Author Archives: Greg Foxsmith

Decision not to seek Re-Election

I was first elected as a Councillor for Hillrise Ward in Islington in 2006, and re-elected in 2010. During my eight year tenure, Arsenal have failed to win a single trophy. These things may be connected.
Now Arsenal stand on the brink of winning the FA cup.
My course of action is clear.
To avoid another four trophy-less years, I will not re-stand.
Tribune article here.
In Addition:-
1 In 2006 and 2010 the Conservatives were trounced in Hillrise. This year, they are fielding NO candidates! My work here is done.
2 I always said I would only serve a maximum two terms. I fulfil that promise. In fact, I think all Councillors should serve a maximum two terms. There are two many tired old faces, entrenched in the Town Hall bubble, with seemingly no life or interests outside politics. New candidates with fresh ideas are surely preferable to careerist politicians becoming increasingly dependant on their allowances, and surviving by patronage in servile demonstrations of Party loyalty.
3 I would like to pay tribute to my fellow ward Councillor Lorraine Constantinou, who has been an outstanding, hard-working Councillor.
4 I was elected as a Lib Dem Cllr, but became Islington’s only Independent Councillor after resigning from the Lib Dems over the National Party support for Secret Courts.
And Finally….
I would like to thank everyone who entrusted me with their vote, and particularly those who campaigned, done-knocked and delivered with me in two elections. Also to my former Hillrise colleagues Fiona Dunlop and Julia Williams, current Cllrs Lorraine and Marian and the excellent MP for Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn.
And not forgetting Donna Boffa (RIP)
I also acknowledge the massive support from Council Officers, who of course do all the hard work for which Councillors take credit.
And (yes I know this is worse than an Oscar speech) to my family, who at times I saw less of than I would have liked.

Below:-Hillrise Councillors 2006. I still had hair when I was first elected!

“Save Our Slide!” Guest Blog by Adam and Daniel FoxSmith

This first part of blog from 2014 is by Adam Foxsmith then aged 10

We all know that children’s play space is important in a crowded place like Islington. So when my brother Daniel,( aged 6, yr2) and I heard that the Council were planning on taking down the Archway slide, we felt we had to do something about it.
There was a consultation, but we discovered that both options involved taking down the slide!
So, Daniel and I put together a question for the Council meeting, as reported in the Islington Tribune HERE
At the meeting, Daniel asked the question “Will you save the slide?”, and I asked a supplementary question. The Council said they would think about it!
We also presented a petition to save the slide.
We have decided to continue the petition, to see how many more signatures are gathered. The Council is still considering what to do, as reported HERE

This part of the blog is by Daniel Foxsmith (now aged 10) in 2017

I am very happy that the Council has improved the park. It is great to have the slide back and I am glad that we saved it. I have tested the slide and can confirm that it as good as before or maybe better! 👍

Slide re-opening covered by Islington Tribune here

Notes

The park-including revamped slide was re-opened on September 30th 2017

Grayling Day Demo -Speakers for Justice

The following speakers spoke up for Justice at The Grayling Day demo in Westminster on 07/03/14

1 Paul Harris
A former president of LCCSA, Paul opened the proceedings with a rousing address. He said the cuts would result in a two-tier system – one for those with money and one for those without.
2 Alistair Webster QC

A Lib Dem peer but speaking as a lawyer he reminded us of their Party Policy of supporting Legal aid, but commented adversely on their failure in government to speak out against Grayling’s cuts, concluding “The politicians may have failed Justice. We will not.”

3 Laura Janes
Laura, representing The Howard League for Penal Reform dealt with how Chris Grayling has removed most prison law work from criminal legal aid.
4 Sir Ivan Lawrence QC
Sir Ivan (criminal barrister for over 50 years, and was a Tory MP for over 20 years) said he was ashamed of this Government. “We will bring the Criminal justice system to a halt to save it- that’s why we are here”
5 Ian Lawrence (NAPO)
Representing the Probation Service, also under attack by Grayling,

6 Paddy Hill

Paddy reminded us what is at stake. “There will be many more miscarriages of Justice like the Birmingham 6 if legal aid is cut to this level.” An article about Paddy’s speech, with a clip in which he brands the MOJ the “Ministry of Injustice” is here.

