File:Haringey Free Speech Area.jpg

English: Outside Wood Green Central Library, 187-197A High Road, Wood Green, London N22 6XD.

On 10 November 2015 in Haringey Civic Centre, ten minutes walk from the library, Gideon Bull an elected local councillor exercised his right to freedom of speech. What happened next tells you how sick democracy has become in Haringey Council.

At a meeting of the Council's so-called "cabinet", Cllr Bull made a principled stand and challenged the rationale for savage cuts and closures to services for elderly and disabled residents.   After the cabinet meeting, the regime now running Haringey Council quickly moved into action against Cllr Bull. It displayed its usual insensitive, closed-minded and increasingly authoritarian character. Cllr Liz McShane Chief whip of the ruling Labour Group of councillors, summoned Gideon Bull to a meeting, accusing him of "uncomradely" behaviour by speaking his mind.   After an "investigation" Cllr McShane recommended to the Labour Group that Cllr Bull should be "disciplined" for thinking and speaking for himself and publicly challenging and disagreeing with the Party Line. The punishment proposed was losing the Labour Whip for three months.   Shamefully, at a subsequent meeting of Haringey Labour councillors a majority of these poor excuses for elected citizens agreed with the sanction proposed by Liz McShane.

Maybe Cllr Bull should have asked his questions and made his appeal to the pigeons in Haringey's Free Speech Area? Pigeons are renowned for their sense of direction and being able to cover long distances to find their way home.   It appears to me that many of Haringey's supposedly Labour elected councillors may have lost not just their sense of direction but a moral compass. But whether they believe Gideon Bull is wrong or right, doesn't a healthy democracy include the responsibility and right to challenge and critique the powerful?   It is outrageous that Cllr Bull should be disciplined for standing up and speaking out on an issue of principle and conscience.   Elected local councillors should all be community leaders. Whether they are "The Leader", a "cabinet" member, or not. They should value and respect people who are prepared to tell them things and produce evidence which disputes their views and plans. When the "leading" group on a local council believe they must silence and punish all and any dissent, their regimes have become truly rotten. ____________________________________

§ 28 January 2016. Matthew Smith reporter with The Tottenham Independent Newspaper reported on : "Tottenham Labour members attack party for withdrawing whip from Cllr Gideon Bull". § Harringay Online local website discussed the events. § I tweeted Haringey councillor Liz McShane a quote by Nelson Mandela. "I like friends who have independent minds because they tend to make you see problems from all angles". That "critical friend" role is what Gideon was doing. It seems neither Cllr Claire Kober the Council Leader, nor Cllr Liz McShane understand or value friends with independent minds. § 25 January 2016 was Burns Night. I tweeted Liz McShane a few lines from Robert Burns' poem "Here's a Health to Them That's Awa". "Here's freedom to them that wad read, Here's freedom to them that wad write, There's nane ever fear'd that the truth should be heard, But they whom the truth would indite." § More wise words: "If Liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." - George Orwell. § A petition was posted by a Tottenham resident, Frances Donnelly asking Cllr Liz McShane to reinstate Gideon Bull. By 1 March 2016 it had more than 77,000 signatures from across the UK and many other countries. Please read the petition and consider signing it. § My own Declaration of Interest.

§ In his samizdat essay: The Power of the Powerless. Václav Havel described how most citizens living under the communist regime in former Czechoslovakia "were living a lie". They kept quiet and hid what they thought and believed, so the State would leave them alone. Havel contrasted this with "a life lived in truth".