Tories ‘in disarray’ over backstabbing claims
The reputation of the York Tories has been “tarnished” following allegations of backstabbing by newly-elected Chair Anna Appleton, leaving the society in “disarray”.
The victory of Appleton over fellow competitors Charlie Rowley and Ben Alexander Edwards, has been marred by accusations of “backstabbing” by Rowley, who has, along with Ordinary Member Sam Francis, subsequently resigned from the society in protest.
Rowley has stated that Appleton had “almost staged a public execution” in a committee meeting preceding the election. The former Campaigns Officer for the society before his resignation said Appleton had attempted to “truly see me off as a competitor and weaken my position not only in the election but in general as she publicly and personally questioned my integrity”.
The battle for the leadership came after Ralph Buckle, former York Tory Chairman, was ousted from his position and thrown out of the Conservative Party following comments made in Nouse on 12th May. Buckle, in an attempt to push his own Eurosceptic beliefs, encouraged people to vote for UKIP instead of The Conservative Party in the recently concluded European Elections.
Anonymous comments made to Nouse criticising Buckle’s actions as Chairman lead to a “naming and shaming” of the source by Appleton during a committee meeting immediately before the elections. According to sources inside the committee, Rowley was directly accused of making the comments.
Rowley believed the clique in the committee had planned to “personally attack” his reputation. “Right from the off there was silence – usually people talk over each other, but there was dead silence because everyone (the committee) knew what was coming,” he said.
Appleton, who was chairing the meeting, denied such allegations of backstabbing, but has confirmed that she had heard rumours that Rowley was the anonymous member. Appleton has refuted any claims that she directly accused Rowley.
“The claims are completely wrong. I had no motive to do that against Charlie, especially as a friend. I wanted to be Chair because I thought I was the best candidate. I never tried to stop him standing, and just want to do what’s best for the society,” she said.
“The committee did not treat anyone in any particular way. People voted in the way they thought would be best, not for personal reasons,” Appleton added.
Rowley denies being the anonymous member in question.
Francis, who was not involved with the incident, has said that his reason for resigning was “because of the way the committee had treated one of their so-called friends”.
“The image of the York Tories had already been tarnished by the Ralph incident, but this has brought it down even further. The society as a whole is in disarray,” Francis added.
“There was no motive to [exclude Rowley]… there was discussion afterwards, but everyone agreed that everything was fine and moved on,” stated Appleton.
A member of the society, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that “the committee had found themselves faced with a genuine challenge – somebody who wasn’t part of the clique, somebody who wasn’t part of the old school Tory stronghold, and they set out to categorically destroy him.”
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I think this is the utter rubbish of a disappointed leadership candidate. I have only met Anna Appleton twice but I have absolute confidence in her integrity.
I think the accusation that the society is in “disarray” is baseless. More people than ever before are coming to the society’s Summer Ball this year and various people from outside the society have joined us on socials in recent weeks.
Following the election of our new Chair Anna Appleton, the York Tories are moving forward with a new agenda to take the campuses biggest political society forward.
Firstly we are committed, as always, to helping our local Conservative candidates getting elected. With Brown’s leadership looking in tatters a general election could come at any time, and so our priority remains helping the Conservative party as best we can.
2ndly we have decided to make all our remaining committee meetings ‘open committee meetings’ so that anyone can attend. Openness and transparency are important Conservative values and so we welcome anyone to come along and see what we are doing. Our meetings are every Thursday at 6:30 and usually take place in Derwent. If the meetings don’t sound like much fun, then you’re always welcome to join us for a drink in Derwent bar from 7:00, following the meeting. We always welcome new faces, so come along, have a chat and see what we’re up to. In the past few weeks we’ve seen many existing members and those outside the society wanting to get involved, so don’t be a stranger, see what we’re up to!
Thirdly we are concentrating on increasing our membership and the participation of existing members. Our Summer Ball on June 13th has record attendance with nearly 40 people coming along, so our society continues to active and widely attended. As mentioned above we always welcome new people in the society, so you know where to find us if you want to get involved. We still have many high profile speakers such as Damien Green and many more lined up, so now is a great time to join the York Tories and help us move forward in the coming year.
Hope to see you at one of our meetings soon,
The York Tories
This article raises the valid issue of Charlie and Sam’s resignation, but there has been some misrepresentation and in one case a serious perversion of the truth. Bear with me and I’ll try to clarify on some points to give a broader picture.
Firstly, the article states that “Rowley denies being the anonymous member in question”. Charlie freely admits to making at least one of the comments in the article. This should be corrected immediately.
