Landshare – Promises to Clean Up the Estates

There’s a problem that’s been bugging me for as long as I’ve been involved in local politics, and I think I’ve finally found the answer.

The problem is the way that the estates in east London look so scruffy, due to the gardens on the ground floor of blocks being untended and often overgrown with weeds. When I first became involved with labour campaigning I thought this indicated that the demand model of social housing was a failure. People who buy their homes or pay private rent wouldn’t pay for a garden if they didn’t want it, but in social housing they just get given a garden when they have no interest in tending it. However, I was corrected by the fact that people with mobility issues are housed on the ground floor. It’s not the allocation that causes the problem, but the aging population.

Honour & Shame in Tower Hamlets

We used to be proud of spreading our ideas around the world. Now we are confused about how we explain our identity to the people who have settled here.

The problem is that we need to understand their culture and identity, before we can explain to them our own. With 3,000 honour crime complaints to the police last year, maybe this is the issue that we’re failing to comprehend.

It would help to understand what happened in Tower Hamlets last year, when the Labour Party collapsed in on itself over the selection of Lutfur Rahman as candidate for Mayor.

It started out as a conversation about secularism, but we didn’t know it was about secularism, because in school we learn everything there is to know about Martin Luther King, but nothing about Martin Luther. We know about the rights of minorities, but not about the separation of church and state.

This was in the days when Muslims were considered to be either moderates or extremists, with nothing in between. This perception was encouraged by the fact that the extremists got more airtime, but also due to the taboos about race and religion that suppressed debate about community, but allowed debate about terror.

The row was mostly, but not exclusively, between Cllr. Helal Abbas and Cllr. Lutfur Rahman. Abbas was not devoutly religious, but Lutfur apparently was, and this is where Lutfur’s increasing clout in the community came from. Including all places of prayer, there are about 40 mosques in Tower Hamlets and most of them see Lutfur as their man.

When Lutfur was first elected as a councillor, he was the apprentice of Abbas. Abbas didn’t complain that Lutfur brought the mosques’ vote with him, but when Lutfur struck out on his own, Abbas was furious. He denounced Lutfur’s religious connections, speaking of the global reaching tentacles of the Islamic Forum for Europe, an organisation based at the East London Mosque, and supportive of Lutfur.

In east London, all politicians of all parties, seek to tap into faith organisations. When the doors of one are shut, they go knocking on another. Those who condemn these organisations tend to be the ones who have run out of doors to knock on.

The scrutiny of Lutfur’s connections to the East London Mosque began when a journalist called Ted Jeory arrived at the local paper. For years councillors had complained that they could never get anyone from the East London Advertiser to cover Town Hall meetings. Now they were complaining about this guy who kept turning up.

Rather like the way that Arab dictators began by condemning Al-Jazeera, Tower Hamlets councillors quickly switched from condemning, to briefing, Ted Jeory. According to Ted, the briefings came from anyone who was ambitious, and included every candidate who would later stand in the mayoral selection. Others, such as the MP, Jim Fitzpatrick, were fearful that Lutfur could muster enough Labour votes to replace an incumbent.

The fact is that Lutfur was on good terms with religious people across a spectrum of opinion, but he wasn’t a conduit for evil. He just didn’t realise that Labour people consider Islam to be authoritive, and not sharing the same values as us. In the fine line that a Muslim politician must walk, in a British political career, Lutfur was too far on the Bangladeshi side. However, this needs to be put into perspective. It’s not as if he was hanging out with suicide bombers.

The rumours about extremist connections continued and reached a high point when Ted’s reports were picked up by Andrew Gilligan and broadcast in a C4 Dispatches film, where Jim Fitzpatrick took the controversy to a new height by alleging a plot to infiltrate the Labour Party with Muslim extremists, “Rather like Militant infiltrated Labour in the 70s and 80s”.

It sounds like a ridiculous now, but at the time the country was paranoid following the 7/7 bombings and ready to believe anything. Meanwhile, Labour head office was becoming increasingly nervous about what was happening in Tower Hamlets. The persistency of the rumours began to turn even rational minds.

