Full meetings of Newham Council are fairly tedious. They are often dominated by the mayor, Sir Robin Wales, informing us all how wonderful/successful/impressive the borough has become since he’s been in charge. His venal payroll-vote nod, clap and cheer at another master-class in self-praise. And we all go home.

Mind you, since the 2006 elections when the Christian Peoples Alliance took over Canning Town South ward in bed-rock Labour territory (Labour since 1912 according to the town hall records), the fury of that party has known no bounds. It has led to ferocious and fascinating inter-party rows in Council.

At full Council on 7 April, during Questions To The Mayor, a Labour member planted one about representations received from local councillors over the closure of Oasis Nursery School. As all the local councillors are from the Christian Peoples Alliance, this was clearly intended to be party political knockabout.

As you will expect from the previous post (Part 1, below), the mayor spun the line that it was River Christian Centre’s (the landlord’s) fault the school was closing. On a Point of Order I countered that the reason why the school was closing was because a road was going through it. Then the balloon went up. The mayor’s executive adviser for regeneration and leader of the Labour group on council, Cllr McAuley, erupted with a show-stopper: Cllr Craig, he shouted, was telling an “absolute barefaced lie”.

At root the eruption was about power and control. In the Aldous Huxlian Republic of Newham there is only one way of seeing the world – the Labour Party way. Labour paradise-engineering requires us all to toe the line and receive the wisdom propagated by the mayoral cadre of party jobsworths and their bloated communications department (spin doctors to you and me), as that way lies universal – synthetic – happiness.

Anyone out of line is out of their control and, like UNISON’s Michael Gavan (see my post of 24th January), is ruthlessly disposed of. Labour Newham is Mugabe without the bullets.

Therefore Cllr McAuley was unable simply to say I had a different and democratically-valid viewpoint about the closure… Nor even that I was profoundly mistaken… Nor possibly that in his view I promoted a malicious misrepresentation of the facts. No, he was so affronted that someone had another way of seeing the world and the school closure that he had to go the whole hog. So I was telling an “absolute barefaced lie”.

It’s a tribute to our Judeo-Christian and liberal democratic heritage that such an expression would be ruled out of order in the mother of parliaments at Westminster. A Christian understanding is that there is only one unchanging root Truth in the universe and that everything else can be up for discussion and dispute; this leads to a liberal and enlightened respect for diverse viewpoints. Freedom of speech, thought and conscience flow directly from this.

Accusations of “lying” on the other hand tend to be fascistic, antidemocratic and intended to close down debate. They aren’t of course ruled out of order at Newham Council.

Cllr McAuley’s claim leads to a logical conundrum. He said ‘advisedly’ (that is, with due consideration) that I told a lie or “uttered a falsehood with an intention to deceive” (Chambers Dictionary). If he’s right, I am a dishonourable liar. However if he’s wrong and I didn’t lie, then the boot must be on the other foot.

I don’t and didn’t lie.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 10th, 2008 at 4:04 am and is filed under Democracy, Newham Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.