Justice for a rioter and his family?
I went to the Crown Court on 10 January to hear Daniel’s sentence – you will remember I was interested in his case following his involvement in the riots on August 8th in Clapham Junction. The headline is that he received 11 months, which Judge Darling said would mean that he would serve half that time in custody and the other half “free” on licence. The Judge also said that the 83 days he had been on conditional bail would be counted against the sentence leaving, according to my calculation, Daniel serving about a further 87 days in custody.
Judge Darling said in sentencing that this was the “most tragic” case he had come across in the whole riot aftermath. He accepted Daniel’s story about how he happened to be in Clapham Junction and that he arrived on the scene after Curry’s had been broken into. He acknowledged that Daniel was of good character (that is had no previous of any kind) indeed the Judge went on to say that Daniel was an exceptional young man with some level of educational achievement. Daniel was a Christian with both a capital and a lower case c, he said, working for the good of the community – the Judge said “an aid worker”, a helper, a doer with many good character references.
But in the aftermath of the riots despite all mitigation and against the PSR (Pre-Sentence Reports done by the Probation Service)recommendation, he, the Judge, had to take into account society’s concerns and fears about the events of August and that he had no choice but to impose some level of custodial sentence. (I should add that the Judge retired for 46 minutes to consider the sentence – he clearly did not do it lightly)
I have two comments: first that Wandsworth Council shows zero respect for the “family” if it pursues, as it intends to do, its policy of eviction with all the consequences that this will bring to bear on the mother and sister. I know the mother quite well and it is clear, and totally unsurprising, that she is under some considerable stress.
Secondly, that the establishment has got itself into a bit of a mess about sentencing in this situation. Whilst Daniel aged 18, with no previous record at all, got 11 months, a man aged 30, sentenced at the same time as Daniel with 11 previous convictions for 22 offences having served two separate terms of 6 and 7 years, got a custodial sentence of 20 months! I cannot believe that this variation of sentence 11:20 for these two men would have been the same in normal circumstances. The establishment has in my view put its fears before the cause of justice
Jobless Too Busy Shopping To Look For Work, Says Tory.
Yes, that was the headline over a story in the Evening Standard on 16 November 2011. What followed was a poisonous diatribe from Balham Councillor Paul Ellis. Look it up, if you can, on the ES website; I must admit I have not found the link!
But the article was so irresponsible that I intend to make the following speech at the 7 December Council Meeting.
“Marie Antoinette was tasteless enough to advise that French peasants should eat cake if they could not find enough bread. Jeremy Clarkson was vulgar enough to suggest that strikers should be taken out and shot in front of their families, but at least Antoinette was not the Minister for Wheat production and Clarkson not the Minister in charge of Industrial Relations.
Councillor Ellis was vulgar enough and tasteless enough to make the outrageous assertion that the Jobless in a Battersea estate were too busy shopping to look for work – and he is Chairman of the Housing Committee and responsible for tenant relationships. Louis XVI may have had some marital reasons for not chopping off Antoinette’s head and Cameron does not have any official role in terms of Clarkson’s employment at the BBC, but Wandsworth’s Leader does have the power and certainly has the grounds for guillotining his Chair of Housing.
Put to one side the comparison of an estate, which one I wonder, with the Oxford Street sales; forget the absurd generalisation about people in their 20s, 30s and 40s (his phrase – not mine), who after all have a 40% chance of being leaseholders rather than tenants and are probably employed rather than not – after all nowhere has unemployment rates higher than 50%; putting all that to one side he completely ignores the fact that this Council’s policies are to some extent based on the fact that some of our estates contain some of the most multi-deprived people in the UK.
Now I don’t want to make the same kind of ludicrous assertions about the residents of Balham, those whom Ellis represents, as he does about some unnamed estate but the grotesque assumption that in some ways more will be spent on Christmas on our estates than in the comfortable streets of Balham beggars belief. There is a class war starting in Wandsworth and it is the Tory party that is firing the first shots.
BOUNDARY COMMISSION RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE CURRENT BATTERSEA CONSTITUENCY
1 The Boundary Commission recommends:-
- moving Fairfield ward from Battersea into a new Putney constituency numbering 80,073 as of 1st December 2010;
- moving Balham and Northcote wards into a new Clapham Common constituency of 79,354 as of 1st December 2010;
- and making the remaining four wards of Latchmere, Queenstown, St. Mary’s Park and Shaftesbury the majority element of a Battersea and Vauxhall constituency of 78,199.
