HENSHAW AND THE STRANGE CASE OF CHIEF RETURNING OFFICER, CHARLES LASHAM...

HENSHAW destroyed the career of one of Liverpool's most respected council officials - in pursuit of money and his own ego.
Within months of arriving as new chief executive at the city council in September 1999, Henshaw was eyeing up the post of Chief Returning Officer.
The post was occupied by Charles 'Charlie' Lasham, one of the few city council officials at that time who had a national and international reputation for their work.
Lasham had been sent to the far-flung corners of the globe to advise on the running of elections and had built up considerable expertise.
He was also highly regarded by council staff and by his collegues nationally amongst Chief Returning Officers.
This was all too much for Henshaw. Here was a council official with a popular public profile, who enjoyed a reputation for competence and innovation.
Henshaw's entire strategy as chief executive at Liverpool meanwhile was being built on the fallacy that everything that had gone before was utter rubbish. That all previous senior staff were incompetent fools and that all services were a disgrace.
Having a beacon of light like Lasham shining away in the corner was an uncomfortable reminder that this was not the case.
It also undermined Henshaw's 'blitzkrieg' strategy of destroying all that had gone before, so it could then be re-built in the Henshaw image.
But there was another, equally powerful factor.
Lasham's position as Chief Returning Officer gave him power and public prominence with the media, councillors, the political parties and MP's.
That would never suit Henshaw. He could not tolerate a rival within the same organisation. Something would have to be done.
Henshaw set his loyal rottweiller David McEhinney on Lasham.
After an entirely blameles career, Lasham was suddenly suspended on the pretext that irregularities in the conduct of elections had been discovered (this discovery of 'irregularities' nonsense was the same pretext which, ironically, was to be employed five years later with Communications Director, Matt Finnegan.)
And here we should pause to reflect that in any organisation, never mind one with Liverpool's chequered history, there are bound to be occassions when rules are bent to get round the strangling bureacracy.
McElhinney's investigation soon discovered that Lasham had recruited a relative to help with polling day duties. The relative had been paid the going rate.
This was held out by a gleeful Henshaw of a fundamental corruption within the organisation of elections.
Swift and decisive action had to be taken.
Lasham was quickly dispensed with. Henshaw even used Finnegan to make public statements about the conduct of elections and the need for probity.
This was all utter bollocks.
Henshaw had got McElhinney to cynically remove a rival and then trumpeted it as a victory for clean government (of which Henshaw, was of course, naturally the most visible proponent.)
And guess what happened next?
Henshaw assumed the role of Chief Returning Officer, pocketing an extra salary of £25,000 a year on top of his £195 grand a year chief exec's salary.
It also gave Henshaw the opportunity to stand on a stage every May, preeen himself in front of the cameras and declare in his puffed-up, pompous way: "I, being the Returning Officer for the said ward of........" etc, etc.
Meanwhile the victimised Lasham was consigned to obscurity, his reputation in tatters.
He had done nothing wrong, except fall foul of Henshw's ego and his greed. (A predicament that Finnegan also found himself in five years later).
There is one further footnote. Henshaw went on holiday to the Caribbean in the run-up to the local council elections (while he was Chief Returning Officer!). At the same time it emerged that an entire block of flats had been missed off the Electoral Register.
The local Merseymart led on the story that Henshaw was sunning himself on a beach while scores of electors were being denied the right to vote because of council incompetence.
On his return, Henshaw went incandescent, screaming and shouting at Finnegan and threatening the individual reporter and his newspaper. Of course, the story was entirely true.
As one councillor was heard to remark: "This would never have happened in Charlie Lassham's day."