THE JOHN LUMLEY AFFAIR - BY PROSPER KEATING

VOC PRESIDENT BRYAN "THE FÜHRER" PHILLIPS: MEMORY PROBLEMS?

2011-10-22T12:37:00.003+01:00

Bryan "The Führer" Phillips and Friend celebrating the VOC's acquisition of a rare Model PS

Word reaches us that Bryan Phillips, the longtime President of the Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club, has been trying to find out who told us that he had described the John Lumley Affair as the most damaging scandal to hit the VOC for over fifty years. A number of members have been buttonholed by Phillips, including friends of mine. Given that Mr Phillips made this statement at several different section meetings around the country, his search for the mole is unlikely to succeed. While I protect my sources, of course, I think I can help The Führer, as he is popularly known amongst members, by telling him that he is in fact looking for several moles. I should also point out to him that his attempts to deny making this statement are overshadowed by the fact that (a) lots of people heard him say it in several different locations and (b) at least two sets of minutes from local section meetings record the fact.

For some historical information about Bryan Phillips, readers might care to consult Bruce Main-Smith's comments. Many VOC members appear to believe that Mr Phillips is a former high-ranking police officer, a belief Mr Phillips has never sought to dispel. In fact, Mr Phillips was in charge of the Public Carriage Office, the division of the Metropolitan Police that oversees taxi licensing. He was very good at his job, by most accounts, but as the late Bill Telfer, former commander of the Flying Squad at Heathrow Airport and a keen VOC member, remarked, it was hardly as if Bryan Phillips was there in The Thin Blue Line, holding back the forces of evil. As President of the VOC, Mr Phillips has consistently failed to act to prevent the actions of his fellow VOC executives bringing the club into disrepute. Mr Phillips was informed of the situation regarding John Lumley's motorcycle collection within a day or two of the attempt by one of the recipients to trade the prewar Vincent H.R.D. Comet he received "out of the blue" less than two days after John Lumley's funeral. And yet, it is not as if his management of the VOC has always lacked decisiveness. His popular nickname in VOC circles is after all "The Führer", which has more to do with his management style than his politics. As a nickname, it is perhaps preferable to "Velocette Man", a previous nickname born of his unexpectedly early arrival home one night to find a Velocette parked on his driveway and its rider parked on his first wife.

How VOC management deals with dissident members...

Mr Phillips presided over the appeal at the VOC's 2011 AGM by Lumley Affair whistleblower Charlie Cannon against his expulsion for bringing the VOC into disrepute by refusing to be silent about the dispersal of the John Lumley Collection. As with the meeting convened to expel Mr Cannon, objections to the proceedings were steamrollered by the VOC management. Mr Cannon decided to leave the meeting and was jeered out of the room.

Meanwhile, despite the efforts of the VOC management to give the opposite impression to members through the club's journal MPH and the VOC website, the John Lumley Affair is far from over and done with from an official viewpoint. A HMRC source confirmed that tax demands based on the independent valuation of the motorcycles that had been traced by March 2010 have been sent to the beneficiaries of the late John Lumley's alleged deathbed decision to disinherit his brother to the tune of half the value of his Estate and to the benefit of the individuals who claim that he bequeathed his motorcycle collection to them.

The HMRC source also stated that the recipients of these tax demands are appealing against the valuations, insisting that the

£75,000 valuation by VOC officials is a fairer amount. Several motorcycle traders report being approached by some of the individuals implicated in the John Lumley Affair, who have asked them for lowball estimates of value not just for motorcycles but also for at least one vanload of prewar Vincent H.R.D. spares. Moreover, a number of eBay and auto jumble vendors known or believed to be implicated in the John Lumley Affair have been steadily selling a variety of vintage motorcycle parts whose provenance they refused to discuss when approached. The

HMRC source stated that once the appeals against the independent valuation are concluded, HMRC will consider the imposition of "penalties" upon the recipients of ex-John Lumley motorcycles who failed to report their valuable "gifts" on the annual tax return forms for several years running. Asked if these penalties related to late payment or tax evasion, the HMRC source declined to comment.

It is likely, therefore, that some of the ex-John Lumley motorcycles that had been traced by March 2010 will be offered for sale by "owners" who cannot afford the taxes due, let alone any penalties, which could be quite severe in the case of prime movers in the affair. There will of course be no shortage of buyers prepared to overlook the stigma inevitably attached to owning any motorcycle with such an unfortunate provenance. HM Government will receive their due, the culprits and their accomplices will be able to keep the remainder, the Executors will be paid for their trouble by the heir who lost half his inheritance. Upstanding members of the North Kunt Section of the Vincent H.R.D Owners Club will be able to gather together at the John Lumley Pie and Pint Meet in the years to come and admire the Nigel Seymour-Smith Model PS, which, like the Nigel Seymour-Smith Comet, will remain perpetually in the keeping of VOC executives and officers, most of whom belong to the said section or the Sarf Lunnon Wideboy Section.

VOC SECRETARY CAUGHT LYING AGAIN...

2011-10-07T16:27:00.002+01:00

The Honorary Secretary of the Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club, Andrew Everett, tasked with managing the attempted cover-up of the John Lumley Affair, seems to be more and more of a stranger to the truth as the pressure mounts. In the current issue of the VOC journal MPH, Mr Everett states that I have made no attempt to appeal against my expulsion from this club for, essentially, shining a light on the wrong-doing of senior club officials and their cronies. The agenda of the club's forthcoming 63rd Annual General Meeting contains the following motion:

3. To consider the motion, put by the Hon Secretary: That the option afforded to Prosper Keating by Club Rule 26(b) 'Any Member dealt with under these rules shall have a further hearing at a General Meeting of the Club. The decision of the General Committee may be altered by a resolution passed by a majority vote at the General Meeting; shall now be brought to a close, as the expelled Member has had 12 months to take advantage of this and has chosen not to do so. Rulr 26(b) indicates no time limitation, but cannot be credible to consider that an expelled Member may return several years on to demand a hearing. I therefore call on this meeting to exercise its 'supreme governing' authority and rule that Prosper Keating has now, by default, forfeited his right to a further hearing.

Andrew Everett: liar?

And yet, as Mr Everett well knows, I have explained my reasons for reserving my right to appeal the decision to expel me, most recently in my letter of 7.9.2011 to him, reproduced below. Essentially, as an earlier post to this blog shows, Mr Everett has apparently sought to mislead club members and other observers by writing in MPH and other media that HM Revenue & Customs is satisfied that there was nothing improper in the dispersal of those assets from the John Lumley Estate removed from the late John Lumley's home by senior officials of the Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club in highly questionable circumstances. While the individuals who participated in the removal of John Lumley's collection of motorcycles, spare parts, accessories, books, scientific instruments and a valuable vintage car may not face theft charges, and those who received these alleged "gifts" may not be charged with receiving or handling, because the authorities have to adopt what the HMRC case officer described as "a practical approach", they are facing the prospect of "penalties" for what amounts to attempted tax evasion, which was a criminal offence the last time we checked.

Even if I believed that making an appeal to a profoundly corrupt management composed of individuals directly involved in the John Lumley Affair or the attempted cover-up and intimidation of whistleblowers afterwards had any chance of success, the fact that the case is far from resolved, as Mr Everett seeks to suggest, makes it impossible for me to consider any appeal at this time. This latest machination on the part of the VOC management provides some foresight of how unsuccessful such an appeal would be against an expulsion obtained by a rigged vote in the face of demands from members for a postal ballot. And as with his reaction to calls for the postal ballot, Mr Everett is now seeking to rewrite the VOC Rules as he goes along to suit himself and the individuals he is defending.

However, there is a principle involved in that Mr Everett is misleading his audience in relation to the motion he proposes, because I wrote to him in good time and informed him that VOC member Ian Poskett would be reading my letter out at the AGM. Mr Everett is trying to pretend that this is not the case. In view of the recent death of Nigel Seymour-Smith, Ian Poskett will be reading out a short statement instead. Although I am in touch with the Seymour-Smith family, who remain unhappy about the way which the VOC management seems to have sought to use the late Mr Seymour-Smith as a means to appropriate the Vincent H.R.D. Model PS. It remains to be seen if the VOC management choses to respect Mr Poskett's right to address the AGM from the floor. Meanwhile, Charlie Cannon, the main John Lumley Affair whistleblower, is appealing at the AGM against his expulsion from the VOC on completely trumped-up 'charges' for which Mr Everett has actually admitted publicly that he has no evidence. Mr Cannon does not expect to succeed with an appeal to a management of which the majority were either directly involved in taking and distributing the Lumley assets or indirectly involved in terms of aiding and abetting the attempted cover-up, as well as the intimidation and smearing of whistleblowers.

There is only one conclusion to be drawn from the fact that, having failed to counter any of what has been published in this web log, the management of the Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club is now resorting to outright attempts to mislead members and other observers about various aspects of this sordid affair. First they lied about the provenance of the Model PS they claimed was donated to the VOC by the late Nigel Seymour-Smith. I shall address this in greater detail now that Mr Seymour-Smith is no longer with us. I had promised his family that I would not publish the truth during Mr Seymour-Smith's lifetime. And then they lied about the authorities' findings, telling you that the authorities had decided that there was no wrongdoing, which surprised the case officer in charge of the file. And here they are, lying to you about my right of appeal and trying to fix it so that I will have no such right and no right of public, recorded reply when it eventually becomes appropriate for me to file such an appeal, even if I only do so for the sake of the principle involved.

Such are the consequences of the sharp rises in values of these motorcycles over the past fifteen years or so, with senior VOC officials buying £6,000 Comets for £600 from widows, conning bereaved families out of shed-loads of valuable motorcycles and spares, acquiring record-breaking Shadows from dead members' girlfriends in questionable circumstances and so on. The John Lumley Collection was very tempting for a clique deeply immersed in this sort of greed-fuelled immorality, so much so that they simply threw all caution to the wind, presuming that nobody would ask where more than £1 million-worth of motorcycles had gone. And when people did ask, they were subjected to intimidation of various kinds. Any classic motorcycle specialists approached by the individuals named here for low ball valuations of ex-John Lumley motorcycles should be very careful about getting involved. As the HMRC case officer said: "We favour the valuation by Mike Jackson even though the beneficiaries are trying to dispute it".

In the end, it all hinges on whether the majority of VOC members condone or condemn wrongdoing and illegality. It would appear that the majority condone it. To paraphrase Phil Vincent himself, the legacy of his marque has been hijacked by the Toms, Dicks and Harrys whom he did not want as customers.

ASK THE EXPERTS!

2011-09-21T01:38:00.000+01:00

Readers of the Mail-on-Sunday newspaper might have noticed the following item in the Ask The Experts section on Page 96 of the 18.9.2011 issue or on the newspaper’s website. A reader with the same initials as those of Graham Smith, Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club Executive Committee member and Editor of the VOC magazine MPH, writes in asking about a case that seems remarkably similar to the John Lumley Affair. He has a friend on morphine in a hospice who wants him to remove £75,000-worth of things from his house and distribute them to friends as gifts.

Readers of this blog as well as VOC members who read the Minutes of the 129th General Committee Meeting in September 2010 will recall attempts by senior VOC management figures to establish the value of the John Lumley Collection as £75,000, compared to the subsequent independent valuation of £430,000. Readers smiling at the cartoon may also recall the discovery of one of John Lumley's laundry bills in the toolbox of the ex-John Lumley Scott that popped up in the Melbourne area of Australia. What a shame that the individuals who removed the John Lumley Collection from the deceased's house sometime between his death and his funeral did not seek the advice of the Mail-on-Sunday's highly qualified experts. Had they done so, this terrible mess might have been prevented.

No attempt was made by anyone to ask the medical staff at the hospice in which John Lumley died to assess his competence to change the provisions of the Will held by solicitors Thackray Williams. No attempt was made to involve Thackray Williams, whose letter of 5.2.2010 to VOC whistleblower Charlie Cannon indicates that they were unaware of their late client's motorcycle collection before Mr Cannon contacted them.

LUMLEY AFFAIR: ALL SORTED, CLAIMS VOC MANAGEMENT

2011-09-20T02:20:00.003+01:00

In the June 2011 issue of MPH magazine, the monthly journal of the Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club, VOC Secretary Andrew Everett devoted his editorial spot to the Executive Committee's meeting at the beginning of May: "I was able to report to the meeting, that a notable development in the John Lumley estate matter is that the Club has recently received a letter from HM Revenue & Customs which, and I quote, states, 'I accept the collection was effectively gifted by the deceased in his lifetime, in accordance with the Letter of Wishes dated 20th March 2009.' Perhaps this will see an end to the speculative and ill-informed claims as to how the John Lumley estate was distributed."