All three of these proposed constituencies are larger than the UK electoral quota of 76,641 and yet population growth in Wandsworth in particular and in south west London in general is expected to be one of the fastest growing in the country. It is therefore probable that all three proposed constituencies will be larger than the target maximum electorate of 80,473 by the time the new boundaries actually come into effect. These proposals, therefore, build an even greater instability and democratic unfairness into the system than is in any case inherent.
2 We have taken the Greater London Authority’s 2010 Round, Demographic Projections for the London Borough of Wandsworth, to illustrate this point. It shows that the Borough’s population is estimated to have grown by 11% between the years 2001 and 2011 and is expected to grow by a further 11% in the ten years 2011-2021. There are actually three projections, known as scenario one and scenario two and the Strategic Housing Availability Assessment (SHLAA). The following figures are largely based on the SHLAA figures, which are close to scenario one. The figures in scenario two have been excluded for these purposes, but it is worth noting that they predict an even greater rate of population growth for Wandsworth.
3 Two of the fastest growing ward populations, namely in Thamesfield and Southfields, are in the Putney constituency, which even on 2010 figures is only 400 people short of the maximum number. It is almost guaranteed to exceed it by May, 2015.
4 However, by far the largest growth rates in the period 2001-21 are expected in Queenstown ward with an estimated 96% growth rate and St. Mary’s Park with an estimated 50% growth rate. These two wards alone represent 30.9% of Wandsworth’s estimated population growth and both of them are proposed to be in the Battersea and Vauxhall constituency. By way of confirmation of these trends, they actually supplied 30.9% of the growth in the decade 2001/11 as well as being expected to provide 30.9% of the growth in the coming decade. The neighbouring wards in Lambeth, with which they are coupled in the proposals, are also likely to have high growth rates thanks to major developments in Vauxhall and Nine Elms.
5 Currently the proposed Battersea and Vauxhall constituency already has a population larger than the electoral quota although below the maximum allowed. Its growth rate is, however, so high that it will, like Putney, almost certainly exceed the maximum by May, 2015.
6 The five wards proposed to be moved into the Clapham Common constituency, that is Balham, Earlsfield, Nightingale, Northcote and Wandsworth Common, have much lower growth rates with an average of approximately 16% but they are all likely to be growing at a faster rate than the London and certainly the national average rate.
7 Ironically the slower growing wards of Bedford, Furzedown, Graveney and Tooting, averaging about 15.5% growth rates, are proposed to be moved into the new Streatham and Tooting constituency – the only one of the proposed “Wandsworth” constituencies with an estimated population smaller than the quota figure, 464 smaller to be precise.
8 In the interest of greater stability of boundaries and of fairer democratic representation we urge the Boundary Commissioners to reconsider the proposals on the basis that fast growing areas should, if anything, have proposed populations smaller than the average electoral quota and that slow growing or declining areas should have the larger populations.
9 Unless the Boundary Commission proposals are amended in this way, and given the narrow parameters that have been set, this would result in Shaftesbury ward and possibly even Latchmere ward being moved out of Battersea and Vauxhall by 2020. It is difficult to model what the ripple effect would be of that, but it might suggest that Balham ward would have to go into Streatham and Tooting, and Wimbledon Park into a Wimbledon seat. The effect is constant instability.
10 The Boundary Commission is required to respect natural geographic boundaries, but it has defined that in a fairly narrow sense without regard to the nature of place and geography. As a result the place of Battersea comes out of these proposals extremely badly. Despite the name, Battersea and Vauxhall, much of the traditional area of Battersea would under these proposals be in either Clapham Common or Putney constituency. The station, Clapham Junction, which is at the heart of Battersea, will be in Clapham Common and whilst the old Town Hall and the main library are in the proposed Battersea and Vauxhall constituency, they are only just so. Indeed the main shopping and commercial centre of Battersea is almost exactly where the three constituencies meet.
11 Given the current need for extra attention to this (at least in part) troubled town centre, it is inflammatory to divide the area so arbitrarily, taking no account of the unifying and centralising role of Clapham Junction station and town centre in the social and communal life of Battersea.
