Up to 1,000 people rallied in Walthamstow, north east London, against the racist English Defence League (EDL) last Saturday.
Unite Against Fascism called the protest with We Are Waltham Forest to oppose an EDL demonstration.
Mohammed, who works at Newham Sixth Form College, told Socialist Worker, “I’m a Muslim. The EDL lies about us and attacks us.
“But I live in Waltham Forest. This is my turf and everyone round here has to challenge them.”
Marchers also took on anti-migrant racism. Sam Strudwick, a Unison union rep at the local Whipps Cross hospital, told the rally, “Immigrants built the NHS and keep it going.”
Affifa came to the protest with two friends. She said, “The EDL targets Muslims, so it is nice for us to see so many people who aren’t Muslims here supporting us.
“The protest was announced in the mosques on Friday and Muslims care. But many are scared to come.”
The EDL protest was a national mobilisation but put less than 100 Nazis on the street. Yet a massive police operation, including hundreds of officers, horses and dogs, allowed them to march.
Crown
Local vicar Steven Saxby spoke to the crowd at the end of the protest.
“Today I have been pushed and threatened with arrest on three occasions in my own neighbourhood,” he said. “If the EDL comes back we must march.”
Police had tried to change the assembly point for the anti-racist protest and constantly harassed demonstrators.
Anti-fascists harangued EDL supporters as they marched under heavy police guard down Blackhorse Road.
Local residents came out of their houses shouting, “We don’t want you here—get out of Walthamstow”.
Around 60 people repeatedly tried to obstruct the route of the march, slowing it down.
When police had penned the EDL near the town hall protesters continued to shout abuse. People from nearby flats stayed to shout at the Nazis.
Irfan Aktar of Waltham Forest Muslim Association told the rally, “The council said they don’t want confrontation.
“But I’m glad to see some councillors here.”
Walthamstow resident Jo Cardwell of Stand Up to Ukip told the crowd, “The only good thing in the election was that Nigel Farage was not elected.
“But the rise of the far right is because of the scapegoating of immigrants.”
The EDL has threatened to hold several protests in the coming months. For details of counter-protests go to uaf.org.uk
Coalition’s closeness to food and drinks industry prevents it from tackling obesity and alcohol misuse, while welfare changes have increased suicide rate, letter says
The groups of senior doctors are particularly scathing about the coalition’s reliance on the responsibility deal, in which food and drink firms voluntarily agree to moves aimed at reducing the harm their products can cause. Photograph: David Kilpatrick/Alamy
Austerity policies and the coalition’s failure to tackle obesity and alcohol misuse has damaged the nation’s health and cost lives, a group of senior doctors have warned.
Welfare changes have increased the suicide rate and the government’s closeness to food and alcohol producers has prevented tough action being taken, they claim.
The highly critical assessment of the government’s record on public health comesin a letter to the Guardian from experts in the field and other doctors. The coalition’s five years in power have amounted to “a huge setback for the health of the public”, they claim.
They draw attention to “the damage that the government’s policies have done to the health of the British population, as well as areas where it has failed to take action commensurate to the scale and nature of the threat to health”.
The Liberal Democrat health minister, Norman Lamb, said: “The Liberal Democrats are proud of our record in government on public health. We championed standardised packaging for tobacco products and introduced free school meals for infants so that every child has a healthy lunch in school.”
Lamb added that if the Lib Dems were part of the next government,“we would go further and introduce minimum unit pricing for alcohol, subject to the outcome of the legal challenge in Scotland. We will restrict advertising of unhealthy food before the watershed [on television] and push for more widespread food labelling so people have the clear information they need to make healthier choices.”
The Conservatives admitted that “the Great Recession made many families poorer and life harder”, but insisted that the best way to tackle poverty was through a strong economy.
“We’re the first to say there is more to do, but child poverty is falling, childhood obesity is at its lowest level since 1998 and smoking rates are the lowest in history. We have also been able to invest an extra £1.25bn in children’s mental health services because our economy is getting stronger.”
A party source added: “Every suicide is a tragedy, but the latest available data shows that the rate is now the same as in 2003 and has been relatively stable during successive governments in the intervening period.” Ministers had also tackled the sale of below-cost alcohol, he added.
Luciana Berger, Labour’s spokeswoman on public health, said: “This warning from health experts is further evidence of how the Tory-led Government has turned its back on our nation’s public health with disastrous consequences.
“The progress made under the previous Labour government has stalled, if not started to reverse. The Tory-led government’s decision to rely on voluntary action proves they are too close to vested interests to take the bold action on public health that is required. The scale of the challenge we are facing is too great to rely on a non-binding and piecemeal deal with a select group of companies.”