VOC Secretary Andrew Everett with VOC President Bryan Phillips: thick as thieves or just thick?

In an email to expelled VOC whistleblower Charlie Cannon on 30.8.2011, Mr Everett expanded on his theme: “It may be useful that you note; that as I published in MPH, the investigating Revenue officer, has written to: all recipients of John Lumley machines, the solicitor executor, and the principal beneficiary, Tom Lumley, and stated in his letter that he has concluded that all the machines were indeed gifted to the recipients in John Lumley's life time (before he died) in accordance with the letter of wishes, that he the investigator, has received via the solicitor. In short the Revenue have found no improper actions were carried out in the dispersal of the estate.”

However, in the course of a 25-minute telephone conversation on 13.9.2011, Mr X, a HMRC case officer involved in the investigations into the dispersal of assets from the late John Lumley's Estate, stated that the investigation was ongoing and that it was likely to be some time before everything was settled, which does not quite tally with the impression Mr Everett was seeking to convey. Mr X said that the recipients of gifts received from someone in their lifetime were responsible for informing the Revenue and paying the taxes due on the gifts. The Executors were responsible for taxes due on the dead estate.

VOC Chairman Tim Kirker: "value irrelevant"

Some readers may recall that the Minutes of the VOC's 129^th General Committee Meeting on 5.9.2010 contained the following passage: Peter Deadman then returned to the question of the collection’s value. The Hon. Chairman replied that it was irrelevant and the meeting agreed with this. In order to move on, the Hon. Secretary stated that HMRC had taken £75,000 as an interim valuation figure on which to issue preliminary pro rata tax bills to each recipient of motorcycle related items. […] Dick Wheeldon agreed the figure and related facts.” However, HMRC do not consider the value of the ex-John Lumley motorcycles so far recovered in the least "irrelevant", as Mr X made clear, saying that HMRC placed more weight on the independent valuation [of £430,000] although the recipients were free to challenge this figure.

The ex-John Lumley Model PS "donated" to the VOC

Asked if the VOC management had claimed that the Model PS was properly appropriated by the VOC, Mr X said that motorcycles counted as chattels and that if gifted, there should either be a Deed of Gift or an actual delivery of the gift: "It's almost impossible in a lot of cases and so we have to be practical. There was...a Letter of Wishes...ah...I mean...and we have letters saying...claiming...where the items were and whether they were delivered before the death or not. At our end, we have to take a practical approach to all of this. It's impossible to try to figure out what really happened. Our main concern is to get the collection valued, get the tax in and then, the values involved would determine whether we would go after penalties or not, so that's down the road."

As the Minutes of the 129th GCM of the VOC on 5.9.2010 also stated: “The Hon. Secretary reported that it was clear from documentation copied to him, that HMRC had decided that the disposal of assets was irregular and they were therefore investigating if it was a deliberate evasion of tax. All parties directly affected/involved were working together for a conclusion and the club had no authority in the matter and should not be seen to prejudge Club members in advance of an official ruling.”“

Yet here we have the VOC Secretary and spokesman for the Executive Committee, the majority of whom were involved in the John Lumley Affair to varying degrees, reassuring the membership that "the Revenue have found no improper actions were carried out in the dispersal of the estate.” although HMRC inspectors are considering "penalties". The reality of the situation was more accurately summarised, perhaps, by a Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club officer who wished to remain anonymous: “They’ve all received tax bills and they’re trying to get lower valuations accepted by the Revenue. They’re trying to discredit the independent valuer but the Revenue ain’t having none of it. They’re also shitting themselves about the fines for late payment or even attempted tax evasion. And their lies about the Model PS are going to come back on them too.”

With a few exceptions, VOC members have been largely silent so far about the dubious activities of the current management and its band of cronies. They have remained impassive in the face of a series of questionable episodes, including the hounding from office of a Treasurer who, as a chartered accountant, refused to approve VOC and VOC Spares Company accounts, the botched production and subsequent sale of a replica Black Shadow, the worsening finances of the VOC Spares Company, run by VOC Executive Committee members and other officials and, most recently, the John Lumley Affair.

Will they say anything when the club to which they belong is obliged to pay taxes of as much as 40% due on the Model PS that Nigel Seymour-Smith did not in fact donate to the VOC? The Model PS was independently valued at £17,000 as opposed to the low value of £5,000 suggested by the same VOC executives who tried to gull the Executors and the Revenue into believing that the ex-John Lumley motorcycles they admitted to having were worth a total of just £75,000. Will they sit by when the Revenue fines their club for tax evasion, thereby bringing it even further into disrepute? Of course they will, which is why the current management has carried on the way it has unchecked for the past few years.

According to HMRC sources, they are still trying to argue their case for a lower valuation but HMRC have indicated that they find the higher valuation more representative of the value of the motorcycles so far traced. Moreover, the valuation was based on photographs of incomplete, stripped and partially stripped motorcycles supplied to the Executors at the same time as many of these motorcycles were actually registered at DVLA as taxed, meaning that they had passed MoT tests and were fully roadworthy.

As for the Letter of Wishes that has finally materialised, some two and a half years after the events in question, readers may recall VOC member Peter Deadman's repeated questions during the September 2010 GCM about the existence or not of such a document. Readers may also recall the oft-cited but never-seen "list" said to have been prepared by John Lumley and given to Dick Wheeldon in The Hospice in the Weald by, variously, John Lumley himself or John Lumley's elder brother Tom Lumley. And then there was Betty Lumley's final version of the list story.

Mr Everett is indeed in contact with HMRC in connection with the John Lumley Affair because the VOC management, instead of seeing that the Model PS was returned to the custody of the reopened John Lumley Estate, decided to appropriate it for the Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club, whilst circulating the falsehood via MPH, the VOC website, Classic Bike magazine and other media that Nigel Seymour-Smith had accepted the Model PS and then donated it to the VOC.

"I GAVE AWAY THREE VINCENTS"

"The bike was returned to Nigel fairly recently..." Oh no it wasn't!

However, once the VOC management found itself dealing with HMRC in relation to the Model PS, the story told to members as well as a much wider public seems to have changed, because Nigel Seymour-Smith is not one of the recipients of letters and tax demands from HMRC. The VOC is facing the tax demand in respect of the Model PS as well the penalties that would have been imposed on the elderly and vulnerable Mr Seymour-Smith, whose family were very forthcoming when I spoke with them but who asked that I avoid overt reportage that might upset Mr Seymour-Smith in his more lucid moments. Meanwhile, the Executors of the John Lumley Estate have not responded to questions about the recovery of an asset worth at least £17,000, a sum that two collectors are ready to pay the Executors and which would go some way towards the legal bills the Executors admitted they were sending John Lumley's sole heir, a cancer sufferer in his eighties who was effectively done out of half the inheritance that should have gone to him under the terms of of his brother's Will.

Another Stolen Vincent...

2011-08-22T14:29:00.008+01:00

A 1,000cc Vincent HRD Touring Rapide, recently purchased for £33,433.33, was stolen whilst at the Vincent Owners Club annual rally at Fordingbridge in Hampshire. The new owner, Harvey Bowden from Cornwall, had only owned it for 6 days and had ridden up from Cornwall that morning. I am absolutely mortified he said. There are not may Vincents left and to have one stolen and broken up for spares is like losing a child. They are irreplaceable.

For many years the bike had belonged to Stan Kirkham from Merseyside and was well known in the Club. Stan recently passed away and the bike passed on to Dave Kay from the Wirral who is the section organiser for the Vintage Motorcycle Club. Having owned it for five years he auctioned it on eBay just last month when Harvey was the winning bidder.

The bike, registration number PVX 299, engine number F10 AB/1/2293, frame number RC 4193, was first registered in 1950 although made in 1949. It is very original and the only mods are the fitting of Craven panniers, not shown in the photograph, and a Givi tinted windscreen.

Harvey had his first Vincent when a lad of 16 back in 1966. It was the top bike to have and although already 15 years old and out of production it was still the fastest bike on the road. Then, in 1972 Honda introduced the CB750 K2 and Harvey moved on to modern biking. His elder brother Marcus, who also had a Vincent HRD, has kept his and has done over 450,000 miles on it.

Harvey is now nearing retirement and wanting to relive his youth started looking around for a Vincent so he could rejoin the club and play with his brother again.
The two brothers had come up from Cornwall together to attend the Annual Rally, Marcus’ 45th rally and Harvey’s first for over 44 years.

Peter Appleton, the rally organiser was very upset. It is the first time ever in over 50 years of club events that a bike has been stolen he said. It put a damper on the occasion and some owners left earlier than normal on the Sunday.

The bike was stolen between 9.30 and 10.30 pm on the Saturday 6th August. Harvey had been working on the bike changing the front spark plug when he went down to the marquee for some supper and socialising with the other club members. Christine Bowden, his sister in-law, was asleep in the tent right next to the bike when it was stolen. She heard some voices and after getting dressed came outside and noticed the bike not there. Thinking Harvey might have moved it she came down to the marquee to find him, but by then it was too late.

Another Vincent owner was leaving the campsite at the time and followed a white van that, on exiting the gate, turned the wrong way down a one way street. It is now believed the Vincent was probably in that van.The bike is fully insured with Carole Nash insurance so Harvey is hopeful that a full payment will be forthcoming. He then intends to look around again to find another Vincent whilst there are still some left. If you hear of anything suspicious ring Harvey on 07802 757576.

The local CID should perhaps begin by establishing the whereabouts of members of the North Kent and the South London sections of the Vincent HRD Owners Club, as well as the whereabouts of all VOC officials and members implicated in the John Lumley Affair. A sharp eye should also be kept on eBay, particularly on the identities used by certain VOC officials who regularly offload classic motorcycles and parts through the internet.

Readers in the Melbourne area of Australia might keep an eye out for this motorcycle, given the appearance there in recent years of at least one ex-John Lumley motorcycle, to say nothing of the Rapide that belonged to the late Tigger Alldus, which surfaced bearing the registration number NRO 365, which formerly adorned the Montlhéry Black Shadow when it was owned by the late John Wright. If the owner of the Rapide bearing the NRO 365 number reads this, he should get in touch with me for further details.

Hopefully, Harvey Bowden will get his Rapide back but some pundits are wondering if this crime is the consequence of what various club members see as the theft culture permeating the Vincent HRD Owners Club from the top down.

SPARES COMPANY GOING BUST?

2011-07-08T14:28:00.004+01:00

VOC officials react to John Smith-Daye's latest remarks...allegedly

When is a loss a profit? When you are a director of the the VOC Spares Company Ltd, controlled by a board of directors installed by the out-of-control management of the Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club. Click on the above link to learn more.

SPOT THE BALL...

2011-07-01T19:04:00.001+01:00

Writing in the April 2010 issue of MPH, Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club Secretary Andrew Everett made the following remarks: “I was asked by Peter Spooner, Section Organiser for Aldershot, why the Executive Committee had not made comment about the ‘Lumley Affair’. […] My reply to Peter was simple; it was, as I understood it, a private matter and not a Club issue.”

Andrew Everett (left) with VOC President Bryan Phillips

According to the minutes of the VOC General Committee Meeting of 5.9.2010, Mr Everett made the following statement: “The questions and details surrounding specific assets belonging to John Lumley up to his death, and of his estate immediately after. That at this time this is not the business of the Club as these matters are being investigated and decided by H.M. Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and the solicitor/executor of the estate.” Further on in the minutes, Mr Everett is described as telling those present that “ it was clear from documentation supplied to him, that HMRC had decided that the disposal of assets [from the John Lumley Estate] was irregular and they were therefore investigating if it was a deliberate evasion of tax.”

A year later, in the June 2011 issue of MPH, Mr Everett wrote: “I was able to report to the meeting, that a notable development in the John Lumley estate matter is that the Club has recently received a letter from HM Revenue & Customs which, and I quote, states, ‘I accept the collection was effectively gifted by the deceased in his lifetime, in accordance with the Letter of Wishes dated 20^th March 2009.’ Perhaps this will see an end to the speculative and ill-informed claims as to how the John Lumley estate was distributed.”

