Are you (whether young or not yourself) intimidated when you walk past a group of young people wearing hoods? Lots of people are – but I still believe that it’s not how young people look but how young people behave that counts. In itself, there’s no particular reason to fear a piece of fabric – but it gets seen a symbolic of a bundle of fears and so induces worry for many people.

There is no question that there are a few young people whose behaviour is wrong. Full stop. They are the cause of much of the graffiti, vandalism and worse that does goes on. Those are the ones that our Highgate and Muswell Hill Safer Neighbourhood Teams are getting to know and engage with so that they can be persuaded out of bad behaviour and involved in local activities more positively than before. Because in the end – condemning people for doing wrong isn’t enough; we need to change behaviour so that we all benefit in the future.

It was clear at a recent local Neighbourhood Assembly recently, that there still were lots of parents saying ‘there is nothing for our kids to do’. And it was quite clear from the answers given by the Labour councillors responsible for Children’s Services and Crime and Community issues, that the provision of youth services in the west of Haringey has been reduced and reduced until now we have just two nights a week provision at the Muswell Hill Youth Centre – and that is paid for by the local (police) Safer Neighbourhood Team, not the Council.

All kids need decent facilities – recreational, sporting, etc – regardless of whether they come from middle-class or working-class families – if they are to be engaged in positive activities rather than the ones that get complained about. Haringey Council need to put some serious funding into local facilities in the west.The Muswell Hill Youth Centre should be funded to open every evening – and they should be then able to have proper entry registration so that gangs excluded from other sports facilities don’t come up to Muswell Hill and cause trouble there instead.

Matters are made worse by the Government’s insistence on PFI deals at local schools. These bring in companies to run matters – and they then hike the prices for using of facilities so that local organisations can’t afford it. As one local woman pointed out at the Neighbourhood Assembly, the charges they make are pricing people like the Woodcraft Folk out of the market. Indeed, I have had complaints that two other local groups had have to give up the ghost a while back because hiring halls was now far too expensive. And yet schools often have fantastic facilities that often could be put to good community use – rather than standing empty – outside school hours. So the Government in effect stops young people using them, resulting in more hanging around with nothing much to do – and then spends huge amounts of money on dealing with the effects as mischief creeps in. Not smart, prudent or joined-up government!

To end though on a positive note of what can be done when people work together: the Bounds Green Safer Neighbourhood Team last summer ran a summer football club in the Scout Park which was so successful that this has now become Bounds Green United and is overseen by Tottenham Hotspurs, with a little funding from the Council. This is a good way forward. It would be far more constructive if all the wards in the Borough were part of a football league where they could compete on the field of sport rather than gangs engaging in territorial wars. Find a positive action – and then we may all want to hug a hoodie!

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2007

In recent times there’s been an interesting – and welcome – shift as regards the terms of the environmental debate. Arguments against taking action on our environment have shifted to a large degree from “it doesn’t matter” to “even if it does matter, you can’t do anything about it”.

So rather than denying global warming outright, sceptics more and more deploy arguments along the lines of, “well changing your light bulbs isn’t going to do any good given how many new power stations China is building”.

Although this argument is normally presented as a matter-of-fact, 100% watertight, no doubts entertained, copper-bottomed case, it is deeply flawed. And those of us who want to secure more and quicker action to tackling climate change need to engage it head on.

So here are my seven reasons why that argument is wrong:

1. Perhaps the biggest obstacle we face to getting more green policies in place in developing countries is the tag of hypocrisy and greediness. We in the developed world did all sorts of environmental damage when getting rich and industrialised – so why should we then turn round and stop others doing the same? That’s why showing that we too are taking action is important. Imagine if George W Bush came over to the UK and lectured us on reducing fuel consumption – would his lectures sound more persuasive if he was telling Americans to do the same or if he was telling American they don’t need to do anything?

2. Small actions add up. Just as the old joke goes – you eat a big elephant in small mouthfuls. Changing one light bulb at home today won’t do much to save the world, but changing more light bulbs at home overtime and having more and more people change their light bulbs too – that does add up. And it’s not just in area you can take small actions but across a whole range of areas. Done the light bulb? Now how about making sure your tyres are at optimum pressure? And maybe next month start recycling your glass jars? And perhaps something else a few months after that? All those little steps add up as little step follows little step.

3. As regards air travel – the basic argument rolled out against taking action on the environmental damage caused by flights is that they make up only around one in twenty parts of the UK’s CO2 emissions. True – but this will grow to one in four by 2050 at current rates. So small actions now with only small immediate effects can have a massive long-term impact if they help head off huge growth.

4. It’s good for our economy to take action now. The more that we do and the sooner that we do it, the greater the boost to the British economy and British firms who produce environmentally friendly goods and services. Greater support for tidal power is a good example – it won’t just help the environment but it will also help ensure that UK jobs are gained by getting a bigger share of the international market for such technology. There is an example for us to follow in Denmark, which is now a world leader in wind turbine technology and reaping the jobs and profits that go with that. The UK could easily have been – we have just as much wind as they do – but chose instead to stand on the sidelines whilst others developed that industry.

5. It’s also often good for our own wallets right here and now. Changing light bulbs or using more fuel-efficient vehicles saves you money. Even though the low energy bulb costs more, you’re quickly into profit from the lower fuel bills and longer bulb life. Keeping your tyres at the right pressure, driving in a fuel efficient way and when you next change cars switching to a more economical one all saves you money in petrol bills. So you don’t have to like the planet – you can just hate petrol taxes! It’s a win for you even if you don’t worry about pollution.

6. It’s right in principle. All my previous points are about pragmatic decisions. But sometimes it’s right to do the right thing just because it is the right thing, regardless of what impact it may or may not have.Living our own lives in as considerate and caring way as possible is the right thing to do – even if there are others who aren’t doing that.

7. And finally – as you might expect a politician to say! – politics matters. Governments set thousands of law, tens of thousands of regulations and spend billions of pounds. That all adds up to a massive amount of influence and power, and it is under the control of politicians. But even this is amenable to the collective voice of many people all taking small actions themselves – both in the ballot box(putting a cross on a piece of paper once every few years is a pretty minimal degree of effort for having a say in how billions of pounds are spent!) and in their own lives. Because the more individuals are seen as taking action in their own lives, however small, the more politicians will be convinced that people do care about the issue and will react and change.

So next time you are sat there staring at your light bulb – don’t worry about the Chinese power station that is out of your control, but remember all the power that lies with you.

This article first appeared on the New Statesman blog.

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2007

When I was first elected to Parliament, I looked forward to meeting and seeing in action close up our major politicians, many of whom had previously only been a face on the TV to me. But Gordon Brown has been strangely absent from my Parliamentary experience. Despite having a huge influence that strays well beyond the Treasury, he rarely debates, rarely answers questions and even in his own Treasury patch leaves most of the Parliamentary speaking to his junior ministers.

And not just in Parliament. On issue after issue, and Iraq above all, he had to be dragged almost kicking and screaming to speak up for his party’s policies – even though all the time he has been signing the cheques for them.

What a weird Prime Minstership it would be to have someone who shies away so much from public leadership. You do not get the impression that this is someone spoiling to get stuck into arguing his corner. Indeed, granting independence to the Bank of England – Labour’s most striking policy in 1997 – was carefully kept out of their election manifesto and away from public debate.

So – will we see a different Brown if he makes it to Number Ten? After all, you can’t send your minions in to bat for you at Prime Minister’s Questions. But even if we do, this background means Brown is surprisingly unpractised in defending his positions in public under sustained pressure. Will he manage it? Judging by what I have seen so far in Parliament, it is an open question.

The breadth of his carefully prepared and cautiously expressed views has, to his credit, been striking at times: such as his sweeping analysis of the way in which during the twentieth century the switch in income tax from being a tax on a small part of the population to being a tax on much of the population has necessitated a significant change in the way that taxes and public spending are defended and justified.

Being Prime Minister, however, is not the same as writing interesting academic treatises. And his big ideas are a very mixed bag: tax credits have been a vastly over-complicated failure and Tube privatisation in London has seen millions squandered, whilst independence for the Bank of England (a policy lifted from the Liberal Democrats) has worked and much credit is due to him on Third World debt and aid.