In May 2010, Tower Hamlets had a referendum for a Directly Elected Mayor, resulting in a mandatory six month time-frame for an election. Seeing an opportunity to bypass his isolation within the party, Lutfur ran in the open Labour Party selection for mayoral candidate, and easily won, but a report attacking Lutfur, from Abbas, and also one from Cllr. Bill Turner, was presented to the NEC and, without committee members having time to read them, a vote was taken to rule Lutfur out as candidate.

Although John Biggs came second in the selection vote, the NEC gave the slot to 3rd place Abbas. They may have feared that they would have been labelled as racist, if they gave the candidacy to a white man.

In response, Lutfur tore up his Labour membership card and announced his intention to run as an independent against Abbas. The two old friends were now sworn enemies and it would be for the electorate to decide who would win. Lutfur did.

In Bangladeshi village society there is little in the way of transparent rule of law. The community is governed by honour and shame. As a system, it seems to work in Bangladesh, but when transferred to the UK, we see both the good and the bad.

We see a low crime rate, juxtaposed against a high perversion of the course of justice, as victims are pressured to drop charges. We see strong family life, juxtaposed with school girls disappearing from the roster, without notice or explanation. We see a moralistic society, where alcohol is shunned. Yet when youths gather in groups on street corners to drink alcohol, as an act of rebellion, they will eventually face severe and violent retribution, from the “community”.

The lack of transparency undermines the justice done by creating other injustices. This is brutally demonstrated when false rumours are spread against individuals who have displeased someone in the community. I first saw this phenomenon when Oona King backed the Iraq War and the community turned on her with the most astonishing slander. She was alleged to be a Mossad spy, who wanted to criminalise the veil and remove Helal from school menus.

The fact that such rumours are unbelievable is beside the point. This kind of attack is a referendum against an individual. If the rumours catch on, then the community consensus has turned against that person. If the rumours fail, then the individual has the respect of the community. However, the attack on Oona was less to do with Iraq and more to do with a consensus in the community that it was time for a Bangladeshi to be MP and that the MP should be a man.

The allegations against Lutfur are different to the rumours about Oona, in that the target audience was the white community. The Labour Party had unwittingly become a part of the system of Honour and Shame, and had no understanding of the issue to help them cope. The result was division and misery.

Today, Tower Hamlets politics is deeply divided. Every time the two sides of the council meet to agree on working together, the agreement is then sabotaged by the Labour people who want to see Lutfur kept permanently out of the party. The bitterness amongst Lutfur’s people is plain and highly visible. They now attack the Labour councillors in return.

So deep are these divisions that Lutfur refuses to sit on the committee that will hire the new Chief Executive for the Local Authority. The Labour group has a majority on this committee, but no chief exec is going to take the job without the cooperation of the mayor. Catch 22.

Meanwhile, in the party, with Lutfur gone, there is a lack of good Bangladeshi activists who can make future councillors. It is unrealistic that any of the current Labour councillors would win against Lutfur at a future mayor election. The Bangladeshis see him as a victim, while the white people continue to see him as the Labour bloke.

The situation is bogged down and tragic. If Lutfur was to reapply to join the Labour Party it’s likely that he would be readmitted, but he point blank refused to. As far as he’s concerned, he is a victim in all of this. Meanwhile, Ed Miliband has washed his hands of the situation with no explanation as to why.

Shakespeare described the battle scene in Macbeth: “As two spent swimmers that do cling together and choke their art.”

The image of both sides drowning is apt.

Cameron the Clueless, Merkel the Merciless

Speaking at the Lord Mayor’s banquet in London, Mr Cameron’s fiery rhetoric on Europe appeared to be in contrast to the concrete policies being hammered out at Ms Merkel’s party conference in Germany.

Mr Cameron complained: “How out of touch the EU has become, when its institutions are demanding budget increases, while Europe’s citizens tighten their belts.” Mr Cameron was complaining about the cost of the capital transfers that pay for roads and bridges in Eastern Europe, building their productivity and sustaining their economies during these difficult times. If he thinks that the political trend in the EU is to have less government and less intervention, then he should listen to the Germans and think again.

On the same day, Ms Merkel told her party, “The task of our generation now, is to complete the economic and currency union in Europe and, step by step, create a political union. It’s time for a breakthrough to a new Europe”.

Plan B unveiled, Time to back Miliband!

At last the Tory-led coalition have accepted the merits of Keynesian economics, and have begun to draw up plans for a £50 billion stimulus, concentrating on roads, housing and national grid improvements.