The question of mental health under the previous government’s austerity policies has taken a vital new twist. Please find a new press open letter touching on this in Monday’s Guardian, here >>
In the accompanying newspaper report, we read that <<…A [Cons] party source added: “Every suicide is a tragedy, but the latest available data shows that the rate is now the same as in 2003 and has been relatively stable during successive governments in the intervening period.” >>
This rebuttal appears in today’s “i” newspaper – not available online >>
SUICIDAL POLICY
Having announced their £12 billion of welfare cuts nearly two years ago, any responsible government would have long since devised clear plans for implementing them (6 May). The Conservatives are also being equally disingenuous about the impact of their austerity policies on Britain’s suicide rate, having recently publicly denied that there has been any spike in the data.This denial flies in the face of all the empirical evidence. Extensive international epidemiological evidence shows a clear and consistent causal link between austerity policies and suicide rates. With the Conservatives returned to office and these cuts imposed, Britain’s suicide rate would soar to previously unheard-of levels.
Dr Richard House
Chartered Psychologist, Stroud; Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy
This is absolutely astonishing. From UK media one would get the impression opposition to immigration stems from strains on local housing and services and I’ve spent many an hour rehearsing how it isn’t immigrants who closed hospital wards; it isn’t immigrants who closed local schools; it isn’t immigrants who sold off local authority housing and failed to finance replacement units. Now we can see the geography and the demographics and it’s clear it simply isn’t immigrants at all…it’s shear, mindless fear and a bunch of demagogues, content to play big fish in a small pond.
While most of the national coverage of Thursday’s elections has been about the surge of UKIP, one of the most remarkable upsets has gone unnoticed: the re-election of Britain’s first elected Asian Mayor, Lutfur Rahman, in the face of a virulent campaign by the political and media establishment. Ashok Kumar reports.
NEW IN CEASEFIRE – Posted on Tuesday, May 27, 2014
One of the biggest upsets of Thursday’s UK elections was to be found in the East London borough of Tower Hamlets. Britain’s first elected Asian Mayor, Lutfur Rahman, secured 37,000 votes, comfortably ahead of the 27,000 tally of his Labour Party opponent, John Biggs, in spite of the latter being heavily favoured by both the press and the bookies.
At 47.8%, the borough saw the highest voter turnout in London. As a Tower Hamlets resident myself, I can attest that there is a veritable gulf between the sentiments within the borough and those endlessly reproduced in the popular press. As thousands of Tower Hamlets residents celebrated the re-election of their Mayor, the mainstream media and politicians sneered, questioning the competency of the borough’s constituents and the legitimacy of its results.
Labour’s battle with Rahman is long-standing. In 2010, as the party was selecting its candidate for Tower Hamlets’ first directly elected mayoral race, and despite Rahman topping the Labour Party’s selection, the party HQ disqualified him on the grounds that he had “extremist-ties”. These claims were widely seen as a political smokescreen, including by many within the Labour party itself who believed Rahman was considered too left-wing and independent whereas Labour wanted someone who would more reliably toe the party line.
Thus, the hierarchy replaced Rahman with the third-placed candidate, who had received less than a third of Rahman’s vote tally during the selection process. (In second-place was none other than John Biggs, but the Labour Party made a political calculation to put forward someone of Bengali heritage.)
Upon his disqualification, Rahman stood as an independent and won the 2010 Mayoral race at a canter, securing twice as many votes as his Labour Party opponent. In Thursday’s elections, standing for the newly formed party, Tower Hamlets First, Rahman would increase that vote share by 60% [the count is still ongoing but Tower Hamlets First is currently tied with Labour for council seats]. And yet, the 2014 election has revealed the extraordinary lengths to which the establishment is willing to go to ensure absolute subservience of the subaltern – in this case, the Bengali community.
Indeed, in a concerted attempt to unseat Rahman, a tidal wave of negative press – propelled by Labour, desperate to secure the mayoral seat – seemed to have washed over the country. A heavily promoted and covered BBC Panorama programme presented Lutfur Rahman as a corrupt, crooked criminal, squeezing all he could financially and otherwise from his borough.
The incendiary documentary was aired mere weeks before the contentious election, and even Rahman detractors conceded its intention was to influence the outcome. In particular, Panorama’s insinuating tag-line of “ongoing investigation” seemed clearly intended, amid mounting election fever, to be read as a “guilty” sign. Indeed, the documentary led to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Tory MP Erik Pickles launching a major anti-fraud investigation against Rahman, whose report, of course, would not be expected for a full month after the election, by which time the intended damage would presumably have been done – or so they hoped.