7 Sir Anthony Hooper
Retired Court of Appeal Judge, Sir Anthony reminded us eloquently:-“For some 60 years everyone has had the right to equal access to Justice. This Government is destroying that right”
8 Francis Neckles
Francis was rightly acquitted at trial, preserving his good character, thanks to good representation by his Legal Aid lawyer. “Chris Grayling says he can’t afford to fund legal aid- Francis Neckles says we can’t afford NOT to”
9 Shami Chakrabarti

Representing Liberty, Chakrabarti made a powerful speech linking Legal Aid with freedom.

10 Dave Rowntree
Dave is drummer with Blur and was also a solicitor with Kingsley Napley.
He spoke about the Magna Carta, which was signed 800 years ago next year, and clause 40 – “To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.”
11 Nigel Lithman QC
Representing the CBA, he had been invited to speak to demonstrate the unity between bar and solicitors in fighting the cuts. Three weeks later, the CBA struck a “deal ” with the MoJ, favourable to the bar but not solicitors, having met the MoJ secretly and without solicitors representatives being consulted. Relations between the criminal bar and criminal solicitors reached an all-time low point following these actions, but have improved enormously under subsequent and present CBA leadership.
12 Janis Sharp
Janis is Mum to Gary McKinnon, and led a courageous (and ultimately successful) fight against his extradition. She knows the value of legal aid, and can be seen in the YouTube film below (incorrectly subtitled as Janis McKinnon- apologies Janis)
13 Bill Waddington
Bill was a former and the current chair of the CLSA.
14 Noela Claye
Speaking with the support of the charity Women against Rape WAR, Noela brought a victims perspective, and showed that ultimately this demo was not just about fees or careers, it was also about victims, clients, and justice.
Noela spoke on camera in the short film of the start of the demo (link below)

Hanna Evans
Hanna was a new tenant and rising star at 23 Essex St. Chambers. Read more (and hear her speech) at #Just4Justice demo here.
15 Sadiq Khan
A former lawyer in a legal aid practice, Labour MP and shadow Lord Chancellor (as he then was) Khan said he opposed Grayling’s cuts. When asked to give an unequivocal commitment to reverse them if in office however he declined. In the run-up to the election campaign, he combined his portfolio responsibility with the role of Labour lead for attacking the Green Party (who had made a commitment to restore legal aid funding) and left the justice portfolio in favour of visits to Brighton rallying the Labour troops in an unsuccessful attempt to unseat Green MP Caroline Lucas. After the election, he successfully campaigned for London Mayor.
16 Matt Foot
Matt, one of the founder members of the Justice alliance summed up the rally, before leading a march to the Ministry of Justice.

NOTES

Short summary of the event by film-maker Ed Stradling with speaker clips here on Youtube

Another short film of the start of the demo here (Thanks to Matt Tiller)

Excellent commentary and photos of “Grayling Day” here (courtesy of Legal Aid Watch)

Photos of demo, all speakers, thanks to Luca Nieve, here

Late Night Levy Madness

The streets of Islington are, according to Islington Labour, rife with violent drunks after the midnight hour, and thus they have rushed to be the first London Borough to raise a tax on licenced premises- well summarised in the Tribune here as the Islington “late night levy”
The move will have little effect on high-profit clubs with promotional drinks offers, disgorging their drunken clientele in the early hours, but will hasten the closure of small community pubs according to CAMRA
In classic Islington style, the money raised will be spent on more saturation CCTV coverage, and recruiting a private security force, who will patrol the streets with no powers of arrest, a rag-tag motley-crew of para-military red-coats.
This hare-brained scheme was introduced by Islington Labour’s Councillor Paul Convery.

There was always something of the Puritan about Cllr Convery.

Unfortunately, Captain Convery’s New model Army is more of a “Dad’s Army”, with Paul as a cross between Private Frazer and the pompous Captain Mainwaring character, supported by his loyal sidekick Cllr Poole, and some loyal backbenchers resembling Cpl. Jones, running around wringing their hands and shouting “Don’t Panic! Don’t Panic!”

The proposal to introduce a privatised security squad was buried in the policy paper (at para 5.3 ) and was not a “recommendation” , perhaps because the idea had nothing to recommend it, but more likely as under the Constitution it is possible only to amend recommendations, so therefore impossible to table an amendment to the goon squad proposal.