Unfortunately, they want someone else to pay. According to The Times, “government hopes private investors… will be tempted to pour cash into the infrastructure schemes. In return they will get the proceeds from tolls, rents and energy bills.” I’m not sure if this sounds like The Big Society or PFI, but the gushing copy of The Times would suggest that the Tory-led government has remarkable foresight in economics.

Danger! George Osborne’s “Credit Easing!”

There is something very strange about George Osborne’s “credit easing” policy. He proposes to use a complex financial instrument in order to bring the UK economy out of a recession which was caused by a complex financial instrument.

When you look closely at the proposal, it sounds awfully familiar. The UK government will sell loans to small businesses, then package them together, and sell them onto the bond market in tranches.

In other words, his proposal to get us out of this mess is to use the same financial instrument as that was used to package the securitized mortgages, which then became toxic, and got us into this mess in the first place.

I’m not saying it wouldn’t work, but I am saying it’s ridiculous to blame the bankers for their complex financial instruments, when the Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer is proposing exactly the same instrument as a cure.
The other proposal is to use Quantitative Easing to buy the bonds of British banks. He hopes this will boost their capital which will cause them to lend to small businesses.

He hopes. How he must hope. There is no guarantee that the banks won’t hoard the money. And besides, why would they lend to small businesses in this country, when they could do safer lending to bigger businesses abroad? I mean, they’re not exactly civic minded.

The new QE idea is that if we pay over the odds for bank bonds, this will raise their market price, causing the yields on those bonds to fall. With a lower interest rate to pay, this makes it attractive for the banks to issue more bonds. In other words, a second bank bail-out, but done on the sly. Further to that, with no equity in return, it’s a free gift from us to them.

The Bank of England governor, who has been very quiet of late, has refused to issue the QE to private businesses, saying that he doesn’t want the BofE to be politicised. Can someone explain what he means by that? However, he has today agreed to print £75billion and pass it onto the Treasury, for them to purchase of the banking bonds.

So the proposal is to supply the banks with debt, in the hope that they supply more debt to small businesses. At the same time as this, the government will directly supply loans to small businesses, through the “credit easing” policy. These proposals are in direct contrast to the Prime Minister’s insistence that it was debt that got us into this mess, and that the only way get us out of this mess is to pay off the debt.

According to the Bank of England’s own analysis, the last bout of QE boosted the consumer prices index (CPI) by between 0.75 and 1.5 percentage points. In other words, it caused 1.25% inflation. The difference between then and now is that then it was necessary to create liquidity in the economy. Everyone agrees that the problem now is one of demand, not liquidity. This bout of QE will certainly be much more inflationary than the mere 1.25% last time. And as people get used to inflation, they get used to demanding higher wages, which causes inflation. This is how governments lose control.

It’s the elderly and the poor who pay for inflation. Women are especially sensitive to prices. So by bailing out the banks with free money, it will be these groups that pay for the bail-out, not the wealthy supporters of the Conservative Party.

However, this is the biggest hypocrisy of Osborne’s policy: Inflation would affect holders of government debt. By stoking inflation, Osborne would be inflating government debt away. The international markets know this and, in normal times, would flee to preserve their capital. But the market doesn’t have anywhere else to go and Osborne knows this. The Euro is in a mess, and so are the Dollar and the Yen. Emerging markets are hardly risk-free, even if they were accessible. The safe haven of gold has far further to fall than it has to rise. There is no obvious place of refuge. So Osborne can stoke inflation without much fear of the markets turning against us.

This blows a hole in his entire raison-d’etre. His continued opposition to Labour’s economic strategy has been, and still is, that the markets will turn against us if we spend to create growth. So why does he not fear the markets now?

We hate the term “The Undeserving Poor”

We hate it because we’re so uncomfortable with the term “the poor”. It has a ring of charity about it, when we don’t consider the welfare state to be a charity. We consider it to be a support structure for those who have fallen on hard times.

If a soldier returns from Afghanistan to spend the rest of his life in a wheel chair, he will rely on state support. But he is not “the poor”, he is the “the hero”.

Is someone in social housing poor? How about if the flat is in Covent Garden? Would you call them “the poor”? Because we’d call them “the damn lucky”.

