Good afternoon and welcome to UK column.
I'm Ben Rubin and I'm delighted to be joined once again by Roger
Meyer. Roger is a journalist and a
campaigner who for the past six years has been raising awareness
and blowing the whistle, frankly on the issue of grooming gangs
in his hometown of Oldham. We had a fantastic and really
jaw dropping conversation at the start of this year about that
and I highly recommend that you go and watch that interview on
the UK Column website. Today we're going to delve into
some of the practical action that Rogers been taking at a
ground level in the local political physical system in
order to hold local councillors to account, because we think
there are some lessons that can be learnt for people all around
the country in what he's been doing.
So first of all, let's say hello to Roger and thank you once
again for coming along to talk with us here at UK Column.
My pleasure, Ben. Thank you for having me.
I really enjoyed last time, so thank you for that.
Yeah. Good.
We enjoyed it too. Yes, absolutely it was.
It was a great discussion definitely, and I'm really
looking forward to today because one of the things that we
touched on in the previous interview is the fact that
you've been very politically active.
You've had a lot of success in unseating corrupt councillors in
Oldham council. I think you said at the time you
got from 40, we got the the Labour council from 47 to 27
seats, right. So you're actually having a real
impact in the political system and really looking forward to
finding out more about how you've done that, basically.
But I guess as a starting point, it'd be really good to hear a
bit about your background in the political system, because I know
this is something that you spent many years training in, and it'd
be good to give people a bit of a bit of context on that.
Yeah, sure. It's in some ways it's it's
unfair, really. Ben I, I came back into a small
northern town where the, the political expertise was what
you'd expect in in towns such as mine and I, I, I came from a
very different place. And so I was at an advantage
from from the beginning when I got involved in this.
My my background, 20 years or so, 20 years at least working at
the highest level in government, sat in government task forces,
sat in rooms with far back as when Tony Blair was was Prime
Minister and and so on and so on.
My last stint I did in terms of politically was working for an
organisation called the Young Foundation, Michael Young's
organisation which trained a new generation of political leaders.
So that's what I did for a, for a, for a stint.
I'm, I'm genuinely considered to be, if if not an expert, more
than competent in grassroots campaigning and mobilising
communities to take civic action on issues that matter to them.
So I, I came from that background in the UK and also
internationally. I've, I've travelled, I, I spent
a substantial amount of my career working in what's known
as counter extremism. So I spent some time working
across the world and sitting in rooms with, with various world
leaders who had managed to overthrow despotic regimes.
Shall we, shall we say loosely, Ben So I, I had that as well in
terms of understanding how we, how to go about it.
And when, when I started, I quickly realised that the way in
which we would have to fight against the establishment as
such, the political class in in my hometown was no different to
how insurgents had had fought against despotic regimes
elsewhere. So we, we deployed the same
tactics in, in here in a small town.
And it devastated them because they, they'd never come across
any, anything like it. We, we mobilise communities, we
supported them to find the courage.
If you follow any of my work, my strap line is do not fear them.
And that was for a, for a reason right at the beginning.
I knew where we were taking this and we were taking this to a
place where we would be confronting and be pushed back
by some of the most powerful politicians in the country.
And they tried everything to shut us down.
And when I talk about some of the most powerful politicians, I
include, you know, now ministers of state such as Jim McMahon MP
Debbie Abrahams is the chair of a Select Committee.
Angela Rayne is the Deputy Prime Minister.
And, of course, Andy Burnham is the Greater Manchester mayor.
People are often shocked and surprised and disheartened that
the country doesn't run the way we expect it to run and our
democracy isn't as clean as it should be.
So people are shocked. In Oldham we were prepared now.
We got the people prepared not to trust these people and to
expect these people to to come out against us and use every
weapon at their disposal to try and silence us.
And that includes lawful and unlawful means, including
mobilising Greater Manchester Police.
To this day there's a Greater Manchester Police operation
named your. Your viewers can type it in.
It's called Operation Hexagon. And Operation Hexagon was
specifically designed and launched to counter myself and
those people who aligned themselves with me, who did
nothing of it and simply speak out over the cover up of the
gang rape of children. And most importantly, mobilise
politically mobilised to hold politicians involved to account.
And that included removing them at the ballot box.
And that's, you know, that's what I did, that's what we did.
And and I don't think they knew what hit them.
And I don't think to this day, they quite understand what what
they took on in terms of, you know, this is a historically a
radical town as well. You know, the working class
Milltown of Oldham, historical strong history with the
suffragettes, with the Chartists, even the Luddites
were from here then. So there's all of that in the
DNA of the people and it and it didn't take, it didn't take a
lot, if I'm honest with you, because people were rightfully
angry, disillusioned, marginalised.
And, and this was five years ago, six years, six years ago
when we started. And it's a pattern now repeated
across the country. We've just been we were just fed
up of being called racist or raising legitimate concerns.
