Thank you all for being here tonight.
It's really good to see so many faces. I
just wanted to say that actually a few
days ago we went out canvasing and it
was very heartwarming to see such a warm
community that was so welcoming. You
know, smiles and and greetings makes a
bit of a change from where I'm from in
London where people barely look at you.
So, thanks again for that and thanks all
for being here tonight. Uh now our first
speaker is one of those uh men that
people rather that uh mothers would
point to their children and say listen
if you do your homework correctly this
is how you'll end up. Uh he's an
inspiration to to many communities. He
he went to university did brilliantly
got a fantastic job and was so good at
his job in fact that um they offered him
to go and set up operations in glamorous
Dubai. uh he did amazingly well and with
the skills that he gathered from his
work experience there, he decided to put
all those um all those valuable skills
in fact to set up an amazing charity in
South Africa that provides hot meals for
vulnerable children who cannot afford to
go to school and who can't go there
unless you on an they have no choice
other than to go on an empty stomach.
And what MUT has done is set up a
charity that provides hot meals for lo
for many children who who would
otherwise not be able to go to school.
So I think just for that that's pretty
inspiring. Um I've in the short time
that I've known him, I've seen somebody
who's really dedicated to his community
and who really wants to to work
tirelessly for it. So I really do
believe that Harrow could not be in
better hands than in those
often feel welcome.
Thank you very much for that kind and
beautiful introduction. Again, ladies
and gentlemen, uh thank you all for
being here today. It's an absolute
pleasure. A lot of familiar faces of uh
people that work and live in this area
and people we met over the weekend. So,
thank you for being here and
friends. I have been doing a lot of
reading and research of Harrow. I would
rather come straight to the punch line.
A lot of you have been waiting uh for
some time. Um I've been reading catching
figures and facts about this
neighborhood where I live. Uh and I
wanted to present all that to you. But
actually while I was sitting here
escorting people in, I decided not to
bother with that. I thought that's not
the best way to talk about Harrow. Um
there is something that happened to me
just a few days ago in South Harrow. Um
a lot of you probably realize we were
canvasing. A lot of our posters are up
and down the high street in the local
shops. Uh we were knocking a lot of
residential doors uh to invite people
for this uh very important event. Um and
I knocked on one particular residential
street just uh down the corner and uh as
I was talking to the gentleman in that
house uh inviting him to our event and
uh telling him all the benefits that we
could have with George Galloway as our
mayor. Um I asked him a very simple
question. You know, what things can we
do for you? And he actually laughed.
Very charming guy. He looked at me and
he said, "Follow me." Um, he walked me
through his street, walked me to the,
uh, high street where his road uh, met.
Uh, and he said, "This is a problem I
face on a daily basis. What can you do
to solve this?" I was a bit taken back
cuz I couldn't quite understand what he
was showing me. What I saw, ladies and
gentlemen, was a handful of youths just
standing on the corner. Uh, people that
live in South Harrow, that work in this
neighborhood, they know what I'm talking
about. Again I questioned Mr. Look sir
you know I don't have much time for
this. What is it you're showing me? And
he said keep looking and you you'll see
what I what my problem
is. There were maybe five or six youths
different nationalities no more than 16
or
18. And I kept observing them and
listening to what what's going on. And
then I saw what was wrong. They were
actually selling drugs on the
corner. Uh and I was shocked. Uh, I was
shocked not because they're selling
drugs, which is an absolutely disgusting
evil thing in our society and it
shouldn't happen anyway, but I was
shocked because it was happening at
6:45 at a peak evening time when
residential people are coming home from
work when people are walking to the
corner shops and buying groceries. It
happened at such a peak time when if you
know this area, you know, five, six,
seven, it's a busy time. It's not a
quite deadbeat time where you will
expect things like this to happen in the
corners. No, it wasn't. So, I was quite
concerned because people were walking
through them, walking past them, uh were
ignoring them. And if I looked a little
bit further, I saw South Har police
station not more than 100, 200 meters
away. So, I'm watching these young guys
doing what they're doing and I'm seeing
South Har police
station stones throw away. Don't know
about you ladies and gentlemen, but for
me that doesn't make any sense. It's
absolutely wrong.
So, as evil as what those children or
those youths were doing for whatever
reason it was, I I it brought a lot of
things home for me and I realized
there's a lot more problems in our
society in our communities than one or
two acts of crime.
It's the lack of community
spirit, the lack of respect and love for
your fellow neighbor. You see, we are
Londoners of all colors, of all
different religions. We are here. This
is our hometown. This is our
neighborhood.
And what came home to me, forgive me if
I'm if I'm going off on one, is just I
felt very sad to see these things
happening on a daily basis. What is that
guy going to tell his children when he
picks them up from school? And I don't
want to point him out. That gentleman is
sitting here. So, thank you very much
for coming. It wasn't a wasted exercise.
You showing me what was going on. I
said, "Good to see you." Um, but then it
it makes you think. It makes you ask the
question, what's wrong with our
communities? Why are we not functioning
properly? Why is an issue happening on
the street and you all of you people
cannot come together as one voice and
address the issue? Tackle the problem.
If you can't do anything, at least make
it a pro. Make it a voice that you can
speak to the person you've elected, the
person that is representing you in
parliament, in local council. At least
tell them this is what we're facing on a
daily basis. Not just antisocial
disorder. A lot of the local shops are
complaining about lack of parking, lack
of facilities. A lot of the local shop
guys said if we have an issue, it takes
us almost two to three working days just
to get through to somebody in council
over the
phone. So guys, where is the problem?
What is the problem? We either we put a
blind eye towards it or we choose to
ignore it. The problem comes from home
from grassroots lack of community
spirit. We you all need to take
ownership of your area. You need to take
ownership of where you live. Talking on
ownership and where you live, I'd just
like to ask a question. If people can
just show show me by a raise of hands,
who knows who their elected member of
part elected member of GLA is for Haro
and
Bread? One hand. No. Good. Anyone
else?
Two. That's fantastic. So, we're what 80
90 if we just round it off. Roughly 100
people uh are in the room, give and
take. Um and two people raised their
hands. So, that's just 2%.
2% of this burough, 2% of Harrow have an
idea of the person that's representing
them in GLA, the candidate. Um, so what
about the 98% of you? 98% of you either
you didn't vote, maybe you didn't care,
or maybe you voted for someone else. But
here's the problem with politics. If you
use your vote or you don't use your
vote, politics is involved in your life
on a daily basis. you are engaged in the
way things and the way this city let's
talk about the burough the way this
burough is functioned we can just yeah I
see a few faces there I didn't vote you
know what I didn't vote for the last
mayor cuz I wasn't in the country but I
didn't
vote but that's my problem and that's my
that's that's what I'm trying to express
to
you there is a person elected by this
burough by the people that live in this
burough by the members of this community
you have a person that you've elected to
look after you, to deal with your
issues, to identify the problems that
you face on a daily basis, but you do
not know who he is and you can't
approach him. So, how do you expect to
turn things around? Very simple thing
I'm talking about. A lot of the people
don't even know the local MP that live
that works them in the area. We're
talking about a GLA candidate. Again,
many people don't know what a GLA is.
This person represents your burough.
This person is in charge of scrutinizing
the mayor. This person is in charge of
asking the mayor, you have 17 billion
pounds a year budget. How much of that
are you spending in in in Harrow or in
Brent? How much of that are we using to
improve the policing to make it a bit
more effective to reduce crime? How much
of that is coming to our burough with
regards to social housing which we don't
have enough
of? Regeneration is a very simple thing
and a very simple word but there's not
much of it happening. If you go to Pina,
you'll see regeneration there. It's a
beautiful part of Harrow, but it is
Harrow. You go to Harrow on the hill,
you'll see a whole different part of
Harrow. A very glamorous, up market,
posh part of Harrow, but it is Harrow.
South Harrow is also Harrow. The whole
burough is one. So then why are parts of
it neglected and parts of it ignored and
parts of it
cherished? Can anyone please explain
that to me? Harrow as a council, maybe
you guys don't know.
We are the third highest council
taxpaying burough in this city. The
third just behind Siri and King um
Kingston
upon the third. But then if you look at
the lifestyle and the comparison of life
that we have, we don't share the same.
According to an article independent I
read, we are the fourth lowest uh
lifestyle uh living in the city of
London. So where's the comparison?
You're paying so much but you're
receiving so little.