It was off the back of this brilliantly choreographed assault by a confluence of media, government, and political actors, that word soon got around that the Conservatives and UKIP hierarchies were asking their supporters to back Labour’s John Biggs as their second preference under the banner “get Lutfur out”.
Beyond Panorama’s retrograde and unsubstantiated caricatures, few seem to be aware of Rahman’s successful track record as Mayor. After all, in politics, an accusation wrapped in a question under the veneer of investigative journalism need never be proven to cause irreparable damage. Once the Panorama bombshell was dropped, not even the metropolitan police denials of criminality could dent its course. As a famous propagandist once pointed out “if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it people will eventually come to believe it.”
Whispers about Rahman’s alleged ‘sleaze’ in the media became shrieks within the political class. Many will fail to realise that Panorama will have combed over every organisation Rahman had ever interacted with, every person he has come into contact with, and every action he had undertaken. The fact they could find nothing of substance is a testament to Rahman actually being – do forgive the phrase in the context of this article – whiter than white.
Umpteen UK politicians – as we know thanks to the expenses scandal – have darkened their names, merely months in office, with wrongful use of the expenses system, underhand dealings and openly making decisions that benefit their friends and personal investments. Yet none of these misdeeds were racialised when covered by the media the way Panaroma had done in Rahman’s case.
This wasn’t accidental, but a tactic that was, at its most fundamental level, a political calculation: The population of Tower Hamlets is 45% white and 32% Bengali. Much of the white residents are the working class that remained in the borough after their more well-to-do white neighbourhoods had fled further out to Essex upon the arrival of non-white – mostly Bangladeshi – immigrants. The white population that remained tends to be reactionary, especially in the southern tip of the borough, in the Isle of Dogs.
Labour Party officials seemed to have decided that by running a white candidate, painting Rahman as an Islamist and a racist, and leveraging the second preference commitment from UKIP and Tory mayoral candidates, they would be able to overwhelm Rahman’s strong base of support in the second round count. However, when the second preferences came through, Rahman had beaten Biggs by 3,000 votes. Undoubtedly, in the coming months the Labour Party will attempt to court Rahman to ensure that those 37,000 votes are delivered to Labour by next year’s general election. After all, that’s the way this game is played.
Even Rahman’s Election Day victory could not shake-off long-held stereotypes. Racist comments whirled around social media, echoed and amplified across news outlets. When Biggs took to the stage on Friday night to concede and a few boo’s were heard in the audience, he couldn’t help himself from barking, “Be a bit respectful. This is democracy and you listen to what we say” – spoken without a hint of irony. Rahman’s supporters seem to understand how democracy works rather well, after beating Biggs by a margin of thousands. Somehow, even after losing, Biggs still thought of himself as a “we”, while we, the children of immigrants, will always remain a “you.”
The election result came as a shock to many outside of Tower Hamlets. In the months leading up to the vote, accusations and smears had run the gamut – from ‘village strongman‘, to third world-style chaos, corruption, and clientelism – entwined with outright racist depictions. Even cries of “intimidation” – allegedly by Rahman’s campaigners at polling stations – fell flat when the evidence was no more than the same unsubstantiated tropes.
Still, despite little evidence of foul-play, the police were called in, stationed at almost every polling site, in order to ‘protect’ the white constituents of the borough from Rahman’s ‘unruly’ campaigners. Instead of Tower Hamlets First campaigners being heralded as committed, politicised local residents, they were portrayed as aggressive and untrustworthy. In another borough – presumably one with the ‘correct’ demographic – such a show of mobilised local community would have been celebrated as a triumph of citizen engagement.
Similarly, outside of the borough, Rahman’s support-base has been routinely and dismissively presented as agentless tribal-loyalists who are set on getting ‘one of their own in,’ to change the face of Britain. Even reactionary UKIP voters are afforded a level of political objectivity, portrayed as rational actors and “disaffected” Labour or Tory voters.
Twitter vitriol invoking the rise of a ‘Tower Hamlet-stan” and policy centers announcing “the Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets” have exemplified the drive to portray Rahman as the head of a sinister plot to use Tower Hamlets as a conduit to insinuate religious extremism into mainstream UK politics. Of course, such accounts, which seem to have forgotten about the potency of traditional party political loyalties, tend to grant the ‘civilised’ white majority ample levels of political agency in their decision-making while the Bengali community of Tower Hamlets is presented as marching in lock-step to the polls, blindly following community dictates.