12 Moreover, the proposed new Clapham Common constituency has no coherent geographic centre, divided as it is into three almost equal parts by the large open spaces of Clapham and Wandsworth Commons.
13 Given the level of instability inherently built into the system and with three of the four proposed “Wandsworth” constituencies both larger than the electoral quota AND fast growing, a question must arise about the closeness of the links between the MP and his/her constituency. The probability is that at the next review, due for the 2020 election, several wards including probably Shaftesbury, Balham and Wimbledon Park will have to be moved from their constituencies as they would otherwise be too large. It must therefore be questionable whether the relevant electors will be able to expect a good service from their MP given the transient nature of the boundaries.
14 Because of the prescriptive nature of the legislation, it is likely that significant constituency boundary changes will be required at every review. Currently these are scheduled for every 5 yearly parliamentary elections. This can only result in unstable constituency boundaries which will be destabilising for electors. It is also worth noting that the local party organisations (of all parties) will be forced continually to form and then re-form, destabilising the bedrock of community politics. Boundary Changes should therefore revert to the customary 10 year cycle.
15 The current legislation mandates a reduction in constituencies from 650 to 600. We believe this is short sighted and ill-advised, especially with reference to inner city constituencies. They generate high demand for MP’s services and currently benefit from co-ordinated attention from MPs and local authorities, working within co-terminous boundaries.
16 An extra feature of the Wandsworth and Lambeth constituencies, which the Boundary Commission should take into account, is the considerable discrepancy between their electoral populations and the actual populations. This is largely accounted for by the very large numbers of European and other immigrants, who live in these parts of London, but who do not have the vote. This population often imposes a large workload on both the MP and local councillors.
17 Furthermore, whilst recognising that the Boundary Commission has not taken into account local authority boundaries, the results of this review are perverse. For many years, the Boundary Commission, local authorities, the Metropolitan Police Service and the NHS have been working towards co-terminosity. Clearly that has had many advantages, eliminating the duplication of roles and number of communication links to the extent that Wandsworth Council now has to deal with only three MPs, each of whom has to deal with only one local authority and one police division. If the current proposals proceed as proposed then Wandsworth will have to deal with four MPs, each of whom will have to deal with at least 2 local authorities and 2 police divisions.
18 With the proposed Battersea and Vauxhall constituency having 4 Wandsworth wards and 4 Lambeth wards, and the proposed Clapham Common constituency having 5 Wandsworth constituencies and 3 Lambeth wards it appears obvious that the boundaries could be drawn with far greater respect to local authority boundaries. That would respect both the historical and geographical expectations of the relevant population.
19 In conclusion we believe that the Commissioners proposals for Wandsworth are flawed. They should be revised taking into account:-
- the growth rates and trends in population estimates;
- greater concern and attention to historic as well as natural boundaries;
- the workload on MPs and the real population as well as the electoral suffrage;
- co-terminosity with other authority boundaries.
Tony Belton and Penelope Corfield on behalf of the Battersea Labour Party
31st October 2011.
November Newsletter
November highlights
1. On 1st November I spoke at the Boundary Commission Hearing, in the Town Hall. The Commission’s recommendations for the new Parliamentary boundaries are very extensive and involve massive changes across the country. As far as Battersea is concerned the plan is to divide it in half, with the railway lines as the approximate boundary, with the north joined to Vauxhall in a Battersea and Vauxhall constituency and the south, including Clapham Junction itself, being joined with parts of Tooting and Clapham in a new Clapham Common constituency.
This change is due to the need to revise boundaries across the country as some areas grow, in population terms, faster than others. The problem is largely caused by the Government’s insistence that no constituency should deviate from the norm by more than 5% – it used to be 10%. As it happens, the current Battersea constituency is more or less the right size but when you start changing boundaries right across the country then clearly there is a ripple effect. The result is just about “All Change”.
I opposed the changes for all kinds of reasons but the most important is that the planned growth in population in Nine Elms over the next few years will require the boundaries of Battersea to be changed again before the end of the decade. It is a recipe for constant change and constant confusion. It will weaken people’s identification with their constituency and will therefore, in the end, weaken deomocracy.
For those of you, who are really interested, my actual presentation to the Commission is also on this blog.
2. On the 10th November, I had dinner with Ken Livingstone at a fund raiser for the Putney Labour Party. This picture was taken a couple of years back.