On that issue he showed decisiveness and leadership, but on far too many others – such as pensions, the NHS and climate change – his response has been to set up long-term commissions under outsiders to tell him what to do. We have all had to suffer from lack of action whilst he has inched towards a conclusion.

Now, I’m no objector to careful consideration of issues, getting in advice, or preparing the ground carefully – but reviews need to be a means to making an effective, timely decision – and not a means to prevaricate. This slow moving, hugely cautious approach could – like his shying away from public leadership – be caught out very badly if he is in Number 10.

A liability too could be the long, long history of political infighting involving Brown and others. This dates much further back than Blair announcing he would not fight another election. As Philip Gould has recounted, it even goes back before the 1992 general election:

“The whole thing was so debilitating because every time Gordon appeared on TV, someone in John [Smith]’s camp would say, ‘Look, it’s another bid for the leadership’, Patricia [Hewitt] remembers.”

Someone I can’t quite see fifteen plus years of squabbling stop overnight at the leadership election. Indeed, Brown’s habit of cutting out others from decisions (as with cutting our Blair from key decisions on the Euro and the public by keeping his independence for the Bank of England policies secret during the 1997 election) makes for an unlikely leader of a team.

Neither is he a likely candidate to give Labour a fresh new look. He is very firmly one of the faces of now not-so New Labour. James Carville, who helped Bill Clinton win the US Presidency in 1992, famously wrote a sign in the office saying the election was about, “the economy, stupid”. But people tend to forget what Carville wrote before that on his sign – ‘Change vs more of the same’. And Brown is definitely more of the same. Blair’s record as Premier is as much about Brown as it is about Blair.

In fact, look at all those issues that most motivated Labour supporters to switch to us in 2005: top up fees, (lack of) free care for the elderly, Iraq and more. They all have Gordon Brown’s fingerprints all over them. Is Labour’s saviour really to be found in the man deeply immersed in the policies that drove millions of voters and tens of thousands of activists away?

There is though, one issue on which Brown’s judgement has been impeccable. As he told Paddy Ashdown a few years ago whilst discussing our parties’ respective economic policies: “You lot [i.e. the Liberal Democrats] were right.”

Now that would make a fun election poster for the next election!

This article first appeared in Liberal Democrat News. For subscription details, click here.

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2007

It’s called Parkland Walk – and I emphasize ‘Walk’ because many local people are up in arms in case ‘improvements’ wreck this haven of nature, peace and tranquillity by turning it into a cycle track. Opened in 1984, Haringey’s Parkland Walk stretches for four miles and is billed as London’s longest Local Nature Reserve.

This green lung nestling in our borough along the old train tracks (long gone), is used by pedestrians, dog-walkers and recreational cyclists (polite cyclists who warn of their approach with a bell and travel at sensible speeds – often parents taking their youngsters for a safe off-road ride) and it is under threat. Or the fear is that it is under threat.

Haringey Council successfully bid to Transport for London for funding for improvements for three ‘green ways’ – one of which is Parkland Walk. No one can deny that Parkland Walk needs some improvements. But as the Friends of Parkland Walk (www.parkland-walk.org.uk) made clear at a packed public meeting last week those improvements should be limited to improved drainage (lots of muddy puddles and flooding), better signs, repairing broken steps and improving access for people with disabilities and mothers with babies and pushchairs.

Where the controversy comes in is the idea of resurfacing it, turning the current meandering, rough path into a smooth surface which will then encourage commuter cyclists to use the walk at speed to get to Finsbury Park station and its super duper bike stand where commuters can leave their bikes safe and sound.

And of course, we all want to encourage cycling – that’s why there is such a great bike stand at the station. But large-scale tarmac (or similar) will strip the walk of its rural nature and also – almost certainly – result in not just more cyclists, but cyclists at high speeds – taking away yet more of its gentle, rural nature. Not every possible route is suitable for more and faster cycling – this one included.

Whilst council officers tried to reassure people at the meeting that the improvements would not ‘widen’ the path, that the meanders would be left in and that there would be no attempt to create a ‘smooth cycle way’ but only patching the path where necessary (albeit along 40% of the length of the walk) – local people did not seem completely reassured. Nor was I.