In spite of this onslaught, Rahman has managed to supersede party-politics by winning independently, bucking trends of voter apathy induced by the increasing ideological amalgamation of the main political parties. What the election shows is that Rahman is more popular now than he was before he started – 60% more popular, to be exact – despite a wall-to-wall smear campaign. Instead of admiration, or at least recognition, most in the fourth estate are questioning his legitimacy. It’s almost as if democracy wasn’t supposed to involve the participation of all citizens, but merely those of whom the rulers approve.
Of course, there is a pattern at work here. Poll volunteers are presented as “intimidating” rather than a mobilised community; higher voter turnout is painted as ‘tribal loyalty’, and progressive policies are presented as Tammany hall-style patronage systems. Despite inviting all parties to his cabinet, the hiring of Muslims is depicted as nepotistic at best and “reverse racism” at worst. But, one might argue, this is to be expected under a coalition government whose cabinet of millionaires has come to represent the status quo.
Even on Election Day, as two thousand mostly young supporters anxiously awaited in the rain into the early hours of the morning, erupting into celebration upon hearing the results, major news sources cynically presented it as an example of sycophancy, with references to crowds ‘mobbing’ Mayor Rahman as he exited the building where the votes were being counted, his supporters were portrayed in the press as uncontrollable and hostile – and willing to cause damage and disorder at any moment.
Joyous residents were presented as a threatening horde rather than representing an excited electorate and a rupture from the apathy. Teams of police were called in because “overzealous crowds could spark violence”, to protect the predominantly white Labour Party members and press core inside. If this were a crowd of white supporters dancing in the streets, mainstream media, politicians and the public alike would watch on and praise the political activity and enthusiasm of local residents.
Rahman, who undertook the full restoration of the Old Synagogue in White Chapel (Panorama misrepresented this as a ‘small grant’) and who stopped a Limehouse gay bar, The Old Ship, being closed down (awarding it a 15 year license after it had been threatened with closure), is still labeled a homophobe. When will racists in Britain realise that Muslims are not the one-dimensional projections of the absolutism that exists only in their minds?
If Rahman was white and not a Muslim he would probably be branded a hippy, or fluffy peacenik, a financially incompetent socialist, giving away the borough’s money to free school meals, paying the bedroom tax for the poor and not ‘investing’ (read: giving it to the private sector) it properly. Instead, because he’s black and Muslim, no such gentle ribbing can be applied, as it would be too kind. Rahman is ‘corrupt’, in league with Bengali school children! (Though white children benefit from free meals, too.) Rahman is only there to represent his own community, a tribal leader of the stone-age era, even though impoverished white families also had their bedroom tax paid, of course. Rahman hates women! Even though he supported an anti-sexism event held after young women were allegedly assaulted and abused by a Labour campaigner.
Mayor Rahman’s policy successes over his first term would be the envy of any progressive politician – were he white and a member of the Labour Party, no doubt he’d be celebrated as a rising star. No other council in the entire country has built as many council or affordable housing units, has reinstituted the full Education Maintenance Allowance after the government abolished it, kept elderly personal care free, expanded the living wage for all contractors, allocated a £1,500 for every student attending university and introduced free school meals for every primary school child.
Under Rahman’s leadership, the council has kept the full Council Tax Benefit for every recipient, is in the process of refurbishing every council home, has not only ensured that every children’s centre, library, leisure centre and youth services stay open but expanded them despite deep government cuts, making TH the first council in the country to ban contracts with firms that blacklist trade unionists.
Tower Hamlets is one of the poorest boroughs in the UK, with one of the highest level of child poverty in the country, but with an area that borders the City of London and Canary Wharf, it brings in an enormous amount of tax revenue. That revenue could be spent on corporate welfare or handouts, yet it is being distributed to the young, poor, and elderly of Tower Hamlets. These policies are unmatched by any other council, yet mainstream media outlets have failed to highlight any of them.
Of course, while impressive, Rahman’s policies arguably do not go far enough. His second term should deepen and expand these policies in order to make a real dent into structural inequity. Indeed, Rahman has promised not to enforce the government’s draconian bedroom tax and to introduce a mandatory landlord registry in his second term, but this will mean little to Tower Hamlets’ working class if it fails to include significant rent controls. Certainly, if history is any measure, it will take the mobilising of the poor, the workers, and then tenants of Tower Hamlets behind such radical policies to ensure their fruition.