3. On the evening of 1st November I attended the York Gardens Library re-launch. Clearly this was a grand occasion for some celebration, as the work of all those volunteers, who have done so much to save the library, came to fruition. The only really galling thing about the evening is that Tory M.P. Jane Ellison and Tory Cllr Jonathan Cook – the ones who had done most to put the library under pressure – got to have the pleasure of speaking and opening a library that owes almost nothing to them. Really galling for this Labour councillor, and for some of the activists involved in saving the library!
4. On the 3rd November I went to a debate in the Council Chamber on “How Green Wandsworth Council is” with new Transport Minister and Putney MP, Justine Greening, and Wandsworth’s Deputy Leader Jonathan Cook. It was largely about the Government’s new “Green Deal” initiative. Last month, I said that I was sceptical about the Tory party being green – I was not wrong!
The purpose of the “Green Deal” is, in effect, to persuade the energy companies to lend money to domestic customers, so that they can buy insulation and other energy conservation measures. In theory, the utility bills will then be reduced and the customer can re-pay the debt by continuing to pay the old level of bills until their debt is paid off.
It all sounded ok in theory, with repayment made through utility bills on the basis that, as the energy content of the bill declines, then the repayment content of it will increase until the loan has been paid off.
It sounds reasonable in theory but whilst it is clearly not the “Big Solution” that the Government seems to think it is, it also seems to me to have a myriad of problems. Who says a particular investment is going to pay off? Who guarantees the quality of the job done? Who picks up the bill if the energy bills do not come down significantly? How is this all going to be calculated in a period of energy inflation? As they say, the devil is in the detail and details are what this Government is notoriously bad at.
5. On November 5th, I joined Jane Ellison at the formal opening of the Mercy Foundation’s computer training facility at 64 Falcon Road. Jane and I were there to present certificates to “graduates” of their word processing and other courses. You couldn’t say that they were high level qualifications but the comments of some of the graduates were quite moving. One lady said that she was basically illiterate, and I mean illiterate and not computer illiterate, before she started the course but now, three months later, she had just made her first on-line grocery order. She was rightly thrilled – quite an achievement for the Foundation – I thought.
6. Later that day I went to the Fireworks Display in Battersea Park. Did you go? And if so what did you think? The chat where I was, was that it was not as good as in recent years. I took a couple of Japanese academics I know – and they certainly enjoyed it!
7. At the Finance and Corporate Resources Committee on the 16th there was a great deal of solid but largely bureaucratic content but there were two items of real interest to plenty of people in Latchmere and especially right down by Wandsworth Bridge. The first was the decision to declare the Eltringham School site surplus to requirements. The school is in Eltringham Street off Petergate and everyone will know it even if they think they don’t. It can be seen on the left as one approaches the Wandsworth Bridge round-about. It is in the Council’s books as an asset worth more than £10 million. I think at that kind of price we are going to get another very expensive block of flats with not many affordable homes!
The second item was about the Council’s acquisition of Putney Hospital for the purposes of creating another so-called Free School in the Borough, though on this occasion at primary level. I think there is little doubt that Wandsworth Borough Council wants to break up what it sees as the monopoly state schooling system.
8. The following evening the Planning Applications Committee had a record 350 page agenda! Bit of a sweat that was! But despite the size of the agenda, the only matter of any great interest to Latchmere was the application for what effectively will become half a dozen very expensive town houses on the site of the old Labour Exchange in Beechmore Road. If you do not remember it here it is on a wet November day in 2009, when I was canvassing for the then forthcoming Council elections.
9. I am the only Labour representative on the Heliport Consultative Committee, which was held on the 21st. The Heliport is so big and busy that it has, by legislation, a consultative committee just like all major airports in the country. It is, of course, the only heliport that large, but actually we don’t do a great deal other than monitor noise levels and try to keep the disturbance it causes to a minimum.
10. I went to the Battersea Police Ball on the 26th, which as ever was a hoot! Not a cheap evening out but, if you can afford it, I do recommend it at least once. It is so wonderfully naff, or do I mean camp? But it raises plenty of money for the Summer Play Scheme for the children of Battersea – so it’s all in a good cause.