But again, it all comes down to
community
spirit. We unfortunately don't have that
because we don't want to take ownership
of it. A simple thing of a vote. You do
not realize the power of a vote. More
than telling you who to vote for, where
to vote. We're trying to make you
understand to use your vote. Only 38%
38% of people from Harrow and Brent
voted. 62% didn't bother voting. Either
they didn't want to, they didn't
understand, but irrelevant. You are
involved. You have someone elected who
is representing you and your interest.
But nevertheless, you don't know who you
can approach to take your direct matters
to. That's one thing I want you all to
understand. I am from this area. I've
lived all my life in Harrow. Um, I met
George Galloway at the opening launch.
I'll be very honest with you. I' I've
just listened to most of his videos.
like most people here was just a fan but
nothing else, nothing
more. Uh after his after the launch
campaign, I I tried my best to rumage
through through the crowd and and just
say hello to him and shake his hand and
I did. I had the pleasure of meeting
George and having a chat with him and I
said, "George, I want to get involved in
your campaign." And you know what he
did? He embraced me. He gave me a hug
and he said, "We need people from London
to represent London. You're welcome."
And I got involved. I was sitting
somewhere in the corner there a few
months ago and I was sitting and
standing by side working for our
community. The way to move forward is to
get people like you involved. You need
to get involved. I urge you to get
involved. I urge you to take ownership
of your local burough. It's a very
simple thing. All you have to do is get
involved. Fight for the re fight for
your right. If you see there's issues
with fly tipping, it does affect you
even if it's two streets away because
it's your burough. If you see there's
problems happening with antisocial
disorder, but it's not outside your
house, you're wrong because you can see
it. It happens in your burough. It
affects you
directly. We are lacking a beautiful
community spirit which we once had.
Because we all feel divided in this
city, but we are not divided. We are
one. We are Londoners. This city is mine
as much as it's yours, as much as it's
yours. You need to take ownership of
this. So I urge you all, please, if you
feel you can make a difference, if you
feel your neighborhood, your burough
could do with a bit more assistance, a
bit more awareness, a bit more policing,
all you need to do is make a voice. So I
urge you, if you want to get involved in
this campaign, if you want to get
involved in improving your burough, come
and find me. I'll be at the back
somewhere. A lot of volunteers have
already asked me to get on board. If any
of you here right now want to get on
board, you can approach me.
Um, I am standing as the GLA candidate
for the respect party for Harrow and
Brent. Uh, I, as I said to you before,
there are issues here and I would like
to tackle all those issues if I can, but
I need your support. I'm not the kind of
guy you're going to see just a handful
of months before the election. You'll
see me walking up and down Harrow and
Brett every couple of weeks. There is no
issue that you cannot talk to me about.
There's no there will never be a
situation when you can't get hold of me.
I'm the kind of a guy I'll roll my
sleeves up and so let's grab the problem
by the horns and let's try and find a
solution. This is my working ethics.
This is my attitude. Not because you
guys owe me anything or I owe you
anything. It's because I live in this
area. I am from this part of town. I've
lived all my life here. I think I'm a
handful of guys that can say we've seen
St. George's Shopping Center and the
build and erected before our eyes. We
were very young. We were very excited
when it was there. But then after
several years, the antisocial behavior
that was happening there, we're going to
take our families over there. So, I've
decided to stand strong and rise and get
involved just because I want to improve
my neighborhood. Not just for me, for my
friends, for my family, for my
neighbors, for my town. So, I urge you
again, please get
involved. And finishing off, this is
London. London is a beautiful city. If
you guys have the pleasure of traveling,
going anywhere in the world, and you say
you're from London, everyone's ears. Oh,
wow. What a great town. What a great
place to be. It's true. London by far
and again from my opinion, it's one of
the most beautiful, magnificent cities
in the world, if not the
greatest. And I mean that from my heart
and I know a lot of you people believe
that as well. But take ownership of it.
Understand the value of London lies in
your hands. The respect lies in your
hands. Whatever you want to give, you
can give. Whatever you want, you can
take back. But you must understand this
is your London more than mine. It's like
a mini global city. And for such a
global city, we need a strong dynamic
man of global standing. And it's for
that reason that I believe in George
Galloway. George Galloway, many of you
are aware of who he is and and do follow
him and obviously have an interest and
that's why you're here. But George
Galloway is more than what you see on
YouTube. He's more than what you hear.
He's a real human being.
He's someone that understands the value
of the basic things in life, the respect
and the principle of getting things
done. I am standing with George because
for me there is no greater man. There is
no out of the other two guys there's no
one else that can do a better job with
regards to cleaning and improving our
city leading London and making sure that
we do see new regeneration in our
burough and other parts of the city that
we do feel the benefits of social uh
housing afforded to our young new
families that arising and growing and
they want to find a place to live of
their own. This gentleman here has faced
many hardships and he's always stood
strong and stood stood firm in his
vision. He's a man of honor. And if you
could all just appreciate that someone
like this is looking to stand as the
mayor of London to lead this great city,
I can assure you one thing. A lot of the
people on the other side of the fence,
their hearts will be trembling. But
again, ladies and gentlemen, thank you
very much for your time. Uh appreciate
you all for coming. And again, if you do
feel that you want to get involved, if
you feel that you can make this city a
better place, if you feel 2006 May, you
want to make a big bang, make a big
noise, make everyone who knows you and
everyone that sees you, everyone that
knows there's an election happening in
London, just say, you know what, we were
part of that election. We stood up. We
got involved. We don't know what's
happening in East London or South
London, but you know what's happening in
Harrowin Brent. You know what you did,
what effort you went through, what
involvement you did. even if it's just
leafleting a um a brochure, knocking on
someone's door, even if it's just
standing there when we're outside on the
streets because this is our
neighborhood, guys. So, please take
ownership of your house. Take ownership
of your area cuz you are Londoners. And
if you cannot understand that, then look
at me. I was the same as you just a few
months ago sitting in the audience.
Thank you very much,
everyone.
invested in Harrow. So much so that I'm
almost tempted to move here. Actually,
makes it sound fantastic. Um, ladies and
gentlemen, before we move on to to our
main speaker, obviously, who's George
Galloway, I just want to get into a bit
of the nitty-gritty of the campaign, as
you know, a campaign is a very costly
affair. It it takes it it costs
basically a lot of money. So, we we
would very much appreciate any form of
donations. If you could, as small or as
big as you possibly can, that would be
fantastic. And at the very back we've
got the uh donation boxes for that would
welcome any contributions. You could
obviously purchase also some of the
books and have them signed by George at
the end of this evening and that would
be also something that we'd very much
appreciate. Um campaigns cannot be done
without the funds and without the
support of voters. So again we'd we'd
appreciate your help. Uh now we've all
there we will have many reasons for all
of us involved in the campaign have many
reasons to have joined this campaign and
to support George Galloway's candidacy.
uh in my case, I've obviously followed
George for for many many years. And and
one thing that I found truly inspiring
is that in the face of total adversity
of of so so often a hostile media, he
nevertheless stuck to his guns and stood
for the oppressed wherever the oppressed
were. And I think that is completely
admirable. And as the events are
unfolding uh this week and and we won't
go into the details obviously this is
about London but you would know that
this is somebody who has always defended
the the most vulnerable in our
communities and our societies not just
absolutely in the UK obviously but
across the world and I think that for me
is something that is that is that is
worthy of of great admiration and this
is why I chose to to uh join this
campaign. Now before we start there's
really very little to say that most of
you don't know. So ladies and gentlemen
please George Galloway.
Thank
you. Thank you very much. Hafsa brothers
and sisters, comrades and friends.
Assalamu
alaykumah. May the peace and blessings
of the Lord be upon you. And my thanks
to the South Harrow Baptist Church for
allowing us to have this meeting in this
hall this evening. We are called respect
and we respect all religions. We respect
everybody wherever they came from,
whatever color they are, however they
pray. And as a religious believer
myself, I suppose the first thing I
should say in this church is that if I'm
the mayor, faith and belief and religion
will be honored equally. I'm not
supporting any religion against any
other religion. But I will defend
religion against those who think it
appropriate to trash it.
On the subject of funds, which Hapsa
just raised, it is really vital that you
support us financially because the other
candidates don't need your financial
support.
The Conservative
candidate Zack
Goldsmith married to a
Rothschild is the heir to a 700 million
pound personal fortune. He earns, if
earning is the
word,
£600,000 a month in interest on the
money that his father left him.
