The Conservative party failed to act on complaints about bullying and harassment within its youth wing, a Tory MP has claimed.
Speaking after former election candidate Mark Clarke was expelled from the party for life after accusations of bullying and blackmail, Ben Howlett MP claimed there had been institutionalised bullying in the party’s youth movement, Conservative Future, which he chaired until 2013.
The MP for Bath, who was elected to his seat in May, told Newsnight on Wednesday that he raised concerns about Clarke’s behaviour with the party in 2010 and had talked about Clarke with current party chairman Lord Feldman and the previous chairs Lady Warsi and Grant Shapps MP.
“We’ve complained about [Clarke] for a long period of time, and it’s not just him, it was people that were attributed to him as well,” Howlett told the BBC. “I complained when I was national chairman [of Conservative Future] directly to Sayeeda Warsi as the party chairman, I complained directly to the chairman’s office when Grant Shapps took over as the party chairman and I have to say Lord Feldman has been well aware of all this, for a very long period of time.”
He added: “It was unfortunately swept under the carpet in the big scheme of things, because the party didn’t want to end up having the general election result lost I can imagine, and you don’t want to talk about those kind of thing whilst an election is going on.”
The party first suspended Clarke’s membership pending an inquiry after a 21-year-old Tory activist, Elliott Johnson, accused Clarke of bullying him before killing himself in September. Johnson’s father, Ray, said he was not satisfied by Clarke’s expulsion, describing it as a “whitewash” to protect more senior members of the party.
Clarke, who ran unsuccessfully in the 2010 election against Labour’s Sadiq Khan in Tooting, south London, was later accused of seeking to blackmail the cabinet minister Robert Halfon by threatening to expose his affair with a Tory activist – an affair which Halfon later admitted to and apologised for.
Clarke has denied the accusations of bullying, harassment and blackmail, telling Newsnight: “I believe that these false allegations and this media firestorm are related to the events surrounding Elliott’s sad death. As such I will be cooperating with the coroner and providing him with the fullest information. This is the proper process. After the inquest I will look to take legal action for defamation in respect of these allegations.”
A Conservative party statement to Newsnight said: “We have been checking and rechecking, but have not been able to find any records of complaints that were made but not dealt with – but we are determined to get to the bottom of what’s happened.”
Clarke worked as director of the RoadTrip2015 and RoadTrip2020 campaigns, which involved bussing hundreds of young activists to Tory target seats across the country. RoadTrip will no longer be authorised as a campaigning entity, a statement said, and the party’s lawyers and disciplinary committee will continue to investigate complaints received in relation to RoadTrip2015.
The party said it would ensure that affiliated campaign groups would adopt the harassment and anti-bullying policy contained in the staff handbook, and that it would continue to give party members and activists access to a counselling service provided by Westfield Health.
The entire leadership team of Conservative Future was suspended on Wednesday ahead of the broadcast of the Newsnight investigation.
Elliott Johnson, a Nottingham University graduate who worked for the campaign group Conservative Way Forward, was found dead on the railway tracks at Sandy station, in Bedfordshire, on 15 September. Johnson had made a formal complaint to the party about Clarke before his death.