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George Galloway chats to a passer-by in Blackstock Road |
Galloway pledge on police raid
MP vows to challenge Met over Blackstock Road operation if he wins Assembly seat
MP GEORGE Galloway has been accused of “opportunism” after visiting Finsbury Park on Saturday to pledge support for Blackstock Road traders, still reeling from a massive police raid last month.
Mr Galloway, Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow and a London Assembly candidate, said the raid would have been a “major national scandal” if it had been carried out in Oxford Street.
He promised that, if elected to the Assembly, he would hold the Metropolitan Police to account for the way it has tackled crime in the street fondly known as “Little Algiers”.
But Lib Dem Assembly candidate Meral Ece, an Islington councillor, said Mr Galloway’s visit was “too late”, coming more than two weeks after 600 officers stormed Blackstock Road.
Cllr Ece added: “It’s weeks after it happened. He’s just trying to opportunistically gain votes after the event, having no local involvement whatsoever.
“He’s obviously latching onto the unease that some of the Algerian community felt.”
Mr Galloway breezed into Finsbury Park on the top deck of a Routemaster bus. “I have come here to show my solidarity with the shopkeepers, traders and the public who were so grievously mistreated by the Metropolitan Police in the last few weeks,” he said.
“The idea that a street can be raided by 600 police officers, businesses can be smashed, and phones, money, details, papers taken without justification is just not something we’re prepared to accept in Britain.”
Mr Galloway visited shopkeepers to hear how police stormed the street.
He said: “They’ve been the victims of an injustice and I hate injustice. They feel as if they’ve been singled out unfairly and no one will accept that.
“Six hundred police descending on a small street is violence. It’s a use of state power which we very rarely see in this country.”
But Cllr Ece said: “Police were responding to the concerns of residents, although generally the sheer numbers [of police] were intimidating.
“They recovered stolen goods and drugs, there were illegal activities taking place.
“There are a lot of businesses and people there who are law-abiding and getting on with their lives.” |
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