[UPDATE 27/05: Unconfirmed reports have emerged of a possible legal challenge to Rahman’s win by the Conservatives and Labour.]
* The author would like to thank Jennifer Izaakson for her valuable comments.
David Laurence Bishop, who goes by the name of Lord Biro, stood as a candidate for the Bus Pass Elvis Party.
He received 67 votes in the by-election in Clifton North, Nottingham, with Lib Dem candidate Tony Marshall coming last with 56. Labour won with 1,174 votes.
Taking the news in jest, a national Lib Dem spokesman said: “We are all shook up by the result.”
Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said he was not embarrassed by the result, but added: “It is a new one for us to be competing against the Bus Pass Elvis Party.”
OAP brothel discount
Mr Bishop, who has stood for election as a councillor in Nottingham at least six times, said he was “shocked” by the result.
“I thought there was a chance I could beat the Lib Dems because they are not very popular in this area,” he said.
“I was hoping I would beat UKIP because it was the first time they had stood, but I didn’t.”
As part of his manifesto Mr Bishop had pledged to tighten laws on hand gun ownership and legalise brothels with a 30% discount for OAPs.
He also said he wanted to scrap the high speed HS2 train because it would destroy Nottingham’s greenbelt and pledged to stop any more tram routes being constructed in the city.
In the last 15 years Mr Bishop has stood for eight different parties, including the Elvis Loves Pets Party, Grumpy Old Elvis Party and the Elvis Turns Green Party.
He said being a pensioner himself, he always tries to fight for older members of the community, which inspired the name for his party.
“If Elvis was still alive he would be on his bus pass, and most of the original fans are pensioners now so I thought it was a good name,” added Mr Bishop.
“I always think I’m going to do well when I stand but I never do. But there is always a chance.”
Mr Bishop said he had not yet thought about standing for next year’s general election but may consider running for Skegness and Boston in Lincolnshire.
“I have always fantasised about finishing my career on the seaside – it sounds sort of romantic.”
Labour’s Pat Ferguson won the seat with a majority of 154 over her Conservative rival. UKIP received 536 votes in third place.
Lord Biro’s election history
1997 general election He stood for Neil Hamilton’s seat in Tatton as “Lord Biro Versus the Scallywag Tories”.
2001 general election He stood under the Church of the Militant Elvis Party for the first time, against Eric Pickles in Brentwood.
2005 general election He stood in Erewash in the same seat as Robert Kilroy-Silk, promising to give him a job as “keeper of the Royal stool”.
2008 He stood in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election, triggered by the resignation of David Davis.
2010 general election He stood in Kettering under the Bus Pass Elvis Party. Policies included “All shook-up about dog-muck everywhere? Bring back the dog licence”.
2011 He stood in the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election as the candidate for the Bus Pass Elvis Party.
2011 He stood in the Feltham and Heston by-election for the Bus Pass Elvis Party campaigning against McDonald’s sponsoring the Olympics.
2012 He stood in the Corby by-election, under the Elvis Loves Pets party.
I dont even know who this is, but the media pulls shit like this often and it should be publicized.
mark duggan was the young man shot to death by the met police here in london, and whose murder, now ruled controversially as ‘legal’, sparked the summer riots a few years back.
Another miscarriage; we can but hope there will be peace in the streets following this inexplicable verdict…
Mark Duggan, 29, was shot dead in north London on 4 August 2011. Photograph: Rex Features
Mark Duggan‘s family reacted with fury as an inquest jury ruled on Wednesday that he had been lawfully killed but had not had a gun in his hand when confronted by officers.
By a majority of eight to two, the jury ruled that the 2011 shooting that sparked the worst riots in modern English history was lawful.
The jury said they were sure, by the same eight-to-two majority, that Duggan did not have a weapon in his hands when police surrounded him. By a majority, the jury concluded he “threw” the gun from a cab he was travelling in when armed officers forced it to stop.
The family described the jury’s conclusion as “perverse” and said they would consider a judicial review.
Duggan’s mother, Pam, collapsed in court on hearing the finding and his brother Marlon shouted at the seven men and three women on the jury as they left the courtroom.
Later, outside the court, Duggan’s brother Shaun Hall, with tears visible on his face, said: “It’s unbelievable. That’s just about what I can say for now.”
Duggan’s aunt Carole Duggan said he had been “executed”, while the family’s lawyer Marcia Willis Stewart said they were in a state of shock and could not believe the outcome.
She said: “On 4 August 2011 an unarmed man was shot down in Tottenham. Today we have had what we can only call a perverse judgment.
“The jury found that he had no gun in his hand and yet he was gunned down. For us that’s an unlawful killing.”