I mean no disrespect to him. As a matter
of fact, I quite admire him. I certainly
like him as a person, as an honorable
man. And if you want another blonde, old
Etonian, heir to a personal fortune as
your mayor, you couldn't do better than
him. But I think eight years of Boris
Johnson has probably persuaded us that
it's time for a change.
The Labor candidate doesn't need your
financial support
either because he's being bankrolled by
property developers and building
companies because they can count on him
to administer London in the way that it
was administered in the last eight
years, which is to say in their
interest, a subject to which I shall
return. Now, Mkhtar said that London was
a global city and I'm certainly a global
man. I had to fight my way in here
through two television
crews. The first was from Russia Today,
seeking to interview me on a case I
brought against
GCHQ and the security services. the
judgment on which was delivered this
morning by the investigatory powers
tribunal on that
subject. I'll give you two minutes on
what it was about only to make a bigger
broader point.
Harold
Wilson, much
missed, one of the last real Labor prime
ministers.
Harold Wilson gave an assurance to
Parliament in
1966, 49 years ago, that members of
Parliament would not be subject to
surveillance by the security services
without his personal express
authorization, except in a national
emergency, and that he would report to
the House at the end of the operation in
which the member of parliament was being
surveyed. Every single prime minister
since Harold Wilson has repeated that
assurance. And every home secretary
since
1966 has repeated that
assurance. But today, and I know we have
distinguished lawyers in the room, today
we learned that Mr. Wilson's promise
wasn't worth the paper. It wasn't
written
on because in
fact for
decades British members of parliament
have been being spied upon by MI5,
sometimes MI6 and now in modern security
services that if you came to me as you
would go to a priest in the confession
box to tell me your personal private
business or a problem you're having at
work, or a whistle that you want to blow
on some malpractice or malfeence
somewhere that the security services
know about it just as quickly as I know
about it and no doubt pass it to the
relevant authority to undermine the
issue that we're raising the campaign
that we're planning or whatever. So just
for the record, let me say that I don't
believe that the decision of the
tribunal today can be allowed to stand
because either Mr. Wilson and all these
prime ministers were lying when they
told us and I sat in parliament for
almost 30 years. Either they were lying
when they told us that we were not being
spied on,
bugged, or even worse actually the
security services were allowing prime
ministers to state something which
clearly wasn't true. Who will guard the
guards is an ancient question first
raised perhaps in Rome, perhaps in
Greece. I don't know. But who will guard
the guards is a really significant
matter in a democracy and if prime
ministers are being misled by our own
security services that's something that
we simply can't accept. And then the
second interview was with the Pakistani
satellite channel and you heard them uh
when you were sitting there and I was
being interviewed ask a question about
London. But the second question was
about the extraordinary turn of events
which has occurred in occupied Jerusalem
in occupied Palestine and besieged
Gaza. I don't want to dwell on that
subject.
because this meeting is about
London. But if London is a global city,
it definitely needs a global
mayor. And what I can tell you is they
can't vote in
Gaza, but if they could vote, they'd be
voting for me. They can't vote in
Jerusalem or in Ramla, but if they could
vote, they'd be voting for me. Why?
Because I have stood up through thick
and
thin under every
attack for now more than 40
years, 42 years to be precise. I have
stood up for the Palestinian people in
dark days and find and there have been
few of those.
My opponent on the other hand, my Labor
opponent Sadi Khan,
imagine was pictured last
night swanning
around a Labor Friends of Israel
reception. I don't know if he
thinks by such
things that people who love Israel are
going to vote for a guy called Sadi
Khan. I fear he's got a disappointment
coming. if he thinks
that. But I asked the question when I
saw the
picture. Why does Israel even have any
friends in the Labor Party? How could
you be both labor and a friend of a
country that is slaughtering people
right this minute in the old city of
Jerusalem?
Children being cut down by tens of
people.
inhale of
bullets. People that that's life's blood
you can watch on
Twitter running down the
alleyways of the holy city of Jerusalem.
I don't know why Israel has any friends
at all. I certainly can't understand why
it has any friends in the Labor Party.
And I really can't understand how it
could have a friend called Sadi
Khan. But I'll come back perhaps in the
Q&A to other international issues. My
brother Mktar made, I think, a powerful
opening case, his first public meeting
as the candidate for respect, my running
mate for Harrow and Brent.
He made the
point about only two of you in this big
meeting even knowing who your member of
the Greater London Assembly is. I
promise you if he's elected next May,
everybody will know who he is. Everybody
will know who he is.
And far from not being able to get hold
of him, you'll be shutting your door and
pretending you're not
in because he'll be bothering you that
much. Only two of you knew who your
member of the GLA was. He was elected
with 70,000 votes out of a total
electorate of around
600,000 voters.
That means he's eminently
beatable. That means that across these
two
burrows, a very small percentage of the
people voted for him and an even smaller
number even know who he is. And by the
end of this campaign, I feel sure that
Mktar will have such prominence on the
streets of Harrow and in Brent that he
stands an excellent chance of being
elected. And if he is, he will be a
pillar of strength for you and for me in
the London Assembly. He also made the
point that only 38% of Londoners voted
in the last Mel election. That's why we
got Boris
Johnson. A joke. Except it's not funny
when you elect a joke because the laugh
is on you. He's had a whale of a time
being the mayor of London. You have not.
I saw in the newspaper this morning that
the leader of the Harrow
Council has pointed out to the
government that not only is Harrow
paying the third highest council tax and
has the fourth worst standard of living,
do the maths. Not only that, but by
fiddling the figures, the government is
cheating
Harrow out of 39 million pounds a
year. 39 million. Imagine what you could
do in Harrow with 39 million pounds a
year. Every
year. But I had a second
thought. My second thought was this.
Why did the leader of Harrow Council not
point this out
before? Why did he only now just
discover that the rateayers in this
burough are being
robbed? They're paying the third
highest. They are the fourth poorest and
they're 39 million a year out of pocket
because the government's fiddling the
figures is biased towards other burers.
You said they were dealing drugs on the
street 200 yd from the South Harrow
police station. I promise you this, they
won't be dealing drugs 200 yd from the
Mayfair police station. I mean, they're
probably in the fancy hotels snorting up
their hooters, uh, like
Billio, but no street drug dealer 200
yards from the Mayfair Police Station or
the Kensington and Chelsea police
stations would be tolerated for 5
minutes. Which leads me to one of my
main campaigning priorities, and it's
policing.
My budget would be 17 billion pounds per
year. That's a lot of
money. 17 billion a year. And the
greatest component of that budget is the
Metropolitan
Police. And I'm going to
insist if I'm the mayor that the London
police has got to look like
London, which it
doesn't. The London police looks like
me with a white face and blue
eyes born in this country. But London is
53% nonwhite British. Why doesn't the
police force reflect that?
McFersonen in the inquiry after the
cruel murder that took place in
Elam said that the Metropolitan Police
was infested with, and I'm quoting him,
Lord
McFersonen,
institutionalized
racism.
Now, it was good that McFersonen pointed
that out.
It was good that the chiefs of the
Metropolitan Police said they better do
something about it. And for a little
while, recruitment of ethnic minority
police officers went up. But it's now
gone down again. And it will soon be
below what it was before McFersonen
reported.
Why? Because for all the nice words from
the tops in the Metropolitan Police, the
canteen culture down below amongst the
other officers soon makes ethnic
minority police officers decide they're
not welcome on this voyage and they get
off and that has to stop.
Just as bad is the point to which I have
just alluded that it's not just the
color of your skin that
counts in policing
statistics. It's the color of your
collar. You see that which is tolerated
in South Harrow would not be tolerated
in Kensington and Chelsea. If you call
999 in South Harrow, the response times
are nothing like what they would be in
Kensington and Chelsea. And as I've
pointed out many times, if you pick
somebody's pocket in Liverpool Street
Station, you'll be behind bars pretty
damn quick. But if you're one of the
city slickers and
bankers working in the gleaming towers
of the city of London and you pick the
bank's pocket or worse pick the public's
pocket by rigging foreign exchange rates
or by reckless gambling as if you were
in a casino, you'll never be arrested at
all. And if you are arrested, you'll
never be sent to jail. In
2008, we had a crash caused by reckless,
negligent, and criminal activity inside
the square mile of London and the police
have done nothing about it. So my
plan is to merge the city of London
police with the metropolitan police.
There is no case for having a
sweetheart private police force which
effectively is policing the square mile
because after all crime rates are going
up in the city of London and we need to
do something about
it. Every day we see an ever more
horrifying statistic. There's a black
man sitting in the front row. He's three
times three times more likely to be
tasered by the Metropolitan Police than
any of the white people sitting here.
Three times more likely to be tasered.
If he were found, God
forbid, with the cannabis in his
pocket, he's twice as likely to be
charged rather than cautioned. If he
goes to court, he's twice as likely to
be
convicted. And if
convicted, God forbid, he's twice as
likely to be sent to jail as a white
person caught with exactly the same
amount of cannabis and exactly the same
record of previous convictions. So
racism hasn't gone away. and class
discrimination between Kensington and
Chelsea and South Harrow or the Walworth
Road or any other area where the working
class
live the policing is very different
indeed. Now I discovered in my
research this
week that half of the people of the
burough of Harrow are earning less than
the London living wage. Half of them
50% earning less than the wage that the
government and the mayor have decided is
the minimum that you can live on in
London. and that you should be asked to
work for. Well, as the mayor, I can't
change
everything. But as the mayor, I can say
this. Any employer paying less than the
London living wage will not be doing any
business with us. They'll not be getting
any share of the 17 billion pounds a
year that we have to spend. and we will
name them and shame them and harass them
until they pay their workers a proper
London living wage. That I can promise
that I will deliver. Now you're
living you're living
here. Some of you will be owners. Some
of you will be
renters. Some of you will be in social
housing.
Many of you will be in the private
rented
sector. London last week became
officially the most expensive place on
earth to rent a house or buy a house.
Until the previous
week, it was second highest after
Monaco, a place to which I shall return.
Not physically. I've never been there.
But in the course of my
remarks, last week we became the most
expensive. The average price of a house
in London to buy is
£500,000. You need to be earning
£77,000 in order to pay for a house at
that price. The average rent in London
is
£1,600 a month. And we are seeing in the
Evening Standard almost nightly, the
kind of accommodation that's on offer a
eye watering prices, a bed under the
stairs in somebody else's house, a
garage turned into a Beiju flat. I'm not
making this up. a lock up now a beu
flat. Well, this is a crisis that is
socially cleansing
London. People are being driven working
people. Londoners born bred Londoners. I
meet them all the time. Real cocknney
who come into London just to walk around
and look at the place they used to live
in, but they can no longer afford to
live in it.
themselves and so they're out there in
Essex or
beyond and making day trips into
London. This social cleansing has to be
reversed. And I give you this promise.
If I'm the mayor, the working class will
begin to move back into London. How will
I achieve that?
Well, by many different tools using many
different
levers. Let me just deal with the most
important
ones. If I'm the mayor, any development
in London has to get my permission. Not
a bad position to be in, is it?
can be rich, they can be powerful, but
they need my permission before they can
build. And I'll be acting on your behalf
when I say to them that any development
that's built in London, 50% of the
housing units will have to be affordable
housing. 50%. That was Ken Livingston's
policy. He never actually achieved it
but he tried. Boris Johnson's policy was
that
25% should be affordable housing but in
fact he achieved less than 10%. If I
give you the uh
latest fabulous development at Battery
power station
8% of the houses are affordable. Even
worse is their definition of affordable.
Boris Johnson now tells people that they
have to provide some affordable housing.
What's affordable housing? Ask the
developer. Well, Boris probably says,
"What would you like it to be?" But on
paper, he says 80% of the average rent
in the
area. This is absurd. affordable to whom
would 80% of the average rents in the
area be? So, if I'm the mayor, 50% of
all new build will be affordable housing
and affordable housing will be defined
as 50% of the average rents in the area.
That's why the property developers are
not supporting me for mayor. That's why
no building company, no housing magnate
is waiting at the door to give me a
donation for my meal campaign. They're
backing the labor guy because they know
that the labor who built this city,
whose parents endured the blitz, who are
responsible for this great and beautiful
city that we have, will be pushed to the
margins. Let me give you just one more
example. I don't have my coat with me.
I've got a badge in it from the Save
Earls Court
campaign. Earls Court, that beautiful
iconic art deco building and all the
land that as far as you can see all
around
it has been
perloined for mega
expensive upper class housing. not at
500,000 but at 10 times that at the top
houses worth millions are going to be
built on the site of the Ellis Court
campaign and I've been involved in it
from the beginning indeed the last
speeches I gave in parliament I gave 11
on the same
night with Jeremy Corbin and John
Macdonald little did I know how eminent
they were about to become the three of
us did a threeman man Philly buster to
talk out the government's business and
try and stop the so-called development
of Eros Court which involves destroying
engineering works and knocking down
council
housing. Now we only built 78 council
houses in London last year.
78. When I was a kid, we used to build
300,000 council houses in Britain every
year. Last year in London, we built 78
in a city bursting at the seams and
where hundreds of thousands of people
are on the waiting lists of the London
Burus. So, we're not building any
council houses, but to please property
developers in Earl's Court, we're
knocking council houses down and moving
the people, many of whom have lived
there for
generations, God knows where, wherever
the wind will take
them. So, my first policy is the 50 and
50. My second policy is this. Ian Dale
on
LBC nearly cried actually when I said
this on radio not that long ago. He
said, "Oh, that's very
radical." I said, "It's me you're
talking
to." I said that in London, hundreds of
thousands, nearly a million, in fact,
800,000 houses have been bought not to
live
in, not even to rent.
You've heard of buy to let in London.
We've got buy to
leave. They buy houses, never live in
them, never let anybody else live in
them. Why? Because they're just safety
deposit boxes for their money. Just cash
boxes. That's all they
are.
800,000 driving up the price of land,
driving up the price of houses,
indirectly driving up the price of
rents.
And all they've bought them for is to
turn 1 million into 1.5 million over a
given period of time. And most of them
are foreign buyers. Now, obviously,
somebody like me has nothing against
foreigners. I love foreigners. I'm
married to a
foreigner. But we can't have rich people
moving their hot money to London. We are
the hot money capital of the world.
More hot monies coming in here and being
salted into property than anywhere else
in the world, including
Monaco, which I promise I'm going to
come back
to, than anywhere else in the world. And
they do it to avoid the gaze of their
own governments, of their own police
forces, of their own media, because much
of that hot money is stolen money. Some
of you may have seen a documentary
recently, a few months ago now, on
television called From Russia with
Cash, where a guy, a Russian guy
pretended that he was an
oligarch driving, being driven actually
in a Jaguar with a with a very
glamorous, she wasn't actually all that
glamorous,
girlfriend, and they pretended that he
was was a government minister in Russia
in the health department. And as he
explained on camera to a whole
succession of estate
agents, you know, I get a bit of this
and a bit of that off every deal. And
I've made myself a pile of money and I
want to put it in London. I want to buy
a house with it, but I never want
anybody to know that I own it. And every
single one of the estate agents,
everyone at all levels, £400,000 flat to
a 14 million pound house, every estate
agent said, "Don't worry about that,
sir. We do that all the time. We can
make the arrangements. We'll fix you up
with a lawyer." Very damning, actually.
I don't know if anyone lost their job or
was prosecuted over it, but they ought
to have been both.
That's what's happening in London and
that's what's driving the prices ever
upwards. So here's my
promise. Any house in London that is not
lived in for a year or more without
legitimate excuse, I will compulsorily
purchase
it. There's a cheaper way. I could ask
the police not to notice if the
squatters move in, but I better not
promise that while the camera's running.
But what we can't have is people
homeless in London while houses lie
empty just to appreciate capital value
for their owners. So Ian Dale was right.
That's a pretty radical policy. But then
you would expect nothing less from me
and I'll be
campaigning with Jeremy Corbin as the
leader of the Labor Party, my comrade
for almost 30 years in parliament.
I'll be
campaigning for a mass drive to build
council houses and against the sale of
housing association houses which Sadi
Khan I noticed today is supporting. I'm
not I opposed the sale of council houses
from the beginning when Mrs. Thatcher
brought it in and I'll oppose it as long
as God gives me breath
because many people will always need
affordable, social, democratically
accountable housing to live in because
they'll never be able to buy at
£500,000 and climbing. Now, Hapsa's
indicating to me that I've gone on too
long, so I might not get back to Monaco
until the Q&A. Thank you very much
indeed for
[Applause]
coming. Uh ladies and gentlemen, thank
you very much. Uh just before we move on
to the Q&A, just wanted to say if you've
obviously enjoyed what you've heard and
you do want to get involved, other than
the donations, you're welcome to leave
your names uh so that we can get in
touch with you and you can help us with
the leafleting or in any possible way
you can. So that would be very welcome.
