Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Khoodeelaar! challenges UK Crossrail minsiter on railway claims

Muhammad Haque | 18.07.2006 19:06 | Analysis | Indymedia | Social Struggles | London | World

Just as Tony Blair has been shown this past week to have suffered another dramatic reduction of his image, 'thanks' to his visible alliance of stuttering supplication to G W Bush, so is the domestic UK legislature caught in a morass of unimaginative 'law'-making, as the CrossRail Bill 'scrutiny' committee has been showing by its failure to allow bona fide objectors put the evidence before it. Next week's filing in the High Court of the formal challenge against the Secretary of State is set to create a record in the history of battles to make the UK Parliament representative of basic standards of democracy that it is often claimed to typify. The constitutional contribution of the Khoodeelaar! campaign towards democratising the UK parliament will be a fitting one, given that the East End of London has been chosen by the Select Committee to be denied its say in the so-called peoples’ parliament.

So, the long-awaited legal action against the CrossRail plan is starting next week. Was that necessary?

Was that avoidable?
Was there an alternative to taking High Court action?
Will the High court agree with the applicants against the Secretary of State?

What about the local MPs for Tower Hamlets?
What about the local Councils?
Did they approach their local council?

All these questions can be firmly answered on the facts in the negative in that we have done all that could have been reasonably expected of us in the past 31 months since the KhoodeelaAr! Campaign began.

We asked the local council, the local councillors, the regional assembly member concerned, the ‘london mayor’ the local Blairing MP at the time to work with the campaign and in defence of the community against CrossRail.

We have seen the evidence of callous disregard and dishonesty. Blatant lying by all concerned against the community.

We have encountered such systematic corruption on the local Tower Hamlets Council and via that Council that no rational person could expect that council to deliver any ethical or democratic response to the campaign demand that the Council must say No to Crossrail hole project.

It has been a long while since the UK's actual law-making process was put to any real scrutiny at an independent forum.

What goes on in the name of scrutiny in the UK Parliament is so inappropriate, inadequate and patchy that to call it scrutiny is to really abuse the word scrutiny.

There are so many bureaucratic and anti-democratic factors for this lack of democratic audit of the UK parliament.

The most important one is that the 'people' are assumed to accept that elected members of the parliament are by that fact alone and actually actively engage d as the voices of the electors when conducting themselves in the Palace of Westminster.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

And it is not a slogan.

The KhoodeelaAr! campaign over the past 32 months against the CrossRail project has unearthed enough evidence to show that parliament is not working.

It may not sound a staggering statement.

But it is a frightening state of affairs.

Without an active democratic and representative membership of parliament, the people do not stand a chance. The people therefore have no excuse to let the situation get out of control and for parliament to become a rubber stamp for what can only be an authoritarian order


Just so that the campaign against CrossRail is seen in the factual context, ALL THREE MAIN Parties are backing this fundamentally flawed project. The number of independent MPs who voted against is so small as to be insulting.

There is no way that those MPs will make any difference if they followed the in-house voting arithmetic.

Many hurdles have had to be got over before we arrived at this stage.


Muhammad Haque
- e-mail: lawmedia@hotmal.com
- Homepage: http://www.khoodeelaar.com

Comments

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech