Social media platform takes action against Clive Fraser, one of the numptiest of Newman’s Numpties. By Town Hall reporter, KEN LEE

Banned: Clive Fraser

Croydon’s laziest councillor, Clive Fraser, has had his Twitter account suspended.

But as is his custom, “Lazy” Fraser has refused to take responsibility for his own actions, and instead blames others. Including Elon Musk…

Fraser was one of the numptiest of Newman’s Numpties in the Town Hall administration that crashed the council’s finances.

He was ward councillor in South Norwood, but failed to notice or take any action to help improve the living conditions of council tenants in the now nationally notorious Regina Road flats. Residents there say they never saw Fraser visit the blocks in all the time he was a councillor – at least, not until after the slum-like conditions were exposed by ITV News.

Fraser had been too busy orchestrating cover-ups of Labour councillors’ conduct – including the brutal assault of a young woman by one of his erstwhile colleagues, which Fraser failed to report to the police. The victim said that she had suffered “an unforgivable violent crime”.

Whoops: but Clive Fraser has been slow to come forward with any likely explanation

As Labour chief whip, the Town Hall enforcer under the discredited former council leader Tony Newman for almost four years, Fraser played a key part in silencing any opposition or questioning about the way the council was being run.

He was also exposed in the Al Jazeera Labour Files documentaries as acting unlawfully in handling and distributing data hacked from this website, when he once again failed in his public duty in reporting the offence to the police.

Instead, “Lazy” Fraser used the illegally-obtained material to bully and harass Labour Party colleagues, including councillors.

More recently, Fraser went AWOL from council business for six weeks, taking a lengthy holiday in Brazil, meaning that he missed some key votes at the Town Hall – an offence which would normally carry some kind of sanction from the group Whip. Fraser escaped unpunished.

He was so unpopular among grassroots members in his home ward of South Norwood that he was not re-selected as a candidate ahead of the 2022 local elections. Only a late switch, nabbing a vacancy in Addiscombe West, kept “Lazy” Fraser’s position as a councillor, and a place on the Town Hall allowances gravy train.

Fraser spends much of his council time canvassing for Labour and delivering leaflets, rather than conducting much casework.  According to official figures, Fraser conducted just three pieces of casework in the nine months following the May 2022 elections.

Keeping it quiet: Fraser has failed to advise the council, or colleagues, of his Twitter suspension

His use of social media tended to be limited, as if the use of modern technology was a bit of a challenge for the retired former Lambeth council housing official. Fraser used Twitter mainly to publish gruesome, self-congratulatory selfies from the campaign trail, and Brazil holiday snaps.

The reason Fraser has been suspended by Twitter – rebranded X by Musk – is a bit of a mystery. Fraser has failed to tell the council (which still carries his Twitter handle as a means for residents to contact him), or councillor colleagues of his suspension from the platform.

“It’s anyone’s guess why he’s been suspended,” according to one source. “Since Musk got busy, previously banned users, like Donald Trump, and worse, have been given their accounts back.”

Typically, Fraser is less than totally frank when it comes to the cause of his suspension. Typically, as far as Fraser is concerned, it is somebody else’s fault.

“As many people are aware there have been issues of security on twitter since Elon Musk brought [sic] the social media platform,” was Fraser’s barely coherent reply to a loyal iC reader who had noticed the suspension and had written to enquire the reason.

Fraser wittered on: “Unfortunately, my personal account under Elon Musk’s tenure of twitter was hacked into, by an unknown third party who then attempted to use it for fake commercial activity. This led to my account being placed in suspension.

“As I have done nothing wrong with the account, and indeed only learned of the suspension after the event, I have contacted twitter for a remedy.”

Given Fraser’s previous willing part played in other hacks, if true, there might be a degree of poetic justice about his explanation.

But given the policies and processes that Twitter practices, the chances that Fraser has been completely transparent about the cause of his being banned from the platform are slim. It is certainly Twitter’s policy to advise account-holders of potential suspension before they pull the plug.

Twitter/X’s rules specifically forbid the use of the platform for a range of undesirable activities, including “Violent Speech”, “Violent and Hateful Entities” (“You can’t affiliate with or promote the activities of violent and hateful entities”), “Child Sexual Exploitation”, “Abuse/Harassment”, “Hateful conduct”, “Perpetrators of Violent Attacks”, “Illegal or Certain Regulated Goods or Services” and “Non-Consensual Nudity”.

It seems most unlikely that Twitter will have suspended Lazy Fraser’s account for a single offence, a one-off mis-tweet.

Cancelled: Fraser’s Twitter account won’t be much missed…

“We take action to suspend an account if we determine that a user has engaged in repeated violations [our italics] of our policies and/or violated specific policies that cause significant risk to Twitter (ie posting illegal content, attempts to manipulate our platform or spam users, using our platform to incite violence, etc) or pose a threat to our users (fraud, user privacy violations, violent threats, targeted harassment, etc),” Twitter’s policy pages explain.

Getting suspended is a serious move, therefore, and not one undertaken by Twitter for one-off or minor offences.

They go to great length to explain the position, here.

Given the Labour Party’s trigger-happy policy on suspending members for posting material on social media that David Evans and his Blairite mates think is questionable, Lazy Fraser’s delay in advising his party colleagues of his suspension from the platform might signal that even he recognises that he could be in deeper do-do.

Stuart King, the current leader of the Labour group on the council, did not respond to our questions about Fraser, who he recently appointed to be his party’s lead member on the council planning committee.

Read more: #TheLabourFiles: Whip letters prove they knew hack was illegal
Read more: #TheLabourFiles: MP Reed, Evans and the Croydon connection
Read more: Chief whip worked with group that attacks council policy

• Inside Croydon – as seen on TV! – has been delivering local community news since 2010. 3million page views per year in 2020, 2021 and 2022.
• If you want real journalism, actually based in the borough, you should consider paying for it. Please sign up today. Click here for more details

• If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com

• As featured on Google News Showcase

• We offer FREE ads to community groups when they have members who are paid subscribers to Inside Croydon

• Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content

• Our comments policy can be read by clicking here

• Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network

• Inside Croydon works together with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as well as BBC London News and ITV London

• ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SIXTH successive year in 2022 in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine