Vauxhall News

I was slithering around the icy pavements in Herne Hill on Saturday with other Lambeth Green Party activists helping the local election campaign there. Cllr Becca Thackray is our excellent councillor there and despite being a lone Green councillor in Lambeth has achieved a great deal in her almost four years on the council. Becca is not standing for re-election, due to family and other commitments but we are putting up some new first class candidates there. One of the sitting councillors is Labour's Jim Dixon, and considering the mess that Lambeth's finances are in - one need only read the South London Press each week for a new expose - he will have some difficult questions to answer in this campaign.

I was unable to attend the Lambeth Police Consultative Committee meeting last week due to having to be at another meeting, but my colleague Shane Collins, the Green Party Parliamentary Candidate for Dulwich & West Norwood, did attend as per usual and put some questions for me. Firstly, I asked how the award of the Queen's Policing Medal to Asst Commissioner Cressida Dick, who was the commander on the ground during the Stockwell shooting operation where an innocent man, Jean Charles de Menezes, was shot, would help relations between the community and the police in Lambeth. This during the week when a permanment memorial to Jean Charles was erected at Stockwell Underground station - and Transport for London deserve credit for allowing it to be placed there. There has long been a makeshift memorial there but it is good that there is something more permanent. It simply beggars belief that nobody has ever been found responsible for these actions.

Shane also asked on my behalf about the Lambeth Police LGBT Liaison Officer and was told that there was someone still in post. I also put a question about the figures for homophobic hate crime in Vauxhall, considering there has been a noticeable increase across London. The police said that these figures were available on the website.This is not an altogether satisfactory response for me and I will be doing further digging about this. Vauxhall is, after Soho, London's second 'gay village' and I would be surprised if it has been isolated from the homophobic violence in the rest of London.

Finally, the South London Press last Friday published my letter on the award of the medal to Asst Commr Cressida Dick which is below.

"I read with interest your account of the New Year's Honours List on January 1st but one significant award was not mentioned. As someone standing for the election in the constituency of Vauxhall, which includes Stockwell, where an innocent man, Jean Charles de Menezes, was killed by the Metropolitan Police in 2005. I wish to express my shock and revulsion at the award of the Queen's Police Medal to Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick, the woman who oversaw a lot of the operation. I share the concern and anger of the de Menezes family campaigners over this - and what a slap in the face it is for them after everything else they have suffered. Once again it demonstrates that the establishment will alwyas rally round for its own and the victims will be left voiceless. The circumstances of this case were simply too murky and there are questions which have never been answered. To grant this award now is, I believe, an utter disgrace."