MYSTERY last night surrounded two newly formed limited companies in Scotland which are, on the face of it, related to Labour, but which a party insider told The National they have “nothing to do” with.
Scots Labour Party Ltd was incorporated at Companies House last month with a registered office at International House, Thistle Street, Edinburgh – an address it shares with hundreds of other companies.
George Martin, 64, was listed as a director, along with Colleen Leonard, 74, who was described as a secretary and who resigned from her post earlier this week. She is still active as a person with “significant control” of the firm, however.
They then formed Labour Party Scotland Ltd on August 8 and again, Leonard resigned a week later, retaining “significant control”. The registered office for this company is an address in Crow Road, Broomhill, Glasgow.
This appears to be at a store called “Crafts and Collectables by Lamplight”, which offers vintage and antique candle-making supplies.
The unit formerly housed an ironing and laundry service, but when we visited it yesterday it was well and truly locked up and the occupiers were nowhere to be found.
An occupant of a neighbouring business told The National: “It’s been used for storage for ages and the guy only comes here about once every three or four months. We’ve been trying to contact him because myself and all the other businesses on this part of the street are spending money doing their places up.
“We’re annoyed because this one is dragging us all down with its dead plants outside and rubbish piled in front of the door.
“But we don’t have a number for him and we can’t find any trace of the business on the internet, so we don’t know what to do.”
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Further enquiries at Companies House revealed that Martin has been busy this year and set up another company – Outdoor Scotland Ltd – in January, with a registered office in Plean, Stirling, for the “sale of other vehicles”.
Kathleen Martin, 67, is listed as a director and Eric Martin, 74, resigned as a director four days after the company was formed. George Martin is also the only director of Stirlingshire Caravans Ltd, which he established in 2017 and which still appears to be operating.
However, only one of The National’s phone calls to this company was answered, when we were told by a man that Martin was busy. The man said: “He’s working under a van and can’t speak to you just now”. He did not return our call, answer any of our subsequent calls, or respond to our voicemails.
Scottish Labour insiders were bemused and said the two companies had no ties to them.
One of them told us: “We’ve had similar things like this before, usually when new domain names are released and people try to buy them up without having anything to do with the Labour Party.
“We’ve been trying to find out who’s behind this – we’ve drawn a blank but we can say it is nothing to do with us.”
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