As her words were interspersed with shouting from a gathered crowd, she went on: “The family are in a state of shock and we would ask that you respect their shock. They can’t believe that this has been the outcome. No gun in his hand and yet he was killed – murdered as they have said, no gun in his hand.”
The officers had intercepted the 29-year-old in an operation based on intelligence that he was part of a gang and had collected a gun. He was being followed by officers who believed he planned to pick up a gun from another man, Kevin Hutchinson-Foster, and then move on to Broadwater Farm, also in Tottenham.
The jury said police had not done enough to gather and react to intelligence about the possibility of Duggan collecting a gun from Hutchinson-Foster.
But they found that the car had been stopped in a location and in a way that “minimised to the greatest extent possible recourse to lethal force”.
The Metropolitan police shooting in north London on 4 August 2011 sparked the worst riots in modern English history.
The inquest, which began in September, was told by police that Duggan was shot twice after he produced a gun when surrounded by armed officers.
The narrative verdict was delivered at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London, where the inquest took place after the jury had deliberated for six and a half days. They were originally sent out on 11 December 2013. They broke for two weeks for the Christmas and new year holidays.
Duggan died “within 10 heartbeats” of a bullet striking his aorta. The jury was told police believed Duggan was a member of TMD, Tottenham Man Dem, which officers believed had links to guns used in nightclubs.
The officer who shot Duggan twice, known as V53, testified he had seen a gun in Duggan’s right hand, and believed the suspect was preparing to use it. V53 said he had acted in self-defence, fearing that his own life or the lives of his colleagues were in danger from Duggan.
The key issue for the jury was whether Duggan was holding a gun, as the marksman said, when he exited the cab and came face to face with armed police.
V53 and a second officer, W70, told the jury they had both seen Duggan holding a gun but were surprised when they could not find it later.
In fact, a gun, wrapped in a sock, was found on the other side of a fence three to six metres (10-20ft) away from where the fatally injured Duggan fell to the pavement, the jury heard. The gun was capable of being fired but had not been “racked”, so was not ready to fire.
Neither the gun nor the sock had any DNA or fingerprints from Duggan on it. Gun residue was also absent from the deceased, save for a speck in his back pocket which the jury was told was scientifically irrelevant. His fingerprints were on a shoebox found inside the cab in which it is believed the gun had been stored, and traces of the drug ecstasy were in his bloodstream.
The jury was asked whether Duggan could have been holding a mobile phone when he left the cab. Seconds before the cab was made to stop, Duggan had held a three-minute conversation with his brother Marlon. One witness claimed he had seen the shooting from 150 metres away and claimed Duggan was shot while surrendering with a mobile phone in his hand.
In the days before the shooting, the Met had received intelligence from the Serious Organised Crime Agency about TMD. It ran a four-day operation codenamed Dibri targeting six members of the gang, one of whom was Duggan.
On his last night alive Duggan attended a family barbecue, and in court his relatives heard the details of his death.
Intelligence was still developing as Duggan travelled in a cab to east London, where police suspected he was planning to collect the gun.
Firearms officers deployed to stop Duggan were then told he had already collected it. The police then used a “hard stop” – boxing in the taxi and forcing it to come to an abrupt halt – a “shock and awe” tactic designed to stun the occupants into submission and compliance, said Ashley Underwood QC, counsel to the inquest.
Two shots were fired rapidly by the marksman. The first shot struck Duggan in one of his biceps. The second, entering through the chest and exiting his back, killed the father of four.
Underwood said: “The chest wound would have been fatal within about 10 heart beats … but it would not necessarily have stopped somebody moving then and there.”
Armed officers and police chiefs have been critical of the length of time investigations into police shootings take. The Met says that by April 2014, firearms officers will wear small video cameras with the aim of clearly showing what has happened and to help shorten investigation times.
Call me naive; you’re perfectly entitled to take that view. It seems to me, however, the Tory leadership is keen to postpone a referendum on EU membership until after Scotland has had its referendum on independence. It’s also long been my suspicion the Tory Party wouldn’t really miss their sole MP from north of the border, it that comes at the cost of 40+ Labour MPs and a handful of LibDem MPs as well. Scottish independence would virtually guarantee Tory government for a generation to come.
And…a referendum on continuing Britains membership of the EU would have a far greater chance of success if Scottish voters are no longer eligible to vote.
Adam Afriyie, the Conservative MP for Windsor, called for a vote on Britain’s membership of the European Union on 23 October next year, rather than the official Conservative promise to hold a poll before the end of 2017.
