Dear Reader, 

My two appeal applications (one made in June, the other in August) need to be progressed. It matters because the outcomes of those appeals, if they are allowed wholly or in part, would affect preparations for the trial and the trial itself, which is listed to commence on 29 January, in three months' time.

Earlier this week I wrote to the court referring to all three case numbers (the appeals each have their own file - it gets complicated!), and asked for the appeals to be progressed. I have received an encouraging response so I hope a judge will be assigned soon.

My first appeal seeks to reverse decisions that were made in May that I argue are against the interests of tens of thousands of ordinary members of the Liberal Democrats. My second appeal seeks to reverse decisions made in July refusing to direct that those ordinary members should be separately represented. I am saying that their separate interests ought to have a voice.

I mentioned earlier a new court decision that is encouraging. In July the Court of Appeal pronounced on the rights of members of an unincorporated association that was a political party. The case was called Haque v Hussain. It has strengthened my belief that my stance on my two appeals is correct.

The trial is listed to commence in a five-day window starting three months from now. The Defendants' solicitors say there will be a Pre Trial Review on 9 December, but I have not received any formal notice of that.

In view of the timetable problem, at the end of last week I filed a formal application for the trial date to be vacated. The Defendants' legal team had already told me they would oppose this, so another procedural battle lies ahead.

Meanwhile I have to exchange witness statements this week, though if the appeals are allowed the witness statements will be inadequate. Issues exist about disclosure and inspection of documents, too.  

It's hard to describe what it is like to conduct litigation like this on one's own. It was not my preference but I do so for reasons of economy. Every formal application requires payment of a court fee. So the costs continue to mount. It was over £300 just to file the application to change the trial date. Imagine what it would have cost to have a legal team charging hundreds of pounds per hour to prepare and file such things for me. Next month I have to pay the court a trial fee of £1,175.

I almost forgot to mention that I served my claim for breaches of the Equality Act 2010 earlier this month. It is in the county court as that is the court with jurisdiction under that Act. More about that claim soon.

For reasons of economy I reluctantly withdrew instructions to my solicitors to represent me in the litigation, but they say that a sum of £1,786 remains owing to them. So, if you can help at all financially, by contributing to this crowdfunder, it would go to them, and relieve me of that expense while I continue to pay court fees and other continuining legal outgoings. I would be most grateful for any contribution. 

Thank you for reading this, and best wishes.   

Jo Hayes

Dear supporter, 

The Lib Dems' autumn conference is in progress in Brighton. I don't expect anything at the current conference to be informative about my pending claim, or about other claims brought by aggrieved members. 

You may have heard that on 22nd July in the county court at Central London the Defendants admitted Natalie Bird's discrimination claim in full, and this is recorded in a court order. 

On the same day, 22nd July, in a different court the hearing of my applications for separate representation of ordinary members went predictably. I mean that the same judge who had made a previous decision on 8th May agreed with what he had decided the previous time. Having refused to adjourn it, he could hardly do otherwise. Therefore, I have filed another application to appeal. So I now have two pending. 

In addition to these applications I am busy preparing my documents, which are mostly emails, putting them in a form that can be provided to the other side for inspection. It is taking a long time because I am doing all the work myself.

Meanwhile, in July the Court of Appeal handed down a judgment in a different case about a political party. The case is called Haque v Hussain. In the skeleton argument I am preparing for my recently filed appeal application I will be relying on parts of this judgment, where the Court succinctly put some of what I have been trying to say. 

The gist of what the Court said is that a party which is an unincorporated association has a fluctuating membership and its assets belong to the members for the time being, to be used in accordance with its purposes for the time being. A member cannot complain if new members come in and get a share, or if the existing member is expelled and loses his or her share. But all of this must be implicitly dependent on the party being operated in accordance with its constitution. 

The Court of Appeal also said that each member has the right to require the political party’s assets to be used only for its proper purposes. That is a restatement of what I have maintained is the law, and fundamental to my case for having part of my pleadings reinstated. 

So the judge should have held that I had standing to complain of departures from the party's rules and the laws that apply to it. Any member, including me, has the right to come to court if the party has not been operated in accordance with its own rules, and the right to complain of use of the party's assets otherwise than for its proper purposes. 

A use that contravenes the party's own rules and also the law of the land, such as victimising a member for doing a protected act (of which I have done many) or discriminating against a member because of a protected belief (like Natalie Bird) or a perceived protected belief imputed to the member (like me) is not use for the party's proper purposes. Breaching the Equality Act cannot be proper.

I hope that the party will soon admit my claims. I hope that by the next conference I will be back.

Thank you for your interest.

Jo Hayes 

Now that the general election is over I can update you on my proceedings without unintended impact on the electoral fortunes of the party I helped to found and volunteered for unpaid for 34 years, until I was ousted. 

The upshot of the Defendants' application, decided on 8th May, was that their two barristers persuaded the court to strike out parts of my claim. I think it was wrong, and I now have a pending application to the appeal court about that. 

On 22nd July I have two applications listed to be heard, though I think they should be deferred until after my pending application to the appeal court is dealt with, as they are all intertwined.