You were trained by the Young Foundation.
We talk about the Young Foundation a lot.
You basically gone rogue, Roger. I like this because they were
training you to be someone that was going to promote the regime
agenda, the despotic regime agenda, but you basically turned
all that training back against them, by the sounds of it.
That's exactly what I've, what I've done, Ben.
And, and for me, it was I, I came into this clean and I, I
will leave this space clean, you know, in, in the sense that my
intentions and my agenda was always to improve the lives of
working class communities, safeguard children and protect
communities, build, build stronger communities.
I say this to all the people who come and find me because we, I
do sadly attract some people who, who I would describe as
extreme right or far right. And I say to them right from the
outset, my my purpose in this space has always been to find a
way in which we can all live together.
You know, So some people struggle with that, but the
people on the right struggle with that in the same way the
people on the left historically struggled with that.
I'm, I am what I say I am now. I'm a product of a northern
working class town. I, my entire life has been
framed by positive experiences through interacting with people
from a whole host of backgrounds.
And. And if I can help them, then I
have a duty to help them. And it's as simple as that.
But the Young Foundation was interesting.
It was, it was very, very, very interesting then.
Yeah. Very good.
So let's some dig into some of the specifics, right?
Because you've you've talked about the, the political
landscape, you've mentioned some key people in the top levels of
the national government, some of whom are also operating in your
local area. So Jim McMahon was the former
leader of Oldham Council. He's now in, in, in the cabinet.
I believe he's responsible for devolution, certainly.
He's doing something very dangerous.
At some point you'll pick up a bit, no doubt, in terms of
changing the way in which politicians can be held to
account. And the undercurrent of that is
that what they're trying to do is they're claiming that they're
raising standards of counsellors and local government.
Actually, what they're trying to do is censor opposition, and
they're trying to censor opposition as a direct
consequence of the experiences him and other Labor Party
politicians have encountered in Oldham.
So they're trying to strengthen the laws through which they can
jump on opposition counsellors who we elect or people like us
elect to represent us. So there's something more
sinister going on that perhaps you and some of your team will
have a look at. He's, he announced a statement.
I, I think he issued a statement this week or last week about,
about this and it's going under the radar, Ben.
Right. Well, what's this space on that
one? We're certainly going to have to
follow that up. And, and I would like to maybe
as we get into it, talk a bit more about the this new devolved
system of metro mares and how you're, you're personally seeing
things changing. But just to start with, what are
you looking at at a council level when you're analysing the
current political systems? I'm thinking about if people
watching this are sitting in their own hometown around the
UK, wherever it might be, what's the current structure look like?
What are the democratic processes that people should be
aware of? There's a lot of people, as you
know, who are very disengaged from this stuff Now you know,
what are the nuts and bolts of the system and where do you
focus when you want to influence it and you and you want to have
an impact and to and to get things to change.
OK, first and foremost, I think what I recognised as soon as I
entered this space in my hometown is the vast majority
of, of people are politically ignorant as to the mechanics of
how local government works. And that includes many of the
councillors. So in Oldham we have 60
councillors, 20 wards, each ward has three councillors and
they're re elected on a year by year basis and there's a fellow
year for the 4th year. So that's, that's how it
traditionally works and historically, and I don't want
to bore bore your listeners, but historically there was a system
of governance at at local council level where there was a
committee style structure where there'd be various committees
and counsellors from across all political parties would get to
sit on these committees and have a say in decision making.
Around the time Tony Blair came in most of that changed and it's
something called a a cabinet style approach to local
governance was introduced where the ruling party essentially
identified 8 to 9 councillors and they would sit together and
and make a decision on everything.
Well so whilst they had committees and and advisory
boards they were all really irrelevant.
It was 8 to 9 councillors and a few years ago Sheffield Council
was the first of the councils that's objected to this cabinet
style because it it takes democracy further away from
people then and at a local local government level that's never a
good thing. So Sheffield Council went, went,
went through a process where they were getting rid of this
cabinet style and returning to a committee style.
So we were struggling right from the outside because it was a
cabinet style government, local council run.
So our only opportunity really to engage was in the full
council meetings. Now in the past, full council
meetings would be held once every month and the public would
be invited in. There's public questions,
there's minutes of meetings that the committee's report back on
and we can either use public questions to scrutinise what's
taking place or we can work with counsellors, opposition
counsellors who have bought into our our viewpoint to be our
representatives in the, in the council chamber.
Again, unfortunately what they did there was they shut down
democracy. So these full council meetings
that were once once a month and now once every two or three
months. I think there's only like 5 a
year. So how you know they're at every
opportunity that they can, they're making it harder and
harder to be held to account. Public questions.
Historically, you could submit a question and then you'd be
invited in and you could ask the question directly yourself.