Uh so first of all if anyone wants to
ask a question please stand up and and
ask a question and I'll hand over the
mic
Mr. Gway now is your friend comrade Mr.
Corbin thank you is the Labor party
leader so is there any chance you can
join him now?
Well, the position I've taken and I will
take it throughout is that I was
unjustly expelled from the Labor Party
and they have to rescend my expulsion.
I'm not going to ask to get back into a
party I should never have been kicked
out of in the first place. I was 36
years in the Labor Party. I was expelled
in 36 minutes. What symmetry is that?
and I was expelled despite the
appearance at my expulsion of Mr. Foot,
Mr. Ben, and Mr. Corbin, all of whom
attended the expulsion and pleaded with
the tribunal not to expel me. So, I'm a
labor man. I'm not any other kind ofist.
I'm not a communist, a Troskyist, an
anarchist, or any otherist. and Labor.
And I'll tell you what, I'm a lot more
Labor than Sadi Khan, my Labor opponent
in this
election. If I'm elected as mayor, I'm
pretty sure the whole Labor Party will
be begging me to come back, just like
they did with Ken Livingston.
Thanks.
Uh, first I'd like to congratulate you
that the roof didn't fall in when you
came into a church. But no, seriously, I
like I I support everything you've said.
Thank you. Um the point I would like to
make and it's particularly uh pertinent
in so far as there's so many Asians here
which I um pleased of is I know how much
you've fought against the Iraq
war and now Cameron is trying his best
to get Britain to bomb Syria.
And I'd just like to make two very quick
points. Ex-F French foreign minister
Roland Dumas is on
record of saying that when he visited
London in
2009, he was approached by high British
officials who told him that Britain was
going to overthrow Assad with use of
mercenaries. That's 2009, at least two
years before the so-called Arab Spring
kicked off. And in
2001, fourstar general retired
uh Wesley Clark, ex Supreme Allied
Commander, is on record as saying he
visited the Pentagon shortly after
9/11 to find out what was going on. And
he was told by a three star serving
general on the Joint Chiefs of Staff
that Britain uh that the United States
was going to attack
Iraq. So he went home and when they
started attacking
Afghanistan, he went back, spoke to the
same general and said, "Are we still
going to attack Iraq?" And the general
said, "It's worse than that. We're going
to take out seven governments in 5
years." And he named them. Iraq, Syria,
Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and
Iran. Obviously, the time scale has
slipped, but it shows that all these
wars, all they are is regime change, and
I I'll give you the links later on, and
anyone else who wants them, I'll give
them. So, anyway, good luck with the uh
I'll be voting for you. Thank you, sir.
Well, uh, Hapsa, it's quite, uh, uncanny
that the gentleman should quote General
Clark, uh, in the way that he did
because my wife and I have just finished
a film called The Killing of Tony Blair.
It doesn't actually involve me killing
Tony
Blair, though they'd pay for
that, but it deals with the killings of
Tony
Blair. And General Clark is in the film
saying exactly what you just said. And
it is
uncanny that though the time scale has
slipped, the targeting is exactly as the
general told Wesley Clark uh back in
2001.
It would be
adding disaster upon disaster, would be
pouring petrol upon the flames. If
Britain, after its role in the Iraq war,
were to now do the same in
Syria. after that has worked out, in the
way that that has worked out, how
anyone, never mind a member of
parliament, could think it was a good
idea for Britain to invade another Arab
Muslim country is simply beyond me. But
I have to tell you that it's worse than
bombing. In a way, everybody's bombing
Syria now. God knows how there's enough
airspace for all these airplanes that
are bombing that small country.
Britain's plan is much worse than that.
It's not just to bomb Syria, but to
seize pieces of Syrian territory by
force against the wishes of the Syrian
government and without a United Nations
resolution to seize parts of Syria and
declare them as no-fly zones, safe
havens, all the old hogwash that we
heard in the Iraq war uh 15 years ago
almost now.
The doing so, if we did, would mean that
a state of war would exist between
Britain and Syria and all its allies,
Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, and the Syrian
army. I don't think the Queen's got
enough soldiers for that. Do you? I
don't think the British public would
tolerate the casualties from that. Do
you?
Yet, not just David Cameron is planning
to put that motion before the House
perhaps this week, but that some idiots
who call themselves Labor MPs in
defiance of the Labor Conference, in
defiance of the leader Jeremy Corbin are
planning to vote with the Tories to do
it. I'm almost tempted. I say almost
because I can't really because of the
blood that will be spilled. I'm almost
tempted to say go ahead because nothing
is more guaranteed to end an in absolute
disaster for the war party than this
crazy plan which if anything is even
more crazy than the invasion of Iraq was
in the first place. Now I was expelled
over the Iraq war. Labor under Jeremy
Corbin, we're told, though it hasn't
happened yet, are going to apologize for
the Iraq war. Well, they better
apologize to me at the same time.
We just have two questions at a time.
And please, can you keep your question
short and sweet? Thank you very much.
Hi, George. Hi. Um my question is about
uh Sadique Khan. Um I'm a full paid up
Labour member. Um I actually voted for
Sadi to keep um Tessa off the uh ballot
paper basically and hope everyone is
happy about that. My question is why do
you think that Sadi is doing things like
in regard to housing from someone that
come from humble beginnings lived in a
council house he openly is proud of
that why why do you think he's in the
pockets of the wealthy rather than the
the anti-esterity movement which Jeremy
Corbyn is leading
well uh he wouldn't be the first uh
labor figure to go down that path. Uh
Ramsey Macdonald, the first Labour prime
minister, came from much humbler uh
origins than Sadi Khan or me, though
both Sadi and me came from the same
origins, a child of immigrants, my case
Irish, his case
Pakistani, and uh was brought up in a
council house and so on. But Ramsey
Macdonald was an so-called illegitimate
child uh with a single parent who grew
up on a croft in Scotland in the direest
poverty. But as soon as he saw the
jewels that the daagers jangled in front
of him, he was a slave to them. It's a
long and dishonorable path that Sadi
Khan is following. Um, I'll tell you
what he's doing and we
intend just like we did in Bethnog Green
and Bo in 2005 to prove him wrong. He
thinks or thought that he had your votes
in his pocket. After all, you're hardly
going to vote for the billionaire
uh Zack Goldmith. So he thought he could
count on you without trying, without
offering anything at all, and then he
could go after the rich and the
supporters of Israel and all the
different groups that he's now uh
cowtowing
to. He thinks that if he
daily escues labor
values that he can capture votes on the
other side of the aisle. But what about
the people that believe in labor values?
Why should they vote for somebody who is
openly stating that he doesn't believe
in labor values? Sadik Khan said that
the economic policy of Jeremy Corbin was
ridiculous. He said he would not support
raising the rate of income tax for the
top people. He said he would not support
raising corporation tax on the profits
of companies. And I'm definitely going
to come back to Monaco eventually. He
said that Jeremy Corbin and John
Macdonald had encouraged
terrorism by their stand on
Ireland in the past and on the Middle
East now. That's a very strong thing to
say when you're the Labor candidate for
mayor. You're saying of the Labor
candidate for prime minister that he
encouraged terrorism. He denounced them
for not bending and kissing the Queen's
hand and all the attacks daily almost.
He said, "I'm going to be the most pro
business mayor London has ever had."
Well, I'm going to be the most
pro-worker mayor that London has ever
had.
business, big business, and the banks
don't need a mayor. They're already
powerful enough. It's the workers and
the tenants and those struggling that
need a mayor uh on their side. So, it's
called triangulation. Bill Clinton
invented it that if there's this
position and that position then
depending on which of those positions
needs you more than they need and chase
votes there and un king in Bethnog Green
in
2005 voted for the Iraq war even though
90% of tower hamlets was against the
Iraq war because she figured that The
people of Tower Hamlets had no choice
but to reelect her. And I proved that
wrong by entering the race and defeating
her and wiping out her big Labor
majority. And I intend to do the same
here in London.
Hello, George. Yes, sir.
