At the launch of Labour’s London local election campaign on Monday, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will be joined by Labour’s London Mayor Sadiq Khan in branding the Conservative record on policing and crime as one of reckless failure.
After the string of recent violent incidents in London, the Labour leader and London Mayor will pull no punches about the impact savage Tory cuts to policing budgets have had.
England and Wales now have 21,000 fewer police officers.
Corbyn will announce that he has called a roundtable meeting in London on Tuesday of police officers, victims of violent crime and experts working to halt the rise in knife and gun crime, to help strengthen Labour’s approach to dealing with the increase in violent crime.
Ahead of the local elections on 3 May, Corbyn and Khan will also address other critical problems affecting Londoners – including the housing crisis, insecure work and low wages – and will highlight the work of Labour councils in London already leading the way on tackling these issues.
Corbyn will say:
On the recent violence in the capital
We meet here today in the shadow of one of the most violent periods we have experienced in recent times – not just here in London but across our country.
Young people with their lives ahead of them are being ripped from our communities. Too many families are facing the loss of a child they have nurtured in their early years – never to see the potential of that love and support realised.
As political leaders we must act. We have to tackle full on the reasons so many of our young people are having their lives extinguished.
Tomorrow I will be meeting with those who on the front line of violent crime. I will be meeting police officers, families who have lost children and organisations working to end the curse of knife and gun crime.
I want to hear what they have to say. Labour will listen to experts whose first hand experience of working on the front line will help frame our approach to dealing with the sharp rise in violent crime.
We must also hold the Government to account. Over the last 8 years the Conservative Government has decimated local services, the core services that are an essential part of holding our communities together.
You simply cannot maintain community cohesion when you slash funding to the police service and cut the number of officers on our streets by 21,000.
You cannot protect local communities when you cut funding to local councils to such an extent they are unable to provide the essential youth service support that stops many young people from being drawn into violent crime.
The Tory record on policing and crime is one of reckless failure. Plain and simple – you can’t have security on the cheap and cuts have consequences. Too many communities are living with those consequences.
On the Grenfell tower fire:
Londoners came together in sorrow and in solidarity in the aftermath of the terrible Grenfell tower fire which took 72 lives.
Who could not have been moved by the outpouring of support? People offering clothes, food, money, accommodation and love to people who had lost everything and who had been let down by their council and by the government.
Grenfell told us something else about London, something we see starkly every day. We may be united but we are deeply unequal.
That fire simply would not have happened if the occupants had been wealthy. That is the brutal but inescapable truth.
And even now the inquiry is failing to learn the lessons of Hillsborough by ensuring the bereaved families have full access to the information they need and that the council and Government give them the answers they deserve.
What all Londoners need to know is that they will be safe in their homes.
Straight after Grenfell it was Croydon Council that committed to installing sprinklers in all high-rise tower blocks and Camden removed dangerous cladding from its buildings and is investing £80 million to improve fire safety in its tower blocks.
Khan will say:
May 3rd will be a chance for Londoners to give their verdict on the Tories’ extreme Hard Brexit – and their failure to build the genuinely affordable homes to buy and rent that Londoners desperately need. It will also be a chance to send a message to the Government that their cuts have gone too far, for too long and are putting the safety of our city at risk.
The recent violence we have seen on our streets is as heart-breaking and tragic as it is appalling. The Met Police work incredibly hard but they are worryingly overstretched and woefully under-resourced. At the same time Ministers continue to slash budgets for mental health services, schools, youth services and probation – services we need to help young people turn away from a life of crime.
We need to invest in our police and in our communities. It’s the same old story under the Tories: police officer numbers down and crime is up.
Vote Labour on the 3rd of May to send the Government a clear message – on Brexit and on the devastating Tory cuts. We need Labour councils in London so they can work for the many, not the few.
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“HOME SECRETARY SAYS POLICE CUTS NOT TO BLAME FOR RISE IN VIOLENCE” is going to be a difficult sell.
Did Rudd make the announcement at a primary school by any chance – and was she tarred, feathered and run out on a rail by jeering six-year-olds?
Yet again Corbyn takes the lead and once again, our so called PM, May hides away whilst she tries in vain to catch up.
And Labour recently with the support of others got a motion through Parliament calllling for 10,000 more police on the streets which was ignored by the Tory Govt.
And now we have the tragedy of mainly young black people on the streets killing each other (which no doubt pleases racists).
Perhaps an alienated youth, a youth that feels it is forgotten and powerless (and combines in gangs) should Politic Up and turn the frustrations into politics – join Labour, join trade unions.
You can empower yourself in a positive way.
And come on rappers, your community needs you now.
Does this government think that Law and Order can be provided on the cheap by closing down police stations and shutting down Citizens Advice Bureaus?
Lets try, to do something completely different!
How about, the parents of the children who love to be out everynight, search their kids before they go out?
Or, make sure the cutlery drawer is padlocked.
Or. when these kids get into a knifing or shooting incident, the police make a visit to their home and arrest their parents?
Just a thought!
Check out Lowkey and Akala.
A History lesson from not that long ago!
Thatcher, while she was in office, her and her cabinet made many people redundant, her main objective was the “MINERS UNION” no matter what, she would teach them a lesson, that being, “you don’t mess with us the TORIES”!
With their policies of Union Bashing, then going on to decimate industry and the infrastructure which was the fabric of our Country, she wanted this Country to be run like a greengrocers and do away with the GREAT IN BRITAIN!
Her dream was to make us all shopkeepers, the service industry was the way to go!
In the process, she made over 5 million of us jobless, no work was to be had, weren’t the only ones, there were many more who didn’t register!
She wanted all of us to be house owners!
Sell the council housing stock to us the council tenants, then make us all redundant, so her rich Banking friends could foreclose and make more money selling them off in bulk!
Crime, Drugs and Interest Rates, under her and the Major Leadership of the Tory Party, went thru the roof, the poll tax debacle, house repossessions, were the highest ever!
The trickle down she believed in, along with her Party, never happened!
YET this crowd of Tories that’s in now, are worse and they’ve learned nothing from then!
Ritalin used with cannabis ‘is fueling gang violence’ ““They start hallucinating and hearing voices. If they are listening to drill music that’s telling them to go and stab someone across the road, [they] are going to do it,” he said. “We don’t understand young people so we try to use medication to get them to conform.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/ritalin-used-with-cannabis-is-fuelling-gang-violence-xtdcp3nks