Looking at the list of "commissioners", Tower Hamlets Fairness Commission is unlikely to address unfairness in the Borough. By all objective accounts, Tower Hamlets remains a very deprived borough. In the ordinary peoples' day to day expedience. Looking at the quality or standard of the Council's service delivery, Tower Hamlets is failing the population. So how is this Commission going to improve "equality outcomes" in the Borough?
As most people in need are also most people who need help with housing benefit, Tower Hamlets Council has a very high proportion people who are about to get a
shocking reduction in that help. And there is no evidence that the Council is going to help. In fact the key speaker on peoples' neighbourhoods and areas where they live, at the first of three known "public meetings" held last week, failed to inspire any confidence that he had the basic knowledge to warrant being given the platform. The fact that he is a long time in post employee of the Council shows that whatever else may be intended by the "fairness Commission" fairness to the people by the Council is not going to be the lead "recommendation" by the Commission.
All known and campaigners for fairness in the Borough who are not affiliated to the Tower Hamlets Council administration were excluded from the published list of members of the commission and from the published speakers' list.
The Borough Council’s Opposition Labour Group last week made critical references to the frequent announcements by the current administration without costed and budgetary justification. The Labour Group itself is a moderate, slightly Right-ward operation. Had they wanted to stir things up, and they appear quite happy with the status quo, they would have wanted to know why the Fairness Commission was composed in the way that it was. And the Opposition wold have also wanted to know how many families, individuals have been evicted from their homes and how many have been sent out of Tower Hamlets and out of their communities.
There is a democratic vacuum on Tower Hamlets Council which has a recorded composition of elected members from a significant “diversity” background. The elected Council has so far failed to make the unfairness by the Council to the electorate an issue at all.
And therein lies the secret of why despite the platforms given to it by the likes of the Guardian and flaunted by the very definitely detached and undeprived James Naughtie four days ago on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, the Tower Hamlets Council’s Fairness Commission will not make any difference to the daily unfairness being meted out by the Council to the communities across the East London Borough.
If the evidence as relayed by the Boundary Commission for England in their draft report legitimising the call for the disharmonious deletion of the word “Banglatown” from the Ward name for Spitalfields and Banglatown is any guide, the Conservative group of councillors on Tower Hamlets are not expected to make a really historic leap for equality and fairness.
Which leaves the people violated by unfairness by Council really without a voice, no matter what decorations are attached to the clerical celebrity of “Dr” Giles Fraser. Unfairness is going to become the order of things in Tower Hamlets and the very crafty blame is going to be laid at the door of the Con-Lib Coalition. That blame is justified in many cases but to excuse the Council’s own unfairness by citing the Coalition is not fair. This is what is happening on the ground.
Can Giles Fraser live with that?
Of course this post is being published on saturday 01 December 2012, some months ahead of the likely publication of a report. But past form and evidence of the behaviour of Council-patronised “inquiries” tells us one thing: they are not going to bite the patron!
So what is the way for getting the Council to be fair to the people?
We could start by doing a bit of the old fashioned campaigning along side the people who daily encounter the unfairness at the hands of Tower Hamlets Council employees, agents and touts.
We could also ask, as this is the weekend after the Leveson Report, that OFCOM itself needs to behave fairly.
How so?
Because OFCOM is the supposed guarantor of broadcasting neutrality. Yet it has not shown much teeth when it comes to the several ethnicity-linked satellite TV channels daily running Pr packages and pieces that shows the Tower Hamlets Council as being “fair”.
These channels could not be reporting on the daily experiences of ordinary people from across all backgrounds in Tower Hamlets. Had they been doing so, they could not even broadcast any plug for the Council administration in the way that they have been doing every single day for some time now.
Will OFCOM vindicate Brian Leveson’s faith in it and show teeth and put a stop to these promotional pieces that in fact justify violations of thousands of peoples’ rights by the Council’s decisions’ practices daily?