I have been to Syria, Iraq and
Afghanistan before America destroyed
them. I mean
they George Bush said either you are
with us or with the terrorist. Now if
this is the policy and Tony Blair gave
his blessing to Bush. So the war
combined together they just trying to
destroy the Islamic countries so that
they can rule
again. British policy was to occupy and
rule. American policy is to destroy and
put their somebody's man and
watch. So what do you say about this in
politics? Well uh Tony Blair didn't just
give his blessing to Bush. He was
central to the Iraq war. Indeed, in our
film, we have Nom Chomsky, the great
American uh intellectual, saying that
without Tony Blair, he doesn't believe
that George Bush could have pulled this
whole thing off. Therefore, Blair is
absolutely centrally responsible for
this uh crime. Yeah. Um there's only one
thing on
which I would not disagree with you, but
but raise another raise it from another
angle. I promise you these people are
not destroying these countries because
they are
Islamic. You and I are old enough to
remember when the United States dropped
more bombs on Vietnam than were dropped
in the entirety of the Second World War.
It's not that they have a particular
desire to drop bombs on Muslims.
Although, as it happens, almost all the
people on whom bombs are being dropped
now are Muslim, but not because they're
Muslim. Because the imperialist
countries cannot accept that they do not
control the resources and the markets
and the rock the the raw materials and
the commodities of the world. So in
Vietnam they had to crush it. In Korea
before that they had to crush any
alternative to their hegman, a word
you'll know uh to their domination uh of
these uh areas. Don't imagine that
anybody at Westminster knows anything
about Islam. You'll hear them talking
about Sunni and Shia if you put a
microphone in front of them and ask them
to define the differences between Sunni
and Shia. None of them could do so.
They're quite happy if you pray five
times a day. They don't care if you
fast. They don't care if you perform
Hajj. You can do that if you like. When
the Sha was running Iran, they were
really
pro-Shia because the Sha was one of
their uh puppets. When Humeni came to
rule Iran, they hated the Shia and they
suddenly hated the Iranians.
In Iraq, they put a Shia government in
power. While in Lebanon, they tell us
the Shia
uh liberation movement, Hezbollah, is
the greatest threat uh to uh life as we
know it. They're hypocrites. It's not a
clash of
civilizations. It's not Christianity
that's making war on the Islamic
countries. Christians believe in the
prophets, peace be upon them. Bush and
Blair believe in the prophets and how to
get a bigger piece of them. That's the
reality.
Mr. My second question is uh if you
become a mayor of London, how would you
deal the chel Chelsea barracks
development?
uh because this is funded by the rich
mega rich people or powerful people like
royals powerful royals as well and these
rich foreigners as well. Well, if I
could and if Al Jazzer are here, perhaps
they can take this message back to his
highness the Amir. I'll build a
fantastic new council house estate on
the Chelsea barracks site. That's what
we need. And if I could do it, I would
do it. Of course, I can't because the
land is owned by the Amir ofQatar who
owns now
18% uh of London, believe it or not,
including the Camden Lock Market, the
hippie market. So when you go there to
buy your cheesecloth shirt, as I'm sure
you do in the summertime, you're putting
money in the pockets of the Amir
ofQatar, the Shard, the Chelsea Barrack
site, Harrods uh and uh much of
Knightsbridge is owned by the the royal
family of Qatar. I'm banned from Qatar.
Uh I'm not allowed to go to Qatar. Um,
but not because of my plan to build a
council house estate on the Chelsea
site. Uh, but for other reasons. Uh, but
I'm not going to
banqatar from London. Everybody will be
welcome in London, whether they're
royals or so-called commoners. And we
welcome investment that will benefit the
people of London. But we can't allow
this so-called, they call it
gentrification, but if they were gents,
it would be easier to bear. They're the
least gentlemanly uh uh uh individuals.
We can't allow rich people to buy
property and then not use it. That's
something over which I have control and
will exercise
control. Any others?
Hi, George. Um, it's nice to see you.
Hi. Um, I'm a Cockney. Excellent. Born
uh very close to the stumps in the Oval,
as was my mother and my grandmother. I'm
a bit of an exile out here in Harum.
Um, I bought a house with my husband in
1984 and
um, we had three children at the time.
So, it was just with my my husband at
the time and we could afford it. Now,
just getting back to this housing. Um
now my grown-up children even though one
is a college lecturer none of them have
stand any chance of being able to afford
their own homes even at the affordable
you know we were able to do it just with
his wages at the time and he was newly
out of university so he just had you
know he wasn't you know right up in his
career
path. How are we going to get either
wages up because we have this minimum
wage or the living wage which is not a
living wage. Back then we didn't get any
benefits at all. We were able to do
this. Um so how how can you get either
because the the cost of housing now
um wages in around London as you said in
Harrow are the lowest. Yeah. What can we
do to address this? There's no because I
think most of the people here um I've
also got a 16-year-old son. None of his
friends are ever going to be able to
live in Harrow. No, we have now for the
first
time people in their
30s still sleeping in their childhood
bedrooms, living with their parents
because they can't afford to move out.
We have people who had moved out can no
longer afford to live out moving back
and sleeping on their parents' sofas. We
have a generation now which by the way
has for the first time a huge albatross
of student debt around its neck. I never
was a student. I left school when I was
16 and a half. I went to work. I paid
for the university education of others,
including Tony Blair, who got a grant to
study at Oxford University entirely free
of charge. But now the Blair government
kicked that ladder away from our
children now. And not only can they not
get a mortgage, they've already got a
mortgage called their student loan
repayment around their neck. And this is
a real crisis. And I must tell you
again, I say I like him as an
individual. How can Zach Goldsmith know
anything about that story you've just
told us? He's never had to pay rent.
He's never had to pay a mortgage. He's
never had to worry a single moment in
his entire life knowing that every month
£600,000 in interest is going to drop
into his bank account, leaving the
capital sum of 700 million.
untouched. Now, nice or not, why would
you elect a
mayor whose life is so different to
yours that he cannot possibly imagine
what you're going through and as you
just described to
us. All I can do is say that nobody who
isn't paying the London living wage will
do any business from us. That's a real
threat because in a 17 billion budget,
there's a whole lot of companies earning
from that budget. I'm not just talking
about the mayor's
office. I'm saying nobody will do any
business with
TfL unless they're paying their workers
the London living wage. No one will do
any business with any part of the London
mealy unless they're paying their
workers the London living wage. That
will have the effect of driving up
wages. Of that I am in no doubt, though
they'll
squeal. They'll squeal that we're going
to put them out of business and so on.
But that's what they did when Labor
introduced the national minimum wage in
the first place. and none of them went
out of business as a result of the the
national minimum wage. So, I'll I'll do
that. I'll push for a drive on council
houses and I'll do the other things on
housing that I
mentioned. But, you know, the greatest
power the mayor of London has, it's the
power of a
pullpit. And I've got quite a good voice
for a pullpit. There'll be no one in
Britain, never mind in London. There'll
be no one in most parts of the world,
never mind in Britain, who will not know
the platform on which I've been elected
and the people with whom I'm doing
battle on your behalf. I think even if
you don't like me, those of you in this
room already know that that's true. If
Sadi Khan is elected mayor of London,
nobody will notice. If I'm elected,
mayor of London, everybody will notice.
[Applause]
Yes. Salam. Uh I'm from London as well
and uh I'm actually working in central
London. Uh I have been working there for
a number of years now. And uh one of the
things which I've really noticed that is
a major problem particularly for people
in London and driving around London is
the traffic issue. I have personally
spoken to uh and know a number of uh
black cab drivers, typical London black
cab drivers and uh they are just one
example of the people who suffer due to
uh huge traffic in central London and
around London in general. uh people
trying to drive from one end of London
to another, not just in central, they
struggle. Wherever you you turn, there's
traffic everywhere. How do you have uh
any kind of main policies to tackle
this? And also, I know you've mentioned
in the past about Uber and these
American companies which are targeting
black cabs and uh British businesses. Uh
do you have a policy to tackle with
them? Could you elaborate? Thank you.
Well, if you think my housing policy is
radical, wait till you hear my transport
policy because that's going to be in a
way the most radical change of all. Let
me start with Uber.
