Talk:Roger Lyons

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I have removed this claim "He also forbade Amicus-MSF branches from affiliating to the Stop the War Coalition, an instruction which was overturned at the 2003 conference of Amicus-MSF." As it was the National Executive who made this decision and not Lyons. I have also updated some of the info about accusations relating to "frivolous and excessive expense claims from MSF" since Lyons has since been cleared of financial irregularities. I've updated the links as well since most of them led to the same site under different guises.

I disagreed with your description of the Unity Gazette as being "ultra-left". While it is true there are some Gazette members (notably the SWP members) who fall into that description there are many others who do not, in particular the large number of current and former Labour Party members. Many members of the Communist Party of Britain also reject the label "ultra-left". I have therefore substituted the description "broad left". Rugxulo 18:01, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

There has been some vandalism of this page presumably by Lyons himself or a supporter. It is legitimate to have a reference to www.rogerlyons.com on this page, I have made it clear the site opposes Lyons. Lyons does indeed say he was cleared of all accusations but actually this is not true see http://www.btinternet.com/~davidbeaumont/rogerlyons/lyons.html which covers it in some detail.


  • It is illegitimate to have several links to David Beaumont's website under different guises. It's not vandalism to point this out, which I did when I removed them. I have removed both links to David Beaumont's website - firstly because it was labelled as an "anti-corruption website" which is simply POV and secondly because both links led to the same website, only under different guises. If you want to link to the website, think of a way to do so without making libelous claims of curruption and don't post multiple links.
  • I'm also going to revert the article back to how it was before since the claims within it are now libelous.

[edit] Sourcing and verifiability

I have removed most of the "Controversy" section because it was not adequately sourced. Please source all controversial claims and ensure that all claims you add to this article are verifiable. Thank you. Kelly Martin (talk) 00:15, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The section was reinserted - and I have again removed it. It needs re-written with care. The sources were not just poor, but being dishonustly used. Apparent 'transcripts of proceeding' posted on somone's ant-Lyons website are useless. The Guardian was quoted as authority for an allegation - when in truth the guardian only reported that 'someone' had made that allegation. It looks to me like this article is being used by someone to push an ant-Lyons campaign. I have semi-protected it, to allow trusted editors to rebuild it in a better form. --Doc ask? 00:31, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I have sourced the controversy section better. It is called controversy so surely that covers it. Wikipedia would be bland if you went through and removed all sections marked controversy everywhere. Nothing is libellous there that is a ridiculous claim let me know anything that is not sourced. The website www.rogerlyons.com is an academically respected site see [1]. The transcripts are not useless they are OCRs of documents produced by the unions' accountants HW Fisher and by the Independent Trade Union Certification Officer. Check with them if you like. I agree that the page should not push an anti lyons campaign but neither should it be used to blandly promote him for a seat in the House of Lords. Oh and I agree with the semi protection thanks for doing that. Dbdb

Sorry no. And given that this is a bio of a living person, if you continue in this possibly libelous manner to push your agenda, you may be banned from editing. The following points need addresses
  1. Peronally produced transcripts posted on a personal website, that obviously has an agenda are illegitimate. We cannot be sure they are accurate and have not been doctored (and I am not saying they have - just that we don't know). 'http://www.btinternet.com/~davidbeaumont/msf/msffl.html' may not be cited in this article, it does not meet WP:CITE.
  2. The Guardian did not 'estimate to amount to one fifth of his salary'. Read it. It says an employment tribunal was told yesterday. - and makes it clear they were told by a disgruntled ex-employee.
If you want to rewrite this, with proper sourcing do it here, and we can work it into a neutral and verifiable account. --Doc ask? 08:35, 27 April 2006 (UTC)



I have never heard of a Wikipedia page progressing so rapidly to protected status. I'm sure it's to do with some of the edits and control attempts (and not all of them mine!). Anyway, nothing to be proud of. I suggest we let the person who first created this page have a go at re-writing it. Meanwhile I will address the two points above.

1) 'Personally produced transcripts posted on a personal website, that obviously has an agenda are illegitimate'. Firstly www.rogerlyons.com (AKA LyonsWeb) is not a personal website. It is in fact a groundbreaking union lay site, which is checked and researched by more than one person and is obsessively careful to avoid defamation. The following academic works reference and highlight the site for pushing the boundaries of union democracy and leadership accountability:

  • Ainsworth, S., Hardy, S. and Harley, B. (2005), Online Consultation:

E-Democracy and E-Resistance in the Case of the Development Gateway, Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 1, 120-145 (2005)

  • Badigannavar, V (2002), Partnership, Organising Campaigns and Unions' Use of

the Internet, Chapter 6 of "FUTURE OF UNIONS IN MODERN BRITAIN" (Mid-Term Report on Leverhulme Trust-Funded Research Programme 2000 - 2002

  • Carter, B. and Cooper, R., The Organizing Model and the Management of

Change. A Comparative Study of Unions in Australia and Britain. Relations Industrielles, Volume 57, numéro 4, Automne / Fall 2002

  • Diamond. W. and Freeman, R. (2002) 'Will unionism prosper in cyberspace? The

promise of the internet for employee organisation', British Journal of industrial Relations, 40: 3, 569-596.