The engineers made redundant by British Aerospace have mortgages, cars and foreign holidays. But in the hard times to come they may well look to the state for support. Does that make them “the deserving poor”? These are some of the most highly qualified well-educated people, who, through no fault of their own, are in an industry suffering a severe downturn. If they are struggling, in the months to come, if they need a helping hand, then we will offer that helping hand. But we will not regard them as “the poor” and certainly not “the deserving poor”.

It’s a term that grates with Labour people. It rubs us up the wrong way. It’s a Victorian idea that has no place in the modern day. Yet journalists constantly ask Labour politicians whether our belief in rights and responsibilities are examples or the deserving and undeserving poor.

They are not incorrect in their analysis. We do believe that some people have a greater entitlement due to their good citizenship, while others should have less entitlement due to their deliberate unwillingness to be a good citizen, but the term will always create a hostile response from a Labour politician because the language is simply unacceptable.

The media are just doing their job. They don’t intend to be offensive by using this angle. But they do need to recognise that to us, it is an offensive term and will not elicit an worthwhile response from any Labour politician or supporter.

We hate the term “The Undeserving Poor”

We hate it because we’re so uncomfortable with the term “the poor”. It has a ring of charity about it, when we don’t consider the welfare state to be a charity. We consider it to be a support structure for those who have fallen on hard times.

If a soldier returns from Afghanistan to spend the rest of his life in a wheel chair, he will rely on state support. But he is not “the poor”, he is the “the hero”.

Is someone in social housing poor? How about if the flat is in Covent Garden? Would you call them “the poor”? Because we’d call them “the damn lucky”.

The engineers made redundant by British Aerospace have mortgages, cars and foreign holidays. But in the hard times to come they may well look to the state for support. Does that make them “the deserving poor”? These are some of the most highly qualified well-educated people, who, through no fault of their own, are in an industry suffering a severe downturn. If they are struggling, in the months to come, if they need a helping hand, then we will offer that helping hand. But we will not regard them as “the poor” and certainly not “the deserving poor”.

It’s a term that grates with Labour people. It rubs us up the wrong way. It’s a Victorian idea that has no place in the modern day. Yet journalists constantly ask Labour politicians whether our belief in rights and responsibilities are examples or the deserving and undeserving poor.

They are not incorrect in their analysis. We do believe that some people have a greater entitlement due to their good citizenship, while others should have less entitlement due to their deliberate unwillingness to be a good citizen, but the term will always create a hostile response from a Labour politician because the language is simply unacceptable.

The media are just doing their job. They don’t intend to be offensive by using this angle. But they do need to recognise that to us, it is an offensive term and will not elicit an worthwhile response from any Labour politician or supporter.

To Televise or Not to Televise?

In days of old, the people were the criminal justice system. There were no police. If a crime happened, then the people of the village would come together to form a posse and the fugitive would be pursued across the fields. He would then be tried before a jury of twelve peers, from the village, and then his sentence would be done on the village green, with everybody watching and sometimes taking part.

Today the crime is publicised by the media, but then we, the community, are excluded. The police pursue their case in secret. The trial is held in relative secrecy, and, the jail sentence is conducted outside of the glare of public humiliation.

It’s a frustrating phenomenon of the modern world that however hard we try to explain that crime is falling the people are convinced that it’s rising. The distinction between actual crime and perceived crime makes a completely different curve on the graph.

When we ask the professionals why this is, they blame the media for the massive publicity they give to a major crime. In fact, the opposite is true. The exclusion of the media from the subsequent process is to blame. The media are allowed to report the crime, but then restricted in every subsequent step of the process.

Red Tape Cameron

In the parliamentary debate yesterday, Mr Cameron spoke of “reducing red tape” in order to get property repaired and London cleaned up. The example he used to demonstrate this “petty officialdom” was the insistence of local authorities to make shop keepers install toughened glass, rather than armoured steel shutters, on their shop fronts.

I’m sure he believes that every local authority has a Frenchman hidden in a cupboard, who comes out at night to add new regulations, when no one is looking.

What Purnell Said

There’s been a lot of debate about the James Purnell film on Newsnight last week. Often the debate has misunderstood what Purnell said. I think it’s worth going back and looking at the film again and being clear about his view.

Newsnight Click to view