Predictably, Councillors supporting the levy ignored the failure of current licensing policy and policing, and naively assumed that the levy would somehow magic away the problems associated with late night drinking. Thus, they argued anyone against the lobby was somehow in favour of vomit, urine and yobbery. Each speaker was keen to outdo each other with apolacyptic visions of Hogarthian imagery, Cllr Poole offering to conduct guided tours of the hellish scenes in his ward. It’s only a matter of time before someone takes up that idea, and we see “drunk and disorderly” tours advertised in TimeOut or Rough Guide. It was this hellish imagery that gave rise to the headline “Islington rivers of vomit and urine” in the Islington Gazette.

In 1979 Elvis Costello recorded Oliver’s Army.
Now we have Convery’s Army:-
Convery’s Army are on their way
Convery’s Army are here to stay
And we would rather see anything else than Islington run this way…

Full music playlist for “Cap’n Convery’s Late Night Levy Army” here

Letter in Islington Tribune here

Protecting Children Services in Islington

UPDATE:-My amendments to the Budget were unsuccessful, and the cuts to Children Services have gone through, with Labour Councillors voting instead to keep their press officers, support officers, and allowances (with the Lib Dems abstaining)
Coverage in islington Tribune here

November 2015-shock rise in crime in Islington reported.

Original Post from 27 February:-
At Islington Council’s Budget Meeting tonight, the Council is potentially going to make a grave error with its proposed drastic cuts in children’s services.
The Council has of course been unfairly hit by disproportionate and draconian funding cuts from central Government, and there are inevitably difficult decisions to make.
However, targeting posts in Children’s Services is making the axe fall in the wrong place, and potentially putting vulnerable children at risk.
In my amendment, I will argue that the cuts should fall instead on the bloated Communications budget (currently running at about £1million per year), and on Councillors own allowances.
When Labour took control in Islington in 2010, they had pledged to “slash” expenditure on both communications spending and allowances. Now they can fulfil that pledge, and protect a front-line service.

My budget amendment also provides additional funding for road safety, especially around schools, and preventing bike theft (which is prolific in Islington)
Detail
I’m trying to stop the Councils proposed slashing of jobs in children’s services. (See appendix B esp items 3,4 and 7) In nearly £4million of proposed cuts, there are six senior posts and a management post being deleted amongst staffing reduction.
I will protect these posts by instead:–
-abolishing party political spin doctors
-abolishing the Councils propaganda magazine “Islington Life”
-reducing the Councils million pound Communications budget by about a third
-reducing Councillor allowances by 10% (to follow the example of Council Leader Richard Watts)
(I will follow Cllr Watts Leadership, and take a 10% reduction in allowances, whatever the outcome of the budget amendment)
-abolishing “special allowances” for chairing planning meetings.

My amendment also provides funding for an air quality strategy to tackle killer pollution levels.

Finally, my amendment also provides some additional funding for the Advice Alliance- there help for vulnerable people needed more than ever with Coalition attacks on welfare and the needy.
(Also topical, with today’s announcement by Grayling killing off Criminal Legal Aid)

Islington Employment Commission

Islington Council set up an employment commission, to solve the unemployment crisis in the Borough by having a series of meetings.
It sadly never reached the high profile those who dreamt it up felt it deserved, so I’ve made this playlist to help promote it.
The terms of reference, appointees and timetable were carefully controlled by the Council Leadership. Nonetheless, the aim of reducing unemployment was a laudable one.
The process has finished, and the report is here
Good luck with that!

Legal Aid Protest- lawyers on strike!

I was not representing anyone on January 6th this year.
Together with fellow legal aid lawyers, we were withdrawing our services, in protest at the underfunding of the justice system and cuts to legal aid.

What happened on 6th January?

There was this protest against legal aid cuts in the morning outside Westminster Court organised by the Justice Alliance.
This was a public demo, well attended despite the weather, to show support for legal aid and against Grayling’s proposed cuts.
I was stewarding a “training session” for lawyers, at Islington Town Hall (from 1115) organised by the LCCSA
It all started to feel a bit like a strike!
The protest was billed as a strike in the Daily Mirror
This had never happened before, and shows the MOJ is in a “right old mess” as reported here in the Telegraph
The guardian also reported on the action
but was this just the usual stuff from ‘fat- cat” lawyers?
The reality of life for the majority of legal aid lawyers is far, far removed from the distortions regularly reported in the popular media. What is dispiriting is that selective and misleading quotes and stats are routinely deployed by the MOJ to re-in force the stereotype.
Check out the Legal Aid MythBuster here
The point of the demo was to help make people aware that if this Government continues with these cuts, It will lead to the collapse of proper publicly funded defence, and innocent people will be either unrepresented or poorly represented, with bitter consequences for Justice and Society.
A report on the Days events in Islington is here

