Eating Fish ‘N’ Chips with Ken to help fight off Boris

Last night I went to a Labour Party fund raising “Meet Ken Livingstone and the Assembly candidates” event at the historic Old Town Hall in Stratford, London. At the balcony of this former “West Ham” town hall, in 1892 election, Keir Hardie the first ever elected “Independent Labour MP”, gave a victory speech to supporters gathered outside.

The main hall was full with about 300 people present. A number of trade unions and local CLP’s had adopted tables. We of course had a UNISON table. Apart from the “Fish ‘N’ Chips” and free pickled unions and wallies (aka as pickled gherkins) we had the usual Labour Party raffle and auction (prizes ranged from such as a free trip to the European parliament via Eurostar to “Tea at the House of Commons Terraces” with Harriet Harman. The mystery prize was a (new!) pair of boxer shots with a design of the London underground system upon them.

Ken’s speech was as usual very good. Apart from being generally engaging, and at times very funny he can also switch very quickly to being serious and sombre (BNP). He gave a 30 minute speech without any notes. I have already heard Ken speak several times this campaign in person and on the TV and he somehow is able to make it different, fresh and thought provoking each time.

This time what impressed me was his obvious personal outrage not only at the prospect of an ignorant right wing toff as the Mayor and a BNP assembly member representing his beloved London. But the chronic shortage of affordable housing in London brought about by 18 years of deliberate and ideologically Tory failure to build new affordable homes to rent for London. The housing problem for London is not immigrants coming into London but the decision to sell off homes and not build new ones.

Many existing Labour Assembly member were there drumming up support. We spoke to top Local City & East AM John Biggs, Leader of the Labour group Len Duvall (UNISON member), Lambeth & Southwark AM Valerie Shawcroft and London wide member Murad Qureshi, (UNISON member of the London Housing Association branch!), Bow East Cllr Alex Heslop (UNISON member) for Bromley and Bexley. Tower Hamlets Council leader, Denise Jones, joined us to eat her Fish ‘N’ Chips, listened to Ken before rushing off to another meeting.

We were able to lobby (pushing a very, very open door) London MEP Claude Moreas over equal rights for agency and temporary workers.

At the end there was a London Music Hall act who by co-incidence sang my favourite song of that era “The Lambeth Walk”.

Bow Boys

Ayub has already posted this picture of Candidates outside last night’s selection meeting. However, “extracting the michael” slightly. It reminds me somewhat of the famous Peter Sellers “lift gag”. Right to left John Biggs (London Assembly member GMB), Cllr Ayub Korom Ali (UNISON nominee), Cllr Alex Heslop (UNISON), Mohamed Munaf Zina Zeena, David Edgar (T&G), a local member whose name I did not catch (who said that he had been visited at his home by 31 candidates so far!) and Dr. Hasanat M. Husain MBE.

Dan McCurry and Abdus Shukur were the only other candidates that I remember seeing. There are, I think, 3 more selection meetings. Bow West meets 7pm tonight at St Paul’s, Stephens Road, E3.