• One is for ordinary party members to have separate representation on the basis that the Defendants shouldn't be representing them because they are in a conflict of interest - despite in theory representing them all. There are procedural rules that enable the court to deal with this. To the best of my knowledge, most members have been told nothing about these proceedings or how much of their money is being spent on them. I have filed evidence from some members who are aware and are not happy about it.
• The other is to amend my claim to ask the court to declare the terms of the membership contract, to which many thousands of people, as members who have paid their membership fee, are parties. I contend that the Defendants have led the court into error and confusion about it in a way that's harmful to the party. 

As a separate matter I have taken steps to protect my rights under the Equality Act 2010 in respect of discrimination, harassment and victimisation I have experienced. More about this soon.

Thank you for reading this, and even more so, thank you for past and any future support. 

Jo

The hearing on 11th April is approaching. The court will hear the Defendants' not one but two barristers argue that most of my pleadings should be struck out and the court be restricted to considering whether the panel who heard Mark Pack's complaint against me slipped up technically and procedurally. 

What holds the party together is the membership contract. The members own the assets. The executive has to use the assets for the party’s purposes in accordance with the contract. Each member has individual rights, in common with the other members, to ensure that the executive complies with the contract.

I maintain that the membership contract contained a term that the complaints system would be independent of the executive. The Defendants say that the membership contract contained no such term. How is denying the contract term in the rank and file members' interests?

Last month I discovered that the party had given a commitment to the Committee on Standards in Public Life that its complaints system would be independent. A party official disclosed this in a video posted on YouTube. How can this be reconciled with the Defendants' stance?

Breaches of the membership contract in the conduct of the party's affairs are part of my case. The Defendants say I've no right to complain. If a member who raises concerns can be ousted and then told it's none of their business, is this in the rank and file members' interests? Particularly if the rank and file had elected the member to the Federal Board.  

At the moment, in the proceedings the Defendants represent all the members of the party except me, the Claimant - in theory. But in reality they don't, because some members don't agree with the Defendants' stance; they agree with mine. There is a conflict of interest here if the Defendants' stance is not in the interests of the rank and file members. 

There are procedural rules that enable the court to appoint someone to represent these members. This would be an attractive solution from my point of view. Are there any volunteers?

At the least, I think the members should be informed about these proceedings - indeed, about all proceedings on which their money is spent. As far as I know, they have not been told or given an opportunity to express their wishes.

Thank you for reading this, and even more so, thank you for past and any future support. 

Jo Hayes

I prepared my witness statement and it has been filed in answer to the Lib Dem leadership’s application for parts of my pleadings to be struck out.

Meanwhile Maya Forstater, founder of the organisation Sex Matters, commenting on the social media platform X (better known as Twitter), referred to my claim as a “gender critical case”. Ms Forstater's comments led to a judge recusing herself from my case.  

Though I would not call my claim a “gender critical case”, my claim does touch upon gender criticality, in that my pleadings refer to senior Lib Dems’ actions leading to the co-chairs of the party's Disciplinary Sub-Group dismissing, or purporting to dismiss, a senior complaints adjudicator who had recommended that the transphobia definition the party was using in its complaints process must be amended in the light of the ruling which Ms Forstater obtained from the Employment Appeal Tribunal.

Additionally, my pleadings refer to a paper I wrote the previous year, in November 2020, which urged the members of the Lib Dem Federal Board to abandon the definitions of misconduct (including, by implication, that of transphobia) that the Board had adopted, on the ground that such definitions were not within the Board’s powers.

My objections were ignored at the time. But the following summer, in June 2021, Ms Forstater won her appeal before the Employment Appeals Tribunal. The Tribunal decided that her gender critical beliefs were protected philosophical beliefs under the Equality Act 2010.

It was not long afterwards that one of the party's senior complaints adjudicators recommended amending the transphobia definition, after which the co-chairs of the Disciplinary Sub-Group, two of the three authors of the definition, purported to sack the adjudicator.

There’s a great difference between advocating that the party has to obey the law and advocating changes in the law. The existing law (as stated on the Forstater appeal) is that, because gender critical views are a protected philosophical belief, an employer (or association) subjecting someone to detriment because they hold or are associated with such views is an actionable wrong for which they can obtain damages. It doesn’t matter whether the court agrees with the protected belief or not. The court will not form a view on that.

Thus, the senior adjudicator was making a point about legality.  

When I previously urged the Board to abandon the definitions, I was making a point about governance. 

The party’s federal constitution gives the Board power to make procedural rules for dealing with complaints.

My point was the same whatever misconduct the Board tried to define: the Board had crossed a boundary from making procedural rules to substantive ones. That is Conference’s job, by constitutional amendment. 

So there are two points here. First, the senior adjudicator’s point about legality. Members are entitled by law to have protected religious or philosophical beliefs, and express them, without being treated detrimentally by the party because of it, and if their right is infringed, they can seek damages. Members have to find ways to disagree agreeably. Second, my point that each party body must stick to its own job and not interfere in other party bodies’ jobs, and if it crosses a boundary, it should step back. 