What became clear from the questions was that the funding wasn’t just a grant from Transport for London to improve green corridors – but that the funding was actually from Transport for London’s Cycling Excellence Centre for improvements for cyclists. So – there are suspicions that the work will really focusing on just getting more cycling along the route, even at the expense of Parkland Walk’s character, but also there is the question of whether this is really the right place to be spending that money. There are many other routes into Finsbury Park that could do with cycling improvements and would be better suited to a growth in bicycle traffic – why not spend it on some of them?

Local users were not generally anti-bike, and were happy with the recreational use by considerate cyclists. Indeed, several recreational bike riders who use the Walk were equally against it becoming a fast cycle track for commuters. I was in Parkland Walk at the weekend – and there was a perfect mix of pedestrians, dogs and family cyclists – all enjoying this amazing retreat.

The council officers promised to put the Parkland Walk funding bid on the web so we can see what the bid consisted of, but I have also written to Transport for London to ask what they believe the money will be spent on. We need clarity from both ends of the chain as there’s such a thing as paying the piper – and we need to know what Transport for London expect for their money – the bangs for bucks.

And if that turns out to be large scale high-speed commuter cycling, then the answer should be, “thanks, but no thanks – the money can and should be better spent elsewhere”. Because to turn it into a cycle path or encourage more or faster cyclists would destroy the ambiance of this woodland nature reserve. Yes – we want more cycling in London – but in the right locations.

This issue is likely to run and run for some time, so please do let me have your own views either by writing to me at House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA or on my blog.

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2007

I have a dead computer in the corner of my study. Recently my hard disk started issuing apocalyptic warning messages and so – as my life depends on my computer and I had been thinking of replacing it sometime anyway – I zipped online and ordered a new one before the apocalypse arrived. Data safely transferred, I am up and running with my new computer – but the dead one is sitting in the corner doing nothing.

As this is (hopefully) an era where we know that we shouldn’t just throw an old computer away and as I was sure that with a bit of work (new hard disk etc) it could be of use to someone – what should I do with it? Well – one of my recent constituency engagements provided the answer (almost).

The “almost” is because events conspired to prevent me taking it with me on the visit as I ended up having to dash back and forth first between marking the thirtieth anniversary of the Battle of Wood Green (an anti-fascist march) and rescuing a stranded daughter (victim of the one working line of the Northern Line expiring with a stuck train at Archway and a mega-important event to be got to).

So I arrived at Maxitech for my visit to their special “bring your old computer day” without my own. Maxitech are a brilliant, not-for-profit local company that reconditions old computers, whilst giving training and employment to the long-term local unemployed – and then uses the reconditioned computers to benefit charities and community groups. Old computers get put back into use, jobs are created and good causes get IT equipment cheaply. Win, win, win!

This particular day was a special hook-up with Hewlett-Packard (who are a huge and very corporately responsible computer company) and children’s charity NCH (used to be National Children’s Homes). All day long the parking lot at Chocolate Factory in Clarendon Road N22, where Maxitech are based, was open to receive computer donations from individuals in the community. Those reconditioned computers will be going to the NCH.

There will be other special days arranged in the future – and Maxitech are there all the time. I will get my computer to them soon, but I suspect there are many other people other there like myself who also have computers that could go to this good home. Whilst much of Maxitech’s supply comes from companies, they also welcome equipment from individuals. You can get further information from www.maxitech.biz or 0870 199 5010. And if you give them an old computer, you’ll not only tidy up your home – you will also do some good (and feel good!) as a bonus.

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2007

The Sudanese regime is one of the most brutal and destabilising in the world today.

Some 400,000 black Darfuris have perished in the past three years due to the measures taken against them by the Government of Sudan and allied militias.

If we are not against this genocidal regime, we are with them.

Two and a half years ago, Tony Blair took a stand saying that ‘international focus on Darfur will not go away while the situation remains outstanding’.

But last year, the Head of Military Intelligence for the Sudan, Salah Gosh – who orchestrates the violence in Darfur – was twice welcomed to this country.