Charlie’s involvement with Nouse was discussed in the committee meeting because it amounted to him breaking an agreement that the committee (including Charlie) made a few days before. In the meeting in which he claims to have been publicly executed he himself called for “naming and shaming” of the individual. A member simply obliged.
The article notes that participants in the election, but it fails to list the results of the vote:
Anna Appleton: 15
Ben Edwards: 6
Charlie Rowley: 2
It should be clear from this that there never was disarray or a fundamental rift in opinion. Charlie put forward his view of how the society should operate and it was one that clearly wasn’t shared by the members, not just the officers.
The closing quotation of the article is simply bizarre – I suppose the writer wanted something punchy to end on. Where is the “old school Tory stronghold”? What is this “clique”? The York Tories welcome anyone to join the society and are a pretty diverse bunch. You’ll be hard pressed to find many who believe it is an insular group past the fact that it is a big group of friends. There were even two Labourites on our last social! Tomorrow we’re having a typical pub/Ziggy’s evening starting at 7.30pm in the Courtyard and as usual everyone is invited along. Do decide for yourselves.
Anna Appleton made it clear that there was no plan to attack Charlie’s character or tarnish his name, so I think the article is rather unfortunate. It just seems that hell hath no fury like a failed candidate.
Forgot to add a disclaimer to the above: I am a Vice Chair of the society!
Hasn’t this just shown people that Charlie wasn’t a suitable candidate? If there are only two people causing trouble and he’s one of them then I don’t think he would have been a good leader of the society
Charlie’s assumption that this so called “personal attack” ruined his chances of becoming Chair seems highly patronising to the members of the York Tories. His performance at the polls, (he only got 2 votes, why was this not mentioned in the article?) seems more indicative of the fact that he failed to fulfill all of his duties as campaigns officer satisfactorily.
He seems to assume that the members of the society are unable to think for themselves. At committee level at least it seems unlikely that members would put personal feuds above the interests of the society, Appleton has always shown that she is fully committeed to the York Tories and in this case it is clear the best candidate won.
How many Tories are there on the committee? Chances are that most of the votes that went against Charlie came from within that very committee (clique?).
I would like to make a few comments regarding this story. Firsty, there is no Tory clique, this is a common assumption made of many societies. All elections and decisions take place in an open and democratic manner. Members enjoy seeing new faces both at meetings and election times. Secondly, Charlie was campaigns officer and therefore was far from an outsider. The reason he lost to Anna was because many didn’t feel his speech was particularly persuasive. And finally, I think the fact that record numbers of people plan to attend the Summer Ball demonstrates how York Tories are constantly welcoming new members. The society is not in disarray at all, and I for one think it is facing new and exciting times with such a dedicated person as Appleton for Chair.
After wiping my face from the eggs, I still believe BNP is the way forward. Traditional party politics have failed us in this time of need.
I am really looking forward to represent my two seats in the European Parliament.
British jobs for British People!
The society got the chance to vote for who they wanted to represent them and did.
23 people voted and he only managed to get two votes. Leaving 21 people who voted against him…now Im quite sure there isnt 21 members of the tory committee.
Charlie was not the choice of the society and he should just get over it.
Paul,
Charlie admitted to saying that Ralph held one-to-one meetings with each committee member – he never said he told the media one of those quotes. That was the only part of the article he admitted to saying.
Charlie was the one in the committee meeting on Tuesday who brought up not talking to the media. I’ve been informed that 4 committee members had spoken to the media before that article was published – if Charlie and Felix were two of them (Felix is publicly named in the article) then who are the other 2 and why didn’t they get named and shamed at the committee meeting? Also how did Anna find out that Charlie was the one who had spoken to the media?
And also tomorrow is only the 2nd time the Tories have visited Ziggys this year, so its not really a typical night.
Lucy,
don’t you think the fact he only got 2 votes at the elections had anything to do with the committee meeting we held just before that, when Charlie’s name was dragged through the mud? or maybe the committee had already decided that Anna was who they were going to vote for?
Also the fact that only 23 people voted shows how little ‘members’ actually care about the society – 13 votes were from the committee and 6 were proxy votes (votes from members who couldn’t attend). this means only 4 non-committee members went to the election night, and 6 people voted without hearing the election speeches, going on name alone.
Sam, you’re right about Ziggy’s, but you forgot to mention that that’s because we normally frequent Reflex! We’ve hosted a broad range of events this year – our weekly dinners, ale tasting, bowling, laserquest, winter ball, many bar crawls etc. You know that we do not do the usual “hit Ziggy’s every week” because we want to appeal to everyone, not just party animals at the cost of alienating others.