Mr Everett and the club management for which he speaks seem to want it both ways. On the one hand, when it suits them, they assert that the John Lumley Affair has nothing whatsoever to do with the Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club, before taking retaliatory action against club members who questioned the actions of several VOC senior executives and officials in relation to the “irregular disposal” of the John Lumley Collection. According to the VOC management, HMRC has now accepted that everything was kosher. That remains very much to be seen. Perhaps Mr Everett might scan and reproduce the HMRC letter in MPH and on the VOC website so that we can read it for ourselves in the context in which its author intended.

On the other hand, when it suits them, they blithely admit to having direct dealings with HM Revenue & Customs in relation to the John Lumley Collection. If the matter has nothing to do with the VOC and its senior management, the majority of whom are implicated in the removal and dispersal of the collection before inventory for probate or the attempted cover-up afterwards, then why is Mr Everett corresponding with HMRC? HMRC make a point of not corresponding with informants, whose identities are masked, even from case officers, in order to protect whistleblowers. They do however correspond with individuals or organisations suspected of owing or evading taxes. Since the ex-Lumley motorcycles so far traced are all in the hands of private individuals rather than the VOC, why this correspondence between the VOC and HMRC?

Could it have something to do with the Vincent H.R.D. Model PS described in the club’s journal and on its website as having been given to the VOC by its own President on behalf of Nigel Seymour-Smith, to whom the late John Lumley allegedly bequeathed it? Whether or not the story of this bequest by John Lumley to a man who had owned it briefly during WW2 is true, the fact is that neither Nigel Seymour-Smith nor any member of his family accepted the Model PS. In other words, the Model PS remained the property of the John Lumley Estate yet instead of returning it to the Trustees, who later became the Executors, the senior VOC official who oversaw the removal and dispersal of the collection arranged with his colleagues for the Model PS to be given to the Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club.

The Model PS: £17,000 as it stands

At one point, following reportedly heated exchanges between VOC executives and people close to the very elderly and infirm Nigel Seymour-Smith, Mr Everett announced that the VOC would assume any tax liability imposed on Mr Seymour-Smith by HMRC. By this point, the Model PS had been officially valued at £17,000 in its current condition, a value described as conservative by leading collectors who have made it known that they will pay the Executors £17,000 for this motorcycle without any discussion. The VOC management had suggested that the extremely rare motorcycle was worth £3,000 to £8,000.

Assuming liability for taxes due on the Model PS is all very well but can Mr Everett prove that the Model PS belongs to the Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club? Can he reproduce a scan of the Letter of Wishes dated 20.3.2009 to which he refers? Is he prepared to quote in full the HMRC correspondence to which he refers in the June 2011 MPH? Can Mr Everett prove that John Lumley left the Model PS to Nigel Seymour-Smith and that Mr Seymour-Smith took possession of it, contrary to the declarations of people close to the nonagenarian former TT racer, thereby enabling him to donate it to the VOC and enabling the VOC management to assume a tax liability on a £17,000 asset on behalf of the members whose subscriptions fund the club?

Only time can tell...

RUMOURS...

2011-05-29T16:37:00.000+01:00

As Vincent HRD Owners Club President Bryan "The Führer" Phillips continues his tour of public houses in which VOC sections meet, telling members that The John Lumley Affair is the worst crisis the club has faced in over fifty years, members who dare to ask The Führer which other crisis in the VOC's history could possibly be as bad as The John Lumley Affair tend to be met with a stony glare.

VOC Führer Bryan Phillips salutes VOC members

The worst episode of which we can think, off-hand, involved a VOC Treasurer who allegedly embezzled club funds to buy himself a motorcar in the late 1950s. Perhaps Phillips was thinking of the palace coup against the club's Vice-Presidents For Life, but that wasn't as long as fifty years ago. The late Ted Davis' energetic production of fake Black Lightnings was pretty questionable, from the viewpoint of those who unwittingly bought them, like the chap who made enquiries about a Lightning he owned that had set a world record in India...only to find out that the genuine bike was powering a water pump in some village in the sub-continent, or something like that anyway. But dear old Ted, who was quite a card and much better company than the unlovable rogues behind the John Lumley Affair, was independent of the VOC, as far as we know.

Come to think of it, there is a brewing crisis that is even worse than the John Lumley Affair. It also involves The Führer as an active participant rather than a kind of Pontias Pilate figure who attempted to wash his hands of the affair when telephoned about it by several VOC members within days of John Lumley's funeral and the reappearance of the first ex-John Lumley motorcycle.

The so-called Nigel Seymour-Smith Model PS

We are thinking of the so-called Nigel Seymour-Smith Model PS, which Bryan Phillips received from management colleagues implicated in the John Lumley Affair and then presented to the Vincent HRD Owners Club on behalf of a veteran Honorary Member of the VOC who had actually refused the alleged bequest to him by John Lumley of this Model PS. In other words, the Model PS remains the property of the John Lumley Estate, which remains open pending a resolution of The John Lumley Affair, which does not seem likely anytime soon.

Recently, following conversations with members of the Seymour-Smith family who did not dispute or object to anything written in this blog, I wrote to Bryan Phillips asking him how he now felt about his involvement in the appropriation of the John Lumley Model PS by the Vincent HRD Owners Club.

Mr Phillips did not respond.

VOC MANAGEMENT: ANOTHER OWN GOAL

2011-05-21T17:58:00.005+01:00

When a couple of senior members of the Vincent HRD Owners Club management had the bright idea of creating an attack blog aimed at me, which pops up in first place on the Google Dot Com search engine when anyone does an internet search using my name.

It obviously did not occur to the authors of this rather lame attempt to blacken my name that it would stimulate a much wider interest in The John Lumley Affair as people researching me and my work quickly found this attack blog and then searched for the real blog. Even funnier is the fact that I have actually been offered work as a result of the attack blog so I suppose I should thank the authors. You know who you are...and I know who you are too.

As you can see from this Google search today, the genuine John Lumley Affair blog now pops up in third place, with an added bonus in that the page in question addresses the Nigel Seymour-Smith Model PS sub-scandal, an affair that not only trumps the John Lumley Affair in terms of abject immorality but proves how rotten the current management of the Vincent HRD Owners Club is from the top down.

Running a straight search on the Vincent HRD Owners Club, as well as The Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club Ltd, shows the John Lumley Affair consistently in the top three or four places. The VOC management could have avoided this situation but chose to denigrate and attempt to intimidate members who raised awkward questions about the John Lumley Affair.

The first two entries take us to the website of the Vincent HRD Owners Club, as founded and named in 1948 without the dots between the letters H, R and D. The third entry also takes us to the VOC website but the webmaster and his technical helpers seem now to have included the punctuated version of H.R.D. as it occurs in Vincent H.R.D. as well as recent publications of the VOC Rules and, of course, The Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club Ltd. And the fifth entry takes us to a new blog focusing specifically on the club management and, in due course, some of its more interesting members and their activities.

Senior executives including Bryan Phillips, Tim Kirker, Andrew Everett and Graham Smith used the VOC's journal MPH as well as the VOC website - and the above-mentioned attack blog - in their attempts to blacken the names of my principal public source, Charlie Cannon, and myself.

In my case, they evidently intended to inflict as much damage as they could to my personal and professional reputation. They failed in their sordid endeavour to misuse not just VOC media but the public forum of the internet in their attempts to smear and intimidate the whistleblowers. And as this blog and others show, they have since been swallowing copious doses of their own medicine, the principle difference being that their statements about us were mendacious whereas ours about them are demonstrably true.

THE VOC AS A LIMITED COMPANY?

2011-04-28T18:58:00.008+01:00

Already worried about the lack of accountability and the cavalier attitude of the current management of the Vincent HRD Owners Club, the club in which successive generations of members have invested energy and money since 1948, the club in which you have always believed you had a stake?

CLICK HERE

The current management and some members have considered the possibility of converting the Vincent HRD Owners Club into a trust, a limited company or some sort of registered charity. The VOC Chairman recently made a statement assuring members that nothing would happen without their prior approval, obtained through a general vote.

Tim Kirker and Andrew Everett were recently appointed directors of The Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club Ltd, a private limited company incorporated in the United Kingdom with share capital, like the VOC Spares Company Ltd, set up in 1975. Who appointed Messrs Kirker and Everett? Who will the shareholders be? And how will the holdings and assets of the Club founded in 1948 be transferred to the new club, founded in 2010?

What of assets like the Nigel Seymour-Smith Series A Comet or the other prewar Vincent H.R.D. misleading described by the current club management as the Nigel Seymour-Smith Model PS? You know from studying the pages of MPH that the Series A Comet genuinely donated by Nigel Seymour-Smith seems to spend its time in the keeping of members of the Executive Committee even though it actually belongs to all of you.

CLICK HERE

How do you feel about total control of assets like this passing formally to the directors of a private limited company who, as recent VOC Spares Company Ltd records show, will staff the Board of Directors with their cronies and yes-men, as well as controlling who is able to hold shares?

The VOC Spares Company Ltd recently recorded a £290k-plus turnover. The next year, turnover was £390k-plus. Yet the Board of Directors told the authorities that the company actually showed a loss that year of £474.00. With the debts outstanding, this would justify the liquidation of the company and the selling-off of its assets. Were The Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club Ltd to show a trading loss, it could also be liquidated and its assets disposed of.

Given the recent performance of a majority of the current management when it comes to the disposal of assets or, as HM Revenue & Customs put it, the irregular disposal of assets, observers can be excused for presuming that any VOC assets up for disposal would find their way into the possession of management figures and their cronies, as per The John Lumley Scandal. And then there are the remaining questions over the disappearance of a prewar Comet reportedly donated to the Vincent HRD Owners Club by the late Tony Fox-Male, a donation recently denied by VOC Secretary Andrew Everett, who assured readers that the management had looked into it...

Remember to keep your VOC subscriptions up to date, otherwise you will not receive MPH or benefit from your 10% discount when shopping at the VOC Spares Company Ltd. Support the VOC: it's your club!

MODEL PS: DID VOC EXEC MISLEAD MEMBERS?

2011-04-28T14:08:00.000+01:00

Unshaven: Graham Smith

If 2009 was a good year for the Vincent HRD Owners Club officials and members who ended up with the £1 million motorcycle collection belonging to the late John Lumley, ordinary members feeling left out of the bonanza must have been cheered up when they opened their August 2009 issues of the VOC monthly journal MPH and read Editor Graham “Teletubbie” Smith’s In The Saddle editorial. “An incredibly generous and dedicated Club Member has very kindly donated an extremely rare bike to the V.O.C. As far as we know, this motorcycle hasn't seen the light of day for nearly 50 years, having been stored at the back of a garage since the early 1960s! Vince Farrell has told me that as far as he knows, there are no more than five of these bikes left (as complete machines). Mr Smith continued: “As this news is so exciting, our intention it to make the unveiling a really big event and promote the Club at the same time. Therefore, our President Bryan Phillips will present the machine to the Club during the 2009 Annual Rally at Battlesbridge, Essex on Saturday 29th August at 2100hrs. I personally saw the machine in the flesh at the beginning of July, and was surprised at its originality having never been restored. I'm sure there will be many Members who want to take close-up photographs of the bike once it's revealed to keep a permanent record of how these bikes left the Vincent factory back in the 1930s (OK - there's a clue as to what it could be!)" Mr Smith, who is also a member of the VOC’s twelve-strong Executive Committee, went on to inform readers that the VOC management had invited none other than Hugo Wilson, the Editor-in-Chief of Classic Bike magazine to the presentation of the “extremely rare bike” to the Vincent HRD Owners Club and that Mr Wilson hoped to run the presentation as the lead story in the October 2009 issue of Classic Bike.

It was not the first time a rare and valuable motorcycle had been donated to the Vincent HRD Owners Club. Some years ago, the VOC received a 1938 Vincent HRD Comet from veteran Isle of Man TT racer and Nigel Seymour-Smith and John Pritchard, who intended that it be used by VOC members. This Comet had belonged to Mr Seymour-Smith from 1938 to 1952 and had been raced several times in the Clubmans Senior TT before and after the Second World War. It had subsequently passed to Mr Pritchard and when he gave up riding motorcycles, he and Mr Seymour-Smith decided to donate the Comet to the Vincent HRD Owners Club, of which they were both longtime members, the latter being one of the club’s twenty-four Honorary Members. The Comet was stored for some years by VOC Series A specialist Bob Stafford, whose references to ex-John Lumley machines during the second half of 2009 had helped crack the mystery of the missing £1 million collection. Eventually deciding that the “Nigel Seymour-Smith Comet” should be passed around VOC sections in Great Britain for twelve-month stints, the VOC management commissioned Colin Jenner of Conway Motors to renovate it. Conway Motors, formerly based in the West London district of Shepherd’s Bush, was one of the first Vincent HRD dealers in the late 1920s. Having changed hands a few times, the business has been based in North Kent since the 1980s.

