Examination of Witnesses (Questions 10480
- 10499)
10480. Mr Galloway: No, I understand
that. I was just about to move on to the next station of my argument.
I am grateful for your not stopping me before I got to this station.
The context I am trying to set is that some of the very poorest
people in England live in Tower Hamlets and live in the epicentre
of this development so far as it affects our borough. I am glad
that you went on the site visit that you did because you will
have in your mind's eye collectively the area that we are talking
about. It is a part of London but quite unique. There are very
few capital cities in the world where so many poor people live
in such poor housing so close to the centre of the capital city,
so close to the power and wealth in this society. This is not
the place to argue about how that might be remedied, but it has
led to a situation for very, very poor people, a large number
of them immigrants and the children and grandchildren of immigrants,
a significant number of them for whom English is not their first
language and for whom parliamentary proceedings and consultations
on major public works are not the Lingua Franca of their everyday
lives in the way that they would be in, say, Kensington &
Chelsea. I think that has informed the way this procedure has
been followed up to now.
10481. One of the things I will be arguing here,
if you will permit me, is that the consultation on all sorts of
matters, environmental and other matters, has been woefully insufficient,
and insofar as the Race Relations Act inform some of what I have
got to say, it is unlawful. There have not been the efforts made
that should have been made, that are required to be made, in compliance
with the Race Relations Act to properly inform and consult, and
seek agreement if possible, with the ethnic minority communities
who live in very large numbers right at the centre of this development
so far as it affects our borough.
10482. Chairman: George, are you going
to elaborate on that?
10483. Mr Galloway: Yes. I wanted to
say that in your site visit you will have seen just how narrow
and clogged are the arteries around Brick Lane, Hanbury Street,
Woodseer Street and Durward Street. These are very dense concentrations
of people, overwhelmingly poor people, amongst the densest concentrations
anywhere in the country. There are very narrow streets, narrow
and well-used pavements. In the heart of this warren of narrow
streets the Promoters intend to visit what I described in the
House as a Ground Zero for seven years utterly devastating the
lives and the livelihoods of very large numbers of people in my
constituency. I am glad that under popular pressure (although
we were told it was impossible when we first advanced it) the
tunnel is now to be dug from both ends. We were told it was impossible
but it turned out to be possible because of popular pressure.
That has mitigated some of the impact.
10484. It is my argument that the Tower Hamlets
Borough Council in their evidence to you has fantastically oversold
the mitigation, that the building of the shafts that are still
proposed in Hanbury Street will still cause massive disruption
and danger to the lives and to the health of my constituents,
and should not be permitted. This response that I have from the
learned gentlemen on my left, and that you have, is full of the
usual soft soap about assurances and the rest. I have sat on committees
like yours; I sat on the longest running railway Bill since Isambard
Kingdom Brunel, the King's Cross Railway Bill. There were many
such assurances given but assurances, as you know with your long
parliamentary experience, are worth little unless they are copper-fastened
and I have not seen in the documents presented to me and to you
anything like copper-bottomed guarantees on the disruption, the
noise, the pollution and dangers that will be caused by the digging
of these shafts in Hanbury Street or Woodseer Street. For the
record, let me say I see no difference materially between these
two options. The number of people whose houses will have to be
knocked down, the number of lorry journeys, the amount of pollution,
the amount of noise, will not be significantly different if the
shaft is built in one or the other.
10485. I simply do not accept that the assurances
on the table to date in any sense solve this problem which I have
and which my constituents have. I have to tell you that locally
it is regarded as inconceivable that streets as narrow and as
congested as Hanbury Street, Durward Street, Vallance Road, could
conceivably handle the amount of traffic that is being talked
about here. That is just the amount of traffic. The character
of the traffic, multi-wheeled vehicles, massive juggernauts every
five minutes, every ten minutes, who knows, thundering through
these very narrow arteries, past schools, past libraries in heavily
densely populated areas is regarded as inconceivable. People laugh
at the idea. How could you possibly run these trucks in addition
to the traffic which is already causing so many problems of congestion
in that area? I tell you, Chairman, it will blight the lives of
some of the poorest people in England, and for what? For the purposes
of a five day commuter line for wealthy people and very little
of the claimed benefits of this scheme will ever trickle down
to the residents of the streets that will be blighted. I will
come on to that point in more detail later in my presentation
to you.
10486. You saw the schools and you saw the schoolchildren,
and I am glad that you did. You saw how many there are. You saw
how precarious the journey to and from school is already. I ask
this Committee to give due weight to the plea I am making not
to endanger the physical safety of these children, of this population,
from this level of traffic. Seven years is a long time, Chairman.
If a week is a long time in politics, seven years of constant
workings on this scale is a very, very long time. And it is in
the context, I hope you will permit me to say, of other massive
developments taking place cheek by jowl and simultaneously. The
Royal London Hospital, a vast project, will be proceeding more
or less at the same time. The East London Line, now I see to be
a wholly privatised piece of work, will be proceeding more or
less at the same time. It will be hell on earth. It will be no
bliss to be alive for those seven years in these narrow streets
where some of the poorest people in England live in some of the
most overcrowded houses and some of the worst houses in England.
I hope that this Committee will not visit upon my constituents
that which I think they would be reluctant to visit on other communities
that perhaps historically have a longer track record of defending
their interests. I argued in July last year that one of the reasons
why this scheme was going to affect my constituency so very severely
was that the community there was regarded as a pushover, unable
to stand up for itself, unable to articulate its case, and ruled
by a political class which has sold itself to this project for
a mess of potage called the Whitechapel Station, about which more
later.
10487. I am doing my best now to try and salvage
something for them in this process. Please do not imagine, whatever
you have been told by Tower Hamlets Council, that the beating
hearts in this area have been stilled by the concessions that
have been made; they have not. Once the work starts, if it starts
on this basis, it will have a very severe impact indeed.