Afriyie, who was rumoured to be behind a plan to oust the prime minister earlier this year, said he would not be able to sleep at night if the public were not given a say on the issue before the election. To achieve an early vote, he is planning to table an amendment to the EU referendum bill, which is supported by the Tory leadership.
Within hours of Afriyie’s challenge, it became clear he had hit the wrong note, as some of the most eurosceptic MPs in the Conservative party pleaded with him to reconsider his position for the sake of party unity. The only vocal supporter of the idea was Tom Watson, the prominent Labour backbencher who said he would probably vote with Afriyie. “I think there are a lot of people who think we need clarity on this now,” he said.
The Labour party also refused to rule out officially backing the amendment, despite Chuka Umunna, the shadow business secretary, saying the party does not agree with the official Tory plan for a referendum on the basis of a renegotiation on Britain’s relationship with the EU that has not yet happened. Labour has so far refused to set out its thinking on whether an EU referendum is necessary but it is possibleEd Miliband could use Afriyie’s amendment to derail the bill or sow discontent among the Conservatives.
Asked how Labour will vote, a senior party source said: “We will respond to the amendment after it is published.”
Some Labour figures believe backing an early vote could cause bitter divisions on the Tory benches before the election as well as settling the issue once and for all. One of the party’s MPs also pointed out any parliamentary time spent on Afriyie’s amendment increases the chance the Conservative-backed EU referendum bill will be “talked out”. This is the technical term for when legislation proposed by a backbencher is killed off because it has run out of its allotted time for discussion.
Afriyie’s challenge, laid out in an article for the Mail on Sunday, also gave Labour another chance to accuse the Conservatives of dithering overEurope when they should be addressing the economy and living standards.
Michael Dugher MP, a shadow cabinet minister and Labour vice-chairman, said it was a sign “the Tories are back to obsessing about the European Union”.
“We need a prime minister and a government that will make dealing with the cost of living the number one priority,” he said. “Instead David Cameron is too weak and out of touch to stop this latest outbreak of Tory infighting.”
Afriyie’s amendment provoked a furious reaction from the Conservative leadership, with Downing Street saying a referendum would not be allowed to take place next year “under any circumstances”.
Theresa May, the home secretary, also slapped down the plan, telling the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, “Adam’s got it wrong” and could “possibly jeopardise the bill”.
Dozens of Tory MPs lined up to criticise Afriyie for disrupting the short-lived Conservative consensus on Europe, after Cameron managed to win round most of his party earlier this year.
Cheryl Gillan, a former Conservative cabinet minister, warned Afriyie’s move would play into Labour’s hands.
“I do take issue with him taking this up at this particular time,” she told the Murnaghan programme on Sky News. “I think he’s jumping the gun too quickly here. I think Labour would be very happy for this referendum to take place next year because they wouldn’t have to make a decision on the matter.”
Chris Heaton-Harris, MP for Daventry, said he had only been in parliament three years, but already knew the Afriyie amendment would “make a referendum less likely”, while Nick de Bois, MP for Enfield North, who wants to leave the EU as things stand, said the timing was wrong.
“No government can hope to influence and reach agreement with EU members on a renegotiated, less intrusive but more pro-single market European Union within a year,” he wrote on the ConservativeHomewebsite. “Neither can we hope to stimulate public engagement on the issues that will help to decide if we leave or remain.
Meanwhile, Sarah Wollaston, MP for Totnes, said she thought it would “scupper opportunity for meaningful renegotiation”.
Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat deputy chairman, said the whole concept of a referendum next year was “barmy”. “This will completely distract everything we’re trying to do about growth, completely distract our building relations with the new German government, completely distract us from saying that in Europe is the place where we get the most jobs, and the most investment and the most trade,” he said.
However, Afriyie stuck to his argument that a referendum before the election is needed because the British public is “suspicious” about whether it will actually happen.
“This is about every single MP searching their conscience and searching their soul and asking: do they want to agree with 80% of the population who want a referendum in the bag,” he told Sky News. “I’m not playing party politics. This is nothing to do with me and David Cameron. It is to do with me and my conscience, making sure that I, as a backbench MP, make sure that parliament has the option to decide whether to have a referendum in 2014.”
He strongly denied wanting the prime minister’s job, saying rumours of his ambition to be leader were “media tittle-tattle”. He also insisted he was a “loyalist” to Cameron and merely disagrees on the timetable for a referendum.