Neither of these points is remotely transphobic. But they do support the current struggle of members who hold a religious faith or a gender critical belief to resist efforts to silence and marginalise them. 

Some individuals in the Lib Dems have spread a rumour based on nothing that I was transphobic. These individuals included the third author of the party's transphobia definition, who is a former convenor of the Scottish party. I have the evidence. I have little doubt that the collaborative effort to hound me out of the party was partly because of this gossip.

If you have backed my case, then thank you, as ever, for your support. I hugely appreciate it. If you agree with my objectives but are not in a position to donate, you can still help by spreading the word, for example by sharing on social media, or talking about it with your friends, family and wider circle of contacts.

Jo Hayes

Last week two high-profile women left the Liberal Democrats. Liz Webster, known to many listeners to James O'Brien's show on LBC as "Liz from Cricklade", announced that she was resigning. Separately, Joyce Onstad, member of the Federal Board, also announced she was leaving. 

Liz Webster is an able and eloquent performer on mainstream media and social media. She stood for election to Parliament and as a police and crime commissioner. A farmer herself, she founded the Save British Farming campaign. She has tirelessly warned of the dangers Brexit meant for farmers and Britain's food supply. She has long been urging the party to campaign to rejoin the EU. She stood for election as president in the party's deeply unsatisfactoty federal election of 2022, during which she was bullied and harassed by some party members.

On 13th February Liz told viewers on her LizWebsterSBF X (Twitter) timeline that a conversation with James O'Brien on LBC earlier that day had forced her hand and she had decided to resign her membership. The party's stance on Europe, the stifling of debate, the culture of bullying and the recent furore over Ed Davey's role in the Post Office scandal had been factors. Last but not least she could not defend the austerity that the party had enabled in the coalition of 2010-2015, which had been the wrong thing to do, when the government should have invested instead. She said she was not prepared to defend the libertarianism shared by some Lib Dem members with some wings of the Conservatives. 

Joyce Onstad stood for election to the London Assembly and to Parliament. She attracted support across the party membership that got her repeatedly elected to the Federal Board; she served as one of its vice-chairs during its 2017-2019 term. She also served on the party's international relations committee and as a party representative on Liberal International. She was expected to contest Southend West in the next general election. 

According to the BBC, the party (that is, the Senior Adjudicators Team) suspended Joyce's party membership after complaints were made about tweets she had shared or reposted criticising the Netanyahu government. Suspension is a theoretically neutral act which in practice is anything but. It instantly terminates all the member's roles in the party. It is the standard method for getting rid of candidates who displease the party hierarchy. What the members in Southend West thought we do not know, since they had no vote on the matter.

I served on the Federal Board with Joyce from 2020 until I was forced out. Her contributions to discussions were invariably thoughtful and free of groupthink. Her demeanour was calm and diplomatic. 

As a person of Black Kenyan background, Joyce has experienced racism. Perhaps it is outside most of the overwhelmingly White party leadership's experience. Joyce has been a human rights campaigner most of her life, campaigning to end apartheid in South Africa and thereafter continuing to campaign for the freedom and dignity of Palestinians. She is a peace campaigner. Her views are controversial; no doubt about that. She herself tweeted that "certain people in the party" had "conflated my anti-Zionist position with antisemitism". 

There is authority to back Joyce's contention that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are not the same thing. On 5th February 2024 the Bristol Employment Tribunal (Regional Employment Judge Pirani and two assessors) delivered a decision in the case of Miller v University of Bristol, to the effect that the claimant's anti-Zionist beliefs qualified as a protected philosophical belief under section 10 of the Equality Act 2010. Joyce's case poses the question whether the party has unlawfully discriminated against her.

The party similarly took action against the Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine, an associated organisation of the party. (There was also a Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel. I believe that both are still active.) The Federal Board, before I joined it, suspended the LDFP amid allegations of antisemitism which to the best of my knowledge were never substantiated. The suspension was later lifted.

Suspension is a deeply undemocratic procedure in which rank and file members have no say. In my own case there was an attempt to suspend my membership without my knowledge, which failed. I was informed of it later. If they thought I would resign they were disappointed. For the following six months I served on committees facing people who had thought they could oust me from those committees without notice. I have every sympathy for others who have experienced this.

The party is supposed to be rules-based and belong to its members. I found the reality was otherwise, but there was no way to reform governance from within, as no doubt others before me have found. The choice was to give up or apply to the court.

Nearly 18 months ago a complaints panel of the Liberal Democrats purported to expel me after 34 years of membership. I was a member of their governing Federal Board at the time. I’m taking them to court to have the decision ruled invalid. My case is that the complaints system was weaponised against me in retaliation because I tried to do what I think a member of a Board ought to do: improve governance, challenge misbehaviour and refuse to join in groupthink.

Yesterday the High Court sent out sealed copies of the directions order made on 15^th November last. The wheels of justice slowly turn. As I mentioned in my last update, the Court has listed a hearing to take place on 11^th April, to consider the Defendant Lib Dems’ application to strike out most of my particulars of claim. I have to file evidence by 1st March in answer to their application. 