Graham Smith’s September 2009 editorial revealed all to those who had not been present at the VOC’s 2009 Annual Rally in the Essex village of Battlebridge on 29.8.2009: “By the time you receive this edition of MPH, it should be common knowlege that the bike donated to the Club that I mentioned last month is a 1934 Model 'PS'. It was donated to the Club by no [sic] other than Nigel Seymour-Smith - the Member who donated the other Club-owned bike, the Series 'A' Comet. If all went to plan, our President Bryan Phillips presented it to the Club at the 2009 Annual Rally at Battlebridge. In case you missed it, take a look at the front cover! Rudge-engined Model 'P's were the most popular Vincent H.R.Ds prior to Series 'A', well out-selling the JAP engined Model 'J's. Rudge engines were first used in 1931, the year before PEI designed the diamond frame. Most Model 'P's therefore had diamond frames and may be considered prototypes for the Series 'A', having acquired dual brakes in 1933. Two versions of the model were available, the Python (Model 'P') and the Python Sports (Model 'PS'), Python being the name under which Rudge sold their engine to other motorcycle makers. Ours is the rarer Model 'PS' (Sports Model)."

Mr Smith rounded off his September 2009 MPH editorial by informing readers that the Nigel Seymour-Smith Series A Comet was currently in the custody of the VOC’s South London Section and that he would be using it for a fortnight during the forthcoming November. The Comet, having been in the keeping of the VOC’s South London Section, then passed to the VOC’s North Kent Section and has recently been ‘won’ again in a raffle by the South London Section. Most of the VOC officials, officers and members implicated in the John Lumley Affair are members of these two sections. Graham Smith was identifed in writing by John Lumley’s next-of-kin but vehemently denies receiving anything from the John Lumley Estate. However, he was present during the clearance of John Lumley’s house between Mr Lumley’s death and funeral, before the Estate’s Trustee’s could secure the Estate and has been heavily involved in the club management’s attempted cover-up and the smear campaigns against whistleblowers. The North Kent Section is run by VOC Membership Secretary John Kennedy, who received, with his wife Dawn Kennedy, John Lumley’s Vincent Series C Rapide. The South London Section is run by John Sayer, whose brother Derek Sayer received an ex-John Lumley Series A Meteor. Another member of the Sayer family received a Vincent Series C Comet.

Of the five Model PS Rudge-engined singles known to survive, one is in the possession of Texan collector Herb Harris, who is in the process of restoring it. Pictures can be seen on Mr Harris’ website. Another was in the possession of the late John Lumley, whose motorcycle collection had disappeared from his home sometime between his death and funeral, before his estate’s trustees had an opportunity to inventory and value the house contents for probate purposes. Not many people had seen John Lumley’s Model PS, which was parked behind a vintage motorcar in his garage, because John Lumley, who was reclusive, invited very few people to his home. A couple of the VOC members who began asking questions about the whereabouts of John Lumley’s collection of motorcycles as early as the funeral on 21.4.2009 recalled it. So did a few other people who had been invited to visit John Lumley’s home over the years. As the Machine Researcher of the Vincent HRD Owners Club, Vince Farrell is well-placed to keep tabs on surviving Vincent HRDs and Vincents made between 1927 and 1955, when the firm ceased motorcycle production. John Lumley’s various prewar and postwar Vincent HRDs and Vincents were all logged in VOC records so John Lumley’s Model PS would have been one of the five surviving models to which Vince Farrell referred when speaking to Graham Smith in advance of Mr Smith’s August 2009 In The Saddle editorial in MPH.

From 1927 to 1934, the Vincent HRD firm fitted engines sourced from external suppliers, including JAP and Rudge. The Model Ps and PS’s produced from 1932 to 1934 used 500cc Rudge motors marketed under the Python name, hence ‘P’ and ‘PS, the latter standing for “Python Sports”. The “Sports Python” motor, as Rudge called it, used the firm’s semi-radial four-valve bronze head and was quite powerful for its time. For the 1932 season, the firm introduced their new chassis, designed by Phil Irving and comprising a diamond configuration front frame, fitted with Phil Vincent’s distinctive cantilever rear sub-frame. Many Vincent HRD enthusiasts regard the Model Ps and PS’s as the first true Vincent HRDs, heralding as they did the Meteor and Comet models introduced for the 1935 season, fitted with the first in-house motors, also designed by Irving. The Model PS, which was fast and reliable on the road, was well-received by the motorcycle press, but motorcycle sales were down by 75% because of the depression of the early 1930s.

Under wraps: Paul Adams with Model PS AXN 459

In the October 2009 issue of MPH, VOC Executive Committee member and Information Officer Paul Adams wrote: "You have all seen the photograph of the Nigel Seymour-Smith donated [sic] Model PS H.R.D. and I've heard a variety of differing views just what to do with it now. This dilemma deserves serious consideration because you have to bear in mind the uniqueness and usability of this machine. If it is to be fully restored, should it be loaned to Sections as is the case with the Series 'A' Comet or should it be a museum piece? I have a personal view but please put pen to paper and write with your reasoned and considered argument suggesting its future. Its future intended use will be made by yourselves, and not the Executive Committee alone. Have your say!" Mr Adams is another of the VOC senior officials implicated in the John Lumley Affair, identified as having received an ex-John Lumley Vincent Series D Black Knight but widely suspected of receiving other items, including motorcycles and rare spares from John Lumley’s extensive spares collection. Mr Adams’ son, Peter Adams, was also found to to have received one of John Lumley’s Scotts, claimed to have been sold for £235 at the Kempton Park Autojumble to a buyer whose name neither Adams could apparently recall.

Jacqueline Bickerstaff discussing Model PS AXN 459 with a motorcycle journalist

The November 2009 issue of MPH contained the following remarks by Jacqueline Bickerstaff, the well-respected motorcycle journalist and one of the Vincent HRD Owners Club’s twenty-four Honorary Members: "The donated bike looks tired, tatty and rusty. And so it is, but it is also extremely sound, very original, and eminently restorable." Ms Bickerstaff also wrote: “Should the Club restore and keep it, and if so, where? What’s the bill likely to be? Should it be circulated like the Nigel Seymour-Smith Comet, bearing in mind the greater rarity, and probably better cosmetic condition it is likely to be in when finished? And the bigger question. What parts of Vincent history, archives and machinery should the Club be in the business of preserving centrally, and what should be left to Members (and others)? [...] The Club’s constitution only states the objectives of the ‘furtherance of social and sporting activities’ and ‘the perpetuation of the H.R.D., Vincent H.R.D. and Vincent marque by encouraging and supporting the continued use of such vehicles’. Is that enough for a Club devoted to a historic and legendary marque? Debate.”

Cover-up: copy annotated by VOC Secretary Andy Everett,
referring to Charlie Cannon's attempts to circulate it

Meanwhile, the John Lumley affair, as some club members were already describing it, was developing into a potentially embarrassing situation for the management of the Vincent HRD Owners Club, because several of the members involved in the disappearance of John Lumley’s collection were members of the club’s Executive and General Committees. In January 2010, VOC member and whistleblower Charlie Cannon received a letter from the executors of the late John Lumley’s Estate. As the letter from Thackray Williams indicated, they had clearly been unaware when valuing the estate for probate of John Lumley’s motorcycle collection, worth an estimated £1 million at average market prices. The letter also mentioned HM Revenue and Customs; it would subsequently transpire that HMRC had opened a file on the John Lumley Estate as early as June 2009, suggesting a complaint soon after John Lumley’s funeral in April 2009. It also seemed that the John Lumley Estate had been reopened, which is an unusual step. Following Mr Cannon’s unsuccessful efforts to circulate this letter amongst fellow VOC members via the club’s email network and internet forum, The John Lumley Affair quickly became The John Lumley Scandal as the club membership went into cover-up mode, shielding colleagues and friends implicated in what HM Revenue and Customs officers would describe as “the irregular disposal of assets” from the John Lumley Estate, namely a motorcycle collection worth an estimated £1 million, amongst other things.

By March 2009, the executors knew the whereabouts of twenty-one of the missing motorcycles. These motorcycles were in the hands of seventeen individuals. The VOC management would later endorse attempts to convince the executors and the HMRC inspectors that the motorcycles in question were nothing but disassembled, incomplete wrecks in extremely poor condition, worth no more than £75,000. However, an independent and highly qualified consultant engaged by the executors at the behest of HMRC valued them, conservatively, at £430,000. Between twenty and thirty further motorcycles and the large collection of spare parts removed clandestinely from John Lumley’s house in April 2009 are still missing.

One of the motorcycles traced by March 2010 was described as a “circa 1932 Vincent-HRD 500 Model PS”, in the possession of one R A Wheeldon of Fawkham, Kent. R A Wheeldon is Dick Wheeldon, the VOC Executive Committee member and Spares Liaison Officer who was the prime mover in the removal and redistribution of the John Lumley Collection. Like other VOC management figures implicated in the John Lumley Scandal, Mr Wheeldon, who also admitted to having one of John Lumley’s three Vincent HRD Series A Rapides, has been observed on the internet selling several motorcycles, including an Ariel Square Four, as well as sundry spare parts widely suspected to have come from the John Lumley collection. In addition, Mr Wheeldon’s son sold a 1929 Scott, registration number UT 4742 through eBay in August 2009, which has been identified as an ex-John Lumley motorcycle and has since surfaced in Australia.

The circa 1932 Model PS established in March 2010 by Thackray Williams as being in Mr Wheeldon’s possession was described as “about 75% to 80% complete, but in a rusted condition. There is a fuel tank shown, and it is of course a spring-frame model”. However, photographs of the Model PS show a very complete and original example, as noted expert Jacqueline Bickerstaff remarked in MPH: "The donated bike looks tired, tatty and rusty. And so it is, but it is also extremely sound, very original, and eminently restorable." The frame and engine numbers, respectively, were given as D718 and U293. The registration number was AXN 459, the same number clearly legible in photographs of the Model PS presented to the VOC on behalf of Nigel Seymour-Smith by Club President Bryan Phillips on 28.8.2009, six months earlier.

VOC President Phillips: did he know?

The Thackray Williams notes further stated: “There is a copy RF 60 Log book on file, in which the first Registration is shown as Feb 1^st 1934.” Nigel Seymour-Smith’s name appears in the logbook as the owner of the Model PS from 1945 to 1947. John Lumley had owned it from the late 1950s to his death in 2009. As MPH Editor Graham Smith had written: “…this motorcycle hasn't seen the light of day for nearly 50 years, having been stored at the back of a garage since the early 1960s!” Mr Smith, identified in writing by the sole heir and his wife as being invoved and later established as having been present during the unauthorised clearance of John Lumley’s house, apparently forgot to mention that the garage in question happened to belong to the late John Lumley.

According to a source at Thackray Williams, who wished to remain anonymous, the “Vincent Club” had stated that the Model PS was worth £3,000 to £8,000, that it was insured for £10,000 and that it was stored on the premises of the VOC Spares Company Ltd in Kettering. However, the executors had also been told that the Model PS was in Fawkham, Kent, almost 130 km from Kettering, Northamptonshire. The Thackray Williams source also referred to a somewhat self-contradictory letter from Dick Wheeldon, apparently stating that John Lumley had wanted Conway Motors owner Colin Jenner to give the Model PS to the person who had once advertised in MPH for news of the whereabouts of his old Model PS.

According to Wheeldon, who seems to have been the prime cover in the unauthorised removal and dispersal of the John Lumley collection, the Model PS had been in Colin Jenner’s possession when John Lumley was allegedly instructing Dick Wheeldon to distribute his motorcycle collection as he lay dying in the hospice, heavily dosed with morphine and other medication. Wheeldon’s statement is interesting because John Lumley is known to have expressed the wish, when he learned of his terminal condition, that the best of his motorcycles be renovated by Conway Motors in order to realise the best prices possible when disposed of on behalf of his sole heir, his beloved elder brother Tom Lumley.