11. I am afraid I couldn’t make the Wayford Street Residents association meeting on 24th November – apologies!
My Programme for December
1. A meeting on the Doddington Estate on 5th December about the Council’s cuts.
2. The Council Meeting on December 7th.
3. The continuing Court Case against a Wandsworth tenant’s son on 12th.
4. The Planning Applications Committee on the 15th.
5. And Christmas! Talking of which A Very Merry Xmas to you and yours!
Did you know?
This rather dashing picture is of Alliott Verdon Roe, the first Englishman to make a powered flight, and founder in 1910 of the AV Roe & Co. aircraft manufacturer (better known as Avro). I am writing about him as the last person pictured in the Haberdasher Arm’s Mural, of whom I have not yet written.
His connection with Battersea and Latchmere, apart from being in Barnes’ mural is rather tenuous. He used the stables at his brother’s house in West Hill to design and model planes including his ‘Bulls Eye’ duplex triplane, which was put into production in an arch beneath the nearby railway. (The Council has very recently, 28th October 2011, unveiled a plaque at the site of Roe’s first workshop in West Hill.)
He was the founding genius of the British aerospace industry, his planes being the first to take part in a bombing raid on German lines in the First World War. But by far his most famous aircraft, betraying his Lancashire origins, was the World War Two bomber, the Lancaster.
See http://www.londonmuralpreservationsociety.com/murals/battersea-perspective/ for Brian’s own description of his mural.
Yours sincerely,
Tony Belton
Latchmere Councillor
Beware the Big Society Trap
Wandsworth has invented a wonderful new trap for the unwary councillor – it’s called the Big Society Grants Fund.
Instead of making £1 million available to large organisations like the Citizens Advice Bureau, the Tory councillors have come up with a Big Society grant fund of £150,000. So far the average grant is only a few hundreds of pounds. They have been distributed to a range of local groups for a myriad of reasons, from helping an oap home to buy new TVs and PCs to assisting a club organise soccer for young people in the area north of Clapham Junction Station.
The really neat trick though is that instead of relying on established and perhaps slightly distant organisations such as the CAB, which have serviced their customers in a very traditional way, the Council has introduced a much cheaper version dependent upon patronage and friendship.
This new grant system makes the councillor, yes including me, feel important and well respected as we sign off relatively small sums of money – £5-700 say for a new TV system for an oaps sheltered home lounge. Now that is really nice but are Labour councillors right to think, as Tories obviously do, that these small very directed grants are any substitute for the big sums that once went to organisations like Cancer Support or Citizens’ Advice Bureaux?
Criminalisation of squatting
At the October Wandsworth Council meeting the decision to support the criminalisation of squatting was supported without comment. Today, less than a month later, it is clear that the move to make squatting a criminal offence, as opposed to a civil one, is being opposed by Shelter and most significant housing charities and associations.
The UK’s 99% protesters include it as one of their complaints about current political developments and yet Wandsworth councillors agreed it without comment.
Squatting has, of course, been a problem for the “authorities” since the first property rights were established. Personally, and emotionally, I rather support the aboriginal view that it is clearly absurd for anyone to claim they own “the land”. But unfortunately that simple philosophy long since bit the dust here in civilised Britain.
That squatting is not a criminal offence speaks volumes for the wisdom of UK lawmakers over the years. Making squatting a criminal offence will not solve the problem of the conflict between the housing rich and the housing poor – it will merely drive the problem into hidden corners, criminalising the desperate homeless.
If enforced, it would bring people into the prison system for the penalty of being poor and homeless. And if squatting were to occur on a widepread scale, then it would be impossible to enforce systematically. It would certainly bring the law into disrepute.
That’s why historically governments refrain from criminalising strike action, though many would dearly love to.
See http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/03/criminalising-squatting-law-trespass-homeless for another comment.
SPEECH AGAINST POLITICAL EVICTIONS
SPEECH AGAINST POLITICAL EVICTIONS
BY COUNCILLOR TONY BELTON
(LABOUR: LATCHMERE WARD,
WANDSWORTH BOROUGH COUNCIL)
at Wandsworth Council meeting 21 September 2011
Let’s start from some basic principles, which I hope we can all agree. First: the innocent should not suffer; second: our policies should not be implemented in an unconsidered and arbitrary way; third: we need an effective penal and social policy for dealing with the kind of situation that Wandsworth faced in the riots on 8 August; fourth: there is a duty of leadership upon local authorities that does not apply to private landlords or possibly even to other social landlords; and fifth: evictions are a perfectly legitimate tool in the exercise of housing management.
