TUESDAY, MARCH 13, 2012
Cllr Saj Khan - an exclusive interview for the PRT!
posted by Joe at 11:27 AM
The Police Force has always been a highly politicised institution. From its creation under Home Secretary Robert Peel in the early 19th century to deal with middle class concerns about the Captain Swing riots, it was then gradually developed directly adjacent to the rise of violent Chartist agitation and early trade unionism.
In this century too, it has maintained its political status. The most obvious example of this occurred during the 1984/5 miners’ strike, but we have also seen the politics of the police at play during the G20 demonstrations in London in 2008 and more recently with the exposure of its close links with the Murdoch press.
Much of the left-wing debate on the police, however, concentrates too heavily on the Met. What are the politics of Cleveland Police?
I first met Middlesbrough Councillor Sajaad Khan last year, when we were both Labour candidates in May’s local elections. Unlike me he was successful and was elected in first place for the tough Gresham Ward, ousting former Council Leader Ken Walker in the process.
I was intrigued to read of his somewhat bold candidature for the Labour nomination for Cleveland Police Commissioner, with the first set of elections due to be held this November. At 31 he is still a young councillor and is decidedly un-embedded within Teesside’s civic society. If anything, despite being a Labour councillor, he’s something of an outsider within the local political world.
Personally I am sceptical towards the whole notion of elected Police Commissioners, but Khan’s campaign has already been the beneficiary of prominent featured articles in both the Evening Gazette and the Northern Echo, and as he may well be the first Cleveland Commissioner I was delighted that he agreed to be interviewed exclusively by the People’s Republic of Teesside so that I could try and understand a bit more about his intentions.
I didn’t even have to ask him a question at first. He had barely sat down when he immediately made clear to me his motivations:
“Basically, I’m not happy with the state of the police at the moment, and I can’t accept the rationale that a former Police Committee member, or a bureaucrat, can be the right person for the job, we need someone who brings a fresh perspective.”
“Police Committee members are conditioned to make decisions in a certain way which can be two dimensional. It needs a new voice. For Cleveland Police, it’s the management, the structure and the policing strategy that all needs changing. But they’re only now talking about stuff a Police Commissioner could do, that they could have been doing already!”
I raise with him my concerns that the whole concept of Police Commissioners is a bit of a populist, right-wing gimmick from a Tory Government. What is the point of it all?
“I’m tired of people playing the politics of fear. The boundary reviews, for example, are going to have a massive effect. Looking at Hartlepool, it’s going to go down from 47 to 33 Councillors. That will have a number of positive effects in that it will save public money and result in fewer bureaucrats, but the people who actually live in the Wards will still be there.”
“Neighbourhood policing is being rationed,” he continues, “We're losing many police officers, but they’re also being redeployed and rationed elsewhere. It’s true we’ve lost many 999 operators.”
Isn’t this a political move by the Tories, though? They will know that their political opponents’ resources are stretched, and that the more elections they invent the more those resources will be stretched?
“Yes.”
Also, don’t the Tories just want to pander to their reactionary base by having a few ‘hang em and flog em’ candidates win Commissioner roles at a local level, and that they can just wash their hands of it?
“That’s the scary thing. Hopefully it should be prevented as anyone who wants to stand will have to pay £5,000, and i'm unsure if there will be any refunds. Hopefully this will deter any EDL or BNP or other far-right nut-jobs from standing!”
“It is true though that if we end up with powerful Commissioners with no checks and balances they would be able to push through extremely harsh policies. In fact, if you look at the surveillance capabilities Middlesbrough Council and Cleveland Police has, a Police Commissioner could really do pretty much whatever they want.”
“David Cameron also knows that it will be a useful election issue in 2015, as he will be able to shift the blame for any rise in crime – caused by his economic policies – onto Labour Police Commissioners.”
I raise the record of the Blair Government with regards to Civil Liberties issues. Isn’t it the case that there were a lot of highly authoritarian policies that were pushed through: the increasing weaponisation of the police; increased powers of detention without charge, proposals for I.D Cards, increased powers of stop and search, and the widespread use of Control Orders and ASBOs?
I also raise the record of Middlesbrough Council. Councillor Khan agreed with me that Ray Mallon has always taken a reactionary line on ‘law and order’ issues in that Middlesbrough Council has massively increased its surveillance operations, has placed hidden microphones around the town to shout at people dropping litter, and has plastered photographs of young people given ASBOs over the backs of buses. I point out that most of this was done not only with the support of, but under the direct responsibility of Labour Councillors.
“This is something that’s true.”
Many people in the Labour Party, I suggest, seem to take a rather inverted snobbery approach to civil liberties issues. It’s regarded as distractionist; the sort of thing middle class liberals discuss at dinner parties. Labour politicians will always point out that their working class constituents actually favour CCTV and ASBOs and so on.
“Well you’re a lawyer, and looking at it from a lawyer’s perspective, this is the worst thing that might now happen. The police will become politicised.”
“Cleveland Police has always been politicised though. Particularly since Mallon and all the corruption during that time we now have Pryce and McLuckie under investigation. The whole Cleveland Police Authority needs changing.”
“Despite that, it would be near impossible for a Labour Commissioner to push through hard line socialist policies, as the individual police officers have to be politically neutral.”
“The Police Commissioner will be a very highly paid post. It’ll be paid more than an MP, but you won’t have any Parliamentary Privileges. So who exactly will you be accountable to? In Cleveland you will be accountable to Labour Councillors and independent representation, you could say the old school club. I’d like to see panellists without allowances, and the money saved should go back into the force, back into services. You should also have members of the public on the panel.”
“Actually, that would be something you’d be good at!”
“Not if it would be unpaid, it wouldn’t!”
Finally, I suggest that there are two obvious outstanding questions. I mention that when I was a candidate last year I was aged only 22, and that if I was correct in my thinking if I had been elected that would have made me the second youngest Councillor in Middlesbrough’s history – behind Steve Gibson. I observed that I was frequently advised to make political capital out of being a ‘young’ candidate but that I was always reluctant to do so as I couldn’t see what justification I might have to portray myself as a representative of the youth of Middlesbrough, and that in fact I don’t think I am. I ask him, however, whether he would stand not just as the ‘young’ candidate, but as an ‘Asian’ candidate.
“Yes, definitely.”
I ask him for his interpretation of the relationship between the police and the Asian community on Teesside.
“You have to remember that there are now over 30,000 Black and Muslim people living on Teesside, not to mention Kurds, Africans, Hindus, Sikhs and so on, and the relationship with the police needs to be better.”
“We have issues on Teesside with extremism and forced marriage, but we also have issues with alienation and exclusion.”
Is this something your election might address?
“Yes. I genuinely believe we need a candidate who can unite everybody under one banner. I think I’m that candidate. The Tories are hopeless when it comes to this. Did you know they had to put out a booklet to activists and candidates with guidance for how to ‘connect’ with Black voters?”
No! But then it hardly surprises me at all!
“I really think that the Labour Party is the only mainstream party that ‘gets’ this issue and wants to do something about it.”
Our chat then came to a close. I asked him what he thought his chances were.
“I don’t think I’ll be on the Labour shortlist as much as I’d like to be. I think the Party will decide at a national level that you have to be on the Police Committee in order to stand. Which is a problem because it’s many of the people who already sit on the Committee that are involved with the problems at the moment.”
So if you were able to be shortlisted it would really shake things up?
“That’s my intention, but as I say I don’t think it’ll happen.”
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