The European Parliament declared the actions of the Sudanese Government ‘tantamount to genocide’.

In our names, it placed itself on record deploring the actions of the Sudan regime, but wriggled out of any obligation to do anything.

We must end the politics of delay; the politics of hypocrisy.

Our unwillingness to act on violence in Darfur has assured the Government of Sudan that it can commit gross violations of human rights with impunity.

The regime in Sudan has played the international community for fools.

Today, there are still no UN peacekeepers in Darfur.

We must match our bold words with bold actions. We need real carrots and sticks. Nothing else will change the Sudan Government’s calculations that it can kill with impunity.

And it’s not rocket science either. We need to stop the Sudan Government bombing Darfur with immediate and urgent progress towards a verifiable no-fly zone over Darfur. There are French and US facilities in the region to monitor such an arrangement.

Secondly, we need to stop the Sudan Government transferring weapons to Darfur: we need an immediate and serious extension of the UN arms embargo to cover the whole of Sudan.We found out last week that a British company has been transporting ammunition inside Sudan in defiance of European sanctions. And where is the outrage from our leaders?

Thirdly, we need to hit those orchestrating the violence where it hurts: impose travel bans and asset freezes on all the individuals named in the UN’s own Commission of Inquiry and Panel of Experts reports and those named by the International Criminal Court.

Finally, and crucially, Khartoum needs money to pay for all this genocide. The UK and the EU needs to target those companies which are providing the regime in Khartoum with revenue, arms and diplomatic cover. For once, we should follow the Americans – who have moved to block transfers by US commercial banks of oil payments.

The whole point is to change Khartoum’s calculus of its own interests.

The UK and USA are pushing for some of these measures at the UN. This is to be applauded. But the support of China and Russia is key to new UN sanctions and we must work hard for their support.

If it is not forthcoming, Tony Blair and other leaders must not rest on their laurels.

The EU and the US must implement a targeted sanctions regime themselves.They must face up to their own duty to protect.

A no fly zone. A meaningful arms embargo. Targeted travel bans, and asset seizures. And cutting what amounts to financial support to the regime.

Europe’s leaders have repeatedly expressed their horror about what’s happening in Darfur.

But to date their words have been hollow.

Wishful thinking is not going to stop the atrocities.

Excuses will not stop the atrocities.

Only action will.

Just this last Easter Weekend, I went for a walk in Regent’s Park early morning – and as the sun beat down on me walking through gorgeously designed and tended gardens, I felt so lucky to be alive and living in such a beautiful city with such a beautiful park on such a beautiful day. It reminded me that we should be deeply blessed (weather aside!) to live in this country – one of the very richest in world, with a fine tradition of decency and humanity and kept free of many of the large-scale tragedies (natural and man-made) that have scarred so many other countries in the last few decades.

So why then are the joys of life often apparently in such short supply? It is not just the media – much though they love painting a picture of grim catastrophe where everything we eat and touch will kill us, and even if it doesn’t there is a cast of other woes just waiting in the wings.

I’m currently slowly writing- or more accurately trying to write – a chapter for a book. My thesis is that we live our lives surrounded by the unattainable- the ‘must haves’ of how our lives should be, what we should do, think, eat, be and aspire too – all of which leaves us meandering along life’s path, whichever path we are on, feeling vaguely disappointed in our achievements or our lack of them and feeling perpetually disappointed or deprived. Even in this age of unparalleled wealth in our country – it doesn’t protect us from a perpetual feeling that if we only had X or did Y, our lives would be so much better.

So how – in this world that has moved on from those ‘old-fashioned’ values – can we create structures or environment that value our human good qualities more and place less importance on wealth or status?

And what – if any – role is there for government and public bodies in all this? This is tricky territory to tread in as one false slip of the sentence and you open yourself up to pastiche as wanting a Ministry of Fun and state-regulated force-fed humour courses with every meal. Indeed, David Cameron’s recent call to "let sunshine win the day" certainly did seem to me rather risible. (Does he think he will be running against a "more rain now" Prime Minster at the next election? On the other hand, if it is Gordon Brown…!)

