Police Response to COVID-19

by Les May

The text below is part of a press release regarding the release of a report by the Home Affairs Committee. I have added my emphasis. The full report can be downloaded from the link at the bottom of the page.

As a result of the COVID-19 epidemic, the police are charged with enforcing unprecedented regulations and restrictions on movement and gatherings in order to save lives and protect the NHS, according to a new report from the Home Affairs Committee.
The report into policing during the epidemic has concluded that the early response from the police has overall been proportionate and effective, and that it is important that any errors and problems continue to be swiftly corrected so that public trust is maintained.
The committee supports the police strategy to engage, explain and encourage, with enforcement as a last resort, and strongly welcomes the vital work of police officers across the country to support the NHS and save lives. It says that adherence to the regulations will ultimately depend on public support and on maintaining the principle of policing by consent.
Given the pace at which the new regulations had to be implemented, the Committee concludes that some early errors were not surprising. It welcomes police forces making public corrections and apologies when mistakes are made, and calls on them to ensure training and proper checks are in place.
The report was finalised before the latest publication College of Policing guidance on reasonable excuses to leave home, and the release of enforcement data from police forces this week which shows a wide variation between 380 enforcement notices served by Lancashire police and 38 enforcement notices served by Greater Manchester Police. The report calls for regular monitoring by the NPCC* and College of Policing where there is significant divergence in the use of enforcement measures.
The report highlights the importance of parks and green spaces during lockdown, especially for families with children and those in urban areas who don’t have gardens or outdoor space, and raises concern about parks being closed to everyone because some people are deliberately flouting social distancing regulations, without first trying enforcement measures against those individuals. It urges police forces and local authorities to work in partnership to see whether proper enforcement action can help keep parks and green spaces open for everyone else instead.
*National Police Chiefs' Council

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5801/cmselect/cmhaff/232/232.pdf

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The Slow Death of an Institution

by ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’

A COUPLE of years ago the Rochdale Observer published a report of a march by one of those three initial right wing groups ostensibly protesting about the grooming of teenage girls by a gang of Asian men.  The then leader of Rochdale Council, Richard Farnell, castigated the paper because he objected to the prominence given to the report. He wanted powers to ban such marches in future ostensibly on the grounds that they ‘scapegoated an entire community’. In other words he did not think that the people of Rochdale had any right to know what was going on in their town if he did not approve of it.

A week later the ‘Your Views’ section of the paper devoted to letters sent in by readers carried a contribution praising the report and objecting to both Farnell’s attempt to prevent legitimate protest and his attempt to keep residents from knowing about it.

In 2014, Simon Danczuk published a book about the town’s former MP, Cyril Smith, who had died four years earlier. I will be charitable and say that the book was not very good.   It contained material taken from Smiths ghosted autobiography, material that was clearly derivative from a 1979 piece in Rochdale Alternative Paper (RAP) about Smith unsavoury antics at Cambridge House hostel, material that was later shown to be demonstrably wrong and a lot of assertions for which there was no evidence produced, but which had the effect of making any further claims about Smith’s behaviour unreliable.

Throughout the summer of 2014 the Rochdale Observer carried material, thought by some people to have been placed by an associate of Mr Danczuk, which tried to implicate the local Lib-Dems in a ‘cover up’ designed to ensure that other things about Smith did not become known.

Also throughout the summer the ‘Your Views’ section of the paper regularly carried letters pointing out the deficiencies in Danczuk’s book and why it was not a reliable record.

If Richard Farnell had been allowed to get away with his objection to the original report it might just have had the effect of making the editor a bit more cautious next time.  It wasn’t the Home Affairs Select Committee which challenged Danczuk’s fanciful stories about Smith’s supposed antics being covered up by Special Branch and of Westminster paedophile rings, it was letters in the ‘Your Views’ columns of the Rochdale Observer.

In recent years there’s been a competitor to the Observer in the shape of the web based media outlet Rochdale Online which included a vibrant ‘Letters’ section.  Whichever of these news outlets a letter writer chose one thing was certain its contents would be scrutinised by local politicians.

