Carmarthenshire County Council was originally formed on April Fools Day 1889 by the Local Government Act 1888. It was abolished on 31 March 1974, and begun anew, which shows beyond doubt that it is entirely possible for the Council to wipe the slate clean and begin again.
There’s no sign of that though in the disgraceful matter of James v Thompson. Carmarthenshire County Council’s unelected CEO Mark James claims to have struck a blow for council’s up and down the land by gaining costs indemnity from the Council (CCC) to launch a counter-claim in defamation against a blogger who had sued him for libel for comments he made following her arrest for filming a council meeting. The well covered story has dragged on and on, for so long that the Council have had time to implement it’s own videoing of meetings.
So it was that ten days before April Fool’s 2017 ANM sat in court to hear Mark James’ lawyer Mr Spackman, describe to District Judge Parsons how proportionate it was for Mrs Thompson’s home to be immediately sold to meet the damages awarded to Mark James for the controversial indemnity
Damages were of course due because Judge Tugenhat’s judgement of the case found that Mrs Thompson had failed to justify her claim that Mark James was “a pinocchio”, or that Carmarthenshire County Council’s indemnity was a “slush fund”, as she had written.
So we sat there, while Mr Spackman reeled out his word-net, chipping away at the unreasonableness of his case in a pseudo-regretful monotone, mumbling about proportionality, author of her own misfortune, etc, the usual lawyerly grease, to persuade the Judge to chuck the Thompsons out of their home for the damages alone, even though Mr Thompson wasn’t a party to the case, and even though the indemnified costs of that case were not being claimed at the present time.
Ask a Busy Woman
It’s worth mentioning that as well as being in court a week last Thursday to save her home, the Thursday before that Mrs Thompson was being interviewed by the police under caution. This interview followed yet further allegations by Mr James of “harassment”, again for writing.
Due to the lack of clarity about whether charges would follow, Mrs Thompson was not even able to share details of specific allegations but she did share the fact that she has always offered Mr James a right of reply on her blog.
Meanwhile in Carmarthen Court, Mr Spackman droned on: proportionality necessitates brevity, parties moving on.. and time is certainly also a pressure for Mrs Thompson who’s now got to stretch hers to come up with the £250 per month the Judge decided she must pay to Mr James to stay in her home, having ruled that it should not be sold immediately. After the hearing Mrs Thompson told me that she felt the Judge had been fair, and it’s also true that Judge Parsons did refer to several things Mrs Thompson said as having been uttered “in the heat of the moment” which Judge Tugendhat had certainly not acknowledged, to her detriment.
But fair? How fair was it to accept Mr Spackman’s obsequious submission that the Welsh Audit Office’s findings on the indemnity as “unlawful” amounted to a mere “opinion”, equally weighted with those of two barristers who said they thought it was. And how fair to eventually shrug the whole thing off as a matter which “should have gone to judicial review” but it’s of course too late now? District Judge Parsons said he would not “go behind” the decision of the Court of Appeal.
“Indemnify Me”
Mark James, who apparently didn’t have time to attend, sent a message through Mr Spackman that he could chuck the damages “in the gutter” if he wanted, arguing that whatever he does with the money is no one’s business but his own. Never mind the stated ground for indemnifying him that: “The Head of Paid Service has confirmed that he is not motivated by a wish to benefit financially and that accordingly should his action be successful any damages awarded to him will be paid over to the Authority and will not be kept by him”.
A cynic observing such flagrant flip-flopping, might wonder whether Mr James could’ve won at all if it hadn’t been expedient to protect the unlawful indemnity of the shelling out of potentially hundreds of thousands of tax-payers pounds to defend its own CEO’s reputation.
At any rate neither Carmarthenshire County Council nor Mr James himself will make any comment. Enquirers to the Council are informed that it is a “private matter” and are referred to Mr James’ lawyers, who say “Our client will not be making any statements nor conducting any interviews”.
But hang on, if proportionality and finality matter so much, why aren’t they claiming those costs post haste? Council leader Emlyn Dole told the BBC last year that it had been decided to “pursue the full costs awarded to the council by the High Court, in the interests of the public purse”.
Awkward
Had Mr James lost the indemnified counter-claim, the people of Carmarthen would be paying his indemnified costs. Asking the people of Carmarthen to pay for that, in addition to Mrs Thompson’s own costs, after there had been such a hoo ha about it in the first place would have been, to say the least awkward.
Mr Spackman might rumble on citing time again and the importance of all parties moving on, but isn’t it also important not to use “too late for justice now” as the ultimate weapon against whistleblowers? The possibility of avoiding the tragedy of whistleblowing is surely at its most remote when mistakes in the Justice system, last port of call for many, are ritually compounded, instead of being revisited and sorted out.
And Jackie Thompson’s is a case in point because whether the Judge was fair or not, and with or without Judicial Review, the brick wall from both Mr James and the Council demonstrates that winning the counter-claim certainly hasn’t made the indemnity issue go away.
In fact the opposite, because until the Council does claim the costs, the people of Carmarthenshire have already paid for it: awkward – no wonder nobody wants to talk about it.
Mr Carmarthenshire County Council?
Referring enquirers to its already stated position therefore doesn’t help the Council.
Neither does Mr James’ contemptuous message to the Court about throwing the damages into the gutter help to shake the unfortunate perception that he knows what he is doing is wrong.
Plus, is it right on principle that the good people of Carmarthenshire should pay to defend a “he said / she said” argument, on behalf of a non-elected official?
To deliberately ignore an offered right of reply and then claim to feel harassed by writing is the opposite of democratic. It also contradicts CPS guidance on new media, where the police are obliged under article 10 to protect robust free speech, and especially political speech.
Perhaps the police will read the guidance and properly inform Carmarthenshire County Council that high ranking officials should be expected to be able to hold a civil conversation in public with a critic.
April Fools comes round again.
Maybe Carmarthenshire folk should urgently petition the council to nudge Mr James to get on and claim the costs. The longer Mr James and Carmarthenshire County Council don’t do that, or state that they will not claim them, the more vexatious the whole thing appears.
Not only that but the delay makes Carmarthenshire residents into unwitting, yet nevertheless unhelpful bystanders to a state of continued threat on Jacqui Thompson’s head. Surely the public, the Council, Mrs Thompson and even Mr James are all owed better closure than that, and spare Mr Spackman from rumbling on.
The more they prevaricate about these indemnified costs, and keep the people of Carmarthenshire out of pocket, the more the impression of injustice risks solidifying into a firm conviction that Mrs Thompson’s comments about dishonesty and a slush-fund were not “seriously defamatory” at all, but justified.
It’s certainly April Fools again, it’s just not quite clear as yet, who the joke is truly on.
Carmarthenshire County Council, featured, Jacqui Thompson, James v Thompson, Judge Tugendhat, libel, Mark James
I am a neighbour of the Thompson family. All of whom contribute to our community. Jacqui is a member of our community council.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the original court case, the fact is that none of us in this community believe that it is right to try to make a family homeless. Not only is the property the family home it is their place of work. The costs to the tax payer have been high enough in this matter, but the costs of rehoming and supporting a family whose livelihood is taken away is surely not cost effective?
Whatever anyone’s view of the whole matter, whatever the rights and wrongs, we should not forget the Jacqui achieved so much for us all – we gained webcasting of the authority’s meetings and we have a local person who, through her award wining blog, keeps us up to date with what is happening in our council.
Many questions remain unanswered but one thing is clear there is no support for pursuing this family. However that has happened, the money must be paid and now the consensus is clearly that someone, somewhere should be looking into where the money ends up – most certainly not a gutter.