LUMKEY COVER-UP: VOC MANAGEMENT SPIN

Andrew Everett, a member of the VOC's Executive Committee who acts as the club's Honorary Secretary, began his case "sumary" [sic] with the this paragraph, in which he referred to his editorial about Charlie Cannon and myself in the April 2010 issue of the VOC monthly journal MPH, reproduced below.

In his MPH editorial, Mr Everett claimed that Charlie Cannon and I were behind several versions of "the same outrageous story", namely the emerging facts of the John Lumley Affair, that had been circulated under various pseudonyms. He then went on to allege that Mr Cannon and I had made a number of unrelated allegations about VOC officials and officers, which he subsequently addressed in his case summary, circulated to members of the VOC's General Committee as a PDF file. 

 

By "EC", Mr Everett means the Executive Committee of the Vincent HRD Owners Club. The VOC EC normally consists of a dozen elected officials although there were eleven executives in place at the time of what Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs would later describe as the "irregular dispersal of assets" from the John Lumley Estate. For a full list of VOC executives and members identified so far as recipients of ex-John Lumley Collection motorcycles, click here.

Of these eleven executives, three were identified in writing by various sources, including John Lumley's brother and sister-in-law, as having been directly involved in the clearance and dispersal of the John Lumley Collection before it could be inventoried by his Trustees, Thackray Williams LLP Solicitors, and registered for Probate. Several other recipients are officers of the Vincent HRD Owners Club.

As developments have shown, the Executive Committee of the Vincent HRD Owners Club closed ranks around those of their colleagues named as being involved: Dick Wheeldon, who also acts as the VOC's Spares Liaison Officer, Paul Adams, who acts as the VOC's Information Officer and Graham Smith, who is the Editor of MPH as well as the webmaster of the VOC's website and members' forum. 

Amongst Executive Committee members actively involved in the attempts to cover up the scandal and to silence any members asking inconvenient questions about the fate of the John Lumley Collection, were VOC President Bryan Phillips, VOC Chairman Tim Kirker, VOC Honorary Secretary Andrew Everett and Graham Smith, who allowed the members' journal and website to be used for attacks against whistleblowers. 

Charlie Cannon is one of the whistleblowers in question but has not, as Mr Everett claimed, penned any articles about the John Lumley Affair. Charlie Cannon has on the other hand provided me with information, beginning with the letter he received from Thackray Williams in February 2010, asking for information about their late client's motorcycle collection, which he tried several times to circulate to VOC members. 

Another of the many errors in the case summary against Charlie Cannon and myself prepared by Mr Everett is his statement that "Cannon & Keating" informed the authorities about the missing motorcycle collection. Mr Cannon contacted John Lumley's Executors after a series of references to ex-John Lumley motorcycles had appeared in the VOC magazine from June to December 2009. 

The letter received by Charlie Cannon from the Executors indicated that a HM Revenue & Customs investigation was under way and that the Estate had been reopened. A source at HMRC later stated that the file had been open since June 2009, suggesting that their informant, suspected by VOC officials of being a former club official himself, had made his initial report very soon after John Lumley's funeral in April 2009. 

If this is the case, then why were VOC whistleblowers subjected to a sustained smear campaign by VOC executives and appointed officers, who were able to use the members' magazine and website for this purpose? Why did two VOC executives, identified by sources close to the club management as Graham Smith and Arthur Farrow, set up this spoof John Lumley-related blog?

Of the eleven VOC Executive Committee members in place at the time, six are proven either to be directly involved in the removal and dispersal of the John Lumley Collection or in the attempted cover-up afterwards, all of which makes nonsense of Mr Everett's assertions on behalf of the Executive Committee that it has "no immediate concern as to the actions of club members who assisted in the dissemination of the JL machines". 

If Mr Everett and his colleagues are so unconcerned about the identities and motives of those who have been in touch with the Executors of the reopened John Lumley Estate and with HMRC, then why did the management of the Vincent HRD Owners Club, from its President downwards, try so energetically to cover up the scandal and to intimidate and defame the whistleblowers?

VOC President Bryan "The Führer" Phillips has himself publicly described the John Lumley Affair to members at local section meetings as "the worst crisis to hit the VOC in over fifty years". 

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Here we have an Executive Committee, more than half of whose members have been proven to have acted in ways that have certainly brought the club entrusted to them into disrepute, that turns around and accuses club members who have exposed them, because of their attempts to conceal the wrongdoing, of bringing the Vincent HRD Owners Club into disrepute. 

Given that more than half of the Executive Committee is implicated in the John Lumley Affair, along with several of the senior VOC officers listed on the inside front cover of MPH magazine, most observers might be excused for drawing the conclusion that the VOC management is indeed corrupt. However, to return to Mr Everett and his case sumary [sic], neither Charles Cannon nor I ever made such a blanket statement, as we shall see.

PK