I intend, however, to demonstrate that the use of evictions for essentially political purposes is unacceptable. But to do that I have to tackle the view that ‘the long-term security of a Council flat or house is a privileged position’, as stated by the Conservative leader, Cllr Ravi Govindia in The Times.[1] I have tried looking up the definition of privilege but the dictionaries have not caught up with this kind of usage. So all I can say is that it is not the kind of privilege that most in this Council aspire to. It is not the kind of privilege that Bullingdon Club members aspire to. It is not the kind of privilege that we mean when we talk about the ‘privileged classes’. What it might just mean in the eyes of some members is the ‘privilege’ of living in subsidised accommodation. But in reality that is not true either. Last year Wandsworth Council paid a profit rent of £22.6 million back to the National Housing Revenue Account. And indeed the national HRA itself has been in surplus and subsidising the National Exchequer since 2008/9. Council housing is no longer subsidised and hasn’t been so for some time – some kind of privilege! No wonder that, rather than feeling privileged, most Council tenants think they are treated as second class citizens – no other relatives of villains of the 8 August riots will lose their homes.
The truth is that the majority party, rather like feudal barons, or nineteenth-century century Tsars, consider Council housing to be a grace and favour offer to be withdrawn when the serfs misbehave. But in fact if Council housing is not exactly a right, most Council housing has been provided as a result of a parliamentary recognition of need. It has been provided as a statutory obligation.
So, back to the basic principles and first: the contention that the innocent should not suffer. Clearly, that means, first and foremost, the victims of last month’s outrages. I and my Labour colleagues absolutely share the feelings that all councillors have for them, for those who have spent a lifetime building up their businesses and their lives in our community, and for those who lost their sense of safety and peace in the community. But that is simple and unanimous. That is what all would expect. Much more difficult is to defend the rights of the innocent, who are closely associated with the villains or even the alleged villains. To defend their rights against the baying, outraged, populist response is a much more difficult thing to do. But it is right none the less so to do. Far easier, especially in the heat of the moment, to say ‘lock ‘em all up; withdraw their benefits; throw them out of the community’. It takes a bit of courage to stand against such populism. But are we really saying that a single mother and her children, or maybe a pair of pensioners, are to be put out on the streets? Are we really saying that a disabled partner or indeed a hard-working man should be evicted, because of the errant behaviour of one member of the household? That is the kind of justice which totalitarian regimes used to intimidate people, by punishing entire families.[2]
Cllr Govindia says that ‘evicting rioters is being fair to their neighbours’. He should try saying that to the neighbours of the current mother and daughter who are threatened with eviction for someone else’s actions. Their neighbours are outraged. I believe that they are starting a petition to protect the mother; and why shouldn’t they? She is part of an extremely robust, self-supporting community of largely single mothers. She is a hospital worker and part of a charitable support group on her estate. She is, as you might imagine, having a pretty rough time right now, even without the threat of eviction. And I would have thought that of all people in this chamber, given his background and the impact which Idi Amin had on his family, Cllr Govindia would have known of the injustices that can follow an unthought-through policy of family evictions.[3]
At this point, let me also refer to the cop-out clause used by Cllr Govindia, that in the final analysis the decision to evict will be that of a county court judge. Whilst that is true, it is the excuse of the lame. What is it saying but that the Wandsworth Conservatives are prepared to impose unconsidered and draconian policies upon Wandsworth tenants, because they know that a higher power will stop Wandsworth from carrying out an injustice. But the Council as landlord will meanwhile make their innocent lives Hell. Local authorities which act like that do not deserve to have power devolved to them.
My second principle was that any policy involving the use of evictions should not be arbitrary. But in the case of these post-riot evictions they are and must inevitably be so. Although the Director says that each one will be judged on a case-by-case basis, how can that be when there is no system for the police and the courts to notify the Council of who has been charged and/or convicted of any crimes? How can that be, when the first eviction letter went out within hours of a charge – not even a conviction? How can that be, when by any rational assumptions there must be approximately 200 families in Council accommodation today, who are directly related to current serving prisoners and who have (rightly) not been threatened with eviction?