But with all that said and all the caveats deployed – there are certainly many things government and public bodies can do to make us sad or angry, so should their role be to minimise such actions or are there more positive steps that can be taken too? In the grand sweep of policy, there are obvious big picture items – such as tackling poverty, reducing social exclusion and cutting crime.

All help remove real causes of misery. But they are not the whole story – just think of the number of times people say things along the lines of, "we may have been poor, but at least we were happy…" So I am interested too in the smaller scale measures.

Take one example: the question of how engaged someone is with their neighbours has huge knock-on effects on their participation in society, happiness and even health. Government can hardly order people to talk to or like their neighbours, but at the micro-scale why about councils doing more to help and encourage the organisation of street parties so people get to know each other? Lots of streets already do have their own street parties – and it does create neighbourlyness and bon homie. Perhaps an annual street party week to encourage all those who mutter about how nice it would be to know the people in their street to actually get round to it? Or perhaps councils should be doing more to help online communities emerge in their areas, through measures like providing easy to use and free website and online discussion forums so that anyone can within a few minutes set-up an online community for their street or neighbourhood – and of course click a link to print off some flyers to then distribute to their neighbours?

As the chapter still needs writing – do let me have your thoughts. Just drop me an email or comment on my blog.

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2007

I recently returned from a short trip to the Middle East. Amongst the many issues to see and hear about, I had wanted to see some of the education work going on. This is because the Liberal Democrats are putting education in conflict zones at the forefront of their international development campaigning – as are Save the Children. So Save the Children arranged for me to visit the Kalandia School on the West Bank of Palestine to see how girls from the Kalandia Refugee camp are educated.

Save the Children work with local partners – and in this case Pyalara (Palestinian Youth Association for Leadership and Rights Activism) were carrying out a workshop with about thirty girls, aged around fifteen years.

At the moment the kids have to go in two shifts as the space is inadequate, though a second block was in the last stages of construction opposite the existing school. About three quarters of the girls wore the hijab – the rest were bareheaded.I asked about that – and the answer I got was that it was less to do with religion and far more to do with the views of your family. I was told that despite living in the camp, almost all the families had television (hence their understanding of media I suppose) but that there were only about four computers in the Kalandia camp.

In this school itself they have been using workshops to enable pupils to identify for themselves the barriers that they encounter to leading fulfilling lives. I guess I was somehow expecting them to blame Israel, the US, us for their poverty and their struggle. But what the girls in Kalandia had identified as their biggest problem was actually cultural – early marriage. Three of the girls from this class were already married (one had already dropped out already) – and the expectation was that the rest soon would be. And marriage generally meant an end to their education, expectation and hopes for the future.

So the workshop became about how to raise this issue and how to begin to change things – all based on what they themselves could do.One route they identified was about getting the message out through the media. After a warm up exercise the girls were asked to define their view of the media. They all said it was a way of getting the truth out there – but they also thought the media could be used to tell lies. They wanted to use newspapers to fight against early marriage. Many of them said that education was more important than marriage – and that there was a health dimension with effects ranging from mental to physical to social issues.

The workshop went through demonstrating what was the key to a good news item, what makes a story and how to get the media interested. They decided that in order to make the issue of early marriage newsworthy they would have to select the most important aspect and try and get a real life story to illustrate it.

They were pretty savvy and very enchanting girls. And reassuringly, as girls are clearly girls wherever they come from, they had a uniform which each girl wore in a different way (mostly under their other clothes) so just the tails peaked fashionably out – just like I used to do at school myself!

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2007

It’s the sort of phone call I dread: four stabbings and between sixty and eighty youths rampaging up and down Lordship Lane. It’s not the first and it won’t be the last. Mercifully this time the ‘stabbings’ are not lethal. But a couple of weeks ago there were three high profile stabbings. These produced the usual bursts of indignation and headlines following each spate of incidents. Much hand-wringing. Number 10 holds a summit. And then what?