Series A Rapide: £214,800 hammer price at Bonham's

1950s Conway Motors poster

Just six months before John Lumley’s death, a VOC member had offered him, sight unseen, £100,000 for one of his three Vincent HRD Series A Rapides. Although the offer seems to have been a bit of a try-on, the fact that John Lumley ignored it suggests that he intended keeping the Estate intact for the benefit of his sole heir. After all, with more than £400,000 in stocks and cash, John Lumley did not need money. Another VOC member who belonged to the South London Section had made a better offer, which was turned down. This gentleman got along well with John Lumley, so it is surprising that John Lumley did not simply give him a Series A Rapide when he was making the alleged list of who was to receive what as gifts as he lay in the hospice.

John Lumley’s sister-in-law Betty Lumley confirmed rumours in Vincent HRD Owners Club circles that Colin Jenner, current owner of Conway Motors, Vincent HRD agents and specialists since the 1920s, had been asked to leave the hospice: “He was upsetting John, bothering him about the bike bits. So we told him to leave and not to come back. John was so upset that he said he wanted all his bike bits sold and the money given to the cancer charities”. In a subsequent conversation, Betty Lumley stated: “Colin Jenner kept on at me about moving the bikes into secure storage because of the value. I felt uneasy about it so we told him to leave. We told him not to come back”. Yet almost a year later, according to a Thackray Williams source who asked not to be named, when recipients of ex-John Lumley motorcycles, parts and other items were making statements to the Executor of the John Lumley Estate and her assistants at Thackray Williams after pressure from whistleblowers within the Vincent HRD Owners Club, Colin Jenner admitted to being in possession of three ex-John Lumley motorcycles. These included a 1925 Brough Superior SS100, the 1934 Vincent HRD Model W and one of John Lumley’s three 1938 Vincent HRD Series A Rapides.

Was it possible that some of John Lumley’s more valuable motorcycles had already been moved before he was hospitalised to Conway Motors in line with his wishes, as expressed to several people? How else would Colin Jenner, persona non grata with the Lumley family, have acquired the three valuable ex-John Lumley motorcycles in question? How could he have been in possession, as Dick Wheeldon suggested, of the Model PS while John Lumley was in the hospice? Colin Jenner did not respond to calls and messages although a member of the staff at Conway Motors said that they “had nothing to with disposing of the collection, luckily.”

A Coventry Eagle Flying-8: £200,000-plus

As well as a considerable number of ‘lesser marques and models’ of the kind to which Wheeldon referred in his MPH obituary of John Lumley, some very valuable motorcycles remain missing, including the Coventry Eagle Flying-8, the second Brough Superior SS100, three prewar Vincent HRD 500cc singles, the Velocette MkVIII racer and a Vincent Series C Black Shadow. However there are some leads in the case of the Black Shadow, involving Colin Jenner’s late brother David Jenner and a classic motorcycle dealer and repairer in Kent. Interviewed on 22.2.2010, Betty Lumley, John Lumley’s sister-in-law, stated that Colin Jenner had been thrown out of The Hospice in the Weald, in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, after John Lumley became agitated. During a further conversation a couple of days later, Mrs Lumley stated that Mr Jenner was asked to leave the hospice and not to return because she felt uneasy about his insistence that John Lumley’s collection be moved from his house into secure storage because of its value.

VOC management at play: Dick Wheeldon (seated)
with Arthur "Uncle Festus" Farrow:

According to the Thackray Williams source, Mr Wheeldon stated that Nigel Seymour-Smith did not want the Model PS, suggesting that it be given to the Vincent HRD Owners Club. As with the rest of the ex-John Lumley motorcycles, Mr Wheeldon has been unable to produce any proof of John Lumley’s alleged deathbed wishes. It has recently been reported in the minutes of the VOC’s 2010 Annual General Meeting that John Lumley could not recall the name of the author of the letter years before to MPH enquiring about the whereabouts of the Model PS. Nigel Seymour-Smith, who is very elderly, stopped riding motorcycles some time ago. Even if there were proof that the dying John Lumley had wanted him to have the Model PS, it would have been very unlikely that Mr Seymour-Smith would have accepted the bequest. It is possible that Mr Seymour-Smith would have decided to donate the Model PS to the Vincent HRD Owners Club, a possibility of which those wondering what to do with such a rare and notable motorcycle would have been well aware. However, Nigel Seymour-Smith did not accept the Model PS and therefore did not own it at any point other than from 1945 to 1947, which is fortunate for him because he is not therefore liable for the taxes and, possibly, the penalties HM Revenue and Customs intend to impose upon the recipients of the ex-John Lumley motorcycles so far traced.

Enquiries through the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency in Wales established that John Lumley commenced the process of obtaining a V5 registration document for the Model PS in 1983 but allowed the application to lapse for unspecified reasons. John Lumley obtained V5s for most of his motorcycles during this period. Although dormant, the application remains on file on the DVLA database as yet another piece of evidence of John Sydney Lumley’s ownership of “AXN 459” up to the point of his death on 7.4.2009, at which point ownership passed to the John Lumley Estate, administered by his trustees and, later, executors Thackray Williams.

A year and a half after the appropriation of John Lumley’s Model PS by the Vincent HRD Owners Club, there seems to have been no attempt by the club management to inform the authorities of this change of ownership or, to be more precise, change of keeper. In the absence of a V5 or V5C pertaining to the Model PS “AXN 459”, There would of course be no obligation to register a Statutory Off Road Notification. Under the 2002 Road Vehicle (Registration) Regulations, governed by the Vehicles (Excise and Registration) Act 1994, it is an offence to fail to notify the DVLA of a change of owner/keeper under Section 59(2)(a). From March 1997, responsibility for notifying DVLA was imposed upon the person selling or transferring the vehicle. As John Lumley is dead, this responsibility would normally fall due to the Executor of his Estate because the Model PS certainly belongs to the John Lumley Estate, which has been reopened. However, the Executor seems unwilling to recover the Model PS, just as she intends not to recover the other assets illegally removed from the Estate of Thackray Williams’ late client.

As the Vincent HRD Owners Club is not a legal entity, it cannot register itself as a keeper of vehicles and nor can it apparently insure vehicles, which raises questions about how the VOC insured the Model PS, owned by a dead man, and how the Series A Comet genuinely donated to the VOC by Nigel Seymour-Smith and John Pritchard is registered and insured. In other words, how is the Nigel Seymour-Smith Comet insured when being used by VOC officials and officers like Graham Smith and John Kennedy, both photographed with the Comet in recent issues of MPH and, incidentally, both implicated in the John Lumley Scandal? Unfortunately for the membership who pay to belong to the VOC, the current management of the VOC clearly feels no obligation to respond to such questions, preferring instead to threaten, smear and expel members who insist upon answers to these and other awkward questions.

Some of the Vincent HRD Owners Club members implicated in the removal and dispersal of John Lumley's collection of motorcycles and parts have stated that they were trying to help the heirs avoid excessive inheritance taxes. Had the sole beneficiary of the John Lumley Estate received his inheritance intact, he would certainly have paid inheritance tax, just as he paid inheritance tax on the part he did receive. The £400,000-plus assessment of the ex-John Lumley motorcycles traced to date vindicates various estimates of the total value of the John Lumley Collection at more than £1 million. John Lumley's octogenarian, cancer-stricken brother Tom Lumley might have expected to see around 50% to 60% of the proceeds of a sale of the auction through a reputable house like Bonham's.

Instead, Tom Lumley is receiving bills from Thackray Williams LLP and is said to be suffering anxiety because he believes he could be liable for any taxes due in relation to the motorcycles that have been traced. In addition, Tom Lumley is apparently expected to cover Thackray Williams’ expenses in relation to the the Estate they were obliged to reopen. It has been suggested that Tom Lumley will make no complaints to the Police nor The Law Society because he is afraid of getting his wife into trouble. After all, Betty Lumley did tell Thackray Williams that she gave the keys of her late brother-in-law’s house to Dick Wheeldon, an unauthorised act for which she could certainly be held accountable.

In the meantime, however, John Lumley is not forgotten; the VOC's North Kent Section of which he was a member for decades and to which many of the lucky beneficiaries of his alleged deathbed largesse belong, has renamed their annual Pie and Pint Meet in his honour. Henceforth, it shall be known as The John Lumley Pie and Pint Meet.

THE JOHN LUMLEY COLLECTION

2011-04-27T14:14:00.000+01:00

When wealthy retired scientist John Lumley died at the age of 76 in a hospice of cancer on 9.4.2009, he left a substantial estate that included a collection of over forty classic and vintage motorcycles worth more than £1 million. Sometime between his death and his funeral on 21.4.2009, this collection vanished from his home, near Sevenoaks, Kent, along with other assets that could not consequently be valued for probate purposes.

John Lumley was a member of several motorcycle clubs in his lifetime, including the Vintage Motor Cycle Club or VMCC and the Vincent HRD Owners Club or VOC, to which he had belonged since the 1950s. He was accorded the honour of an obituary in MPH, written by Dick Wheeldon. Mr Wheeldon wrote: "I am certain that his enthusiasm will be remembered in future years by those who are the new keepers.” and rounded off his homage to John Lumley by telling readers that John Lumley’s family had “…asked that donations be made to appropriate charities – the Hospice or Cancer Research. This is entirely in keeping with the wishes of a very practical man.”

Some readers found Dick Wheeldon's reference to “new keepers” intriguing; John Lumley was not known to have sold any of his motorcycles prior to his death and, just a couple of weeks after his death, it was unlikely that his Estate would have disposed of them, especially as the Estate’s Trustees, Thackray Williams LLP of Bromley, Kent had only just published the Deceased Estate notice on 1.5.2009 in The London Gazette. Almost a year later, in March 2010, officials and members of the Vincent HRD Owners Club received the following text by email, as did other individuals and bodies in the classic and vintage motorcycle world.

VOC OFFICERS SAVE DEAD VOC MEMBER'S £1 MILLION MOTORCYCLE COLLECTION

Several senior VOC officers and executive committee members should be congratulated and made Honorary Members for ensuring that a dying old man’s deathbed wishes that his £1 million motorcycle collection be sold and the proceeds donated to charity were carried out without the interference of the executors of his will and the British taxman.

North Kent Section VOC member John Lumley’s collection included three Series A Rapides, five A Meteors and Comets, a Model W, a postwar Comet or two, a Black Prince, a Series C Shadow, two Brough Superior SS100s, a Velocette KTT, a 1930s Square Four and about twenty other motorbikes. The VOC officers and members who ended up with bikes each paid the handsome sun of £1000 to charity and the solicitors and the heir to John Lumley’s estate and his wife have the receipts to prove it. Their all pleased as punch but the heir, 84 yrs old with cancer, is suffering anxiety after being informed that the estate has been reopened and that HM Revenue & Customs have opened a file on it and might charge the estate 40% of £1 million. To the heir and his wife, it was just a worthless pile of old motorcycle bits.

The dying man’s brother, 84 yrs with cancer himself threw a well known Vincent dealer out of the hospice for harrassing John Lumley. Then John Lumley dying in the hospice said get rid of it all for charity, so they tryed to do the right thing. They were helped by a senior VOC EC member who took the keys from the heir’s wife the day after the death and cleared out the huge collection before it could be valued and registered in Probate. The heir’s wife said John Lumley was in his right mind even though he was dying of cancer and drugged on morphine. First she said she made a list of the bikes with her dying brother in law and gave it to the helpful man from the club then later remembered the list was made by VOC members coming to the hospice and doing it with John Lumley but the list was not in his handwriting. She didn't keep a copy of the list because there aren't any photocopiers in hospice bedrooms and the VOC EC member who was so helpful in clearing out all those worthless old motorcycle bits has'nt shown the list to the Executors who have reopened John Lumleys estate yet.

Some of the VOC officers and members who got bikes describe this list as a letter from John Lumley saying who was to get what. But no one can produce this “letter”. Thats OK because its not in John Lumleys handwriting and he was too poorly to write anything so it probabley wouodnt be a legal document anyway. John Lumleys dying wishes were not recorded. They forgot to call in his solicitors and a doctor to certify that he was in his right mind to change his will. The only legal document is John Lumley’s will, which left everything to his brother, house and contents, period. Shame the most valuable contents got removed before they could be valued or the £800,000 the heir got would have been a lot more and he could have given more than the £1000 per bike to the cancer sufferers his brother wanted to have the money through the hospice.