Uber is Uber represents the American
model of no regulation, burning of red
tape, absolute privatization, where
every person is turned into the
competitor of the other, where no
communal values exist, where no
tradition, you know, Markx said in the
uh communist manifesto in 1848 that
under
capitalism all that is solid will melt
into air and all that is sacred will be
profained. And he was absolutely correct
in both regards. I happen to
believe that our black
cab is something which we're known for
in the world. Just like the beef eaters
at the Tower of London, you wouldn't
knock down the Tower of London and make
it an apartment block for rich people
because it's accepted that it's part of
our heritage. I believe that the black
cabs are part of our heritage. What do
they represent? They represent a group
of workers, all of them small
businesses,
25,000 small businesses in London, who
have to prove themselves repeatedly to
be of good
character, to be people with no criminal
convictions of any kind, who are
properly insured, whose vehicles are
properly roadw worthy, and who if they,
god forbid, get you into an accident,
you're going to be at least as secure as
it's possible to be in a well-maintained
and robust motor car. None of that
obtains none of it in Uber. Anybody can
be Uber. Uber claims that they're not a
taxi firm at all. They're just a mobile
phone technology company. Thus, they
don't pay any tax in Britain, which is
my second objection to them. They're a
technology company based in the
Netherlands where fortuitously it
happens that technology companies pay
virtually no tax in the Netherlands
which is why they say they're based
there. But any one of you can become an
Uber
operator and when I ask for you I don't
even need to know that it's you that
came. You could give your phone to
somebody else. You may have no criminal
convictions. The person you gave the
phone to may well I don't want my wife
my children traveling in a car with
somebody whose character has not been
properly checked and cannot be
vouched. Neither can you know how could
you that the car is
insured and you won't even know what the
price of it is. They say it's cheaper.
Well, it's cheaper until the rain falls
or the snow falls or there's a traffic
snarl up or there's an emergency
somewhere. Then they have something
called surge pricing. So the journey
that cost you £10 yesterday might cost
you £30. In fact, during the recent tube
strike, it was five times more. A
journey that cost you10 the day before
and£10 the day after was £50 on the day
of the railway strike, the tube strike.
So I'm going to ban Uber just
like many states in the United States
have done and as many states countries
around the world are trying to do. And
if I can't ban them, if the court will
not allow me to ban them, I'm going to
ensure that they obey the law like the
black cab drivers and like the private
hire drivers have to do. This is not
just an issue between the black cabs and
Uber. The allies are the black cabs and
the private hire companies against Uber.
And I'm going to be taking quite a
radical stand on that. But my other
policies are even more radical, and some
of you might not like them, but I've
thought them
through. There will be no trucks or
heavy vehicles allowed to drive in
central London, if I'm the mayor,
between dawn and
dusk. All deliveries by trucks and heavy
vehicles will have to be made after dusk
and before dawn. Why? Because 9,000
people a year in London are dying from
the pollution caused largely by those
heavy vehicles. 9,000 every year are
dying from the long-term exposure to the
levels of pollution in London. Our air
quality is becoming one of the worst in
the world. Second, I want to encourage
London to get on their bikes and cycle.
and cyclists are being knocked down and
killed and maimed by trucks and heavy
vehicles almost every day of the week.
And thirdly, the congestion of which you
speak w is is largely caused by two
things. It's caused by the proliferation
of 80,000 Uber
drivers
and trucks, heavy vehicles moving slowly
in streets that can't accommodate them
at a time when buses and taxis and
private cars have to move around. So, of
course, this will have to be negotiated.
every company will have to negotiate
with its workers that they now have to
deliver in the evening and at night even
through the night whereas before they
were delivering during the day but I
believe it's necessary to save lives to
save limbs to save lungs and to save
money for businesses in London that are
affected adversely by the enormous
levels of congestion that we have on On
the Harrow Road where I live, not in the
burough of Harrow, further down in
Harlesdon, on the Harrow Road, you can
it can take you an hour and a half from
effectively Paddington to
Harlesen because the congestion is
simply impossible to believe. I would
never have believed it before I moved
there.
So there will be more cycling, fewer
trucks, fewer heavy vehicles. Uh
certainly none of the latter during the
day. And if I can run Uber out of town,
I'm going
to Thank
you. So I've got um three more questions
lined up. Um please if anyone else has
got one after I think we've got time for
one more after that. Okay. So please put
your hand up if anyone else has I
promise to be more brief in my answer.
Okay. So I've got one here and then
that's closed. So this gentleman
uh yeah I'd like just make two points
please. First is about pollution and
second about something else pollution.
Uh five points uh for your policies.
Number one pollution. Number two
pollution. Number three pollution.
Number four no private cars. And number
five within the M25
uh unless they're electric. can go with
the first three unless they're electric
or otherwise pollution vetted. That's my
first point. My second point is about
just general stuff. You were saying
earlier uh I noticed uh your colleague
here didn't do it but I think you did it
a bit. You said well you know in a
certain situation if someone is x y or
zed in harrow where I've come to a long
time ago I'm originally from Essex. What
I've learned in the last 15 years is we
don't have although the council says
blah blah blah we don't have that. We
have men, women, and children.
You're talking about ethnic. I'm I don't
We don't really accept it. When I look
around, when I go around Har, you see.
No, it's not. I'm not white. I'm not
white. I'm a man. And you're a man. This
is a white man. This is not a black man,
as you said earlier. And you're not a
white man. You're a man. Those are my
two points. Thank you. Of course, in an
ideal world, that would be the case. But
it's not an ideal world. As far as the
police are concerned, I'm a white man,
and he's a black man. That's why he's
three times more likely to be No, it's
No, he's a black man and he calls
himself a black man and and more
important Well, don't tell him what he
should do. Don't
Don't tell me what I should call myself.
Look, listen. You're not God anymore.
No, I'm definitely not God. There's only
one God and it's definitely not me.
Brothers, brother.
All
right. We're not racist. We pride
ourselves on being men, women, and
children, not black. Well, you
may listen, brother. Nobody's ever
managed to shut me up. And you certainly
won. You certainly won.
You certainly won.
Let's move on to a more meaningful uh
question.
Sorry.
Uh I will ban them. Yeah. I think
they're they're an infestation. They're
a danger and they're uh demeaning and
degrading.
Uh I just wondered what your your views
on the expansion of PRO airport are. I'm
against it. I think that the levels of
pollution that I referred to are
directly contributed to by the
extraordinary amount of aviation going
in and out of Heathrow. If there's a
need for a new terminal, that terminal
should be at Gatwick. And we should
build a high-speed rail link between
Heathrow and Gatwick. and you won't even
notice the travel time in a high-speed
rail link will be so short that it will
be just like going from one terminal to
another at present in Heathrow. So I'm
totally against it. Sadik Khan used to
be strongly in favor of it and now he's
strongly against it. I've always been
strongly against it.
[Applause]
Hi George. Um, as mayor of London, what
would you do to stop shell companies in
London from taking trillions of dollars
away from Africa in corrupted money?
Well, uh, I did mention earlier that
London is the hot money capital of the
world. It's official. It used to be
Monaco. And here I'm going to grab the
opportunity because when I was speaking
in the city center uh on Saturday, yeah,
Saturday, me and Mktar and my friends,
we were out a pop-up meeting. It was a
fantastic uh event. Some of you may have
been
there. I asked if there was a top shop
in the shopping area and then sure
enough, as there is most places, there
was. which led me to talk about the
owner of talk shop.
Topshop we always understood was owned
by a man called Philip Green. Sir
Philillip Green if you don't mind. Made
a night by the Labor government of Tony
Blair until it became clear that Topshop
wasn't paying any tax
here. And when people inquired, how can
a business that's on every high street
in every shopping center and is packed
doing great
business, how could it not be paying any
tax? And Sir Philip Green enlightened
us. He said, "It's not paying any tax
because I don't actually own Top Shop.
Mrs. Green owns Top Shop and Mrs. Green
fortuitously lives in Monaco where they
don't pay any tax at all. So every time
you buy something in Topshop, you're
buying Mrs. Green's goods who happens,
as I say, by stroke of good luck to live
in Monaco. Now, if you believe that,
you'll believe anything. These companies
are deliberately dodging, paying for
tax.
Facebook p it was revealed this week4
£4,000 last year in corporation
tax where it's got millions tens of
millions of users in Britain and when it
made more than2 billion pounds in profit
last year but paid only4 £4,000 in tax
in Britain. If we tolerate this
corporate thievery for that's what it
is. It's robbery by the richest people
from the poorest people. We talked about
the 39 million that could have been
spent here in Harrow on things that you
vital need but has been cheated from
you. This is direct theft from you. At
the same time, London is the hot money
capital of the world. So the foreigners
are either not paying us tax even though
they're working and earning here or
they're stealing money in their own
countries and salting it here where no
one's going to trouble them where
regulation is uh wafer thin and where
the toleration of hot money being used
to buy property in London is almost
absolute. If I'm the mayor, I'll hunt
them. I'll hunt them in every way that I
can. You can count on that.
