Wednesday, July 12, 2006
© Muhammad Haque
By Muhammad HaqueOrganiser
The Brick Lane and the Whitechapel London E1 Area campaign against Crossrail hole Bill
0930 Hrs GMT London Wednesday 12 July 2006
That ‘Crossrail Bill’ is now in the UK Hosue of Commons, 12 July 2006 being allegedly ‘scrutinised’ by the ‘Crossrail Bill Select Committee’]Khoodeelaar! court action may bring wider attention to Crossrail attack on the East End of London than may at first appear to be the case.For a start, the series of actions that is about to begin, will include by definition the type of detailed examination of the evidence against Crossrail that has not been allowed to happen by the CrossRail Bill Select Committee in the UK Hosue of Commons.Although that examination should have taken place, if the claim - that the process of law –making in the UK parliament was taking place – or does take place - at the highest democratic and accountable level were to be justifiableThe realities as we have observed in June 2006 make that [above] expectation a most unrealistic one. The 'meetings' of the UK Housei fo Commons 'Select committee' on the Crossrail Bill were conducted in an openly hostile way to those who had any serious objections to put against the Crossrail Bill.For a start there is no culture of democratic accountability in the UK parliament. No wonder that even a diehard Tory like Quentin Hogg, himself no stranger to constitutional law, was forced to conclude that the system of ‘parliament’ that existed in the UK was one he could describe as an elected dictatorship.A dictatorship, albeit an elected one.But then, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party too had got elected at one stage,!So what is the difference?I shall report on the expected spaces that make up any alleged difference and on the danger of letting the elected dictatorship extinguish any remaining democratic values from the plastic parliament.Can a programme of court actions produce results that a rally of thousands might not be able to? I think it can do. And I am of the view after organising this Khoodeelaar! Campaign for the past 31 months to stop CrossRail digging holes in the Brick Lane and Whitechapel London E1 area and mounting other assaults on the community in the East End of London. Can a programme of court actions produce results that a rally of thousands might not be able to? I think it can do. And I am of the view after organising this Khoodeelaar! Campaign for the past 31 months to stop CrossRail digging holes in the Brick Lane and Whitechapel London E1 area and mounting other assaults on the community in the East End of London. Crossrail threatens to blight most of the Brick Lane and Whitechapel London E1 area community. It threatens to drive out of business a very large section of the small business enterprises. And to make the environment a hundred times worse than it currently is. All for nothing. Mainly to make Canary Wharf expand to the City of London! The mind boggles! We are not expecting anything like the length of the McLibel cases. But we are most empathically about to commence something that may well end up as being the second such court action. Are we right to embark on this? Are we right to say that court actions would cost less person hours than organizing and maintaining massive demonstrations involving thousands of human beings would entail? These questions are pertinent right now as we have reached the last phase before formal foiling of constitutional law challenges in court against the promoters and other institutionalised and institutional touts for the CrossRail project and its threat to the East End of London. Long before the Crossrail Bill Select Committee [House of Commons] formally 'heard' some of the evidence against the CrossRail hole Bill threat to the Brick Lane and Whitechapel London E1 area, Khoodeelaar! the campaign against CrossRail had decided on a set of actions that included a specific constitutional dimension. After witnessing the blatant obstruction against key presenters of anti-CrossRail evidence in the Committee during June 2006, Khoodeelaar! Has now decided to test the UK law in a way that will perhaps bring the Human Rights Act 1998 into very unexpected focus. 1. The main constitutional law allegation that I could find against the Secretary of State was that he lied in and to Parliament, he misled parliament and he wrongly failed to tell the House of Commons fully and duly of the requirement that UK law had to comply with the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental freedoms. 2. That was based on the preliminary and literal reading of the contents of the Crossrail Bill, as introduced to the House of Commons by [the then] Transport Secretary Alistair Darling on 22 February 2005. 3. Having observed since that date the many activities of the Transport Secretary and the rest of the groupings that make up the ‘promoter’ of the Crossrail Bill, it is clear that compatibility with constitutional requirements is not at the top of the priorities of the UK executive seeking to get the Crossrail Bill through Parliament. 4. It has been clear from the behaviour of the two successive holders of the office of Secretary of State at the UK Department for Transport over the past 24 months that compliance with the Treaty obligations on ECHR is nothing more than a nuisance to them and to the Blair regime. They have shown remarkably consistent evidence of hostility to the rule of law and due process and constitutionality for the promotion of the CrossRail project 5. It was only through the sustained campaign on the ground over the past 31 months backed up with original Khoodeelaar!! Legal analyses of the UK executive's behaviour that we have been able to show that the Secretary of State was wrong to have introduced the Crossrail Bill in the shape it was introduced and that he was wrong to have flouted the UK’s constitutional law making treaty obligations that he did. Especially, as I have pointed out on dozens of occasions already including in pieces carried on indymedia UK and international sites, about the abuses of the executive powers to make several hundred million £ available to the promoters without any justification. That abuse of public money ahs included the abuses of the local tiers of peoples and community representation. Where Ruth Kelly herself lives, the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Council has been one abysmally anti-democratic, anti-community, cabal of corruption, misrepresentation of the local people that is found anywhere in the whole of the UK. And has Ruth Kelly said a word in opposition to the corrupt Tower Hamlets Council? Has she spoken a word in support of the community that is threatened by Crossrail? To those who have sought to make light of our legal action programme, we can only s ay, WATCH this space.
© Muhammad Haque
posted by KHOODEELAAR! NO TO CROSSRAIL HOLE BILL
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