Thank you to everyone who has helped and contributed financially thus far. I would be most grateful for further help with the inevitable costs of the approaching hearing on 11^th April.

Another way in which you can help is to share this update with your contacts, and mention my case to your friends and family. 

In one respect, the case of Alan Bates and 600 other sub-postmasters against the Post Office, which led to the current public enquiry and the recent ITV docudrama, has something in common with mine, because in October 2018 Mr Justice Fraser heard an application by the Post Office to strike out more than 160 paragraphs – between about one quarter and about one third, depending whether one counted the challenged evidence in pages, paragraphs or lines – of the factual evidence served by the six Lead Claimants for a trial due to start early the following month. The total number of passages under attack was in excess of 160 paragraphs. 

On 17^th October 2018 the Judge delivered a stinging judgment, which you can find online under the name Bates v Post Office Ltd (No. 2). The Judge said: “The application by the defendant to strike out this evidence appears to be an attempt to hollow out the Lead Claimants’ case to the very barest of bones (to mix metaphors), if not beyond, and to keep evidence with which the defendant does not agree from being aired at all.”

The Judge expressed puzzlement at the attempt to strike out such evidence at that stage. He agreed with the Claimants’ counsel that the application appeared to be an attempt by the Post Office to secure an advantage at the trial by selectively tailoring the evidence which the Court was to consider.

The Judge dismissed the Post Office's application and added that he suspected that in the background to this application the defendant was simply attempting to restrict evidence for public relations reasons. He went on to say: “Whether this “generates adverse publicity” for the defendant is not a concern of the court, as long as the evidence is properly admissible under the [Civil Procedure Rules] … The court is not a marketing or PR department for any litigant, and the principle of open justice is an important one.”

In my own case the Defendant Lib Dems seek to strike out parts of my pleading, to prevent the majority of the issues I have pleaded from being tried at all, and since evidence relating to those issues will not be relevant if the issues are struck out of the pleadings, they seek to prevent me from filing evidence I believe the Court should have before it. It will be the Court’s task on 11^th April to decide whether I am entitled to raise those issues. 

Since writing the above, I’ve seen a report from the BBC that Dr. Shahrar Ali has won his claim against the Green Party. The latter's management removed Dr. Ali from his post as spokesperson for policing and domestic safety. He claimed that his removal was because of his protected gender critical beliefs. Though I haven’t seen the judgment yet, the BBC reports that the Court held that the Green Party had improperly dismissed Dr. Ali because it failed to identify any breach of its Spokespeople Code of Conduct, and the judge, Judge Hellman, could not rule out the possibility that the unfairness had been due to his gender critical beliefs. An award of damages was made.  

All three cases – Dr. Ali’s, the sub-postmasters’ and mine – are disputes between an organisation and members or former members of it who plead that the management has ridden roughshod over their rights. I have heard this called managerial capture: the organisation’s management behave in ways that are hierarchical and undemocratic leaving the rest of the organisation with little or no say in decisions that affect them. In the Post Office case the management apparently set off down the road of concealing defects in the Horizon software system. Why they did so is unclear to me. But they would not turn back. Something similar, I believe, has happened in the Green Party and the Lib Dems: in each case the management was captured by a particular interest group, who have landed the organisation in court because they would not admit mistakes. The pity of it is that the costs fall on those who challenge the interest group and on the organisation as a whole.

In each of these cases the management has hijacked the claim to represent the organisation. But it seems to me that Mr Bates and his colleagues represent the spirit and ethos of the organisation better than the Post Office executives who created this scandal. Dr. Ali and his supporters represent the political movement that is the Green Party better than the activists who allegedly collaborated to get him sacked.

At heart I am Lib Dem. I was a founder member of the party. I wholeheartedly support the party’s aims and values declared in its Federal Constitution and I support those many, many party colleagues with whom I worked through the years, who battle to live those values and uphold them. To my mind, they are the party. Their rights and interests must be fairly and properly treated. It seems to me that the members who chose to collaborate on Mark Pack’s mega-complaint against me, instead of addressing the issues of governance I raised, are not the party, since they have chosen an illiberal, undemocratic path.

It is difficult for outsiders to know the truth. Ed Davey found this when as minister for the Post Office in 2012 he was assured by management that the organisation was not at fault. It took the determination of 600 sub-postmasters, a legal team, years of battling, a huge amount of money and the acuity of Mr Justice Fraser to expose a gigantic scandal. It went on for so long partly because the Post Office invoked confidentiality to withhold information, keeping individual sub-postmasters isolated in their fight to defend their livelihoods and good names. Thus each one was unaware that many others were fighting similar fights. Confidentiality has had a similar isolating effect on individuals caught up in the Lib Dem complaints system, perpetuating the poor governance.

The party management is using expensive lawyers and running up big costs bills which it hopes to recover from me. I am trying to minimise costs and one option I am considering is continuing without legal representation, but I hope to avoid that. 

Thank you for your interest and for any help you can give. 