One Conservative MP, Andrew Griffiths, joked about Afriyie’s ambitions as he tweeted: “Dear Adam Afriyie on behalf of Tory MPs in marginal seats everywhere, we know how much you want to be leader. But please! Just stop!”
In a previous existence I had spent a few years living in Stoke Newington. Although I’ve been away from that exciting neighbourhood for a few years, I’ve tried to keep in touch with local events. Consequently I found the following sad news in my inbox earlier…
This email informs you about the Council decision re Wilmer Place, and tells you about a meeting we are calling on Wednesday 14 August.
On Wednesday night the planning sub-committee approved the Sainbury/Wilmer Place development. This was despite the massive turn out of support and the huge petition.
Two of the councillors did not even bother to speak or ask questions, they simply voted when urged to by the chair to approve the application.
To say people were upset was an understatement, and no doubt some of the things that were said were regrettable. But the anger that was felt was genuine and well founded. Our community, which has never been so well organised and united, was simply ignored.
But before we go on we have to pay tribute to the great speeches of Daniel, Louisa, Nick and Russell. Well done one and all.
We also have to pay tribute to the people who came out and listened to the debate and put the council under scrutiny. We did not get the right result but they knew we were watching.
An unfounded rumour
An unfounded rumour which emerged on Wednesday was that one of the councillors had explained they voted the way they did because they had been briefed before hand and told that they should approve the application as if they did not the Council would inevitably lose the appeal.
If this was true it would have been entirely wrong, the councillors are meant to make their decision on the facts that they are presented with in the committee meeting. We have spoken to the relevant councillor who tells us (originally in a private exchange of emails, but which she has subsequently agreed we can reproduce) that:
I voted, reluctantly, in favour as I was of the opinion that the applicant would win their appeal and the scheme on the table was an improvement on the appeal scheme. We could have made everyone in the room happy for a short while by voting it down but a few months down the line you would still have ended up with the result you didn’t want.
This is a consequence of how planning law works.
I did tell an irate member of the public that I had voted the way I did because I thought we would lose the appeal. I don’t know how she came to believe that we had been ‘instructed’ to vote in favour.
It is perhaps worth noting that Councillor Luke Akehurst (nothing if not a Labour party loyalist) tweeted: Really gutted by Wilmer Place Sainsburys N16 decision. Planning law doesn’t give enough weight to local public opposition.
There is no doubt the councillors were pressurised to vote for granting permission, in the beleif that the Council risked losing at appeal and that this would be expensive. We heard Vincent Stops, the Chair, pretty much say that before the vote was taken. Since Wednesday, two of the five members on the committee have expressly conveyed to us that the deciding factor for them was the risk of losing an appeal.
So rather than deciding on what they thought of the application, the Councillors were basing their decision on what they thought the planning inspector might think at appeal. The councillors were clearly wrong in voting to approve the scheme, but they did so, not because of any ‘shenanigans or ‘dodgy handshakes’, but because as a committee they have become ‘risk averse’ and they feared that Sainbury’s would appeal any decision they did not like until they got what they wanted.
We should of course praise Councillor Barry Buitekant, the only member of the committee to have the courage to vote ‘no’ to this development. Thank you Barry.
While this was very much a community based campaign, we also received support from across the political spectrum, with many Labour, Green and LIb-Dems backing our campaign, so thanks to them as well. Most importantly of course, thanks to everyone who put the effort in to make this the biggest community mobilisation in Hackney for many, many years.
So what next?
We are calling a meeting at 6.30pm on Wednesday 14 August, at the Methodist Church on the High Street (next to the Sainbury’s Local). In the meantime we will explore the possibility of a Judicial Review of the decision (although we do not have high hopes at this stage).
At that meeting we will do three things.
We will reflect on the campaign and celebrate what went well. We will also consider what if anything we could have done differently.
We will explore what if anything can now be done (and we accept that by then we may have to accept that it is possible that we have lost this issue).
Finally, having built an organisation out of nothing that can mobilise people to leaflet, campaign and parade, against something we don’t like, we ought to think what we could do if we decided there was something positive we wanted for our community.
There is a saying, it does not matter how many times you get knocked down, it matters how many times you get back up again. On Wednesday night as a community we were knocked down. Lets make sure we get up even stronger than before.
This blog is devoted to legal, historical and human rights matters, in which issues of general concern are addressed freely and spontaneously. It is intended to further an informal exchange of views in the democratic spirit of freedom of opinion and respect for the opinions of others, in an effort to understand rather than condemn, to propose constructive solutions rather than grandstand. The perspective is both from inside and outside the box and the added value lies more in the questions than in the answers.
digger666 
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