Gang culture is not something society in general really understands. And the carrying of knives and guns is not something that is fully understood either. It is said that young people carry knives because they are scared not to – because other kids are carrying and they don’t feel safe. It is often said that it is about ‘status’ (who’s going to dis you now – if you carry a knife?). It’s said that the lyrics of rap songs encourage violence, degrade women and so on. It is said that when a kid can get £20,000 per year taking packages here and there versus £12,000 per year stacking shelves at a supermarket… It is said that it is easy to get a gun. It is said that a being part of a gang delivers loyalty stronger than family. It is said that kids have nothing else to do. It is said that it is family breakdown. It is said that the male role model has disappeared from families and primary school classrooms. It is said that there is a group of extremely alienated youths outside all society. It is said that when at home, gang members are as sweet as pie.

So – there’s a lot of saying going on – but – I don’t think we really know. I don’t think we have the empirical back-up. We are rightly lengthening prison sentences for carrying a bladed instrument in a public place or carrying a gun – but as with so much other crime, changing jail sentence lengths is only at best a very small part of the solution.

I raised the Lordship Lane rampage in Parliament with Jack Straw, the Leader of the House, asking him to arrange time for a proper and detailed debate of these issues in Parliament. Credit where credit is due – he said he would try and make time for a debate on the wider issue.

I’ve drawn the parallel with drink driving before (see here). That too was an issue of needing massive cultural change – making being drunk whilst hurtling around at high speed in a lump of metal no longer acceptable. Laws were needed, but so to was a long run investment of time and effort to change people’s habits and attitudes. What we’ve done for drink driving we need to go for the knife touting culture too. They are different problems – but the solution is not about the punishment alone – it’s about changing so much more. And hand-wringing and headlines definitely aren’t the answer.

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2007

Speech given at the Haringey Freedom Breakfast, 21 March 2007

Firstly – thank you to Pastor Nims – whose work to bring the world together in peace with events like these always makes us remember our better selves and what we need to strive for as human beings for the good of all in what is sometimes a very negative world.

This morning’s news about the gang fight in Wood Green yesterday with up to eighty youths involved and four stabbed reminds us sadly of how very far we have to go.

So – thank you Nims for this opportunity to say a few words about freedom; what freedom means in the ongoing fight against modern slavery; and the importance of celebrating the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery here today.

I am so thankful that Britain was at the forefront of the abolition of slavery – but so ashamed that we ever were part of it.

And yet it goes on today. Slavery is not just something of the past. Today – here in the UK there are still other forms of slavery in the UK.

Human trafficking is not relevant to the UK, but also to Haringey.

There has been enormous increase of trafficking into Europe, particularly in Britain and especially related to prostitution.

Some 4,000 women, girls and boys, some as young as 10, are trafficked into Britain alone every year for sexual exploitation.

And the problem is closer to our homes that most people probably think.

In Haringey, a two year undercover operation exposed a sophisticated criminal network that charged thousand people between £3,000 and £5,000 for a ticket into Britain. On arrival in the UK the ‘clients’ were sold into the sex trade.

Senior officers considered the network to be one of the largest, if not the largest, people trafficking gangs they have encountered in the UK. Thankfully, in this case eight members of the gang were prosecuted.

But in most cases, they remain undetected.

These terrible facts are a call for action. Finally, we have a decision by the Government to sign the European Convention Against Trafficking. This is great news.

It is great news for personal freedom.

But I now urge the Government to ratify and implement the document without hesitation. Implementation, implementation, implementation.

We need to send out a message to say that human trafficking is unacceptable in the UK. We all have a duty to safeguard personal freedom.

And the important point is that behind the word trafficking is a human being. The minute we lump people together under labels they lose their humanity. The lesson of slavery is that man’s inhumanity to man knows no bounds, it continues and it is beholden on every one of us to speak out and act against it – whether state or personal – and to remember the value and worth of each human being that lies behind a newspaper headline.

This is why I am so happy to be here to celebrate the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery today.

Because the 25th March 1807 was a beautiful day for personal freedom.

Each of you here in this room may have different reasons for why slavery is such an affront to human dignity.

But – by sharing our insight, experience, information, and expertise- we can together continue to develop a strategy to take the next step in stamping out slavery so that on the 25th March 2207, the Freedom Breakfast might truly celebrate the abolition of slavery. We’ve come a long way, but there is still a long way to go.

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2007