An honest mistake?

Liability of Members for the Party’s Debts

Posted by admin, on 29 Aug, 2011, to BNP Ideas web site

By Andrew Brons.

Britain First is now citing the Collett v. (Adam) Walker case to support a contention that ordinary members of a party are liable for its debts. I sought advice on this point about a year ago and Richard Edmonds sought similar advice from a different source when he was considering his leadership challenge.

Ordinary members of a party that is an unincorporated association are liable for the debts of the party/association only to the extent of the unpaid part of their annual subscription.

Ordinarily the governing body of the party is responsible for the debts of the party nationally.

The governing body of the BNP is probably just the Chairman but might extend to the Advisory Council (now transmogrified into the National Executive but still appointed), especially if the Advisory Council agreed to any specific debts.

In the case of liabilities entered into by specific officers, the specific officer will be liable for that debt. This is the reason for Walker (Adam) being liable for the money owed to Collett: it was Walker who engaged the services of Collett.

Some spurious advice was given on a website about a year ago, to the effect that BNP members who had been elected to public office (councillors and MEPs) were liable for the Party’s debts. This resulted in our losing two of our three county councillors.

That advice was completely wrong and was obviously based on the fact that elected officers of the Party (nationally), if there should be any, would be liable as members of the governing body.

The person giving the advice had confused the concept of ‘elected officer of the Party’ with that of ‘member of the Party elected to public office’.