What the Greens in London will do next
My third place in the London Mayoral contest was a big blow to the Liberal Democrats within the coalition. After promising to scrap tuition fees and oppose austerity, doing the opposite has shattered many Londoners’ trust even in their outsider candidates like Brian Paddick.
The result was an endorsement of the Green Party’s focus on pay equality, lower fares paid for with a pay-as-you-drive scheme (“Oyster for your car”), lower rents delivered with co-operatives and private rented sector reform, and healthier streets thanks to less traffic and cleaner vehicles.
We are determined to push forward with these ideas on the London Assembly.
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Ten myths about private rented housing
A quarter of Londoners live in private rented homes, but the Mayor doesn’t seem to spend a quarter of his housing efforts improving their lot.
I’m a lead member of the Assembly’s Planning & Housing Committee, and we recently conducted an investigation into poor housing conditions in the private rented sector, I was surprised at some of the arguments that were put forward against reforms.
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Who will scrutinise the Met Police now, and how?
The Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) has been both rewarding and infuriating; a chance for a mix of politicians, independents and magistrates to question the Met in public, but still astonishingly impenetrable when it chose to be.
There was genuine dialogue – sometimes tetchy and difficult, but the Commissioner had to respond directly.
This contrasts with the new arrangements for policing in London, where the Mayor Boris Johnson will keep both the executive power and direct scrutiny of the Met.
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Why are undercover police investigating protesters not bankers?
I was sent one of those hush, hush confidential Met briefings recently, about who approves police under-cover operations and what the mechanisms are.
It all seemed sensible stuff, except the fascinating omission from the document of any justification of why they would conduct an operation against a particular group and how this relates to the Regulatory of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.
Perhaps there is a different briefing which explains the justification for targeting people like ‘Reclaim the Streets’ a bunch of 1990’s campaigners who, like me, didn’t like the pollution which comes from building new roads? I suspect not.
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Difficult questions for how the police handled the riots
Both the Prime Minister and the Mayor have raised concerns that the police were slow to deploy and used tactics that didn’t work. It has been too easy for them to jump for tough-sounding solutions like water canons, plastic bullets and an army presence in emergencies. But 16,000 officers seemed to work on Tuesday night, so we need to first ask whether our much-cherished policing model can work with some better tactics.
The fires and violence were incredibly frightening for residents, and must have been for the police and other emergency services. I certainly would not have wanted to go out onto the streets of London three nights in a row to try and deal with it.
Yet, many Londoners feel very let down by the police.
The first and most obvious question is whether we had enough officers out there to deal with the troublemakers. In Catford a group of five brave officers charged a group of 40 looters. Why so few? Once the 16,000 officers were deployed the streets calmed down. Could we sustain 16,000 officers on the streets for longer periods? Will the 12,000 police during the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games be adequate?
The Met have said how overstretched they were, which I can understand. But this wasn’t just about numbers available. Where they were present, such as on Mare Street in Hackney, the Met seemed to focus on containing the rioters to stop them spreading. Shopkeepers were incredulous when riot officers didn’t intervene to stop people breaking their windows.
We must also ask why the police took so long to catch up with unfolding events. During the student protests they seemed unable to cope with the speedy, highly mobile protestors using social media and mobile phones to organise themselves. I was critical of the violence employed against too many of those young people, most of whom were taking their first steps into peaceful political activism.
This time, they are facing criticism for almost the opposite – appearing to stand back when faced with crowds of genuine criminals. These riots may have included some angry people, but mostly they were just plain greedy, indulging in a consumer driven frenzy of looting and vandalism. The Met’s public order tactics struggled to catch-up.
This was not a case of mass aggression against the police, with lots of people in one place. Although terrifying, the police have training and tactics to handle this. Instead, we saw organised or at least connected groups emerging in different locations and with different intentions.
The Met must again consider how they can create flexible and adaptive public order tactics and training to cope with what may come in the months and years ahead. We must also ask questions of their intelligence. For example, were the structures and communication networks of London’s gang culture the main drivers of this action?
A further question is whether the police can work more effectively with organised communities who resist outbreaks of criminal behaviour. The spontaneous growth of self organised protection by communities like the Kurds in Dalston demonstrated a realistic assessment on Monday night that the state would not be able to protect their property and livelihoods. Should the Met have worked hand in hand with shopkeepers determined to protect their neighbourhoods, and can they do so without promoting vigilante behaviour?
One final question on police tactics: what role does leadership play? It took the Met until Tuesday to respond adequately to the spreading violence at a time when the Met is without a permanent Commissioner, and when the Prime Minister and Mayor were on holiday. Are the police able to respond quickly to unfolding events without this leadership, whether to dictate a change in tactics or to absorb tensions such as those arising from the death of Mark Duggan, or was this simply an organisational delay due to mustering so many extra police?
These pressing questions about British police tactics must be examined, before calling for the sort of policing we normally associate with repressive states. They must be thought through in a wider debate about our society, its deep inequality and “me, me, me” consumerist culture. The biggest question of all is why a minority of young people were so happy to participate in violence, destruction and theft.
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Note: this article has been edited since the original post, to cut it down.
The reality behind Boris Johnson’s police cuts
Everyone knows that police forces are facing major budget reductions. Yet, the Mayor of London has said he is both increasing police numbers and boosting the frontline, claiming London will be “the envy of every police force in the country” and will “buck the trend”.
The reality behind the Mayor’s claims is a little different.
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Ten myths about housing benefit reforms in London
Myth one: the housing benefit bill is out of control
Not all myth. London’s housing benefit bill rose from £3bn to £5bn in the seven years from 2002 to 2009, putting an extra £2bn a year into the pockets of landlords in order to help people afford a home .
Myth two: the cuts will fix the problem
Who knows? The basic problem is the increasing number of people who need housing benefits to afford to live in London. The Work and Pensions department’s own analysis showed that almost 70 per cent of growth in the benefit bill was due to more people claiming benefit . The Mayor’s research showed that the increase in the number claimants over 2002-07 almost exactly matches the shortfall in affordable rented housing .
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We need to reclaim the true ideals behind civil disobedience
Every new generation of campaigners from the peace movement of the 1980s onwards has been through workshops which teach you how to make an impact and how to handle the police.
Non violent direct action (NVDA) has to be part of a wider, mass protest to be really successful, but from Greenham Common to Swampy and Greenpeace, it has as much a place in Britain’s cultural life as Glastonbury or a Royal Wedding.
If done properly, it can not only generate the right kind of publicity, but direct it against the right institutions.
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London’s increasing debt: what will Boris do about it?
The Mayor put on an upbeat performance on Wednesday by claiming that the cuts could have been worse and London had benefited as a result of Crossrail and the tube upgrades being protected.
The reality is that Transport for London (TfL) is facing the same cut in its grant as the rest of the country, with the significant exception of £890m ring fenced for the tube upgrade.
However, Londoners have been given the green light to continue its previous plans to go massively into debt in order to pay for Crossrail and the tube upgrades.
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When will London’s new cycles reach suburbs?
It is so hard keeping track of the cycling budget. We know that (up to now) whatever is claimed in Mayoral press releases from Boris is different to what has actually been spent.
It does feel like there has been a big expansion under this Mayor, but the reality is that in the first two years he spent around £8m less than the previous Mayor promised.
Much of that is because of delays in setting up the cycle hire and superhighways which the Green group had agreed with the previous Mayor as part of our budget deal.
Much of the gap between Ken’s planned expenditure and Boris delivery is explained by the cancellation of the LCN+. This was a big strategic scheme led by the boroughs to establish a linked up series of cycle lanes and facilities all across London.
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