That has now changed where you've submitted to a council
officer and it goes through a system where the mayor then
reads out your questions for you.
And of course the questions are now all loaded with Labor Party
plants. In my town, they're all former
councillors, so account, you know, of friends and relatives.
So it's every opportunity. They're trying to shut democracy
down. If you were to come to my town
and go to the next full council meeting, and I say this from
experience, it is easier to go go get a visit in a prison and
get through security in a prison than it is to get into the
council meeting in the town where I come from.
All of this is intentional, which means, which means what
we've been doing has been working because every every
month, every other month, they're coming up with another
strategy, another, another attempt to try and hinder the
public involvement in local decision making.
So what have we been doing? I sit here, it started during
COVID and I would run online workshops using Zoom.
And this is completely alien to me.
When I started, I'd never used a camera or anything like this.
And I would run online workshops and I'll I would teach people
how to decipher the various elements of what goes on in the
council meeting and identify at every level where we have the
opportunities to scrutinise, expose and raise our voices to
challenge the wrongdoing that was taking place.
So whilst my focus was and remains the cover up of the
grooming and gang rape of children, I'm very clear that
the BAT is a symptom of a underlying failure in our
democratic system and we need to get to addressing that.
So we do all of that, we talk, we discuss, we maybe have 16 to
20 at a time. And by the time, by the time I'd
finished then we had a small army of mainly pensioners, if
I'm honest with you, a small army of pensioners who had
become experts on engaging in local democracy and holding
democratic systems and structures to account.
And the council hated it because they'd never come across
anything like it. People asking questions, asking
the right questions and not going away until they'd either
got an answer or we'd got a response that merely confirmed
what we believed in the 1st place.
And we knew that the local media wasn't on our side.
In fact, it's only, I think it was only about 3 weeks ago that
the editor of the Oldham Evening Chronicle, unprecedented and
unprecedented, only three weeks ago the editor of the Oldham
Evening Chronicle came out and accused the council of
corruption. Prior to that the local media
was controlled by the local authority.
So we had social media and we had a Facebook page and the
council repeatedly attempted to close our Facebook page down.
The Labor Party repeatedly attempted and Facebook were
pandering to that. So we struggled.
We did struggle for a long time, but we managed to have our own
voice I think is what I'm saying to you, using social media and,
and because they can't control social media that way.
Everything that was happening in the council chamber, every
document that was being released, every nugget of
information we were getting, we were then amplifying via social
media channels and WhatsApp groups.
And by the time the elections came along, we'd already
crowdfunded leaflets to do 2 things.
One was to discredit the councillors who'd blocked us, as
in blocked a public inquiry into the gang rape of children.
And the second thing was we had capacity built, trained,
motivated, encouraged, identified, all of those things,
a whole host of independent and opposition councillors who were
best placed to challenge for these seats.
And then what we did was we went back out and educated people to
get behind one candidate, not to split the vote.
And because we came from this, from a position of impartiality,
I'm not a Conservative, I'm not a Lib Dem and I, no, I wasn't
aligned to any of the independents we supported.
We just supported the best candidate possible on the
promise from them that once they got in they would support
government intervention in the town.
And it took us 5, five years. It took us five years and
probably about 100 of us, if I'm honest, with a hundred of us in
a core team, and we decimated the council.
They went from 47. This is a safe Labour town.
They went from 47 down to 27. Of course it helped.
It's helped when we had imbeciles that we that were
opposed to us. So first and foremost we had a
council leader from Failsworth who was called Sean Fielding.
Sean Fielding was infamous, infamously held up his ripped
underpants down line just after he'd he'd been forced to
announce the an inquiry into the into the gang rape of children.
So that didn't help him and he called it old barefaced lies.
He stood up in the council chamber, called it barefaced
lies. And one of the when one of the
elder elderly women went to the council meeting and asked the
public question, it was like a for me as a campaigner, it was
like a lottery win. He stood up and he marched every
councillor out of the council chamber twice rather than answer
a simple question regarding the employment of Shibir Ahmed in
Oldham Council. So he, he was, he was, you know,
he was, he just added fuel really the leader, leader of the
council. It made, made our, made our work
easier. We then had a council leader
called Arud Shah. Now Arud Shah was Jim McMahon's
worked in Jim McMahon's office previously.
So she's very close to Jim McMahon.
She's now currently the chair of the Constitutional Committee of
the Labor Party. Nationally.
So this is a powerful woman, you know, chair of the the
Constitutional Committee of the Labor Party.
She unfortunately, or fortunately, fortunately perhaps
for, for, for the campaign, unfortunately for the town has
direct links with organised crime.
And this is a pattern when it comes to in particular,
Pakistani politicians in the Labor Party and their
associations with organised crime.
It's not racist. It's just a shame.
You know, it's, it's a pattern, it's a regular pattern.