  • Hogan, J. and Greene, A-M. E-collectivism: On-line action and on-line

mobilisation

  • Paper presented at APROS 2000 (Sydney, December 2000).
  • Hogan, J. and Greene, A. M. (2002), 'E-collectivism: On-line action and

on-line mobilisation', in Holmes, L., Hosking, D.M. and Grieco, M. (eds) Organising in the information age: distributed technology, distributed leadership, distributed identity, distributed discourse. Aldershot, Ashgate.

  • Paper [2] presented at Cornell University's Global Unions conference, New York 2006[3]

Are we saying that only large organisations' web sites may be cited? Makes the web a lot smaller and Wikipedia just a enclyopedia of corporate information.

Secondly and anyway it is acceptable to cite personal sites in these circumstances. Quoting the current Wikipedia guidelines 'A personal website or blog may be used only as a primary source, i.e., when we are writing about the subject... of the website'. The subject of the rogerlyons.com website is Roger Lyons. It is easily the largest reference on that subject in the World.

Thirdly of course it is partial but if you exclude controversial material from biog pages there wouldn't be much left except date of birth and wonderful achievements. I absolutely do not accept the blanket and heavy handed removal of the entire 'controversy' section, which unfortunately immediately preceded the protection. If you like we can re-name it 'criticism' as for example in the highly praised Wikipedia page on Hugo Chavez [4]

2) 'The Guardian did not 'estimate to amount to one fifth of his salary'. I agree with you (and I don't think I wrote that). This should be changed to something like 'the Guardian reported employees' claims that..' . However I suspect you want it removed altogether which I would oppose. The fact that it made it into the Guardian, a respected and large national newspaper in the UK means it is significant information about Lyons which should not be 'censored' from Wikipedia. I am happy for it to appear only under 'Criticism/Controversy'. Dbdb 4/28/06


OK, I have no agenda here (I didn't even know who he was before I was directed here). There is no problem with citing the guardian's report - as long as it is done accurately. However, we seem to agree that the previous wording (whoever put it there) was prejudicial and inaccurate. When we are dealing with criticism of a living person, we have to be very careful that we are accurate, and depending on reliable sources. My primary problem was not with Rogerlyons.com but with quoting transcripts from 'http://www.btinternet.com/~davidbeaumont/msf/msffl.html'. Whilst those transcripts may be accurate, wikipedia has no means to verify that. You also misunderstand WP:V and WP:RS, I qopte in full:
A personal website or blog may be used only as a primary source, i.e., when we are writing about the subject or owner of the website. But even then we should proceed with great caution and should avoid relying on information from the website as a sole source. This is particularly true when the subject is controversial, or has no professional or academic standing. WP:V says: "Self-published sources... may be used only as sources of information on themselves, and only in articles about them. For example, the Stormfront website may be used as a source of information on itself in an article about Stormfront, so long as the information is notable, not unduly self-aggrandizing, and not contradicted by reliable, third-party published sources. Self-published sources may never be used as sources of information on another person or topic."
ie. Rogerlyons.com can be used as verification only of information about Rogerlyons.com, certainly we can list it on this page, and certainly we might use it with the 'according to a critical website' caveat. But I don't think we can use it to verify facts, it is hardly a neutral source. I might suggest that you re-write the criticism secion and post it below. Others can then suggest changes - and if we can agree we can get the protection removed. --Doc ask? 11:12, 28 April 2006 (UTC)


I would like to point to something which I have pointed out previously, but maybe I was not clear enough; 'www.rogerlyons.com' IS a personal website, it is run by a man named David Beaumont, from his home and is registered to him. If you view the source of this website is it clearly the same website which was also used as a source for libelous claims within this article - http://www.btinternet.com/~davidbeaumont/rogerlyons/welcome.html (also known as 'rogerlyons.com'). I hope this is helpful to anyone who was under the impression that the 'btinternet.com/~davidbeamont' website and the 'rogerlyons.com' website were actually different websites.