You mention committee votes as though they’re worse than votes from non-officers. The committee are the ones who have seen both Anna and Charlie in action, and if anything are likely to be the best informed concerning their participation, skills, and dedication to the society.
Finally, Anna informs me that since the publication of this article she has been approached by a senior member of the Nouse team who confirmed that Charlie was not just the source of one of the quotes but _all_ of the anonymous quotes in the last article. Striking stuff. There was no dragging of Charlie’s name through the mud – it seems he waded through it of his own accord.
To stop this argument I can confirm that anybody discussing sources is speculating, only the editor and I know who the three sources in the Ralph Buckle story were.
Paul,
I know we have a lot of socials, but our suppers tend to be only committee members (this is only a guess as I have never actually been on one). I dont’t mention committee votes as worse than non-committee members – its just that other people have written on here saying what a lively and growing society we have, but only 4 non-committee members turned up to listen to the speeches. We have 100+ members on facebook yet none of them could be bothered to turn up to vote. It’s this that annoys me. If the members actually cared about the society, and the future it’s going to have, surely they could have turned up to vote? Maybe we didn’t advertise it enough, I don’t know
There are so many issues of basic fact in here. May I present just three?
1) Nouse has confirmed above that *nobody* can claim to know the sources of the story, as they have not been released. Therefore Appleton is lying when she says that she ‘knows’ who the sources were.
2) What is all this about the Tories being the largest political society on campus? The Labour club is far more active, and the NGS has both many more meetings and many more members than the Tories.
3) It is simply untrue to say that there was no plan to attack Rowley. Chris Etheridge spoke to me on the subject just hours before the vote, and made it very clear that both he and Appleton were doing all they could to ruin Charlie’s chances.
Not quite true on a couple of points there, NTY, but I’m not going to get into an unrelated squabble of the ins-and-outs of political societies this time
Just worth noting that at least several of the people in this thread, including the above NTY, have said things that aren’t completely accurate.
It looks to me like there will be little backlash from this and it (including Ralph’s departure) will have negligible effects beyond the end of term. Good luck to the new Chair, who has obviously had to start the job under a little more pressure than usual!
In response to the previous post;
I have never led any conspiracy against anyone within the York Tories nor do I have any interest in such actions. Charlie and myself are on very amicable terms and have spoken on several occasions about the matter. Any disagreements have been resolved in very effectively.
Furthermore, what upsets me most about this article is its petty nature. Myself and other members of the committee have worked very hard recently to organise speaker visits such as those by Viscount Monkton and David Davis and our annual Summer Ball. Instead of focusing on this, this article simply seeks to create tension and division.
*Please excuse the typo in the previous comment.
I would also like to add one further point. I feel that comparisons between the Labour Club, the NGS and the York Tories serve no purpose in this debate. All of these societies have their merits and I have good friends in each of them. Rather than seeking to cause further controversy, I think it would be best for all parties concerned with this debate to move on. University is a time for making friends and meeting new people; not a time for becoming embroiled in personal attacks.
Anyhow, that is my opinion.
I shall now refrain from further comment because I feel that all that can be said has been so.
I love how you idiots think your society is such a big deal… we’re not talking about the national party here guys, get a grip!
amazed: I’m getting pretty tired of all these comments thrown around on how “it’s just university, get a life”. You fail to grasp that it is possible to have a keen interest in the affairs of something that doesn’t affect the entire world while still maintaining a sense of proportion. If you don’t like reading about these articles or the comments here, it’s simple to open a new website.
This idea that the York Tories are a closed and exclusive group of conceited mutual admirers is quite frankly ridiculous. I’ve been chair of the socialists and I’m still friends with half of the committee – so much for the ‘closed clique’ image that some have tried to project.
God, you lot are losers
I have remained reasonably silent over this entire affair over the last week or so. I am not prepared to continue this so-called “speculation” of who may have “back-stabbed” who as it is neither helpful or constructive to where the York Tories go from here.
What I am prepared to say is that this issue is hopefully nearing its final chapter. What has been has been. Chris Etheridge is indeed correct in saying that it is time to move the committee and of course the entire society on towards the new academic year, which is what we intend to do in these final few weeks before the summer. This will enable us to have sound and positive plans for the new year – socials, events, speakers etc.
The events of the last two or three weeks have without a doubt been some of the most challenging for the society but I have no doubt that we will move on from this affair.
York Tories Publicity Officer