© Muhammad Haque
Telling the London
SPECTATOR magazine,
Sunday 26 September 2010 about
Tower Hamlets mess about the mayor thing
“I notice that in the 'critical' comments published about the post of mayor in the name of London there is hardly any commensurate attention paid to the role of what was launched as the Greater London Assembly. Even official historians, typified by Ben Pimlot and his likes, have failed to tell the truth about this mayor thing. It is an anti-democratic disaster for society.
People are being hoodwinked out of their ordinary sense of right and wrong in the process.
Why not demand that elected members of the [redesignated London] Assembly and their counterparts on local Councils across London [and beyond] are subjected to a democratic scrutiny expressly based on the democratic requirement that they must deliver the overdue and truthful and daily scrutiny of both the mayor [where unfortunately there is one] and of their leader and leading post holding councillor colleagues [also known lately as ‘lead members’]?
While it is ‘fun’ to have a go at the careerists and time-servers bent on reaching the posts or [as they often seem to gain the entries] staying in post as mayor or leader, the result of such criticism is often inconsequential on the ground, especially in relation to the exercise of the power that is claimed by the ‘existence’ of the posts concerned. This is so because neither the electors nor the constituency areas concerned are legally or constitutionally able to make the democratic contribution that has been missing from the steady and the one-sided slide away from democracy in this country under the proliferation of careerist spots and openings for the skilled self-servers.
The ‘constitutional arrangement’ that exists in Britain today simply does not allow for the ordinary - voters and others concerned about the fact and the extent of democratic accountability - to make constitutional law interventions where those in post or positions of power fail or misbehave at the expense of the community of voters residents and society..
The people including the electors who do turn up are being left out of the equation except as voting fodder.
What is my evidence for saying this?
Tower Hamlets!
Those two words should summarise at this time what I am saying in context here.
What has been happening in Tower Hamlets has serious repercussion and implication for democracy and society all over London and in other parts of Britain.
Every known wrong has been alleged against a very disproportionately large number of individuals involved in the bureaucratic bid to control the local Tower Hamlets Council.
The focus over the past few months has been on the post of an elected mayor in the name of Tower Hamlets. This focus has not been caused by any spontaneous express of enthusiasm by ordinary people for an anti-democratic move
And if reports are accurate, Harriet Harman has had cause this week to feel quite victorious as she has had her men where and when she wanted them! All in the name of serving her Party, of course!
In the case of Tower Hamlets, if the published accounts of a meeting of the Labour Party’s ‘National Executive Committee’ held on 21 September 2010 are to be believed, Harriet even had her man HOW she wanted him!
She wanted him to be imposed! As opposed to being democratically selected by Party members who were eligible to do so.
According to the published account originally attributed to NEC member Christine Shawcroft and subsequently elaborated on from a standpoint of a trade unionists relationship with the Labour Party NEC by John Grey [whose detailed blog entry about the same session of the NEC on the same subject of Tower Hamlets - has now been so severely censored by the Labour Party central bureaucracy that Gray has removed it from his blog without a single word of explanation ..] the role played by Harriet Harman added manifest weight to the
These injudicious and almost certainly extra constitutional indiscretions by the Labour Party’s central bureaucracy as fronted up to last week by Harriet Harman may very well come back to haunt not just Harriet but all her men, currently on a high of ‘achievement’ and many more besides.
Has any condemnation of Ken Livingstone included any constitutional or administrative legal way forward and away from the abuse of office that Harriet Harman has again displayed a clear propensity for?
I have been involved since the first week of January 2010 in a community campaign against there being an elected – with executive powers concentrated in the hands of the single elected individual - mayor in Tower Hamlets.
As our campaign continues, we, as the BHANGEELAAR! “Campaign against an elected mayor in Tower Hamlets" have asked the “Retuning Officer” for Tower Hamlets to publish full and truthful account of the conduct of the campaign "for an elected mayor"
That referendum was held on the same day as the polls for the Tower Hamlets Council wards and the two parliamentary constituencies situated in the East End Borough.
The voters did not receive the true account about the existing system [with an elected councillor as Leader and a cabinet of elected councillors] of running the local council. So the votes they cast in the ‘referendum’ were not cast by knowing or being informed of far less considering all the facts and the evidence.
Also, there is a serious degree of concern among people from across the Parties and other backgrounds about the sums of money actually spent by certain canvassers or backers of a particular outcome ['response'] to the referendum question as put.
This is vital because the maximum amount any campaign was allowed to spend under the legal rules was under £12,000.
The sums of money that have been actually spent, as known to members of the community in Tower Hamlets would exceed that limited sum several times.
There have been other irregularities and breaches of the rules in the conduct of the referendum.
The “Returning Officer” has so far refused to provide the information or to show independently verifiable evidence that he had done his job of constitutionally supervising the conduct concerned of all involved in the promotion and the due implementation of any lawfully called referendum about the future constitution of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Council.
To highlight the unconstitutional culture of undemocracy that has now become so common to and available to be jointly enjoyable as another 'achievement for the Party' [as they will each claim in their sub-segregated dens] by Harriet Harman and Ken Livingstone: neither of them has made any known comment expressing any concern for constitutionality, due process, natural justice in the mess that has been the Tower Hamlets mayoral referendum.
Harriet Harman has been reported to have shown only one serious concern: about the additional sum of One Billion POUNDS that Tower Hamlets will receive as an ‘Olympics borough’ to be used by HER man in the Tower Hamlets ‘mayoral office’!
[To be continued] [The BHANGEELAAR! Reporting, diagnosis, updates and more]
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