The battle against guns will be won at the grassroots

This is an article I wrote for Progress, the magazine of Labour's Progressives.

Lambeth calling

The battle against guns will be won at the grassroots

01 October 2007

This summer, our cities have seen a number of young people, typically teenage boys, slain on our streets. A rising sense of moral panic, ramped up by a media hungry for summer stories, has seen politicians of all parties trying to address an issue which is no stranger to Lambeth.

Here, crime is the Labour administration’s top priority, being the main concern of residents. There were over 3,000 fewer offences committed last year, the fifth successive year of crime reduction. But seven murders in a nine-week period have again underlined the need to continue to address violent crime among young people.

Sadly, too many politicians respond in a default way. I never thought I would hear a Tory leader quoting the Sex Pistols, but for David Cameron to talk about ‘anarchy in the UK’ is doubly disturbing. First, because it feeds a sensationalist media agenda, and, second, because it was the social conditions created by the Conservatives’ legacy which contributed to the problems of inner-city violence that we see today.

Some of Cameron’s proposals are welcome, but I cannot believe that the Conservatives are serious about correcting the social ills which they did so much to bring about. Eighteen years of Thatcherite rule saw horrendous riots in Brixton and other parts of the country, and pushed aspiration and wellbeing in Britain’s black and minority ethnic communities to an all time low. The decimation of urban and industrial areas in the 1980s and early 1990s created both a black and a white underclass.

In 1997, Labour was entrusted with the task of tackling these inequalities. Over the past decade optimism has been repaid with better schools and measures to address poverty, as well as Sure Start. But action has been focused too much on broad national intention and not enough on very localised application.

Neither local government, the police, the health service nor the voluntary sector, have yet been trusted enough by the centre to work together on local solutions. The government has introduced tougher legislation to deal with criminality. But more needs to be done to encourage localised action on the causes of crime - poor housing, poverty, school exclusions, drugs, absent fathers and fractured families.

Strong, patient and responsible action is needed in places like Lambeth. Guns and gangs have been a growing problem for years, and it will take years to grow the solutions. In Lambeth we are prepared for a long, determined journey with our communities, and our police. A gangs commission, set up by Lambeth Council, is currently taking a comprehensive look at our problem.

We are realists. It may take 10 years, probably more, working with children from the earliest age and their parents before we see tangible benefits. In the meantime, we are in much need of stronger legislation on weapons and drugs. But we also require funding and support from the government to engage better with young people and their families, to improve council housing and build another secondary school in addition to the two we are now building.

More ‘role models’ are an obvious and talked-about answer, but the best and most consistent role models are good parents, and the best places to learn how best to live are first in the home, and second in a strong community with inclusive facilities for study and leisure.

Yes, we should be also be tough. Crime and antisocial behaviour are intolerable. Discipline is everything, in the home, in school and on the street. The government is right to tackle crime and poverty, but it must also give greater attention to the strains of debt on low-income families and the pull of consumerism on our children.

It is in our communities that the lasting solutions will be emerge - better parenting, more encouragement through school, proud neighbourhoods that celebrate young people and prepare them for a future as working citizens, equipped with the skills to raise families, walk away from conflict with their peers and to live useful lives within the law.

Mark Bennett is Labour councillor for Lambeth and cabinet member for safer communities.

The Importance of Being Ernest's Great-Grandson

I travelled up by train to a family barbecue in North London today, hosted by my cousin John Garrad.

Part of the reason for getting together was for older members of what has become quite a far-flung family to share old photographs, memories, keepsakes and the like, and for younger members of the family to get to know each other better.

It was fascinating to read the obituary (pictured) of my great-grandfather, Ernest Garrad, from the TOT (Train Omnibus Tram, a friendly society, a forerunner of the London Transport Benevolent Fund) magazine of December 1929. Ernest started life in the East End as a road-sweeper, the son of a policeman. He served with the 20th Hussars in India, South Africa and the Great War. He served with Kitchener's and then Roberts' Horse, and in the Great War was a motor mechanic.

He was latterly a ticket collector at St James's Park tube station, by coincidence the station I used frequently when I was working for the Labour Party at Old Queen Street. I've always felt really at ease at St James's Park, and now I know why.

