Newham Unites against Police Terror
By Kevin Blowe, June 2006
There is something truly shocking about the argument that justifies the shooting at dawn of a young man in a botched anti-terror raid by saying that the police have a difficult job distinguishing between the innocent and the guilty and that Londoners have just got to accept heavy-handed police operations as the price they must pay to feel safer. It suggests that we write the Metropolitan police a blank cheque to take whatever unaccountable step they wish, secure in the knowledge that the Prime Minster and the former Left-wing firebrand Ken Livingstone will back them 101%. It is an argument made by those who are never likely to feel that they, their friends and their neighbours are the targets of suspicion and are never likely to find the frontline of the war on terror on their doorstep.
Residents of Forest Gate like myself who woke up on 2 June to find our streets cordoned off and the media in a frenzy about a supposed chemical bomb factory were far from reassured by the massive police presence around our homes, not least because most suspected within hours of the raid that Lansdown Road had become a crime scene with no crime and the Met had made, as was subsequently shown, another terrible mistake. And whilst the press speculated about the nature of the intelligence and what impact the raid would have on the career prospects of Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, local people worried whether they or someone they knew might be next. And whether next time, a member of the local community might be shot dead to help keep London safe.
In the week that followed the raid, the neighbours of two men at the centre of the raid, Mohammed Abdul Kahar and Abul Koyair, tenants of the brothers family in Lansdown Road whose home had also been raided, were able to recount their own ordeal, which included a vicious beating by police officers. Whilst senior officers talked of the "overwhelming support" they had received from the public in Forest Gate and acknowledged only the disruption the police operation had caused, activists from the east London community organisation Newham Monitoring Project (NMP), which has been supporting both families, canvassed residents and found deep disquiet about the raids themselves and intense scepticism about the motives for carrying them out.
As it became clear that Mohammed had been shot in the chest, not the shoulder as the police had first claimed, and had been incredibly lucky not to have been killed, surviving largely because of his physical fitness, more and more questions remained unanswered. Was the military-style operation really for the benefit of the media, a way of showing the preparedness of anti-terrorist policing as the anniversary of last years tube bombings drew near? But the police remained silent, local police commanders specifically denied the option of providing information to local people by their superiors in Scotland Yard. For days, it felt as though the neighborhood around Lansdown Road, where residents were escorted by police officers through the cordons to their doors, was under a state of siege.
But in spite of the anxiety that people felt, and as leaks from within the police attempted to blame the two brothers for the shooting and to smear their family, a remarkably mature campaign had begun to grow, one that rejected both the Islamist fringe and the timidity of local councillors and carefully selected community leaders who told the police what they wanted to hear. It took its lead from the brothers themselves, who refused to be typecast in the role the media expected of them as young British Muslims and who demanded nothing more than their right as citizens, born and brought up in London, to an explanation and a proper apology, one that went much further than the lukewarm expression of regret by the police for "any hurt that may have been caused."
The campaign in support of the Abdulkahar family that brought over three thousand people out onto the streets of Forest Gate on 18 June was rooted amongst younger members of Newhams mosques but from the very beginning looked outward. It sought a united response from everyone in the area who wanted to express their support and solidarity with the two families and with cousins of Jean Charles de Menezes, who marched alongside them. Every church in the borough was contacted and the local Sikh temple gave away free drinks to the marchers, whose numbers reflected the huge diversity of nationalities locally.
This is the story that the press completely missed. Most journalists learned nothing from spending ten days camped in Forest Gate, preferring to follow the polices simplistic lead in seeing the Muslim community as separate, insular and isolated. Rather than talking to local people, supposedly respectable broadcasters like Channel 4 wanted to find a Muslim to respond to the hopeless apology from Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman, choosing to ignore the fact that most people in Forest Gate felt we were all due an apology for the shooting of one of our neighbours.
As we struggled for ways to articulate the concerns expressed to us, campaigners witnessed the apparent contradiction of the community where the raid took place. On the one hand, it has one of Londons few ethnic majorities with a population that is constantly shifting and changing, but at the same time there is an underlying tradition of community activism that local residents have managed to hold on to. Its part of the reason I like living in Newham so much. Time and again, NMP activists heard people refer to local struggles of the 1980s, such as the Newham 7 and Newham 8 campaigns, when expressing their sympathy and support for Mohammed, Adul and their family.
Newham Monitoring Project, which has witnessed many changes in its fortunes over the years, was able to very effectively draw on the recognition and experience it has maintained over 25 years in Newham to help organise public responses to the police actions, whilst the network of Muslim activists who mobilised for the march in Forest Gate revitalised the alliance that came together to organise the ten-thousand-strong local demonstration against the start of the war in Iraq in 2003. At a local level, they reflect the wider trend among young Muslims to find new allies that found its expression in the anti-war movement.
Arguably the greatest irony of the bungled and potentially lethal raid in Forest Gate on 2 June is that it has brought both local residents and local communities closer together. The problem for the police and for their masters in Downing Street and Mayor Ken Livingstones office is that it is largely in revulsion and disgust at the way the police acted. No amount of self-deluding statements about "partnership and cooperation" with communities in Newham is going to change that fact. It is also clear that because the police operation was planned and controlled centrally by the Mets gung-ho Specialist Operations Directorate, local police commanders are now finding it almost impossible to respond to the difficult questions they have been faced with. NMP continues to argue that there can be no blank cheque, no hiding behind the threat of terrorism to justify the shooting of an innocent man. We have therefore called upon the architect of the raid, Andy Hayman, to come down to Newham and address local peoples concerns in person. On the evidence we have collected, if he agrees hes going to have some serious explaining to do.
Kevin Blowe is an activist with the Newham Monitoring Project, and is also involved with running RAN's sister site, Radical Activist Newham.