There are immediate family members involved in either the
heroin trade or or in serious gangland, gangland affairs.
Now Arud Shah's brother is a convicted money launderer.
You can't pick your family. It's fine.
And he was younger when he did it.
So I have no issue with that really.
But the issue with Arud Shah is when she campaigned to get
elected in the ward where we took her out from to Chadditon
S, she went out celebrating the night of her election, red red
Labor Party rosette with a man called Zia Hussein.
Now I name people because all of this is a public matter of
public record. Zia Hussein is a dangerous
criminal who kidnapped and tortured a couple of young men
in the town. He was convicted for it.
When the police turned up, they found blood splattered all over
the world. Now, what is the leader of a
council doing partying and not just randomly.
They both had red Labor Party rosettes on the, you know, on,
on, on their jackets. So that just shows the lynx
organised crime has in the town. Zia Hussein, convicted
kidnapper, convicted torturer out celebrating an election
victory wearing a Labor Party rosette with the leader of the
town. She then it then emerged and
when I first got the information, I I couldn't, I
didn't really believe it. She has she describes as a
childhood friendship and I and I won't speculate any further than
than that she has a childhood friendship with a man called
Muhammad Imran Ali. And Muhammad Imran Ali is
locally known as by his gangland name Irish IMI.
Irish IMI is one of Dale Kregan's gang.
He was the getaway driver of the cop killer Dale Kregan.
One of these police officers that were murdered came from my
town. So this is the getaway driver of
the cop killer, Dale Kregan, with a direct association with
the leader of Oldham Council. Of course, he's got convictions
for heroin dealing. And as I've maintained from the
outset, the very same sorts of men, and I'm not saying this is
him, but the very same sorts of men, the very same sorts of
gangs that were involved in the peddling of heroin in towns such
as mine also peddled children. And that's not, that's not
anything that the police would dispute either.
And it's, it's, it's a, it's a matter of fact, there's a direct
correlation between the heroin dealers and the, and those who,
who trafficked children. So when that news got out and we
put it on leaflets and we went out and campaigned, it's again,
it was easy to remove her or it should have been easy to remove
her because I'm looking at your face and I'm and I'm and I'm
imagining the face of people who listen.
This is the chair of the National Constitutional
Committee of the Labor Party, right arm advisor of Jim McMahon
MP. Also previously worked for
Debbie Abrahams, close friend of Angela Rayner.
Direct relationships with some of the most dangerous criminals
in the country and she celebrates them.
She celebrates her her relationships because these men
at election time go and collect postal votes.
So we knew all that was taking place.
So we took, we mobilised our community in, in Chaddington S
where she was standing and we removed her and we removed her
with a conservative unprecedented.
This is a working class, northern working class town and
the best candidate in that ward was a conservative and we
mobilised and we got him elected in the run up to the election.
Men in terms of how you take these people out and to be ready
to know what happens. The police arrested me at the
instructions of Arud Shah and at the instructions of one of her
friends, the wife of a guy called Anthony Granger who the
police had shot dead in Salford a number of years ago, her name
is GAIL Granger. They arrested me at the
instructions of both Arud Shah and GAIL Granger to stop me
campaigning. The police officer, the
Detective Inspector very specifically told me if I
continued to campaign, I would be locked up.
Of course I continued to campaign and it took me 3 years
then for those cases to collapse against me.
But I knew, I mean part of me knew what I was getting it
myself involved in when I, when I decided about this, you know,
this cancer had to be, had to be purged and you will need to talk
about metro mares at some point. That's when I realised how
multifaceted though, and the different layers were of, of the
establishment who were out to get us because the police's
attempt to prosecute me was a malicious prosecution.
They dawn raided my house, 8 police officers dawn raided my
house. I shared it with my 6 year old
daughter at the time and they dragged me away without even
having taken a statement from either Arud Shah or GAIL
Granger. And when they dragged me away,
the newspapers, because the newspapers, the local media were
involved. The newspapers ran the headline
that I'd been arrested as a child sex offender or as part of
a child sex offending investigation.
And that was probably a low point, but we kept going, you
know, we, we kept going bent, we leafleted, we campaigned, we
knocked on doors. This is old fashioned boots on
the ground, knock on doors, speak to people.
We'd, we'd got a cross community team working with us.
Some, some of my team, they like reach any, everything from
retired soldiers to pensioners to teenage mothers.
You know, we, you know, all, all of our cross community team and
people believed us back when we knocked on doors with our
leaflets and we spoke to him as I'm sure the people who are
listening to this, we're not we're not some far right note
cases as these as as the establishment tried to present
us as as that we definitely aren't the criminals, despite
them trying to portray us as criminals.
And we removed Arud Shah from power.
This was a second Labor Party leader in a row we'd removed
from power. And at the time, because we'd
removed her from power, the Labor Party were in opposition,
stood up in Parliament and claimed it was a misogynistic
campaign because she was a woman.
It was a racist campaign and used any, any and every identity
label they could use to try and and silence us.
We've got momentum going all this time in the background.
We've got opposition councillors taking motions for public
inquiries, asking very uncomfortable questions about
how public money has been spent, for instance.
And again, I, I name names and I have the evidence to back this
up. So you don't have to worry about
any of that. There's a man in my town called
Frank Rothwell. He's famous.
He, he, he rode across the Atlantic for charity.
He's a, he's a character and he owns the local football club, he
owns Oldham Athletic Football Club.
Frank Rothwell when we were taking out Arud Shah for reasons
only he knew, went out and delivered leaflets.
He he wasn't a candidate or anything delivered leaflets
promoting and supporting Gharood Shah.
Few years later of the subsequent year Frank Croftwell
by after he's bought Oldham Athletic.
The council, and this is a cash strapped council, provide a
private football club in a privately owned business
£1,000,000 for its pitch. Last week they've just announced
that they're supporting them with a further £5,000,000.
And I think what I'm trying to say to you then is that in towns
such as mine, when you campaign against the establishment,
you're campaigning against what is a completely rotten borough
and there's no hiding of what's taking place.
They're doing it in plain sight. So when Andy Burnham gets
himself involved and this is, you know, the King of the North
want to be future Prime Minister, Greater Manchester
Metro mayor and his PR machinery of how great he is and he gets
himself involved in the cover up.
You've got to wonder were this leads and how endemic it is
across towns and cities were political parties and
demographics such as in Oldham align and what we do about it.
Because it, it, it has nearly killed me.
It's been 6 years and it has nearly killed me to, to get us
this far and we're still nowhere near.
And I'll be honest with you, you know, we, we, we managed.
We're, we're fighting and we're holding our own, but we're
nowhere near cleaning up this town.
I almost don't know what to say in the face of that, Roger.
Like it's, it's just astonishing, you know, when we
talk and I hear about some of the stuff that you've seen and
that you've had to deal with. I think the main thing that
jumps out at me from that is that if you're going to get into
this area, people listening, then you need, you need some
bravery basically. And someone's got to take a
position of leadership like Roger's taken up in Oldham to
galvanise people and to, to, to hold these politicians to
account ultimately. Now I'm not suggesting for a
second, by the way, that every council is going to be the same
as Oldham's, right? Because the issues that we're
talking about here are particularly mucky.
I think let's just put it like that, but a lot of the
discussion that we have, a lot of certainly what have we see in
the mainstream media on a day to day basis is all about national
politicians. You know, the Keir Starmers and
the Boris Johnsons and whoever else you might want to want to
talk about, you know, Nigel Farage or whoever it might be.
But actually where the rubber really meets the road in terms
of policy, like where stuff actually gets done, where it
happens, where the shovels meet the ground, that's at a local
council level, which is why what we're talking about here is so
important. And, you know, you've just
recounted a lot of work which has been successful.
You're still grinding it out. You've got your small army of
pensioners. I love that idea.
Like, you've got a core group of people who have been enabled
with an understanding of how the system works.
And you know, at some point I would love to talk to you about
whether we can run some sessions potentially for our members or
whatever else it might. Be.
Yeah, we should. We should.
We should do that definitely because ultimately it's a
process of exposing what's going on inside the council in the
face of all of these things that they've introduced in order to
try to stop that from happening. And it sounds like they're
making up lots of elaborate new rules and, and introducing
people into the into the situation and having people walk
out of council chambers and anything that they can do to
stop what you're up to is, is they'll they'll Chuck it into
the mix, including arresting you, right?
You know, like this is this has been a all out war really that
you've been subjected to. But I don't think that it
necessarily has to be at that level for anyone who wants to
get involved in this because you aren't necessarily in your
average council going to be dealing with the issue of
grooming gangs, for example. But it might just be that we're
looking at the implementation of some of the other global
policies that are coming drought down the track, whether it's 15
minute cities or, you know, the introduction of new experimental
energy systems or whatever it might be.
You know, those things only get implemented because of local
councils. If we want to have an impact on
the, the national agenda, then I think that's, that's, that's the
best place to focus. And, and ultimately you, you,
you've had, you have had a success, right.
So you got from the Labour. So it's, if I remember
correctly, you got 60 councillors on the council.
There used to be 47 Labour, that's now down to 27, not least
through the efforts of you and and and the group that you've
been working as part of. Yeah, they're in a minority
position, but we've gone further than that.
I mean we've done something which I chuckle at.
At the last council meeting, what we managed to do was have
an extraordinary council meeting.
I think I mentioned it to you last time we were on.
We, we, I was pushing this idea of extraordinary council
meetings. We met, we manoeuvred even the
Labor Party councillors into a position, we manoeuvred them
into a position where every councillor, Labour,
Conservative, Lib Dem, Independent, the sectarians, we
manoeuvre them in such a way because we've got the town
watching Ben and, and what we're doing and they know how we'll
react because that's, you know, how it works, isn't it?
Democracy, if it's, if it's open, if it's transparent and
you can see what the decisions they're making and you're
informed and they've got less wriggle room to to do the wrong
thing. We forced every councillor to
reject, to vote to reject Yvette Cooper's local inquiry with this
KC called Tom Carver because it's toothless, you know,
there's no statutory powers and demand that the home secretary
look at it again and for a, for a public inquiry.
So we got Labor Party councillors, we went further
than to just to make them a minority opposition.
We forced them to vote with spend.
And the reason we managed that was because of the pressure we
put them under. And that's politics, isn't it?
You know, but it's about, it's about leveraging public opinion
and applying pressure in the right way at the right time to
get the results you want. And it doesn't matter.
I agree with you. It doesn't matter what the theme
is. And for the vast majority of
people, the themes aren't dangerous.
Now, what we're doing is dangerous, but the themes aren't
dangerous. But the methodology's the same.
You've got to learn to understand how the rule, how the
game operates, where the leverage points are, where
you're most effective from the outside in, and how you can
maximise the resources that you have to achieve the change you
want. And that's essentially political
campaigning. Being on with the truth, right?
I mean, what you're talking about the, the mechanics of it
are quite simple, right? So you basically got a council
that is corrupt. You are doing things on a
consistent basis to reveal that corruption by questioning them
on the system in a systematic way, knowing what questions to
ask and when inserting yourself into the process and, and
interfering with them as much as possible.
And then taking what you're finding through that additional
kind of process of revelation, right?
Because things are being revealed to you taking that
information just go and telling people you know.
So actually when you I'm guessing because this is this is
you, you said that these these elections happen every year.
So is there like a is there a is there a season when you're out
doing going door to? Door or the local elections are
in are in May every every year. There's not one this year
because it's a follow year, because last year was like an
all out election because the boundary Commission changed
things so that. But what we normally do is, you
know, from January till May, end of January, once it gets a bit
darker to, to May, we're outdoor knocking non stop with leaflets.
We crowdfund the leaflets. But prior to that in, in the
autumn, we tend to be educating people online using Zoom, using
whatever the, the platforms are. And, and then we also work
directly with the people we getting elected, like the
councillors because, and, and we're coming up short there,
Ben, and we need to get better at it.
But we're learning as we're going along as well.
Because a lot of the counsellors are just people who come forward
and get elected are unprepared. And particularly if they're
independent counsellors, they just don't have the scaffolding
around them to, to be able to navigate what's taking place.
And a lot, a lot of them get wooed.
Sadly, a lot of them get wooed. It's like the, the Lib Dems, you
know, when they went into coalition government and the
Conservatives just played them, gave them ministerial cards and
briefcases. And then before they knew it,
they did agree to everything that the Conservatives wanted.
Well, it's, it's like, it's no different to that in local,
legal local government. It's just a sad state of
affairs. They get invited into a room by
the chief executive and the drinks will come out and
they'll, they'll get put on, you know, something like the head of
planning. And there'll be a, there'll be
an additional allowance of 10,000 lbs, which doubles the
salary of a counsellor. And, and, you know, humans are,
you know, people are what they are and, and we struggle with
with some of that, but we're getting better.
We are getting better at it. And I'm not being negative, but
it's just it. We've, we've just been on a
journey our ourselves been so and we're getting better and
better. Ultimately, really what needs to
happen is that one of the mainstream parties needs to
clean its act up and, and, and, and take this head on.
But when it comes to child abuse, it's it's across all of
them, isn't it? You know, look at the
Conservatives. They were in power for 14 years.
They could have and should have launched an inquiry into this.
It wasn't their voter base. It wasn't their politicians.
But they didn't. Yeah, I don't think I'm holding
my breath for any of the mainstream parties to sort
things out. And your point about people
getting, how would you describe it, enticed into the machinery
of the states once they get elected, right?
It's probably a nice way of saying it, right?
Let's not let's not say they get compromised and corrupted when
they end when when they get into power.
But you know, that's kind of what's going on.
But you just have to deal with it on a case by case basis
ultimately, don't you? So just OK, so, so I'm, I'm kind
of, I'm learning a lot from this.
This is because I've been very sort of uninterested in the
political process for a long time.
And, and particularly council elections.
I don't think I've ever voted in the council election.
I've already national elections, but never in the council
election. It sounds like this is quite a
lot of variation then from, from location to location, right.
So, you know, in terms of, you know, you mentioned the
difference between the, what did you call it, committee style.
Cabinet style, we've got fewer counsellors, you've got people
who meet once a month, you've got some that meet just 5 or 6 *
a year. And so actually people, if
they're thinking about becoming more politically active, they'll
have to go for a process of, of analysing their own counts and
seeing what the kind of the nuances are and the
idiosyncrasies of their own local area.
Broadly speaking, they're all they're all doing similar stuff,
right? What you essentially have is
either a committee style, which is rare, or a cabinet style.
The cabinet style basically means the party with the most,
you know, with the majority decide what happens, you know,
and they even exclude their own councillors.
It's just in a small, small group of eight or nine.
It's a Tony Blair sort of style of leadership.
And, and then you have council meetings and each each of the
committees underneath the council meetings, are they they
produce reports and those are the opportunities buried in, in,
in those reports is always the information we need, always the
information we need. And then we have tools open to
us. The tools we have open to us is
public questions we can do directly.
We also have the means of opposition councillors that we
now have on side. You can raise matters inside the
council chamber also directly with council offices.
And then we also have, and we've used it effectively multiple
times. Then it's Freedom of Information
requests now done properly and coordinated their the dynamite
because again you've got to accept and understand that a
freedom information request, the aim isn't always to get the
information you want. Sometimes the aim is to get them
to lie to you. Sometimes the aim is, is to get
them to reveal something they didn't want to reveal.
You know, there's, there's a whole host of ways of using
Freedom of Information requests. And, and we've, we run
workshops. I run workshops.
And then I sat back in awe and looked at the, is it the
whatdidtheyknow.com site? You know, that, that were where
people were of their own volition submitting brilliant
Freedom of Information requests. And in some ways what what they
were doing is, is grinding to halt the machinery of local
government, which again is a weapon for us because we want to
do that. Sometimes we want to do that.
If six or seven people submit complimentary FOI requests at
the same time as public questions are going in, at the
same time as opposition councillors are challenging
decisions or raising concerns, and with social media amplifying
all of that, they can't deal with the pressure bed.
Right. They can't deal with much
because unfortunately, local governance doesn't always
attract the brightest or the best.
I think it's probably fair to say, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that's what I'm
saying explaining to you because when I first came into this, I
expected a higher ceiling of challenge.
And I'll be honestly, what we've achieved has been difficult, but
it's not been difficult because we've we've faced competent
people. It's been difficult because of
the corruption and the criminality, not the competence
of those we who are opposing us. That's good to hear.
That fills me with confidence. I'm feeling very excited by this
conversation. No, we can win this.
We can we can win this if it depends what you guys want to
do. But if you, if you, if you want
to mobilise, if you want to learn how, how to challenge, how
to hold to account and basically how to improve the places where
you live, I think that's what it, well, you know, how to have
a say and make a difference and what matters most to you.
And I was always taught when I belonged to, when I believed
that stuff and I belonged in on, on the left.
And I was always taught to be the difference where you can be
the difference, you know, and, and, and I can be the difference
in the place I live. I can't, you know, I say to my
Muslim friends, for instance, I can't do anything about what's
going on in Israel or Gaza or in Ukraine or any of those sorts of
places. But I can make a difference what
happens to at the local children's home or the local
taxi driver. It is, is a sex offender or not
and it has access to children. You know, those are the things I
can make a difference on. I could not agree more.
You know, we hear a lot about global leadership, you know, and
you have these programmes where people are presented as, oh,
we're going to, we're going to fix things all around the world.
It's like me not you can't do that.
You can fix things in your immediate area, right?
And that's it. And that's all we should, all of
us should really aspire to, you know, And if we all did that,
then the world would be a much better place.
Yeah, Spear of Influence. We used to call it the Spear of
Influence. You know what?
What are my skills? Where do I have legitimacy and
where can I make a difference? And those 3 features put them
together and and and off you go. Fantastic.
OK. So look, let's let's we talked a
bit about the the current system and that's been really helpful.
Thank you very much. And we're definitely going to
have to talk about arranging some sessions and training up
our army of pensioners and retired soldiers and other
people who can, who can. Get active.
My apology to your audience. I I've not met any of you yet.
It's beyond me and you and I've spoke to Stephanie.
I think so. My apologies if you're, if
you're, if you're, if I'm, you know, if you're very different
to what I'm used to. I don't think that you need to
apologise on that front. And I mean, the more the merrier
ultimately, right? But I think it's fair to say
that when people get older, they, they, they become more
attuned to the bad things that are going on around them.
They become more intolerant of the sort of mediocrities that
we're seeing in in in government that we're all ultimately paying
for, right. And, you know, as and when we
will bring in the younger generation, we can bring in the
younger generation. But you know, it's cool.
We need really, we need everyone involved in this, you know, if
we're going to going to take the country in a better direction.
So no need to apologise on that front.
One thing I would definitely like to just wrap up on actually
is, is where you see things going next.
