Employment Tribunal versus the Open University

In 2001, the year of the true Millennium, my career was destroyed and my working life ended.

This was one of the few personal predictions I had believed in for a number of decades. I had, thus, expected to literally die at the Millennium – when I was 60 years old. Things did not turn out exactly in that way, and – thankfully - I have since had a number of years to document my life. But, in effect, the politically active part of my life was ended by the events described in this part of my life story.

However, in order to avoid any undue criticism of misrepresentation, where the events involved were highly controversial and clearly I had my own very personal perspective on them, the descriptions come directly from the evidence emerging before the Employment Tribunal[1] which represented the final stage of the process. Regrettably, it also illustrates how much the British legal system - which depends on the minutiae of the law rather than on the spirit of it - may be loaded against someone who challenges the establishment!

This evidence, given before a court, had perforce to be precisely accurate – the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth. On the other hand, the other side's arguments cannot fairly be included 'verbatim', for my necessary editorialising - where the evidence overall ran to more than a thousand pages - might be seen to pose different problems of balance. Even so my comments are balanced here by the various verbatim (and unedited) comments on it made by the Tribunal itself. As verbatim reporting of documented court proceedings, it should also be seen as rather more truthful than usual; even where this is to my disadvantage.

Despite the fact that what was under examination essentially related to a small number of elements, and the whole essence of tribunals was supposed to be that they are simple and cheap for plaintiffs, it turned out that the evidence that needed to be presented had to so extensive, occupying nearly two weeks in court and running to more than a thousand pages, that the legal bills involved probably added up to £¼ million overall.

The next document is the summation of the case I made to the Tribunal at the end of the hearing. As such, it also responds to the extensive case presented by the OU’s counsel:

The Tribunal’s decision went against me, perhaps inevitably in view of the serious mistakes made by my legal team. As these revolve around the legal (albeit crucial) minutiae of the case, I have chosen not to record these here, though I subsequently settled out of court against them for some tens of thousands of pounds! Accordingly, with a view to providing the fairest possible picture, the following sections report the Tribunal’s Extended Reasons, together with the response I provided to them for review.

In view of the way the judicial dice were loaded against me, even before the mistakes made by my legal team cut the remaining ground from under my feet, I was hardly surprised that, although it accepted that it had made an amazing number - several dozen - of mistakes, the Tribunal even so refused to change its decision.
9205 Tribunal – Review Decision

[1] Thus, it summarises the statements (witness in chief and summing up) I made to the Employment Tribunal at Bedford, as part of my case against the Open University, as well as reporting (typically in italics) some of the other important elements which emerged during the hearing.

It is the same as the one I presented to the tribunal with the following exceptions:

1)      References to innocent third parties have been, where possible, edited out or made anonymous.
2)      References to the 100+ pieces of my evidence, running to 600 pages overall, have been dropped, and the few key documents have instead been inserted in the main body of this report (in boxes).
3)      To aid appreciation of the structure(s) linking this complex series of events, the 131 paragraphs of the statement were grouped into a number related activities (labels A – O) - with a brief summary preceding each and a final summary at the end of the statement – of which this is one.
4)      Some of the other key elements which emerged during the hearing have been added.