The heirs never thought of calling in qualified valuers. John Lumley’s solicitors, where the executor is a senior partner who saw the collection and agreed with the sister-in-law that it was old junk, never called them in either. And the VOC EC member who was helping the heirs must have forgotten to mention the true value of the collection to them. And nobody asked questions when several vanfuls of £1 million of rare motorcycles were removed from John Lumley’s house.

The solicitors reopened the estate and wrote a letter asking for information to one of the honest VOC members trying to blow the whistle on the disappearance of the collection on 5th February 2010. This letter was sent to some VOC members and to the VOC sections but a senior VOC officer said he blocked it. Another attempt has been made to circulate the letter to VOC sections and it has been sent to MPH for publication because MPH should be the first to publish it before other magasines so the club does'nt look bad. But why did he block it? Why are the VOC officers and members who got John Lumleys bikes not answering questions about it now? Why did the senior VOC officer and EC member who took the bikes not tell the heirs and the solicitors how much they were really worth?

Who cares? Talking about this would be bad for the club wouldnt it? That’s why the senior club management want to throw the whistleblowers out of the VOC, from bringing the club into disrepute like John Mossey. But their having trouble with this because the whistleblowers have a right to be heard at expulsion proceedings at a GCM and the VOC management want to bury the story of the John Lumley Collection. This is what happens when TROUBLEMAKERS start making trouble about VOC officers who, after all, give there valuable time up to serve the club and its members. They deserve respect and asking them questions that make them go all bent out of shape and red in the face and all that is disrespectful. Its a diabolical liberty and members have no right to upset the club management, do they? After all, the lucky old heir of that weird old git who only let a handful of people past his door to see his Aladins Cave got £800,000. But like his wife said, their not feeling so lucky anymore because Her Majestys Revenue & Customs has opened a file and now it is being investigated by HMRCs investigations branch. But they are only the beneficiaries not the estate. Its the solicitor acting as executor who is perrsonaly responsable and will have to explain to the tax inspectors where their cut of the missing £1 million of assets is.

HMRC can start with the club’s own magazine, where Bob Stafford has given details of some of the most valuable John Lumley bikes since June 2009. Then they can ask the the solicitors for the receipts to charity with the names of lucky new owners of John Lumleys bikes on them. The bikes are taxable because the owner did not die more than seven years after they say he gave them away. A tax accountant in the club who did see the letter from the solicitors asking for help in finding the bikes said the people who got bikes should have declared them for tax. A former policeman in the club said that a serious offence had been committed when the bikes were taken after death and before probate and that people who knowingly received the bikes could possibly face charges too. But the VOC management will protect it’s own. They are already closing ranks and threatening anyone who asks embarrassing questions. So if you see an ex-John Lumley Series A Rapide or some other lovely machine from his collection, buy the VOC officer or member riding it a beer and congratulate him for putting another Vincent HRD on the road. Lick his arse like a good little VOC member, or he will have you expelled from the club.

And what about the cancer sufferers Jonh Lumley told his sister in law he wanted the money to go to? Well, sod them! Their going to die anyway arent they? Let the NHS look after them if they cant pay for their care. What about the rightful heir? Sod him too! He’s got cancer and if he and his wife did’nt know what they had, they dont deserve to have it. Ignorance is bliss. They got £800,000 for nothing so why shouldnt the bikes go to people who will cherish them? But their not ignorant any longer! Their just two scared old people with enough problems of there own without all this greif on there plates. They think the taxman is going to stick a huge bill on them and the solicitors are going to send more big bills. Meanwhile, let’s all give a big hand to the VOC officiers and members helped the Lumley family in order to help themselves.

There known because the heirs helped make a list using the charity reciepts and others were named in MPH and on the internet. The senior club official who went into John Lumley’s house after his death to clear out all “the old motorcycle bits” even said that he will put a special memorial plate on his new £200,000 Series A Rapide that he got for a £1000 to charity honouring the memory of John Lumley. What a very honourable bloke!

We’re lucky to have these guys running our club because no one else can be bothered to do it. Really? More like no one decent and honest wants to work with these guys. So get down to your solicitors today and make a will, then buy your next of kin a gun and teach them how to shoot so they can protect the bikes if you fall ill and some VOC’s Burke & Hare Section come calling to help you out. Oh, sorry, its illegal to shoot intruders in Britain so forget about the gun and buy your nearest and dearest some judo courses to help throw your new best friends off the property. A subscription to the local gym is good because some of these guys are overweight.

John Lumley suddenly had loads of friends when he was dying, a man who let very few people get close to him. Luckily some of those people arent going to sit on there hands and let this happen, even if they get thrown out of the VOC by the people bringing the club into disrepute. If you think you have even half an ounce of decency in you and you know anything about any of John Lumleys bikes because there are a few not accounted for, get in touch with Debbie Korb of Thackray Williams solicitors at xxxxxxxxxxxx@thackraywilliams.com or the executor who is Linda Gabriel on xxxxxxxxxxxx@thackraywilliams.com

See the letter for details. This is the letter that the top management of YOUR club, for which YOU pay, did’nt want you to see, the letter they wont circulate or publish in MPH.

Alf Garnett

Awkward Section (Recognition Pending)

Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club

Although "Alf Garnett" got a few details wrong, subsequent events and revelations have shown his account to have been surprisingly accurate. The fury of the VOC management was entirely unsurprising, given that more half of the VOC's then eleven-strong Executive Committee turned out to be directly involved in what Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs would describe as "the irregular dispersal of assets" from the John Lumley Estate. The April 2010 issue of the VOC monthly journal MPH carried the following editorials by the Chairman and Secretary of the Vincent HRD Owners Club, Tom Kirker and Andrew Everett.

Mr Everett was quick to attribute responsibility for the "Alf Garnett" polemic to VOC members Charlie Cannon and myself, although he would later admit to a Special General Committee Meeting of the Vincent HRD Owners Club in Banbury on 16.10.2010, convened to expel us from the VOC, that there was no proof to support any of the allegations made against us by the club's Executive Committee. Mr Kirker was more measured than his colleague, Mr Everett, who made a number of allegations, some of which were certainly defamatory and possibly libellous.

However, Mr Kirker repeated the story that John Lumley had decided to give all his motorcycles away to his friends in return for a "modest donation to charity". Research has shown that a total of £5,000 was given to charity by a handful of the lucky beneficiaries of John Lumley's alleged deathbed "altruism", to borrow Tim Kirker's term. £5,000 equates to around 0.05% of the estimated value of the John Lumley Collection. Mr Kirker's reference to members' children did not go unnoticed, subsequent developments indicating that four adult offpsring of senior Vincent HRD Owners Club officials and officers received ex-John Lumley motorcycles.
Two years after John Lumley's death, twenty-one of the missing motorcycles have been found in the possession of seventeen individuals, most of whom are officials and members of the Vincent HRD Owners Club, one of the world’s most exclusive clubs of its kind, known amongst members as the VOC. When rumours began to circulate that senior VOC officials including several members of the club's then 11-strong ruling Executive Committee were involved and several club members who had known John Lumley began pressing for transparency, the VOC management was forced to react. Unfortunately for the public image of the club, the management chose to shoot the messengers rather than the officials whose actions had embroiled the Vincent HRD Owners Club in what would develop into the biggest scandal to hit the club in the six decades since it was founded.

John Lumley’s main passion was for prewar motorcycles manufactured by the legendary firm of Vincent HRD in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, often described as the Bentley of the motorcycle world. Readers unfamiliar with this marque, which ceased motorcycle production in 1955, can read a potted history by clicking here. However, he was enthusiastic about motorcycles in general and his collection included a couple of Brough Superior SS100s, like the machine Lawrence of Arabia was riding when he had his fatal accident, an extremely rare Coventry Eagle Flying-8, which is very like the SS100, at least five rare Scott Flying Squirrels, a Velocette KTT racer, an Ariel Square Four and other prewar machines by Rudge, Douglas and Norton. He also had a number of lesser but nonetheless desirable machines dating from the 1940s to the 1960s.


John Lumley with his Vincent HRD Model W

John Lumley’s Vincent HRD and Vincent collection included three late 1930s 1000cc veetwin Series A Rapides along with five 500cc Series A Comet and Meteor single cylinder machines, including the 1937 Comet offered by its recipient just two days after John Lumley’s funeral. There was also a rare Model PS, the sporting single powered by a Rudge Sports Python motor, produced before Vincent HRD began making its own engines, and an even rarer example of the water-cooled 250cc Model W. John Lumley also had some postwar Vincent HRD and Vincents, as the marque became in 1949, including a Series B Rapide, a Series C Black Shadow, a Series C Rapide, a couple of 500cc Series C Comets, a Series D Black Knight, a Series D Black Shadow and a humble but scarce Firefly moped.

The last Vincent HRD Series A Rapide sold publicly realised a hammer price at Bonham’s in 2008 of over £200,000. A Brough-Superior SS100 has recently been sold for more than £280,000 and a Coventry Eagle Flying 8, one of no more than twenty known to survive, was sold some years ago for £120,000. The prewar Vincent HRD Meteor and Comet singles made from 1935 to 1939, of which John Lumley had five, are worth an average of £25,000. A Model PS in working order might be worth £30,000 to £40,000 although it is hard to value this motorcycle as no more than six examples survive.

All in all, John Lumley’s collection of motorcycles and rare spare parts was probably worth more than £1 million. This estimate seems vindicated by the £400,000-plus valuation said to have been established by an independent assessor engaged by the executors of the John Lumley Estate in the wake of the row generated by concerned Vincent HRD Owners Club members acting as whistleblowers in the months following John Lumley’s death in April 2009.

2011-04-26T23:41:00.000+01:00

On 5.2.2010, VOC member Charlie Cannon received a letter from Debbie Korb, a solicitor working for Thackray Williams, the firm entrusted with John Lumley's Will and Estate. Debbie Korb's reference to HM Revenue & Customs struck Mr Cannon and his fellow whistleblowers as significant. Subsequent enquiries established that HMRC had opened a case file on the John Lumley Estate in June 2009, indicating that they were not the only ones concerned by the disappearance of John Lumley's motorcycle collection. It was also clear that Thackray Williams had effectively reopened the Estate, which is an unusual move.

Debbie Korb wrote: “I understand following my recent telephone conversations with the late Mr Lumley’s brother that Mr Lumley did not own a collection of motorcycles but instead owned a number of motorcycle parts which were given away prior to his death”. This struck Mr Cannon and others who saw the letter as strange, as it was well-known in classic and vintage motorcycle circles that John Lumley had built up an extraordinary of motorcycles dating from the 1920s to the 1960s, as well as a substantial collection of rare spare parts, many of them new-old-stock.

T E Lawrence on an SS100

John Lumley’s Vincent HRD and Vincent collection included three late 1930s 1000cc veetwin Series A Rapides along with five 500cc Series A Comet and Meteor single cylinder machines, including the 1937 Comet offered by its recipient just two days after John Lumley’s funeral. There was also a rare Model PS, the sporting single powered by a Rudge Sports Python motor, produced before Vincent HRD began making its own engines, and an even rarer example of the water-cooled 250cc Model W. John Lumley also had some postwar Vincent HRD and Vincents, as the marque became in 1949, including a Series B Rapide, a Series C Black Shadow, a Series C Rapide, aq couple of 500cc Series C Comets, a Series D Black Knight, a Series D Black Shadow and a humble but scarce Firefly moped.

Coventry-Eagle Flying-8

The last Vincent HRD Series A Rapide sold publicly realised a hammer price at Bonham’s in 2008 of over £200,000. A Brough-Superior SS100 has recently been sold for more than £280,000 and a Coventry Eagle Flying-8, one of no more than twenty known to survive, was sold some years ago for £120,000. The prewar Vincent HRD Meteor and Comet singles made from 1935 to 1939, of which John Lumley had five, are worth an average of £25,000. A Model PS in working order might be worth £30,000 to £40,000 although it is hard to value this motorcycle as no more than six intact examples survive. The little 250cc watercooled Model W might be worth £15,000 to a committed Vincent HRD enthusiast with substantial disposable income.