Catch up on twitter comments #fight4legalaid and/or #walkout4justice

Cycle deaths in London

I attended a demo outside TFL HQ on Blackfriars Road, to highlight the sad cases of recent cycling fatalities in London, and the failure of Boris/TFL to take proper budgetary action to improve cycling safety.
Thousands of cyclists laid down their bikes and lay in the road in a symbolic gesture described as a “die-in” by the organisers, an informal group who set up the Stop the Killing protest
The concerns will not go away- and pressure is building on Boris to act.
There is a lot of anti-cycling sentiment out there, for which some cyclist behaviour does not help, but ultimately cyclists are vulnerable and it is time to stop blaming cyclists for the fatal accidents or incidents where they are seriously injured, and work to make London a safer, more cyclist-friendly environment.
A similar argument (but much better written) is made here by Caroline Russell of Living Streets
cycling playlist here

A postcard to Mr Clegg

In 2013, as requested by Save UK Justice campaign, I wrote a postcard to Nick Clegg, the then Deputy PM in the Coalition Government, and helped deliver a batch of over 3000 similar such postcards.

Lib Dem policy as approved at party Conference, supported Legal Aid.

“Dear Mr Clegg,

You are the Leader of the Liberal Democrat Party, currently in Government in coalition with the Conservatives.

That Party is committed to savage, damaging and unsustainable cuts.
Your Party, to its credit and in stark contrast, has declared a Policy to support Legal Aid.
What are you, as Leader, going to do about it?
Yours sincerely,

Greg Foxsmith”. (Together with 3000+ other postcards and the Save Justice UK Campaign)
We finally received an answer from Clegg -published by SaveJusticeUK here
The response was woefully inadequate, sloppy, fatuous and factually incorrect. It was worse than a brush-off-it was a calculated insult. There were still some good people in the Lib-Dems, but it was now clear they needed to examine their consciences, and either change their leader, or change their party. They did not manage the former, although many did the latter, and the Lib Dems were decimated in the post-Coalition election of 2015.

Now, at the Lib Dem Conference (September 2016) the Lib Dems pass a motion “regretting” the legal Aid bonfire. (This regret is seemingly not shared by the ghastly Lord McNally, Lib-Dem minister and sidekick to Chris Grayling, who (along with Simon Hughes) should carry much of the blame)

Sadly for those who support legal aid (and more importantly those who need it) this expression of regret by the Party Conference comes too late. Nick Clegg cannot say they were not warned.

legal aid playlist
postcards-for-justice

Notes
1 I attended Lib Dem HQ in November, representing the LCCSA, to help deliver the thousands of save Legal Aid postcards as part of the postcard campaign organised by SaveJusticeUk.
Also attending from Islington was Ruth Hayes, (pictured with me outside LD HQ in photo above) from Islington Law Centre.
Ruth told me “the Law Centre knows the importance of Legal Aid to vulnerable clients, who without it will be denied justice. We are particularly concerned about the impact of the Residence Test, and changes to funding for Judicial Review.”
2 see also opinion piece in Lib Dem Voice here.)
There was also advice to act quickly from Lib Dem Lawyers -and we all know what happens to people who ignore legal advice….

War Child

This month (December 2013) I ran the Santa Run (10k dressed as Santa) for the brilliant charity War Child
A fantastic charity, and what better time to support their work helping the children who are victims of war than in the run up to Christmas, as we in the privileged West indulging in our annual orgy of consumption and consumerism would do well to remember.
I may have completed the race, but it’s not too late to sponsor me!
So be of good cheer, and don’t be a Scrooge- please sponsor me for this years Santa race to help the work of War Child.

It’s a great fundraiser, and a really fun event in which to participate or take part. It’s a surreal site to see so many Santas sprinting off , all raising money for good causes. I completed last years race in Greenwich which I ran for Greenpeace) ,and I’m looking forward to Santa Dash 2015!
Below are some photos from last years race, and this years event in Victoria Park.

Playlist of music recorded for WarChild