[Applause]
I was wondering um he said something
about he said something about um kids um
selling drugs. I was wondering what
you're going to do to tackle like youth
crime and um like for example the NCS
challenge keeps kids uh out of like
gangs and stuff like that. I was
wondering what would you do to keep the
youth off the streets?
Well, I'll tell you what, again, this
might seem counterintuitive and some of
you might not like it. I was in a
gang. I was in a gang when I was a
youth and it never did me any harm. What
do they mean by a
gang? By a gang, they mean a group of
young boys and girls who are hanging
around together on the street because
they've got nowhere else to
go. And that's why I was in a gang cuz I
had nowhere else to go. I had no money.
I was very
poor. And so when I came home from
school, I put on the coolest clothes I
could steal. No, I mean I could
find and I went around with my pals in
the street and they called us a
gang. But we had nowhere else to go.
There were no youth clubs, no community
centers. We couldn't afford to go to the
pictures. Couldn't afford to go at the
swimming baths. Couldn't afford to go to
the
snooker. So what are we going to do? If
we abandon our young people without
hope, without facilities, without money,
the devil will find work for idle hands.
So we need to shift the paradigm here.
We need
to say through public policy and in
everything we say and do that young
people are not just valued, they're the
future. For goodness sake, we're going
to be depending on them in years to
come.
And if
we develop a society where it's just a
jungle, what are the young people going
to do but act often times like
animals? It's not them that's to blame.
It's the society and the system that's
to blame. If you don't offer someone a
positive role model, a positive future,
then why should you be surprised if they
start uh
misbehaving? Why should young people not
be violent when our government is death
dealing out death and violence
everywhere around the world? Is it a
coincidence that in the United States
they're shooting each other in colleges
and schools because their governments
going around the world shooting people
every single day? There's a direct
relationship between the projection of
violence and so-called strength on the
part of our societies and how people
behave within them. Now, I have zero
tolerance for drugs. I have never even
seen a drug, never mind taken one. I
have never drunk alcohol in my life. If
I could, frankly, there wouldn't be any
alcohol, never mind any drugs. But I
know why people are are smoking
cannabis. I know why people are taking
drugs. Because they have no hope of a
better future. So, might as well get out
of your head and escape that way. That's
what we've got to change. Of course, we
must punish people who are carrying
knives and stabbing each other. I'm with
Lee Jasper. He's one of our comrades who
wrote very powerfully recently about
something that happened within his
family with black-on-black violence.
People stabbing each other, gangs
stabbing each other, black youth killing
other black youth over the last pair of
trainers on sale in Oxford Street. Of
course, we have to do everything that we
can on a multi level from the police to
the social workers to the families. But
above all, if the children have no hope,
don't expect them to behave like those
of us who do have
[Applause]
hope. Um, a question from the black man.
[Laughter]
Um, I'm just going to address this real
quick. Um, there's a
17.1% pay gap between men and women.
There's lack of representation in in the
House of Parliament among working-class
people. There's a difference between, as
you said, me being stopped on the street
and white people being stopped on the
street. There's differences between
people. Yeah. And we need a mayor of
London that's going to speak about these
differences instead of ignore it like
you just did. So, I'm just going to
address that point real quick. Um, my
question is in in Bradford, um, you
dealt with the hosen the Trojan horse
um, um, scenario and currently I'm a
youth worker in Shepherd's Bush and, um,
we're we're currently being asked to be
part of this prevent strategy. As the
mayor of London, um, are you planning to
address that in any way?
Well, the commissioner of the
Metropolitan Police is answerable to me
and answer and I'm answerable to the
Greater London Authority of which I hope
Mktar will be an upstanding member and
I'll be
requiring from the commissioner that
London is policed without fear or favor
and irrespective of the color of the
face or the collar.
Now, because I know you, I know that
you're not just a black man. You're a
Muslim black man. If the police knew
that, you'd be even more likely to be
tasered. You'd be even more likely to be
stopped and searched because black and
Asian people are at least 16 times more
likely to be stopped and searched than
white people. And if they're Muslims, if
they look like Muslims, they're even
more still even more likely to be
stopped and searched. I don't know about
the tasering. The only figure I've got
is for black and white. Now, this is
because not just of racist policing,
despite the efforts of the top brass,
which I acknowledge have been uh made.
It's because we're living in a world,
which brings us back right to the very
beginning actually of what I had to say.
We're living in a world that is
permanently at
war. And in this era, it has been
permanently at war against Muslim
countries.
And we said, I am now and have been
since the beginning the vice president
of the stop the war
coalition. We said if you go to war
against Muslims abroad, you'll end up at
war with Muslims at home. And that's
exactly what has happened in the the
last conversation I had with Tony Blair,
not the last one because that'll be in
the H when he's on
trial, but the last at this moment that
I had with Tony Blair, I said to him
three
things. First of all, if you and Bush
invade Iraq, it was a couple of weeks
before they did. If you and Bush invade
Iraq, there's no al-Qaeda in Iraq now,
but there will be hundreds of thousands
of al-Qaeda in Iraq once you have
invaded them. Secondly, the fall of
Baghdad will not be the beginning of the
end, but just the end of the
beginning. How precient was that? And
thirdly, I said you will send extremism
cascading around the entire world,
including on our own
streets. And that
was entirely accurate
also. And what we're
experiencing every time they crank it
up, they they when they want to go to
war, they have to crank up a bogeyman.
There has to be a new Hitler somewhere.
We've had a long succession of them. I
mean, the Mai in Sudan predated Hitler
by quite some years, but he was
painted effectively as the new Hitler.
We've had Nasser as the new Hitler
because he had the temerity to want his
own country to own the Sewish canal
running through his country. He was the
new Hitler. Arafat was the new
Hitler. Saddam was the new
Hitler. And now Bashar is the new
Hitler. If you're going to pump up the
propaganda to make people believe these
things and therefore support your war
against them, you have to paint them as
evil and as a threat. And once you've
pumped the airwaves and the newspaper
front pages with that kind of
rhetoric, are you surprised when an old
man gets stabbed in the back on his way
to the mosque for the Maghreb prayer?
It's not surprising at all. It's not
surprising that people hate and fear
Muslims when we've spent the last 15
years at least telling everyone that we
had to go to war with this Muslim
country after another. And we talked
about Wesley Clark's prediction. There's
a war now in every country that Wesley
Clark mentioned except Iran. And we came
pretty news is reading the newspapers.
How radical do you think a young Muslim
in Britain or anywhere in the world
feels tonight as he watches on the news
the children being butchered in
Jerusalem? How radical do you think
they're
feeling? You think that it just washes
over them in the way that it does many
others? Apparently, it doesn't. I'm here
to tell you that. So if you want to
dradicalize Muslims in Britain, you have
to stop invading and occupying Muslim
countries, you have to stop propping up
dictators in Muslim countries. You have
to stop this relationship with Saudi
Arabia. My God, they talk about human
rights and one party rule and one family
rule. They don't like Bashar al-Assad
because he's one family rule. I don't
like one family rule. How come we're so
much in love with the al-Saud family
rule that our prime minister will fly
flags at half mast on the British
Parliament to mourn the death of the
last tyrant and fly halfway across the
world to kiss the nose of the next
member of his family that has taken over
the richest country in the world. We
have to stop all that. We have to stop
backing Israel and start backing the
Palestinians.
that the ones if you if you said to me
you can only do one
thing what would it be if I could only
do one
thing I would on behalf of the British
government on the 100th anniversary
couple of years from now I would reverse
the Balffor
declaration made in
1917 I'd say that this declaration was
an historic mistake
To promise on behalf of one people to a
second people the land that belonged to
a third people was a
gargantuan mistake for which we
apologize. And henceforth our policy is
going to be recognition recognition
recognition of Palestinian rights and
opposition opposition opposition to what
Israel is doing to the Palestinians.
Thank you very much.
Thanks a lot, George, and thank you,
Harrow. Um, I think we've come to the
end of this evening. So, uh, there's not
much else to say other than please, if
you have enjoyed and if you've liked
what you heard, please get involved. We
need all the help we can get. Um, either
through donations, either through help
for leafleting or as any possible task
that you could possibly contribute with
would be very welcome. Um, as I said
before, uh, George's books are on sale
at the back. And if you'd like to
purchase copy, please