I'm supposed to have been given my middle name after this man. However, for mysterious reasons, it appears that he used the name Ernest and the name Edward, and my grandmother was under the impression that his name was Edward. So my middle name is Edward when it should really be Ernest!

As Wilde said "It is a divine name. It has a music of its own. It produces vibrations ... The only really safe name is Ernest."

So maybe I'll have to change it, or add it in.

Gordon Brown Wows the USA

If proof were needed of Gordon Brown's stature as a statesman, his visit to the United States, which included the remarkable move of getting the United Nations to back a peace plan for Darfur, has provided it. A friend in Washington has sent me the following link to a pro-Gordon paean by Brent Budowsky, who goes as far as wishing that our new Prime Minister could be President of the United States.

"Imagine," says Mr Budowsky "an American president who would speak as Gordon Brown speaks, and do what Gordon Brown proposes to do!

"November 2008 is coming and Americans will be astonished at the outpouring of idealism, optimism and excitement when the dead hand of the current course is removed, and a new government brings new life to our democracy and renewed
appeal as a beacon for the world.

"Gordon Brown, a man who prepared to be prime minister for a decade, has spoken the words with eloquence, and offered the plan with depth, that is a gateway to the future and a forerunner to what is coming.

"A new Democratic president, backed by a new Democratic Congress, working with a brilliant British prime minister, backed by a Labour Party majority in Parliament, would create a program that would rally support throughout the world, lifting two proud nations while lifting the aspirations of people everywhere."

http://thehill.com/op-eds/gordon-brown-for-president-2007-08-01.html

Cameron's leadership: A Miraj

How amusing but also how appalling to hear David Cameron on the Today programme this morning, lashing out at anyone who has recently dared to criticise his leadership of the Tory party. I suppose if he attacks everybody, then that makes him inclusive.

Cameron was actually on the airwaves to tout his latest policy idea, which is to take away the right of appeal from children who have been excluded from schools. To my mind, as a school governor, the appeal process is vital, giving an opportunity for a child's case to be scrutinised by a higher 'court of appeal' than the school, allowing for justice to revisited and done if the exclusion has been unfair. Cameron, incidentally, got it wrong in saying that "perhaps" school governors could sit and hear exclusion cases as if that was some new idea that had just occurred to him. Governors already do that, the final decision does not rest with the head teacher as Cameron appears to believe.

Then it was on to the meat of the interview, Cameron's wobbly leadership of dissenting Conservatives.

Ali Miraj, on the board of two Tory policy reviews and the man who introduced Cameron at the launch of his leadership campaign, has become disillusioned, asking for "some substance and some credibility and not box-ticking and gimmickry". He has also said that "Cameron in my view has got substance, somewhere in there, but I'm afraid that in recent weeks, that has been taken over by PR."

Showing a spectacular lack of substance and a rather immoderate temper to judge by his rising tone of voice, Cameron hit out at Mr Miraj saying "I think listeners will draw their own conclusions about someone who one day asks for a peerage, to be elevated to the House of Lords, and the next minute launches a great attack on the leader of the Conservative Party."

With what evidence does Cameron make this serious assertion? Miraj has denied it.

Miraj, a former Conservative councillor and twice a parliamentary candidate, has responded: "Instead of engaging with the actual significant points I was making, he is trying to smear me now, which in my view is very, very disappointing and smacks of a complete lack of integrity. They can smear me as much as they want. They will be the losers if they don't engage with the points I have made."

Cameron then turned his anger on Lord Saatchi, who has said that "nicey-nicey" politics will not help the Tories win the next election. Cameron said, paying scant heed to the 18 years of Conservative rule (when of course the guiding Thatcherite motto was that there was no such thing as society) that his "answer to Maurice Saatchi is that the big question facing Britain today is how to mend our broken society."

Next up for scorn was Lord Stanley Kalms, the party donor, who last week dared to opine that Cameron's Conservatives "need to do some rethinking". Cameron retorted: "I don't think he knows what's going on in the Conservative party review groups. Stanley Kalms has never supported the Conservative party under my leadership. He takes a very backward looking view of these things."

I wonder whether any of this would be happening now if David Davis had won the Conservative leadership. Perhaps ordinary Conservative voters outside Mr Cameron's metro-bubble are wondering too. Is he thinking what they're thinking? I doubt it.