And we talked about the current system.
We talked about the success that you've been having in your local
council in Oldham, which has been fantastic.
But what are they trying to do? You've mentioned Jim McMahon,
who you know very well who's doing some stuff.
They've just announced something about centring opposite.
Well, they haven't called it centring opposition.
Your interpretation of it is it's about centring opposition.
It'd be great to just hear a little bit more about that.
And then also, I'm sure that's part of this broader process of
what they're calling devolution to the metro mare system.
I'd be great to hear what your thoughts are on that as well.
That's exactly what they're doing.
It's it's, it's under the devolution banner and they're
introducing more metro mares. They reckon it's worked.
They want to have a higher standard of counsellors.
That means they want a sense of the opposition more.
And McMahon's leading it. And McMahon's leading it based
upon his experiences of what we've done to him and his
associates over the last six years.
I mean, this man hates us. Not just me, he hates us.
He's wanted so many of us in prison and we are a threat to to
the Labor Party machinery of what governments looks like now.
Unfortunately, the conservatives couldn't care less if not took
the time to understand any of this properly.
Sadly, Ben So they, they've not got any answers and I, I think
so far reform have been nothing other than sound bites.
So we've got three years or four years to try and inform and
influence at least one or two of the opposition parties to
understand the dangers of what's taking place and come up with an
alternative model. Now, the metro mayors don't work
for me, the metro mayor, the political appointments, and the
metro mayors also are the police and crime commissioners.
So before I came on with you this morning, I submitted
another complaint to the police who are essentially protecting
individuals who are inciting serious violence against me.
And I know, I know that the police, because I've sat in my
living room with the police, I know that the police have been
ordered to let this continue. And they've been, they've been
ordered because of the political infiltration of the police force
by the, by the political establishment, by, by, by, in
my, in my, in Greater Manchester by Andy Burnham and the Labor
Party. He's got Kate Green, he's
devolved the powers to now the issue you have here is if we
elect metro mayors, they can't be existing politicians with
cosy relationships and what they're doing, it's a layer of
devolution. What they're doing is
strengthening the hold and their ability to protect each other.
It's not deep devolution, It's a racket.
It's a protection racket and it is something you would find in
1930s Chicago rather than rather than here.
I I listened to, I think it was on talk news randomly popped up
on my friend. There was a, there was a police
and crime Commission. I think it was elected somewhere
and he beat the Labor Party candidate and, and this man went
through hell, I forget his name, but he went, he went through
hell with a whole host of allegations made against him.
He tried to commit suicide. His wife found him.
And the only reason he didn't kill himself was, was because
he, you know, he failed to do so.
And it turned out that a senior Labor Party MP had been involved
in it because, because, because he'd won the metro mayor, Metro
mayor position or the police and crime commissioner position.
And that's, that's you've got to understand these, these
positions are key anchor points, the key gateways, lynch pins in,
in that corrupt system of, you know, continuing to control.
And, and they want more control. What they want is more control,
more Congos, more of these devolved roles and ultimately
more control. So if you do have an objection,
if you do have something that's a concern that you legitimately
raise, the only place it's going to is their own.
Yeah, they just want to tie you up in in the big bureaucracy
that they control ultimately, don't they?
Yeah, yeah. OK.
Look, Roger, that's been fantastic.
Thank you very much. That was really insightful and
you've given me a lot of hope actually.
No, no, please and and please do do follow us.
We are currently going up or about to go up against a man
called Tom Crowther. He's AKC.
So Tom Crowther is the is the council who's been appointed by
Yvette Cooper to front these local investigations.
And, and we're calling him out. I've issued a letter and we're
looking forward to him to control them because we, we've
took on senior Labor Party politicians, we took on senior
police officers, senior journalists and, and someone
like Tom Crowther doesn't scare us because we will not allow
them to cover up what's took place.
And so if you don't mind, I'm just, you know, I'm just calling
him out. Look forward to meeting you,
Tom. I'm sure he's not looking
forward to meeting you. But anyway, look, there's,
there's loads to get into here. We'll no doubt be talking about
this again and I look forward to inviting you in at some point to
have another conversation. Maybe we can make it more of an
interactive discussion with with some of our members and help
people think about how they can get active.
Please, like you AQ and a or some sort of case studies where
we, you know, you bring the real life challenges in, in towns and
cities where you, you've got some of your members and I can
say, OK, have we looked at this? Have you looked at that?
And I'd love to do that. It'd be no problem whatsoever.
Fantastic. Great stuff.
Well, look, Roger, thank you so much again for your time.
It's been a fantastic discussion and for now I've been Ben Rubin
for UK column and Roger Meir up in Oldham showing us the
direction that we should be taking to fix things in our own
backyard and ultimately lead to a better country for everybody.
Thank you. Thank you.