This is a guest post by Laurence Dodds and Raziye Akkoc, of EastLondonLines, the excellent news website run by students at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
The London Assembly elections are sometimes overshadowed by the grime and glamour of the mayoral contest. That’s not surprising when last night’s Evening Standard debate gave us the remarkable spectacle of Ken Livingstone joking about having Brian Paddick’s “wheezing” when they make love, Paddick being jovially informed by host Clive Anderson, the comedian, that he’ll have “a job under Ken”, and Boris Johnson accused of “spraying sticky water” everywhere (we promise we’re only taking the last one out of context).
But at 6:30pm on Tuesday, April 17, EastLondonLines is organising a debate between four Assembly candidates in Tower Hamlets, so we have a vested interest in drawing attention to their elections. Our site, run by journalism students at Goldsmiths, University of London, has been following the GLA elections for some time. Despite their relative obscurity, we think they are important – and we want to explain why you should come to our hustings in Bethnal Green next Tuesday.
Our People’s Question Time will see candidates from the four main parties, including current Labour member John Biggs, stand up for their policies and answer questions from the public. We wanted to give people the chance to quiz the hopefuls on whatever issues they please.
Residents in the boroughs covered by the City & East seat – Tower Hamlets, Newham, City, and Barking and Dagenham – will be able meet, hear, and scrutinise the candidates, one of which is likely to win and represent them. Joining Biggs, who has served at City Hall for 12 years, will be John Moss (Conservative), Chris Smith (Green) and Richard Macmillan (Lib Dem).
You can find out more here, see interviews with the candidates here, and find it on Facebook here.
Because its only formal power is to amend the Mayor’s annual budget if two thirds of its members vote that way, the Assembly can appear powerless, the mere nagging spouse of the Mayor.
No doubt this owes to the circumstances of its creation. When Tony Blair was elected in 1997 he had to balance Labour’s longstanding commitment to re-establish direct government in London against the lessons he’d learned from Margaret Thatcher, from whom the city had nearly seceded in the Eighties under Ken Livingstone. Nobody could accuse the former Labour PM of being an inattentive pupil, and it was clear from his frosty antipathy to Ken that he considered city rule a double-edged sword (warning in 2000 of a “disaster” should London re-elect the red renegade). It’s easy to see the Assembly a deliberately toothless animal – a sop to the faithful but spayed so as not to cause additional threat.
Nevertheless, these elections are important. Despite the Assembly’s limited formal powers, it makes a reasonably high rooftop from which to shout your message. Its members have influence, and a platform, and consistent opportunities to report, question, or be quoted. Using its members as opinionated go-to guys is the kind of journalistic shortcut we’re only now learning we should have learned earlier.
More than that, this is an opportunity to voice your opinion on the current government. It isn’t partisan to point out that neither of the parties now in government actually won the election and that both have broken pre-election promises. That makes it more crucial than ever that the public get the chance to update its verdict. In such desperate times, in the depths of a recession, and with a Tower Hamlets council ward by-election in Spitalfields and Banglatown only days away, the results could be interesting – and they will be heard.
For that reason you’re all enthusiastically invited to attend our Assembly election debate on Tuesday April 17, from 6:30 until 8pm at Oxford House in Bethnal Green. No sign-ups or bookings are required. It is our solemn duty to ensure that the four we’ve invited all receive a good grilling, and that is something we trust you can give them. We hope to see you there.
Ted Jeory adds:
Former Tower Hamlets council leader John Biggs would appear to be as safe as houses, but he’s had an interesting journey since moving to City Hall in 2000. When Ken was an independent mayor, John was his self-appointed attack dog; when Ken was back in the Labour fold in 2004, John was his loyal servant; when Boris won in 2008, John moved back to his bullish attack dog mode. And of course, in 2010, John was the big victim of the Labour chaos that eventually led to Lutfur becoming mayor…on the back of Ken’s support.
Trial by Jeory 
Let’s just take your attention to another Hustings, the SBT Bi Election, all the 5 candidates are here, only The Mayor’s candidate Gulam Rabbani, seems to be hiding. To not show to up to an hustings is an insult to the local community.
John Moss is just awful. Awful , awful , awful. Couldn’t care less about anybody but himself.
Oh? What’s he done, Dazza?
Presumably he thiinks that he has bought enough votes so he doesn’t need to bother.
Its what we have come to expect from the mayor and his independents, By keeping a group silent and devisive, they get their way.
Grassroots. Divisive? I could be wrong.
Lutfur Rahman and his stooge Robani do not need to attend any hustings – not just because they don’t give a toss about the white and non-Muslim voters it’s also because they are confident they have enough votes to win. How are they so confident?
Leaks from the Town Hall suggests Lutfur’s Robbani already had over 500 postal votes.
If Ala Uddin and the Labour party are to stand a remote chance of winning this seat they need to get all their people out over the next week or so. This includes: Josh, Michael, Abdul Alim, Mizan, Doros etc. Labour people need to put their differences to one side and show a bit of backbone for a change – if this Lutfur Rahman is to be tuaght a lesson. Please please get the white vote out – that is the only way to stop this extremist from being elected.
Also, to weaken Lutfur Rahman Josh should get back into/ or into (for some) the Labour Party the following people – becuase they would be delighted to leave Lutfur Rahman:
Ohid Ahmed
Rania Khan
Lutfa Begum (Ranias Mum)
Oliur Rahman
Rofique Ahmed.
Come on Josh and Tower Hamlets Labour Party – if you want to kick this self serving Lout Lutfur Rahman out of the Town Hall you need to weaken this guy now. Becuase he thinks there are no other contenders for the Mayoral Election in 2014.
So, if Ohid and some of the others were brought into the Labour Party this would strengthen Josh’s chances.
Er, but what exactly have Labour got to offer any voter? What can they actually deliver? Anything?
Point taken David, but Lutfur and Robani by failing to attend showed their utter contempt for the public beyond their core voters and I think – if my vote matters for anything – I should show my disdain about this.
There are frequently elections and circumstances where you know that the person you want to vote for is very unlikely to win – it is the negative argument over wasted votes often used by Tories to scare Lib Dem or Green voters. Under such logic presumably I should be voting Tory right now because that way my new MP could become part of the Government not the ‘useless’ Opposition. If an overriding concern to make one’s vote count means that everyone slavishly votes for government candidates it would reduce our politics to something like they have in Syria or Kazakhstan.
I am voting for who the one man who can stop the person I hate the most from winning. It is not yet positive voting but it is not giving up and rolling over. Therefore I am voting for Ala Uddin the Labour candidate. I am voting for him because he actually wants my vote and he has personally promised to represent my interests and hear my concerns.
If I do not now vote for him I will be sharing the blame for his defeat and can only thank myself for what comes after. I would also be sharing the blame for rejecting the one reasonable candidate who has a chance of winning in favour of a man who does not even care enough to meet me, let alone help me and whose dodgy victory may well create the circumstances where Lutfur and his ragged band of nasties rejoin Tower Hamlets Labour and then… well then any choice around here would have gone out the window.
Lutfur’s candidates refusal to attend any meetings where non-Bengali people could question him supports many of the things that I have long been saying about the mayor and his team’s utter contempt for the public at large and how non-Bengali people simply do not matter a toss in his new Tower Hamlets. Vote for the one man who can stop him – vote for Ala Uddin.
It looks as if Lex may have committed an offece under the Representation of the Peoples Act as the counting of postal votes is confidential until the declaration of the poll next thursday night. Lex claims to be a membeer of the Labour Party where did he get his information from