At the Case Management Conference yesterday, 15th November, at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, the Court gave the case a Category A listing, in recognition of its element of public interest or importance. This means that it will be listed before a High Court Judge, not a deputy.

The Court has fixed 11^th April 2024 as the date for hearing an application the Defendant Party wants to make for Orders which would prevent parts of my claim from being tried, would allow the Party to avoid wide-ranging disclosure and would put me at severe disadvantage financially:  

• The Party wants to restrict the trial to the narrow question whether the complaints process made mistakes in my case.
• It wants to avoid disclosure relating to the wider problems I had attempted to raise and get the Party to address concerning governance failings, problems with the so-called independent complaints system and issues with treatment of individual members.
• It wants me to pay a large sum of money into Court.

I allege that the people who moved to get me expelled did so in retaliation for my questioning the status quo. The Board is responsible for directing, co-ordinating and overseeing the work of the Federal Party. I believe it was my responsibility, as a Board member, to ask questions and raise issues. Throwing me out solved nothing. 

I hope the parts of my claim that relate to wider governance go forward to trial. It is important that the Party should be properly governed. It would be so much more effective if it was a happy ship. The country needs it to be. But when last I heard, Party membership had approximately halved since 2019, and the Party is languishing at 10% or below in the opinion polls, failing to benefit from the Conservatives’ unpopularity. 

Since the claim was served nearly all the legal expenses have been met from my savings. Times are hard, but if you can help, please donate to my Crowdjustice fund. I would be immensely grateful.

Please spread the word: by talking to people, by forwarding this email to sympathetic friends, by mentioning it on Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

If you have supported me, thank you. And thank you for your interest, and for reading this update. 

Since my last update a stay and a mediation have taken place but failed to resolve our differences, so the Court directed a Case Management Conference to take place tomorrow. 

The Party’s legal team intend to apply for orders that would prevent parts of my claim from being tried. The Party’s application will take too long to be heard tomorrow. We expect that the Court will direct a later hearing. 

My case could be halted by the financial burden becoming too much for me, but it will not be halted for lack of will to see it through. I have spent a large amount from my own savings on this case. My heartfelt thanks go to those who have donated to my CrowdJustice fund. Some of you have donated more than once. I know how hard times are, but please keep donating and spreading the word.  

At the time when a hearing panel decided to expel me, I was serving terms of office in two senior positions: 

• I was an elected member of the Party’s governing Federal Board. Like a non-executive director of a company, I had governance responsibilities. I had a democratic mandate to work to improve governance and how members were treated. When I tried to do that, I encountered groupthink and resistance. I feel those governance responsibilities still. 
• At the same time, I was the duly elected Regional Candidates Chair for the East of England. I had a democratic mandate to get local parties in my region selecting their candidates early, to get active and build their teams and recognition as shadow MPs. Almost as soon as my term of office began, so did the obstruction and interference by people exceeding their roles. 

My mandates are unfinished business.  The expulsion decision prevented me from completing my terms of office or seeking to achieve these aims in a democratic way by standing for election as Federal Party President. My case alleges that there was a collaborative effort to victimise and drive me out as retaliation for my proper efforts to oppose poor governance, wrongdoing and disregard of the law by the Party. 

People ask why I persist in my aim to return to an organisation that is in the bad state I say it is. A big part of it is indignation, some for my own sake personally, and the rest for the sake of other members who have suffered mistreatment at the Party's hands. 

More than that, the country needs a party with a strong liberal voice contributing to political debate, policy and legislation. The Party is not living its values, which millions of people support and believe in. And instead of welcoming liberal-minded members it is intimidating people and conducting witch hunts. Is it coincidence that despite the Government's enormous unpopularity, the Party's membership halved between 2019 and this year, and opinion polls find its support languishes at 10% or below? I am not prepared to see the Party I helped to found fail. 

Thank you for your support thus far and your interest. Please donate if you can. And please spread the word.

Apologies for the delay since my last update. The judge gave the Defendants until 28th April to file a defence, which they did on the last day. 

My side has filed a Reply document, plus information the court requires for case management decisions. 

The Defence contains some surprising pleas: 

• They deny my claim that the membership contract has a term that the new complaints procedure must be an independent, stand-alone process free from interference by the executive functions of the Party. Yet the members in Conference voted for that (the debate is on YouTube), and the title of the complaints procedure and guidance declares to the world that it is "independent".
• They deny that there is a term of the membership contract that members will be treated fairly. I should imagine that is news to members and they may have views on it.
• They deny that the courts will intervene, calling the matters I have pleaded "internal politics of a political party". Again, members may have views on that. My view is that proper governance is not a matter of politics at all; and if a rule that the courts will not intervene exists, which I don't think it does, it should be overruled. The Party exists under the law. No one is above the law.
• They plead that Mark Pack is Federal Party President. He is not. It's public knowledge that there's an appeal by another candidate in last year's contested presidential election. This appeal has been pending and unheard for seven months! That is a gross failure of process and breach of the contract with every party member.

