BHANGEELAAR! Breaking commentary on Guardian web site setting out evidence of Ken Livingstone’s role in the imposition of mayor thing. CLICK here

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/davehillblog/2010/nov/04/bobo-from-brockley-blog-boris-versus-ken?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments

Here is the evidential note straight from the very campaign that warned Livingstone against going for an executive mayor thing. Had Livingstone paid attention and stayed away from the promotion of the ‘YES’ bid, he could now be claiming with undeniable accuracy that he is a pan London politician rather than one who is untenably involved in inner cities factional activities that are engendered by other undemocratic forces thus causing his claim to being a democrat such routine attacks of hollowness.

On 6 February 2010, Ken Livingstone arrived in the Hanbury Street, Off Brick Lane London E1, to provide 'big gun' element [as described by the local “East London Advertiser” report dated 09 February 2010] to the 'launch of the YES for mayor' campaign over the referendum [scheduled then to take place on 06 May 2010]. As our demonstration was taking place against that event generally and against Livingstone’s participation in it in particular, at least three demonstrators shouted abuse at Livingstone who was visibly affected by the hostility. So how significant was that incident? We would say that it was very significant indeed. We must share that sense of the significance with your readers for the good of the democratic movement in London. Decades earlier, the same venue, the Brady Centre in the Hanbury Street, had witnessed Ken Livingstone being treated by local people almost like a pop star. Why? Because of the public stand [NOT necessarily delivery of the goods that he was promising] that Livingstone then took in his role at the GLC over the tense issues of housing, racist attacks and community cohesion [that last stated phrase was to come into usage nearly 30 years later]. So had Ken Livingstone taken a leaf from his own record book? Not by the evidence of what he went on to say on 06 May 2010. His words were given pride of place by the YES for Mayor campaigners who highlighted a particularly compounded denunciation by Livingstone of the Tower Hamlets Council and its structure. Livingstone, it appears, does not do his own research. Had he done his research on Tower Hamlets then he would have found that the condemnation that he was making of the Tower Hamlets Council would apply to the very panacea – an executive mayor- that he was commending to Tower Hamlets. He made the ‘case’ even less tenable, seen from an objective universal standpoint, when he in effect encouraged people to opt for a YES campaign by citing Lewisham AND Steve Bullock as ‘role model/s’. This brief account shows that we had witnessed a bureaucratised Lewisham in Tower Hamlets at the start of the year. Livingstone had brought Lewisham in a packaged to us in February and now he is being fingered doing penance for his deeds back then. What has happened in between is of equal importance. The calls from usual suspects demanding all manner of Labour Party punishment of Livingstone because of his intervention in Tower Hamlets are a diversion. The real events are ‘evidence’ in the political bankruptcy of the Parties. None of the ‘mainstream’ Parties demonstrated evidence of real democratic activities in their ranks. What they showed – and are continuing to show this week, is that the Parties’ bureaucracies are going to go on doing the same things as they had been doing before for years and years and years. As it is the Labour Party that has been the main one involved in all the key events this past year over the issue of the change to the constitution of the local Tower Hamlets Council, all indications are that Tower Hamlets Council will end up wasting more cash under an executive mayor system than it would do under the leader and cabinet system and that the local ordinary public has been caused a great deal of confusion, disrespect and disenfranchisement by the whole imposition [of the diversionary, wasteful executive mayor system] that we scarcely can afford. As for the ‘Tower Hamlets Tories’ offering to help the local community, that is another serious insult to the East End. Nothing that Peter Golds has ever said on the record is about the East End ordinary people genuinely. Noting that he is likely to do will be about our people either. He is ‘in’ Tower hamlets to let Big Business benefit. His leader CONDEM Cameron has in fact used the very words spelling out his silly Con ideology of setting up Google et al as the fantastically ‘good role models’ big business when he surfaced in Stratford today [Thursday 04 November 2010]. Let the Tories explain why they staged the about turn from being opposed to the mayor system to going all the way in the opposite direction including the fielding of a candidate for election as the executive mayor wearing the Conservative party colours

2004 Hrs Thursday 04 November 2010

BHANGEELAAR!

THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST AN ELECTED MAYOR IN TOWER HAMLETS