Williams in Carry On Cleo crying “Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me!”
“His attempts to paint himself as the victim in this matter are frankly pretty disgusting. I was there on that evening in question and saw with my own eyes those two young women stood in silence shaking at the onslaught they suffered. It’s unfortunate that people are apparently now shouting at Cllr Weavers and we don’t condone that at all but perhaps he now better appreciates how those two young mums were made to feel.”
“All of this could easily have been avoided, all the Lib-Dems had to do was admit things got out of hand at that meeting and issue an apology to the women, they have refused to do so and instead, they are left dangling on the hook of their own arrogance and are desperately scrabbling for lame excuses. I expect there will be another attempt at one any day now.”
She also pointed out that there have been a number of occasions when concerns have been raised about behaviour at the meetings:
“This is not just an isolated incident, although it was an extreme example; local Labour and also independent councillors and even the official young observers to the committee have all recently criticised the way the Area Committee was being handled, the conduct displayed and how it dealt with matters.”
Sefton Council’s Initial Assessment Sub-Committee for Audit and Governance looked into the bullying complaints and its Chair, Councillor Robert Brennan, has rejected the idea that they were nearly all identical and “copied and pasted”:
“We received a number of complaints and it was very clear that they were individual complaints and not simply copied and pasted multiple times. Obviously, there were similarities in some content due to them all complaining about the same incident but they were clearly not nearly all ‘exactly the same in their wording, just copied’ as has been claimed.”
“Also, it is incorrect to say that this is just a matter of the council having to show it is doing something, that is not at all the case.
We are making these recommendations to ensure that hopefully there will not be a repeat of this type of situation and all councillors are fully aware of their responsibilities.
The review will tighten procedures and allow us to impose stiffer sanctions against any councillors who commit future transgressions.”
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