10488. I said that my constituents thus affected
are amongst the poorest people in England, in some of the worst
houses in England, some of the most overcrowded houses in England.
They also already suffer amongst the poorest health in England.
We have a situation where the people in that area, literally in
the shadow of the City of London, the wealthiest square mile in
Europe, and metaphorically in the shadow of the gleaming spires
of capitalism in Canary Wharf, live six years less than the people
in Kensington & Chelsea, six years less. The incidence of
asthma, diabetes, heart problems, in my constituency are way above
the national average now. It is already amongst the most polluted
boroughs in England and that is before these seven years begin.
Once the dust is flying, the mud is splattering, the trucks are
rolling, the juggernaut is in full flight, the impact on the health
of my constituents will be, I predict—I am no physician
but I do not have to be Einstein to work this out—hazardously
affected. Not just the physical safety of walking in the streets
going to school, going to the shops, going to the library, but
the longer term impacts of the pollution that will be visited
upon them by this project if it goes ahead in this form will be
very grave and very serious indeed.
10489. In the responses there is reference to
the three monitoring points which will monitor the pollution levels
thus created. This is completely insufficient. One of these three
is on the tip of the Isle of Dogs measuring the air pollution
in the middle of the Thames! I am asking you for this: we need
a special zone for the observation of pollution generated by this
project in the heart of this project. That is the very least you
can do for me and, more importantly, do for them to ensure that
this pollution is monitored where it is happening in a serious,
scientific and systematic way, and if, as I predict, pollution
levels exponentially rise that proper mechanisms are in force
to ensure the work is halted until that problem can be resolved.
10490. I want to turn if I can to the issue
of hours of work, Chairman. I saw a quote—let me paraphrase
it, from Mr Keith Berryman. He referred to the site during your
proceedings as "not a 24 hour site, generally speaking".
What does that mean? A 23 hour day, generally speaking? A 15 hour
day? What does that mean, "not a 24 hour site, generally
speaking"? How much of it is going to be a 24 hour site?
How is it conceivable that in such a built-up area you could even
contemplate anything remotely approach a 24 hour site, generally
speaking? I am asking you to ensure that this work stops at six
o'clock at night so that some kind of life can be lived for seven
years by the people living in this area. A 24 hour site or a site
that stretches beyond six o'clock is unacceptable to the people
in the area and I hope that you will take that on board.
10491. I note in passing that no agreement has
been reached on the amount of local labour. This adds insult to
injury. Not only, as I am coming on to argue, will this railway
line take jobs from Tower Hamlets but the actual building of it,
the digging of it, will not even involve local labour, so it will
be imposed upon the local people. There will be no benefits for
the local people, there will be disbenefits for the local people,
and they will not even get seven years of work out of it. I am
asking you to turn your attention to that question of local labour
which is not resolved and all we have is an assurance that it
will be discussed. You are a trade union man, Chairman, I hope
you will hear the import of what I am saying on that matter.
10492. The mess of potage that I referred to
earlier called the Whitechapel Station has been one of the great
red herrings that has been dragged across this whole affair. We
do not need a Whitechapel Station. If it had not been for the
previous Tower Hamlets Council's fixation with a Whitechapel Station,
not for transport reasons but for "regeneration" reasons,
a concept I will also come back to, there would not necessarily
have been this Whitechapel alignment in the first place. We do
not need the Whitechapel Station, we have got a perfectly good
station. In any case, London Underground were going to renovate
that station in 2009 so, in fact, the chimera of the Whitechapel
Station will delay by many years the renovation of the Whitechapel
Station. On the Whitechapel Station, which the Tower Hamlets Council
say is needed for regeneration purposes, I now see a reference
in their newspaper—they call it East End Life, we
call it East End Lies, the sort of weekly Pravda paid for
by the taxpayer and published by Tower Hamlets Council—that
they want it to be a piazza-style, plaza-style, entrance to the
station. I do not know about you, Chairman, but I start counting
my spoons when I hear words like "piazza, plaza developments"
for regeneration purposes. I think Blade Runner, I think
Canary Wharf, if you like. I certainly think the death of the
community as exists in that part of Whitechapel at the moment.
10493. One of the reasons why so many people
want to come and live in the warehouses, want to come and live
in the lofts, want to come and live in the trendy bijous flats
in and around Brick Lane is precisely because of the character
of the area, precisely because of the multiracial, multicultural
nature of the area, one of the most important jewels in the crown
of which is the Whitechapel Market. If you ask me to choose between
the Whitechapel Market and a piazza-style regeneration development,
I know what I and the vast majority of people would choose. Whitechapel
without its market would be no Whitechapel at all.
10494. When the Promoters, in league with the
Council, talk of regeneration, I think Spitalfields. Spitalfields
was another jewel in the crown of the East End. It was regenerated
with a piazza-style development. They call it regeneration, I
call it death. Anyone who has been to the redeveloped, regenerated
Spitalfields knows that we have exchanged a real community with
real life's blood coursing through it for a windswept, concreted
square with a few homogenous, globalised multinational stores
and restaurants for very rich people like you and me, Chairman.
None of the local people could buy the hors d'oeuvres in the restaurants
in the regeneration Spitalfields, and I refuse to do so on principle.
10495. Chairman: Can I say that I am
not very rich.
10496. Mr Galloway: It depends whether
it has been a good day at the bookmaker or not, unless your habits
have changed.
10497. Chairman: It is very nice of you
to comment on that but I think you are wrong.
10498. Mr Galloway: I meant it not in
any pejorative sense, Chairman, you were a very good pundit on
matters of turf in years gone by.
10499. Chairman: I think it is called
the economics of the racing industry.
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