By the way, the Wandsworth Committee Paper 11-719 for the next Education Committee is an interesting case in point. It says that 14 young people are amongst those charged with riot-related offences. I have learnt today that 5 of these live in Council property (though some may be living in leasehold tenancies) and one is a ‘looked-after child’ in Council care. Children we may think they are but the age of criminal responsibility in this country is actually (and controversially) as low as 10. In fact, it can well be argued that the parents of children as young as these do have some responsibility for their behaviour. And as the Council proposes to evict the parent of an independent 18-year-old, then surely we should be evicting all the families of these young people too? Including those who stand in loco parentis to the ‘looked-after child’? That is, all 60 of us Councillors, and in particular Cllrs Tracey and Dawson, who are the current Wandsworth cabinet members with responsibility for Education and Children’s Services.
In the longer term, it is completely inadequate to retreat into the simplistic, platitudinous analysis that the riots were all down to ‘Criminality, pure and simple’. Possibly in the heat of the moment on 9 August 2011, that was a justifiable response from David Cameron. Yet the analysis looked pretty thin to some of us then and it is looking weaker and weaker with every day since. There clearly does seem to have been a substantial element of criminality and criminal organisation in the Clapham Junction riot on 8 August. But that alone is an insufficient explanation, as it sheds no light on either the timing of the riots – or upon the roots of the criminality. And it says nothing about the epidemic speed and spread of the rioting, which was unprecedented in recent British history – and says nothing to account for the involvement of some rioters, previously unknown to the police. It also helps little in explaining the match between the addresses of those charged with riot-related offences and the most deprived areas of the country. It is said that these were not ‘political’ riots. But they certainly took place in a political context, as everything does. My colleague Cllr Boswell will talk more about that.
I could also say a great deal about the judicial issues involved in this case: such as eviction before trial, guilt by association, double jeopardy; the impact on tenants rather than (say) leaseholders but my colleague Cllr Daley will cover those points.
With more time, I would also have much more to say about the impact of this eviction policy on women and kids, its impact on future generations, and the damage it inflicts upon family cohesion. Just imagine, for example, what the policy of guilt by association would mean if it was applied to the families of all 80,000 prisoners across the UK. It would mean 80,000 families on the streets, and since men constitute the great majority of criminals, victimising women and children who are in need of help rather than hostility. Again, my colleague Cllr Speck will say more on that.
Oh and what a wasteful kind of penal system is this! Do we really think that our society will benefit from all this? Do we believe that this kind of justice, unfairly dispensed, will make the villains more or less inclined to have a stake in our community? Do we think eviction will act as a deterrent? Clearly it will deter families who are Council tenants from turning in their own villains. But I guess that is not the kind of deterrence we are looking for. Apart from anything else, eviction is an expensive process, which will lead to many appeals. And what’s more Councils will have to pick up the pieces, in terms of working with fractured families. That is a theme on which my colleague Cllr Randall has more to say.
Finally, I want to make a comment about the Council tenants’ contracts – and it’s really quite a simple comment – Get Real. Do you expect people, many of whom are desperate for housing, to take on board every word and every nuance of a contract signed years ago? Do you seriously imagine that a contract – signed perhaps even before the villains were born – can be a meaningful guide to all aspects of life? How many of you have read every clause of that software contract which you ticked a box about yesterday? By the way, do you expect a contract which does not even define what is meant by the ‘local area’ (in which crimes are punishable by eviction) to be respected in every detail? One of the principles, which I listed at the start, is to act wisely and humanely. Not in a panic-stricken rush to injustice.
I call upon Wandsworth Council to reject the use of evictions as a means of control and collateral punishment of the innocent, when the crimes committed bear no relationship to local housing management.
[1] Ravi Govindia, ‘Evicting Rioters is being Fair to their Neighbours’, The Times, 16 Aug. 2011, p. 20.
[2] For example, Himmler used that tactic when punishing the family of von Stauffenberg, the man who tried to assassinate Hitler. His wife was sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp and their children given a new identity and put into an orphanage. Himmler based this policy on an old Germanic tradition of punishing criminals’ families as well as the criminals themselves. It was called Sippenhaft (kin liability). Other examples of those who used this policy of family intimidation were Stalin and Mao.
[3] In August 1972, the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin ordered all Ugandans of Indian descent to leave the country within 90 days – triggering a mass exodus of nearly 75,000 people.
Tony Belton
Tony Belton 