The membership contract promises properly run internal elections and if something goes wrong, an appeals process. Without those things, those in charge have no legitimacy; there is no way of knowing who has authority to be in charge of the party. That is no way to run an association. The Party would not deserve the label "organisation": It would just be a random collection of people.

I want change at the top and that is why I'm taking them to court.

Thank you for your continuing interest and support.

Dear reader, 

Well! Things are getting interesting! The party's solicitors got cross with me over my last update because I said that the party was in default of defence, but my side thinks that's the unvarnished truth.  

As I said in my last update, the time limit for filing a defence expired on 31st March, and the party needed to apply to the court for more time to file one. That application is before the court. Two days ago my side filed evidence on why we do not think the party should be granted more time, and we filed an application for an injunction to order the party to re-admit me as a member. We have asked for a hearing. So that is before the court as well.

In short, two cross-applications are now filed, and the court will decide whether to let the party put in a defence late, or cut the whole thing short by giving me the relief sought, which is restoration of my membership status that was wrongly taken from me. 

Meanwhile, we still do not know what the party's defence to my claim is going to be! We haven't even seen a draft.

Thank you for helping me get thus far. WIthout the support of people who believe in the same things as I believe in, I might have given up. But that wouldn't be right. 

It's now five months since the provisional result of the presidential election was announced, and still the appeal to an internal appeals panel by one of the candidates is pending and unheard. The party leadership is simply carrying on as if nothing was amiss. 

I believe the party should be living its values, and to me, that includes running itself according to its own rules and the law of the land. It includes, in case of complaint, deciding via an independent process which puts justice first, no matter how important or unimportant the individuals may be. It includes defending grassroots members' rights, including their right to choose their own candidates for public elections by democratic ballot without interference from obscure unaccountable higher-ups. It includes transparency, properly recorded decisions and accountability for decisions. It includes positive action to redress disadvantage, too.

That is not what is happening, and I cannot stand by while things are amiss. I've committed too much to the party over the years to just walk away.

These developments mean yet more legal costs, including instructing counsel for the hearing of the cross-applications. I know how hard times are, but any contribution to my crowdfunder would be gratefully received. 

Thank you (again) for reading this. Please keep spreading the word!

Dear reader, 

I never thought I'd be typing this. The party is in default of defence! It's had since 3rd February to file and serve one, but time ran out on 31st March. Now it has to apply to the court, because I've already consented to the party having 28 days' extra time, which is the maximum that the rules permit the parties to agree. (The rule is for case management reasons.)

Thank you for helping me get this far. It's been a difficult few months. On 10th October, nominations for party president closed without me. I am shut out from party activities, Facebook groups and so forth, and I can't even vote on choosing the prospective parliamentary candidate in my area. 

The party presidential election took place without me and is still not concluded, as the result was subject to an appeal by one of the candidates which, astonishingly, is still pending and unheard over three months later.

My solicitors had commenced a claim, and on 3rd February we served the claim form on the party's solicitors, with a statement of case I had written myself, to save expense. If they thought it was all over, they were mistaken.

The standard period for filing a defence is 28 days but the party's solicitors asked me to consent to an extension of time of 28 days. I did consent, and that gave the party until 31st March to file a defence: 56 days, eight weeks. That enabled the party to defer delivery of its defence until after its spring conference in York.

On 23rd March their solicitors asked me to consent to another 28 days' extension, but the Civil Procedure Rules don't allow that. They only allow the parties to agree 28 days, and I've already done that.

So the party is out of time and in default. It is applying to the court for more time. My solicitors have said we won't apply for default judgment if the party files and serves its defence by 6th April - Maundy Thursday. 

Meanwhile, we still do not know what the party's defence is going to be.

What puzzles me is why an organisation of the party's size and resources did not simply get on with producing a defence document. It had ample time and it has many people. I hope whoever is making these decisions is not using delay tactically. 

These developments mean yet more costs. If you can help by donating, I will be immensely grateful. This case doesn't just affect me. It affects everyone who wants the party to be well governed and successful. Delay just puts off the day when the necessary reforms happen, in my view.

Thank you for reading this. Please see my video, too: a link is on this webpage. And please keep spreading the word!

Thank you to everyone who has supported my case, followed its progress and sent me encouragement! 

We now have a legal proceeding in existence. It was commenced on 6th October. It alleges that the party was in breach of the membership contract. The next stage is to state my case in a formal pleading. 

My solicitor will instruct counsel to draft the pleading (called particulars of claim), which will set out what was wrong with the party's complaints system as a whole, and in detail, what was wrong with the process to which I was subjected.  

This claim is an opportunity to put the Lib Dems' complaints system on trial. 

It's not just my fight. It's the fight of everyone who has had a bad experience of the party's complaints system. More than that, it's the fight of everyone who wants to see the party reverse its fortunes. It needs to attract members and supporters and treat them well. 

The party will not put its house in order until the defects are exposed in court. It has had ample opportunity to put things right voluntarily, but failed to act.

The claim has already cost me a lot of my own money. I don't have bottomless pockets to continue alone. That is why I seek crowdfunding help.  