Richard Stott

I was deeply saddened when I heard this morning that Richard Stott, with whom I worked closely during the editing process for the single volume of Alastair Campbell's diaries, died this morning from the pancreatic cancer he had been fighting against for much the project.

I had known Richard slightly ever since I worked in the Downing Street press office, but got to know him well as we went about the protracted editing process. I came to admire him as a journalist of great flair and fibre, and phenomenal energy. He coped with the disease with immense courage and bullish good humour, as well as what I would describe as an optimistic fatalism, often shown in sudden flashes of biting - but good-natured - wit, very often at his own expense.

I will always recall the long discussions we had about the relative merits of one form of words over another for various footnotes. He would often correct me over a point of syntax, and I would often correct him back on a point of detail. He never got impatient or gave the impression that he thought his view (ie as one of the great modern newspaper editors) was any more valid than the whippersnapper he had been asked to work with.

The last time I saw him, perhaps a few months ago, he had just had weeks of therapy and seemed to be very much on top of the cancer, cracking jokes - usually at the expense of the man he called either "Campbell" or (for more pointed fun) "the diarist", who had worked for Richard when he was editor of Today. Working closely with Richard was a great education and great entertainment - he would frequently have me in stitches with a mischievous remark, lobbed like a hand grenade into the most serious conversations.

I can remember at that last meeting, a long evening called to take careful stock of where we were with the diaries with publication looming, that despite his obvious ill-health he had the team laughing off our worries for him. He did a very funny and totally spot-on impression of Alastair reading out his work for the audiobook version with every snort and throat-clearing that anyone who has had a conversation with AC would recognise instantly.

I'm sure Richard was pleased to know that The Blair Years was published, and I know AC made a point of driving to see him in hospital, where he had worked on the last proofs of the book, where he was presented with the very first copy off the presses.

I am sorry I will never see or talk with Richard again. He was a good man, a Labour man, and only 63. Cancer is the cruellest of diseases.

Streatham Vale Flower Show

Since I was elected as a councillor, I have attended the Flower Show that is held biannually in the Holy Redeemer Church Hall in the Vale. It's always a fun event, organised by the Streatham Vale Property Occupiers Association, harking back to the earliest days of the Vale in the late twenties and early thirties, when the residents would vie to win various cups and shields for their garden and allotment produce, their cakes and their jams.

The show is still going strong today, and today's event saw trestle tables displaying the best in flower and vegetable arragements. Tea was served, old friends caught up with news and raffle tickets were sold - I won a nice little paintbox for my nephew when the draw was made by excited local children, overseen by former Conservative councillor for Streatham Vale (1986-98), Simon Hooberman.

The Flower Show is a testament to continuity, and the strength of the community young and old in Streatham Vale.

It's Gordon and Harriet

I was up in Manchester today for the Leadership Conference, held in the Bridgewater Hall. It was a really positive event, and it was nice to see Lambeth well represented there.

The announcement of the results for Deputy Leader were pure political theatre, with twists, turns and suspense throughout. There were gasps as the results were read out by Mike Grffiths of the NEC, and consolatory applause as one candidate was knocked out of each round.

Finally, it came down to two candidates - Alan Johnson, tipped by many as the favourite (who had been nominated by Streatham CLP) and Harriet Harman, who eventually won. Sky News had announced Johnson as the winner minutes before the announcement, only to have to retract and apologise, proving the old saying about Sky - "never wrong for long".

Coming out of the hall, there were a lot of long faces, and a lot of shocked ones. I went to the bar with some friends and we watched as various followers of various candidates got their bags and drifted home.

This all goes to show that the Labour Party can do the surprising thing, even surprise itself. She's only been elected for a matter of hours, but I have no doubt that Harriet will be a notable Deputy Leader, who will attract many people back to the party, and new members too.

I spoke to an old friend from '97 on the phone this evening and he said, wisely: "Harriet wanted it enough. The others didn't. She won." And now that she has won, we should all support her to do the job.

It was a historic occasion - seeing Gordon Brown accept the leadership, and Tony Blair standing down. Gordon made an acceptance speech that was ambitious, substantial and serious, with much for local government to think about. The poll results today - putting Labour significantly ahead of the Tories - stand us in good stead as we embark on a new era of Labour government.