Hammers groups reject owners meeting offer
The meeting is due to be attended by Karren Brady, David Sullivan and David Gold but both groups have released statements why they have turned down the invitation ahead of a protest scheduled for 29th February outside the London Stadium.
Hammers United statement reads: “Hammers United can confirm that we have received a written invite to attend the meeting with ‘West Ham United Chairmen’.
The club chose to decline our invitations to meet. They have demonstrated a continued reluctance to engage outside of their unpopular and undemocratic OSB construct, despite advice to the contrary from the Football Supporter Association.
There appears to be little coincidence that this latest unacceptable and conditional offer from the club has been publicised and that the proposed meeting is set to take place a few days before our protest on Saturday 29 February.
The message from Hammers United has always been, and will continue to be, clear and well publicised. We asked that the club come and talk to us; the group that now represents over 10,000 of their fans, in a room, with the FSA. This offer has been refused time and time again.
Our current position is very clearly explained in a statement on our website and we will not be attending the proposed meeting on 25 February.
>We decline this invitation, again. Our position has not changed since the last invitation and the reasons for declining on that occasion. We simply do not accept the legitimacy of the OSB as a representative body for West Ham fans, and we have heard nothing from the club that causes us to revise that position. In the first instance, the club has repeated its claim that each of the representatives and supporters’ groups have equal access to having their voices heard at the highest level of the Club. WHUISA believes that if it were to join the OSB, it would still be in a minority amongst groups hand-picked by the club. We doubt the intentions of the Club when it is more than a passing coincidence that the Official Supporters’ Club were selected for a place on the OSB while being part of the very selection panel that chose the representatives.
In the second instance, the club is pushing its plans to ‘evolve’ the election model for the OSB. We are concerned as to whether the OSB actually wants to change the voting process at the OSB at all, given the minutes of the meeting held in October last year suggested that a majority of reps voted against a proposal to change the election process. Furthermore, when the Chair of the OSB, David Baker, said that fans will be brought closer together if the selection process is more democratic, the club Vice-Chair replied that she would not be willing to allow individuals on the Board who might not behave in a ‘constructive’ manner. This word is filled with subjectivity and anyone could decide that one person being ‘destructive’ was simply asking a pertinent question.
It is our doubts about the willingness of the Board to listen to criticism that have further informed our decision to decline this invitation. The Club have said that supporters’ meetings provide the opportunity to share and voice the suggestions, views and concerns of members. However, would questions be allowed at all that are free from vetting before the meeting? Are they really saying that they would be willing for questions to be asked about – for example – the fact that the Club Vice-Chair is a part-time member of staff who we feel does not have the time to fulfil her job as the Club’s Chief Executive? Could we ask detailed questions about the Club’s accounts, the business activities of the joint chairmen, why does the club insist on persevering with Socios.com and the Vice-Chair’s damaging newspaper columns?
We further doubt the good faith of the club when it attributes credit to the OSB for initiatives in which it had no involvement, such as the free sanitary products in all women’s and accessible toilets and the extra murals around the stadium.
However, the one issue that has damaged good faith in the Club is when it told a blatant lie in claiming that neither WHUISA nor HU responded to the first set of invitations from the Supporter Liaison Officer and David Sullivan. WHUISA responded to both invitations, and we can prove we responded. Claiming otherwise is a distortion of fact.
For these reasons, we fully support any lawful protest action planned for 24th February at Liverpool away and on 29th February before Southampton at home. “