THE CAT CLAWS HIS WAY OUT OF THE BAG

2011-04-26T07:56:00.001+01:00

Having discussed the letter from Thackray Williams LLP with concerned friends and acquaintances, Charlie Cannon decided to circulate it by email to VOC officials and section organisers, as well as other bodies and individuals involved in the classic and vintage motorcycle world but his initial attempt on 1.3.2010 failed to reach VOC sections in Britain and around the world as he was using an out-of-date mailing list. VOC Secretary Andrew Everett would later state in his case sumary [sic] of proceedings by the VOC’s Executive Committee to expel Mr Cannon that: “neither I nor any member of the Exec received this message. I was duly sent copies, a good while later, after the GCM, by members who’s [sic] private email addresses are in the second part of the list." However, Mr Everett did not forward the letter from John Lumley's executors requesting information and help to VOC sections for circulation to members. However, some VOC members certainly received Mr Cannon's email.

VINCENTTWIN turned out to be Colorado-based VOC member Peter Allen. Mr Allen is the brother-in-law of Colin Jenner, the current owner of Conway Motors, West London-based Vincent HRD agents and specialists since the 1920s but located in northern Kent since the 1980s. As of March 2010, Colin Jenner was one of seventeen VOC members established as being in possession of ex-John Lumley motorcycles, including a 1938 Vincent HRD Series A Rapide, the extremely rare 1934 Vincent-HRD Model W John Lumley is wheeling off the Isle of Man ferry in the video stills below, and a 1925 Brough Superior SS100. Mr Jenner is believed to be in possession of other ex-John Lumley motorcycles and it has been alleged that some of these motorcycles might have been transported abroad, possibly to the United States. Mr Jenner has never responded to any calls or messages although a member of staff at Conway Motors commented on 2.3.2010 that Conway Motors had "...had nothing to do with disposing of the collection, luckily." Contacted the same day, Mr Jenner's brother-in-law Peter Allen made the following response when asked if he were in possession of any ex-John Lumley motorcycles.

A second attempt by Mr Cannon, using a current VOC mailing list, does not seem to have reached its intended VOC recipients either. A copy of the letter was subsequently sent to MPH Editor Graham Smith for publication but Mr Smith, also a member of the VOC’s Executive Committee, neither responded nor published the letter. Some VOC members say they attempted to publish it on the VOC’s ‘official’ forum, also run by Graham Smith, without success. Their posts were quickly deleted. When asked about this recently, Mr Everett replied: "I am the Secretary of the Club, I am not your personal researcher to be called upon as and when you decide you want to write up something for your website blog."

VOC Secretary

As he made clear in his editorial published in the April 2010 issue of MPH, reproduced below, Mr Everett strenuously denied blocking Mr Cannon's attempts to circulate the letter from Thackray Williams. However, while Mr Everett and his fellow VOC Executive Committee member Graham Smith were not impeding Mr Cannon's attempts to do his civic duty in circulating an appeal by a deceased VOC member's executors for information about the John Lumley Collection to Vincent HRD Owners Club members, another whistleblower had more success in circulating the following text by email to hundreds of recipients.

quote/…

VOC OFFICERS SAVE DEAD VOC MEMBER'S £1 MILLION MOTORCYCLE COLLECTION

See the letter for details. This is the letter that the top management of YOUR club, for which YOU pay, did’nt want you to see, the letter they wont circulate or publish in MPH.

Alf Garnett

Awkward Section (Recognition Pending)

Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club

end quote/…

The fury of the VOC management was unsurprising. "Alf Garnett" got a few details wrong. For instance, the "senior club official" who planned to commemorate John Lumley by attaching a plaque to the £200,000-plus Series A Rapide he got in return for a donation of £1,000 to charity never got around to giving anything to charity in respect of the several ex-John Lumley motorcycles he redistributed to himself. Enquiries about the charitable donations said to have been made to Cancer Research UK or The Hospice in the Weald by Vincent HRD Owners Club officials and members who received ex-John Lumley motorcycles established these donations totalled £5,000, £1,000 of which appears to have comprised cash payments of £100 and £200 made directly to the beneficiary of the John Lumley Estate and his wife, which the beneficiary seems to have given to charity. However, subsequent research and events indicate that Alf Garnett's account was sufficiently accurate to conclude that he must have been very close to the action indeed.

The April 2010 issue of the VOC monthly journal MPH carried the following editorials by the club's Chairman and Secretary, Tom Kirker and Andrew Everett. Mr Everett was quick to attribute responsibility for the "Alf Garnett" polemic to VOC members Charlie Cannon and myself, although he would later admit to a Special General Committee Meeting of the Vincent HRD Owners Club in Banbury on 16.10.2010, convened to expel us from the VOC, that there was no proof to support any of the allegations made against us by the club's Executive Committee. Mr Kirker was more measured than his colleague, Mr Everett, who made a number of allegations, some of which were certainly defamatory and possibly libellous. However, Mr Kirker repeated the story that John Lumley had decided to give all his motorcycles away to his friends in return for a "modest donation to charity". Research has shown that a total of £5,000 was given to charity by a handful of the lucky beneficiaries of John Lumley's alleged deathbed "altruism", to borrow Tim Kirker's term. £5,000 equates to around 0.05% of the estimated value of the John Lumley Collection. Mr Kirker's reference to members' children did not go unnoticed, subsequent developments indicating that four adult offpsring of senior Vincent HRD Owners Club officials and officers received ex-John Lumley motorcycles.

2011-04-25T09:10:00.001+01:00

The Trustees of the John Lumley Estate, Thackray Williams LLP, had published the Deceased Estate notice in The London Gazette on 1.5.2009, giving 10.7.2009 as the deadline for any claims against the Estate. Probate was granted on 19.8.2009 in the sum of £886,824, the net value of the Estate being £884,275, with Linda Gabriel, a senior partner at Thackray Williams LLP, named as Executor. John Lumley’s house was listed as sold on 7.12.2009 for £411,000. John Lumley's accountant Michael Bushell, who received an ex-John Lumley motorcycle, saw no reason to question the probate value: "...the pile of rusted motorcycle parts that I am in possession of did not lead me to believe the valuation thereof was low. I had, and indeed have, no knowledge of John Lumley's other assets".

However, other people who had known John Lumley and were familiar with his house and its contents felt that the value of the estate seemed low, given the value of the motorcycle collection and the collection of rare spare parts. Others were already wondering about the whereabouts of the collection before John Lumley's funeral on 21.4.2010. As former VOC Treasurer Roy Huxley recalled in an email over a year afterwards: “As I had not been attending any of the meetings I was unaware of John’s death until I read about it in MPH. I attended John’s funeral and left immediately after the service. That morning, before the service, I got into conversation with another section member and when I asked if John’s bikes were going to be auctioned off by Bonham’s I was surprised to learn that all the bikes had already gone - clearly not the usual way of handling the estate. This particular member had received a Series A Comet in bits. I assumed from this that being excluded, I was no longer considered one of the North Kent or South London members. I must be one of, if not the only local members not to have been given any of the bikes."

By the time VOC Executive Committee member Dick Wheeldon's obituary of John Lumley appeared in MPH, a small group of VOC members knew where one of the ex-John Lumley motorcycles was. Two days after John Lumley’s funeral, VOC North Kent section member Tom Bull had visited Jim Poskett, a member of the VOC’s South London section. Mr Bull had offered Jim Poskett a 1937 500cc Vincent HRD Comet in exchange for a 1000cc Vincent-engined Parkin Special worth an estimated £25,000. When it transpired that this motorcycle was from the John Lumley Collection, Mr Poskett declined Tom Bull’s proposition.

Asked how this ex-John Lumley motorcycle had come into his possession, Tom Bull explained to Jim Poskett and other curious VOC members, including Ian Poskett, Jim Poskett's brother, and Charlie Cannon, that it had “just turned up” outside his house. Ian Poskett telephoned VOC President Bryan Phillips: "The first question Bryan asked me was: 'is Colin Jenner behind this'?" Colin Jenner is the current owner of Conway Motors, a Vincent HRD dealership and specialists located in West London from the 1920s to the 1980s but now in North Kent. As Ian Poskett would later say: "The VOC management knew about this from the top down right from the beginning. But they didn't do anything about it."

Charlie Cannon said: “I got a phone call early in May from Dick Wheeldon. He explained that he had distributed the bikes and that it was all according to John Lumley’s wishes. I pointed out that it was against probate law and said he should give them all back to the estate. He said it was a bit late. I asked him about the Series A Rapide he got and he said he was going to put a plaque in memory of John Lumley on it.” Charlie Cannon also described discussing a classic car that had been parked in John Lumley’s garage: “Dick Wheeldon told me that some people from the owners club had turned up and taken it away. They had insisted on paying some money for it because it was valuable. I don’t remember what kind of car it was but Dick Wheeldon told me that the money would be donated to the cancer charities. The thing that gets me about this is that Dick Wheeldon was a Director of Derwents, the patents company. He must have known about property and probate laws.” As well as his rôle as a member of the dozen-strong Executive Committee of the Vincent HRD Owners Club, Dick Wheeldon also acts as the club's Spares Liaison Officer, working with the VOC Spares Company Ltd, set up by the VOC in 1975 to manufacture spare parts for Vincent HRD and Vincent motorcycles.

In his monthly column in the June 2009 issue of MPH, the VOC’s Series A specialist Bob Stafford, a member of the club since the 1950s, wrote: “I was so sorry to hear of the recent death of John Lumley. Although we met very infrequently he was always interesting to chat with, having lots of enthusiasm for the bikes”. Mr Stafford then wrote: “One of the bikes I was checking out recently which has turned up in a collection soon to be dispersed...”, and quotes the engine number M655, which corresponds to a 1930s 500cc Vincent HRD Series A Meteor. Further on in his June 2009 column, Bob Stafford recounted “checking out Twin engine V1014 for its owner recently”.

Series A Rapide sold by Bonhams for over £200,000 in 2008

It would be six months before V1014 was mentioned again but it was one of John Lumley’s three Series A Rapides and was logged on the machines register of the Vintage Motor Cycle Club as well the Vincent HRD Owners Club database. In the October issue of MPH, Bob Stafford made a further reference to motorcycles from the missing John Lumley Collection, writing that the : “…new owner of one of the Twins once belonging to the late John Lumley" had contacted him about a problem concerning the motor.

By "Twins", Bob Stafford meant Vincent HRD Series A Rapides. Bob Stafford clearly knew the whereabouts of some of the more valuable ex-John Lumley motorcycles. Mr Stafford was even more explicit in his December 2009 MPH column: "Another of the late John Lumley's bikes has surfaced and is being made ready for restoration, this came to John from Gerry Malin's collection way back and now it has come to Tom Bull as a rolling chassis, engine out and in need of various bits to complete 1937 Comet DJH 661.”

This ex-John Lumley motorcycle had, of course, already “surfaced” back in April 2009, when Tom Bull offered it to Jim Poskett by Tom Bull just two days after John Lumley’s funeral. Bob Stafford also referred in passing to a "very smart Meteor" that once belonged to Tony Fox-Male, another well-known figure from the past, suggesting that this Meteor was also an ex-John Lumley machine, but without identifying the "new owner". Bob Stafford then rounded off the part of his monthly column dealing with ex-John Lumley motorcycles by writing: "...but nothing to say about this until the new owner has been contacted, keep coming don’t they, no need to make any replicas at this point.”

Mr Stafford's reference to the Gerry Malin Collection is borne out by VOC Kent and Sussex Section Rep Norman Walker's statement to the VOC's Executive and General Committee on 5.9.2010 that John Lumley had bought some items for about £1,000 at the sale of the Malin Collection. Gerald Malin ARIBA was a former Secretary of the Vincent HRD Owners Club who died in May 1988. Gerry Malin had resigned as Secretary in the early 1960s and had sold off a number of his Vincent HRD motorcycles at the time, John Lumley apparently being one of the purchasers. When Gerry Malin died, Sotheby's auctioned his motorcycle collection off at Brooklands in October 1988. There were five Series A Vincent HRDs, including a Rapide, and a quantity of parts listed in the catalogue but none with the engine number C478 and frame number D1396 of "DJH 661", the Comet that had "just turned up" outside Tom Bull's house sometime between John Lumley's death on 7.4.2009 and Tom Bull's visit to Jim Poskett on 23.4.2009, two days after John Lumley's funeral.