Sadly that is a thing of the past. The Rochdale Observer first cut down the space devoted to letters from readers, then reduced the frequency of the column to the point where some things are out of date by the time they appear. Rochdale Online went the whole hog and got rid its letters pages completely.

A liberal democracy like ours needs these self correcting mechanisms.  Politicians need close scrutiny. Ideas need to be challenged.   We are moving to a time when politicians and journalists will have a monopoly on the dissemination of ideas. Twitter and Facebook are no substitute for a vibrant ‘Letters’ page in a newspaper or its web based equivalent.   With both Twitter and Facebook it is easy to become locked into a world in which we only hear the views of people we agree with.

Contributions to ‘Letters’ pages in newspapers aren’t perfect.  They can be badly written, erudite, bigoted, idealistic, trivial, important, liberal, conservative, revolutionary or reactionary.   But in local newspapers they give people a sense of belonging because they allow them to have their voice heard.  Our society will be all the worse for their loss.

Les May justifies attack on Simon Danczuk

DEAR JOHN (WALKER),

YOUR response to my Northern Voices piece ‘Same Old Danczuk’ highlights the stark difference in the way that you approach investigative journalism and the way that Danczuk approaches it.   In your piece you specify the questions which need to be asked and who they should be asked of; that is not Danczuk’s way of doing things.   He resorts to a ‘scattergun’ approach in which he fires off a lot of vague accusations in the hope that some of them will stick.

His book ‘Smile for the Camera’ devotes chapter 10 (pages 237 to 256) to Smith’s relationship with the Liberals. It is full of second hand stories taken from people who were willing to talk to him.   At the end Danczuk concludes ‘Cyril abused people both as a Labour councillor and as a Liberal MP and no political party was ever able to stop him’.  There is nothing in the previous twenty pages, or indeed the rest of the book, to justify the second half of this sentence.

Danczuk has used this tactic of vague, but damaging, accusations before.  After Leon Brittan died in January 2015, Danczuk said ‘Sir Leon is someone who should have faced questions and been compelled to give evidence to the inquiry over his role as home secretary in the 1980s when a dossier containing allegations of establishment child abuse was handed to him.  We had a similar carefully placed story about a ‘dossier’ in the Rochdale Observer in 2014.  The so called dossier was in fact some notes made of a telephone conversation by someone in the office of Lib-Dem MP Liz Lynne.

If Danczuk had drawn attention to the fact that David Steel knew in 1979 exactly what the allegations against Smith were and was aware of the evidence for them being true, then I would have felt this was entirely justified, as he was in pointing out that Steel nominated Smith for a knighthood (p243).  What I objected to, and still do, is that he implied that Cyril’s behaviour at Cambridge House had continued and that the local and national Liberals were aware of this and had protected him.  That is just too vague to be taken seriously as in the absence of specifics it can never be refuted.

Danczuk’s desire for other people to be asked questions by the IICSA is not matched by his willingness to answer questions himself.  He avoided answering questions about his book from the Home Affairs Select Committee in 2014 by turning the spotlight on Leon Brittan and he has avoided being asked questions by the IICSA.

LES MAY

Zero Tolerance and Simon Danczuk

By Les May

SIMON Danczuk’s remarks about beggars in Rochdale town centre, or as he would have it 'aggressive’ beggars, has predictably provoked quite a lot of moral outrage.

But to what extent can they be regarded merely as ‘alternative facts’?  Fortunately we don’t have to look far to get a picture of the reality of life for those who drink and/or beg in our streets.  And who better to provide it for us than Simon himself? 

Simon sees himself as something of an ‘expert’, because he was involved in research which was published by the homelessness charity ‘Crisis’ in 2000.  Now I have read his research, and I don’t think his recent comments can be said to follow from the data he collected.