Times are hard, but if you can spare a financial contribution, please donate. And please spread the word among your like-minded friends. Thank you!

There's a lot of interest in the Lib Dem internal elections at the moment: 

• Voting is in progress now in the members' ballot for the next Lib Dem president and other Federal party positions. The ballot is due to close on 15th November.
• Mark Pack, the current president, has a challenger who's promising to bring about change. Members have an opportunity to opt for a new broom. 
• My bid for a court order last month was a sign of how seriously I take the party's plight and how important I think change at the top is. I tried to get the court to "hold the ring" so I could take part in the presidential election and tell members what needs to change.
• It's now in the public domain that Mark Pack was the complainant against me. It's in the public interest that members should know that presidential candidate Lucy Nethsingha and Federal Board condidate Callum Robertson were witnesses in Mark's complaint against me. They stand for more of the same at the top. 
• I hate to see how the party I helped to found is being run now.
• What brought me into direct conflict with Mark Pack was a complaint he made anonymously in September 2020 against another party member whom I'd never met at that time, who asked me to help. An administrative error outed Mark as the complainant. 
• Members who've been respondents to anonymous complaints may be wondering whether Mark Pack was the complainant against them, too. Is that how you want your president to spend their time in office?
• The judge didn't grant what I asked for. My legal team doesn't agree with the judge. Time ran out for doing any good by winning that battle (for an interim order) when the door closed on my chance to take part in the presidential election. 
• It could have been left to the members to choose whether they wanted me as their president, but Mark Pack spent £69,000 to deprive them of that choice. I don't know what fund that came from. 
• I've paid what the judge ordered me to pay, leaving an £18,000 shortfall which will be picked up by whatever fund paid for Mark Pack's costs. His aggression against me has led to this. 
• Mark argued that such behaviour by the party president was OK. Evidently he intends to carry on complaining against fellow-members. Who will be his next target?
• I'm saddened to have been prevented from completing my elected terms as Federal Board member and Regional Candidates Chair for the East of England. Apparently democratic legitimacy cuts little ice with Dr Pack or the party's unelected, obscure adjudicators.

My legal team is contending that the judge made errors of principle in his decision on the costs. We filed the papers with the appeal court on 3rd November and served copies on the party's lawyers on the 7th. I hope to get the money I paid returned, which will help me proceed with my main claim to expose the defects in the party's complaints system, and show that I wasn't validly expelled. 

My next task is to prepare my particulars of claim to accompany the claim form issued last month. The deal, decided by the members in Conference, was that the new complaints system would be independent and meet certain standards. I pointed out defects in November 2020 but my recommendations to remedy them were rejected.  If you have information concerning the complaints system please contact my solicitor, Elliot Hammer of Branch Austin McCormick. 

Meanwhile all donations will be gratefully received and put towards progressing the claim.

Thank you for reading this update.

My legal team now has the claim form bearing the court seal, recording its issue date, which was 6th October. There was a delay in processing it, due to a backlog at the court office. 

Now the claim form is issued, a legal proceeding is in existence. In it, I'm claiming my Lib Dem membership back. I have four months in which to serve it. 

My application heard on 5th October was my bid for an interim order, called an injunction, to enable me to participate in the Lib Dems' current presidential election. When nominations closed on 10th October, the opportunity was lost: an order after that date would not have served any useful purpose. 

I have paid from my own funds what I was due to pay. You might like to ask current party President Mark Pack, who is seeking re-election for another three-year term, for his justification for spending £69,000 in legal costs on preventing me from standing in that election.

The next task will be drafting the particulars of claim. Any financial contribution towards the costs will be warmly welcomed.

I'm asserting breach of contract. The deal was that the complaints process would be independent and fair. It will be my case that it was neither. I criticised it two years ago. As more people come forward with evidence of their unhappy experiences, it's becoming clearer that the process is deeply flawed.

Anyone with information is asked to kindly contact me or my solicitors, Branch Austin McCormick. If you are on Twitter, you can send me a Direct Message. My Twitter account is @JoHayesLibDem.

Thank you to everyone who's supported me thus far with advice, encouragement and donations. The main battle is yet to come.

The interim judgment handed down on Monday reveals that:

• the "senior party member" hiding behind anonymity who was using the complaints system to get another member expelled was Mark Pack.
• Due to a procedural error, Dr Pack's identity as the complainant was revealed to the member concerned, who informed me. I wrote to Dr Pack warning of my concerns that persisting with the complaint during police investigations risked possibly interfering with the course of justice. He reacted by filing a complaint against me.
• Both complaints were while he was Federal President of the party.

I was expelled in part for what I, seeking to act as a responsible member of the Federal Board, wrote to Dr Pack about his anonymous complaint. That was one of three grounds.

The second ground was that I was apparently too persistent in seeking an assessment day for another member of the party to become approved, so he could stand for election as Essex Police Fire & Crime Commissioner. He wasn't even permitted to apply for approval. You can read more about that aspect of it in the Federal Appeals Panel decision, Case 17B, on the party's website. At the trial of my claim, I will contend that my decisions and actions as a directly-elected regional candidates chair, with the backing of my committee, were things for which we were democratically accountable. The hearing panel was not democratically accountable. The hearing panel ought not to have substituted its own opinion of what's in the party's best interests for mine and my committee's; especially as it had inadequate information to go on.   