On 2.1.2010, VOC North Kent Section member Brian Hill made an eye-catching announcement on a Vincent-HRD-related internet chat board, posting that he had just “fired up A Rapide V1014” and that he would "have it finished and MOT'd in time for the Pioneer run in March." He reposted his announcement on 3.2.2010. The Pioneer Run is a major annual event on the British classic motorcycle calendar, when pre-1915 motorycycles are ridden from Epsom Downs, on the south-western edges of London, to the south coast resort of Brighton. Many riders on later motorcycles accompany the pre-World War One machines and riders on the sixty-mile run.

Brian Hill's exuberant announcement was acknowledged by other VOC members, including former MPH Editor Robert Watson and Dick Sherwin, who hosts the VOC's Pioneer Run gathering at his home in Sussex, on the route of the Pioneer Run. As readers will recall, V1014 was mentioned by VOC Series A specialist Bob Stafford in the December issue of MPH. This Series A Rapide was the fourteenth production Rapide to roll off the Stevenage production line. Phil Irving’s prototype was numbered V1000, the suffix indicating the vee disposition of the cylinders and the number indicating the capacity.

This Series A Rapide is logged on the Vintage Motor Cycle Club's machine register under its original plate EUC 574, which is a central London number issued in 1938, suggesting that it was sold through Vincent HRD’s London agents Conway Motors, then based in Shepherd’s Bush, West London. Conway Motors survives, having been acquired in the 1980s by VOC member Chas Guy and relocated in Kent. After Chas Guy’s death in a racing accident, the business was acquired by VOC member Colin Jenner.

In March 2010, according to a Thackray Williams source, Mr Hill reportedly stated to the executors of the John Lumley Estate that this machine, re-registered as CSV 582, was incomplete, consisting of parts stored in boxes for more than forty years. However, publicly available DVLA records show that CSV 582 seems to have been licensed for the road on 1.2.2010, the next date of liability being 1.2.2011. This suggests that Mr Hill acquired a tax disc for the machine, a process requiring presentation of valid insurance and a valid MoT test certificate. Moreover, the machine had been issued with its first V5 registration document in the name of J S Lumley on 24.2.1984, when it was given its age-related number, replacing the original 1930s number. In order to re-register this Series A Rapide, John Lumley would normally have had to present a valid MoT certificate and valid insurance, which would have been rather challenging in the case of an incomplete motorcycle, dismantled and stored, according to Mr Hill's March 2010 statement, in boxes since the 1960s. Prompted by Mr Hill's announcement, VOC member Charlie Cannon contacted Thackray Williams LLP.

It would appear that Brian Hill's January 2010 announcement came as no surprise to some members of the Vincent HRD Owners Club's North Kent Section attending the John Lumley Pie and Pint Meet. Held on 27.9.2009 at the Anchor & Hope public house in New Ash Green, Kent, the section's annual section fixture had just been renamed in honour of John Lumley, a generous homage given that all any of them seemed to have received were piles of rusty old scrap. Writing in the November 2009 issue of MPH, the ubiquitous Dick Wheeldon saluted Brian Hill's efforts with regard to a Series A Rapide that had been dismantled since 1969. Mr Hill had been unable to afford the £50 asking price for the Series A Rapide back in 1969.

However, as the records of charitable donations made in respect of the late John Lumley to the The Hospice in the Weald show, Mr Hill did at least make a donation of £1,000 to a cancer charity in return for the Series A Rapide he received as a consequence of John Lumley's startling deathbed decision to disinherit his brother, giving half the value of his Estate to his VOC friends instead. The Hospice in the Weald had received £4,500 in total on 28.4.2009, sent in by Tom Lumley. John Lumley's funeral had taken place on 21.4.2009. Betty Lumley stated that she had given the keys to Dick Wheeldon on 8.4.2009. Tom Bull had offered Jim Poskett an ex-John Lumley Series A Comet on 23.4.2009.

Ian Poskett's ex-Ginger Woods Series A Rapide

VOC member and John Lumley Affair whistleblower Ian Poskett, who owns an immaculate 1938 Vincent HRD Series A Rapide with a provenance involving famed TT racer Ginger Woods, remarked:"Even if it was in boxes and covered in rust for the last forty years, I'd have given a hundred grand for it. Look at it this way: you can get all the engine and cycle parts now, newly manufactured. If you have the important bits, the engine and the front frame, with the factory numbers, another twenty or thirty grand and a bit of work and you'll have a two hundred grand bike, won't you?Or you just buy a Meteor or Comet basket case and use it as a donor bike. "

Indeed. The only difference between the Series A singles and twins chassis was the front frame, beefed up and stretched to take Phil Irving's new veetwin engine. John Lumley had three Series A Rapides, all allegedly incomplete and dismantled. Three of John Lumley's five Series A singles remain missing. As for Mr Poskett's valuation of a very incomplete Series A Rapide project, comprising just the front frame and the motor, it is common knowledge that a former VOC Aldershot Section Organiser, Jeff Smith, made John Lumley an offer of at least £100,000 just six months before the former's admission to the hospice. Typically, John Lumley ignored the proposition, having already signaled that his motorcycles would go to his heir in line with the terms of his Will but that he wanted Colin Jenner of Conway Motors to put them back together before any sale in order to realise the best possible prices.

The VOC Replies...

2011-04-24T23:25:00.000+01:00

After conducting a campaign of slander and intimidation against whistleblowers within the Vincent HRD Owners Club, culminating in the expulsion of Charlie Cannon and myself on trumped-up charges by means of a blatantly rigged vote at a Special General Committee Meeting convened for the purpose, the senior management of the Vincent HRD Owners Club posted the following statement on their club's website on 2.12.2010. It is reproduced here precisely as the VOC management published it and was apparently written by VOC Chairman Tim Kirker and VOC Secretary Andrew Everett.

quote/…

The Estate of the Late John Lumley
and the Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club
shadow

The truth that fails to be either sensational or scandalous

As useful as the internet can be, it has one very real downside. It provides a virtually unassailable platform from which the unscrupulous can launch unwarranted and destructive attacks on just about anybody. The Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club (VOC), finds itself a target of two malcontented Club Members; the one-time journalist Prosper Keating (Paris, France) and Charlie Cannon (South England).

The VOC is a motorcycle club of approximately 2,500 Members across 29 countries. Normality is that Members expect their elected Officials to take care of the Club's organisation and business discreetly, with any announcements or discussions of same, being confined to the membership. It is therefore with great reluctance that we are circulating this announcement in a wider public forum, an action made necessary due to the relentless internet assault on the VOC's reputation.

The excuse for the attack was the disposal of the estate of John Lumley; a life-long Member of the Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club who spent the better part of 60 years amassing a varied collection of motorcycles. John dismantled the majority of his collection so that it occupied boxes and shelves in most of the rooms of his house and overflowed into the shed of his motorcycling friend, Dick Wheeldon.

In the early part of 2009, when it was clear that his cancer was terminal, John set out to put his affairs in order. Believing his plan to be a legally acceptable process (but sadly, like most people, he was unaware of the nuances of English probate law), he set about making out bills of sale with the intention of distributing, for nominal fees, his motorcycle collection to his friends. Unfortunately, his health deteriorated faster than he anticipated and he ran out of time to see this through by himself. So, with the full co-operation and support of his only immediate relatives, his brother and sister-in-law, Tom and Betty Lumley, a list was compiled for the purpose of distributing gifts of machines and parts to his friends. This was signed by John and witnessed. (The executers of the estate, Thackray Williams Solicitors, and HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), are aware of this list.) Tom and Betty called on the help of a few of John's close friends to carry out the physical dispersal of these gifts and over a period of several weeks, 20 people found themselves the surprise owners of boxes of parts that with time, effort and significant expenditure, had the potential to be turned into interesting and collectable old motorcycles – such as pre-war Vincent Series 'A' Twins and Singles, Brough Superior, together with some less prestigious makes and models. There was only one machine that could be considered as near complete, the majority being far short of this, and again most were in a poor condition.

The group of 20 recipients, that included two elected Officials and one Assistant of the VOC, initiated the idea that each person would make a contribution either to the hospice that cared for John, or to a cancer research charity.

John died shortly before the dispersal of his collection was completed. In his will he bequeathed his estate to his brother Tom. John's wishes regarding his motorcycles have been completely supported by Tom and Betty. They were aware of, but not actually interested in, the financial value of the machines.

Keating and Cannon cite their concerns of tax evasion, and the heirs to the estate being cheated, as reasons for contacting the executors of the estate. Apparently, initially quite pleased to be thought of as the person who also brought this matter to the attention of HMRC, Charlie Cannon is now keen to deny that he did so. The executer in turn contacted the beneficiary of the estate who confirmed that John's collection of motorcycle parts had indeed, effectively, been given away.

On learning of the estate being reopened, Dick Wheeldon called on the co-operation of all the recipients to compile a detailed file of the machines that had been dispersed and where they were. This file was passed to the executors and HMRC, who agreed that any tax would be levied on the new owners rather than on the Estate, and confirming that these machines were to be treated as gifts made by John Lumley prior to his death. Thackray Williams Solicitors appointed Bonhams Auctioneers as an independent valuer to establish what tax, would be due. (At the time of writing valuation is still to be agreed.)

So, what is all the fuss about?

Having alerted the authorities to what had happened, Charlie Cannon and Prosper Keating, were not content to leave matters to HMRC and the executors of the Estate. Instead they instigated a series of rumours and allegations about conspiracies, cover-ups and corruption which they circulated widely, both within and without the VOC. Using pseudonyms such as Alf Garnett, Jolly Jester, Vincent Rapido…they posted messages on internet forums, set up blogs containing the same material, and circulated e-mails to anybody they knew who was connected with Vincents and other classic vehicles. Charlie Cannon tried to get some material circulated through the VOC's e-mail server but typed all the e-mail addresses incorrectly. Naturally, his failed attempt was then reported by them as part of the conspiracy – the messages must have been blocked by the VOC Official(s) who control these things. Very little of this material found its way onto the VOC's official internet forum because Prosper Keating was, and still is, the only person to have ever been barred from the forum, due to an earlier, but unrelated instance of written abuse of another Club Member. Keating's assertions expanded exponentially to include all manner of dubious claims of VOC past mismanagement, to the extent of reinventing parts of the Club's history. Why the questions about what happened to John Lumley's collection should have lead to this torrent of totally unrelated and fantastic accusations, made against the majority of elected Club Officials and some appointed officers, is still a mystery.

The Executive Committee of the VOC decided early on that there was nothing to be gained by responding to the false allegations and defamation being levelled at the Club. Experience showed that refuting one lie or half-truth would just lead to another. The management position was that matters having been referred to HMRC, nothing more should have been said until they had reached their conclusion.

We are clearly not alone in our views.

In keeping with the Club's established protocol for formally considering any claims of Member misconduct, two meetings of the General Committee spent over four hours reviewing all the material. In advance of the meeting, Committee members had been supplied with the link to Keating's blog. Cannon and Keating were invited to attend to make their case. Cannon came to one meeting but offered no arguments to support the assertions that he had publicly made. Keating did not attend either meeting. The meetings' deliberations resulting in a unanimous vote of confidence in the Executive Committee, both jointly and severally and an 85 per cent plus vote to expel Cannon and Keating. The expulsion motions did, however, contain provision for the expulsions to be suspended should either individual apologise publicly for his actions within a week of the meeting. They both chose not to do so and are therefore, no longer Members of the Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club.

As seemed inevitable, the flow of material from the keyboard of Prosper Keating has not stopped. Indeed his blog was updated with more inaccurate reporting the day after the SGCM, and numerous times since. He now includes Thackray Williams Solicitors as a target of the rant, one assumes because the legal process has failed to match Keating's preferred story-line. The VOC do not propose to respond to his wild assertions – enough time has already been lost in handling the matter, time that should have been spent on the stewardship of the Club.

Officials of other clubs may learn from our experience. The owners of internet platforms are not helpful when it comes to moderating the content of their users. Legal redress is complicated, lengthy, and expensive. In reality, a simple motorcycle club is powerless to combat such an assault. Once written, this sort of dirt lingers on. Readers are attracted to the sensationalism of fiction, whereas the truth is usually very mundane and goes unnoticed.

Individual members of clubs should likewise take heed – take care if you are asked to help a close friend disperse of cherished vehicles.

Tom and Betty Lumley have read this statement, and despite what you may have read elsewhere, have confirmed it as a true and accurate record of events.

© 2010 Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club . www.voc.uk.com . www.vincentownersclub.co.uk

end quote/…