In particular he seems to be promoting a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to begging, to be downplaying the lack of both overnight accommodation and the support needed to get people off the streets, and overemphasising the role of drug addiction. A dangerous ploy for someone who has admitted to the use of Ecstasy and Cannabis, and seems to have significant knowledge of the effects of alcohol.   

A memorandum submitted to the Home Affairs Committee by ‘Crisis’ in 2005 said:

‘Begging and street homelessness constitute two overlapping parts of a broader homelessness problem, "research from across England—including Manchester, Brighton, Leeds, Blackpool, Bristol, Chester, Leicester, Westminster, Woolwich and Luton has consistently found that the vast majority people begging are homeless".'

So what did Crisis have to say about Simon’s report?

This:

'It is the contention of the report that reliance upon police enforcement policies such as zero tolerance schemes are an inappropriate response to a complex problem' and 'Of all those surveyed, just over half had slept rough the previous night and four in five where vulnerably housed.'

Do I detect a shift to the right?  Or is it just that Simon’s own addiction is to self publicity?

You can find both the original report and the summary at the links below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_facts

http://www.crisis.org.uk/data/files/publications/Walk%20on%20By%20%28summary%29.pdf 

http://www.crisis.org.uk/data/files/document_library/research/walkonby_full.pdf 

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmhaff/80ii/80we15.htm

Relevance of Immigration in the UK Referendum

by Les May

YESTERDAY the Home Affairs Select Committee chaired by Yvette Cooper launched an inquiry into developing a consensus on an effective immigration policy. 

She said, ‘Immigration is one of the most important issues facing our country and will be central to the Brexit deal. Britain voted for change, especially on free movement, but there has been very little debate about what kind of reforms or immigration control that should now mean or how we get the best deal for the country.’   

Which isn’t strictly true.  In the recent referendum the only question that was asked was whether or not we wanted to leave or stay in the European Union.  There was no question about immigration, the single market, or about the wider question of free movement of people, good, capital and services, so no politician has the right to infer anything from the vote other than that a majority of people voted to leave the EU. This isn’t sophistry, it’s just a fact.   

Fixating on immigration ignores all the other reasons why people may have chosen to vote ‘leave’. Is immigration a significant factor in the growth of inequality? Is it really the reason why some people are paying out a third of their disposable income to rent a house for which they have little security of tenure?  Is it really the reason why some people have become reliant on food banks to ward off starvation?  Is it really the reason that some people feel they have been ‘left behind’ by globalization?  

No! It’s not that ‘they’ have come here to steal our jobs, its that our companies have exported jobs to ‘them’ to line the pockets of CEOs.

In the 1980s the ‘Chicago school’ of economists argued that companies should be run for the benefit of the ‘owners’.  The natural consequence of this was that the proportion of money going to wage earners fell and that to shareholders increased.

 http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/EMO%202012%20Eng_Chapter%203.pdf  

One way of boosting profits still further is to export manufacturing jobs to low wage economies in the Far East.  Check out where your Dyson vacuum was made.   

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2752100/800-jobs-to-go-as-sad-Dyson-moves-factory-to-Far-East.html  

Whether you think that Cooper belongs to it or not there is a strand in the Labour party the best way to fight off a challenge from UKIP for the so called ‘Labour vote’ is to emulate UKIP and start parroting ‘something must be done about immigration’. The effect of this will be to let the Tories off the hook as architects of our present era of ‘casino capitalism’ where a few winners take all and the rest of us squabble about what is left. 

I’m told that Corbyn has never said anything to indicate that he has any time for ‘populism’.  The indications are that he, and Diane Abbot, will tackle UKIP’s populist policies head on.  But that could bring them into conflict with those in the Labour party who think the best way forward is to become a kind of ‘UKIP Lite’. 

In summer the writers of ‘think pieces’ were speculating that the Right and Left wings would end up fighting over the carcase of the Labour party.  But if the recent referendum told us anything it’s that people do not always feel bound by those traditional allegiances.  How long before those same writers are predicting the death of the Labour party as its splits into those who are willing to scapegoat immigrants to garner votes and those who are not?