As the creator of this page I would like to respond to the various comments particularly those of Dbdb and the above anonymous individual. Firstly I am happy to accept changes to erroneous information and it would indeed appear that I inadvertently misrepresented the Guardian article. However I am disappointed that the rogerlyons.com and amicus.cc websites have been ruled out as information sources. As Dbdb implies, there is precious little other information on-line about the Lyons era; the MSF website was created toward the end of that union's life; it no longer exists and was never particularly lucid about controversy in the upper echelons of the union. I did not create this site to engage in character assassination of Roger Lyons, and certainly not to libel him - I admit to having placed myself in the group of members which intensely disliked many of his actions and political views, and would therefore like there to be some reflection of the controversy which existed in MSF. Nevertheless I attempted to creat a reasonably NPOV article. I notice that the majority of my edits have not been contested.
We should not forget that Roger Lyons was the General Secretary of a major union during most of that union's existence and whether we like it or not he has earned a place in the history of the UK and Ireland trade union movement. I can think of few places more suitable than Wikipedia in which to publicly document that history.
I would however add one comment - a number of remarks on this discussion page are not signed in the customary manner i.e. ~~~~. I would urge all participants to follow the recommended practices. In the event that we have anyone who wishes to remain anonymous, e.g. because he/she was once a general secretary of a major trade union, then there is nothing to stop that person taking out a login which does not disclose their real life identity. Rugxulo 19:22, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
As a disinterested person with no knowledge or view of Lyons, I repeat my suggestion. Someone post an attempt at a fair, verifiable, neutral account of the 'controversy' and others can suggest ammendments - usually it is quite possible to find a factual description of what has happened or has (verifiably) been alledged to have happened, in these occasions. Let's have a concrete proposal, then we can move ahead. --Doc ask? 19:59, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
Don't be so ridiculous/paranoid. There are no ex-general secretaries posting here (to my knowledge), I certainly am not one and I doubt anyone else here is one. I am simply a person who would prefer it if this article remained factual, and was not used in a rather vindictive (personal) campaign (as it seems to have been). I agree with you, Lyons has earned his place in history, but what is more important and factual historically speaking, the fact that he was instrumental in organising hundreds of thousands of people into trade unions, the fact that he has dedicated much of his life to fighting for the rights of workers, the fact that his evidence at the Cullen enquiry lead to new offshore safety legislation (this is all stuff which can be found online at websites other than rogerlyons.com or amicus.cc) or the untrue claim that he bought a bun on expenses for 25 pence? Please decide whether this article is going to be a factual account of his whole career as a trade unionist, or simply a way of "getting back" at him in someone's very bitter and personal crusade. Also, decide whether Wikipedia is to become the Heat magazine of the Trade Union movement, or is to remain an actual encyclopedia (you know, with facts in it). You're right, I have not signed my comments, this is because I don't have an account here and I can't think up anything to call myself. I do wish to remain anonymous, if that's OK. If you like I'll sign as Anonymous. - Anonymous.
It's fine. But let's stay on topic. What do you suggest we add to this article? --Doc ask? 10:36, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
I personally do not understand why a "controversy" section was added to this article before much else about his career was added. Why not add that he is active in the organisation Justice for Columbia (http://www.justiceforcolombia.org), he was joint-chair at one point I believe, but I'm not sure which year, and also the organisation Justice for Burma? Both organisations are for international solidarity with the oppressed workers of those countries. I believe he travelled to Columbia with JforC in 2004. He was also involved in the ANC during the apartheid years and I believe it mentions on the TUC website that he was active (not sure of dates or anything) in the civil rights movement in America in his youth. He was also involved in the NUS as a student, I think he may have been the vice-president but will have to find something to varify this. - Anonymous--86.129.143.63 12:27, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
Just found a link on the Justice for Columbia website with photos of the delegation to Columbia which Lyons took part in http://www.justiceforcolombia.org/Images/Delegations%20pix/Feb2004%20delegation/Feb2004.htm Perhaps this could be added to the links? Or simply link to the JforC website?--86.129.143.63 12:41, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
I have mentioned Roger's visit to Columbia and also his visit to Israel and Palestine in November 2003.Rugxulo 12:12, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
  • I have since further researched Lyons' biography and have added what I believe to be important facts - his anti-apartheid work and his nomination for Mandela as honorary president of UCL union. I also looked into UCL's union newspaper PI which reported that he organised the first SA scholarship in the UK. I also included a short paragraph about the evidence given to the Cullen Inquiry regarding Piper Alpha, but have not included the precise dates, perhaps someone else could confirm? Also amended some of the technical points regarding his term as JGS, discovered that the legally-mandated term in a union merger is actually 6 years, and not 5 years. Apparently GSs are given an extra year in this circumstance. Also included the interesting fact that in the ballot for merger the members actually voted for Lyons to stay on as JGS of Amicus until September 2007 (his 65th birthday)! - Anon