I mentioned before that the member who was interested in the Essex PFCC role complained to the Information Commissioner's Office because personal information about alleged unresolved complaints against him was shared with a number of members, including me.

The Information Commissioner upheld the complaint in February of this year, after an investigation, deciding that the personal information shouldn't have been shared with the members and me to whom it was sent. In the Commissioner's view, the party was not GDPR-compliant. 

One person who we know for certain shared the personal information (wrongly in the Commissioner's view) was Lucy Nethsingha. Others may also have done so. The people who passed it to her will be identified in the court process.

Meanwhile, I brought the Information Commissioner complaint to the Federal Board's attention. At a meeting of the Federal Board in September 2021 we were told that there was no outstanding complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office against the party. I didn't accept that. I asked to see the correspondence; this was refused. That is the third ground on which I was expelled.

I'm still shut out of the Lib Dems, I miss you and I'm continuing with my claim to get my membership back. I'm claiming nil in money. The claim is for an order to restore my membership. I aim to put the party's complaints system on trial.

You perhaps recall that in September 2018 the party's Federal Conference resolved that there should be a new complaints system, and that it would be independent. In November 2020 I sent the Federal Board a paper which warned that the new system was not independent, and I suggested ways to make it independent. The Board rejected my proposals. That makes it hurt even more to be expelled under the same system!

I was a member since the party was founded in 1988, a period of 34 years. Not a single complaint against me was upheld until now. 

Saddened and disappointed though I am that I can't stand for President, the fundraising appeal reached its initial target. Thank you to all the wonderful backers who donated. 

I'm personally having to fund the actual cost so far, which is much higher. 

Next I have to get my particulars of claim professionally drafted. Please help me with the cost of doing so. 

We have reached a crucial stage. I have been concerned about party governance issues since 2018 or earlier. To my regret and concern, it looks as though my fears were not unfounded. The party must be better and do better as a vital general election looms. In order for the party to heal from this difficult and electorally largely unsuccessful period in its history, changes must be made. Putting the "independent" complaints system on trial will be cathartic. Please help me to help the party emerge leaner, fitter and election-ready.  

Thank you for reading this.

My legal team filed the claim form on my behalf last Thursday. My claim to get my membership back is thus launched. 

The judge was unwilling, on balance, to grant an interim order to enable me to stand for election as Lib Dem Federal Party President, though he accepted that I'd suffer significant detriment. There hasn't been enough time to get an order from the Court of Appeal before nominations close at 6 pm today. 

The approved judgment was handed down this morning and discloses that the complainant against me was Dr Mark Pack, who is himself seeking a second term as Lib Dem Federal Party President. 

More details soon. Thank you to everyone who is supporting me. 

The documents and skeleton arguments are filed, and the court listings office is trying to find a judge to hear this application tomorrow, Wednesday 5th October. As I write I'm waiting for news. 

We're seeking an interim injunction, granted at the judge's discretion. My legal team and I hope it'll be granted, so that I can seek nominations to be elected as the new Lib Dem Federal Party President. 

Whether achieved in court or out of it, my aim is to change the party's governance for the better. It needs to happen, fast, so that Britain gets the strong liberal democratic presence in Parliament which it needs.

The CrowdJustice appeal is 91% of the way to its initial target. Warmest thanks to the scores of people who have contributed! It's a real help, and it's really good to know I have your backing. 

My legal team filed my application at Court this afternoon, after a lot of work preparing the papers. 

This followed a breakdown in negotiations with the party's solicitors. 

I'll post a further update when I know when it'll be heard by the Court.

I'm 88 percent towards my initial Crowdjustice target. Thank you for all the wonderful, generous support I've received so far. 

How you can help: please keep spreading the word and sharing the link to this fundraising effort.

My legal team has written to the Lib Dems outlining my case and explaining the urgency (because of the imminent internal elections for party roles at federal level). We've suggested ways to resolve the dispute without resorting to the court. We await their response. 

THANK YOU to all the lovely people who have already pledged contributions. The party's resources (or rather the members' resources) vastly exceed mine, so you are helping to equalise the odds. Fingers crossed that we can avoid going to court!

You can also help by talking to people such as family, friends and colleagues; emailing people you know; sharing this crowdfunding page with people via message, email, Facebook, Twitter and other social media. 

It matters now, because the Lib Dems are in transition. On 1st January 2023 a new regime will take over running the party for the next three years. Those who take the reins could be fizzing with new ideas, and could tackle the concerns I've been raising. Or they could be a retread of the outgoing regime. 

This case is a test case on the party's complaints system. If the court accepts there's a serious issue to be tried, it has a discretion whether to make an order enabling me to be nominated for party president. My hope is that there can be thorough debate, after which the members can decide democratically, by ballot, whether they want the party to carry on as now, or be guided in a different direction.