Cameron Watt is Deputy Director of the Centre for Social Justice; he writes here in a personal capacity.
Andrew Gilligan is to be commended for his impressive Evening Standard investigation into Lee Jasper, Ken Livingstone’s equalities and policing czar. It is alleged that at least £2.5 million in City Hall money has been channelled to organisations controlled by Jasper, his friends and business associates.
One project of which Jasper is patron, Brixton Base, received a grant of £290,000 from the Mayor’s London Development Agency for ‘premises’, even though it was occupying a LDA-owned building at that time. Another £230,000 was given to make the project a ‘creative training hub’ for the black community, although it appears that very little training was ever delivered. Quick inspection of the project’s website certainly does not inspire confidence that over half a million quid of taxpayer’s money has been invested wisely.
Jasper claims that he had no control over the LDA’s decision-making on its support of Brixton Base and other projects. However it seems that when senior LDA officials wanted to evict Brixton Base from their premises after a string of complaints, they were overruled by Jasper. In an email the Standard claims to have obtained, Jasper orders a senior LDA official to ‘ensure that this action [the eviction] is withdrawn immediately and ensure I am consulted on all major decisions affecting [Brixton Base]’.
Gilligan contends that at City Hall, ‘Mr Livingstone’s chosen representatives of different communities are wooed with favours and cash.’ Exploiting the politics of victimhood is of course second nature to Livingstone and Jasper. It is therefore not surprising that their allies, such as the Black Information Link website, are presenting the Standard’s investigation as an attack on all London’s black and minority ethnic communities. Such a crass deployment of the race card deserves short shrift. These serious allegations about the misuse of huge sums of public money are underpinned by a thorough investigation. Any person or group that has acted in the manner Gilligan alleges should be subject to full media and public scrutiny, irrespective of their ethnicity.
Jasper and Livingstone have a lot of explaining to do. Boris Johnson and the Conservative GLA group will continue to lead efforts to get full answers to all the allegations. If even only a few of the charges are proven, Jasper’s career at City Hall will surely be over. Whether this is marks the beginning of the end for the slippery Mr Livingstone himself remains to be seen.
***
Yesterday Gilligan also revealed
that Jasper lives in a housing association owned Victorian house in
Clapham. He is paying a paltry £90 rent a week on this property which
is worth at least £750,000. Clearly Jasper’s £117,000 salary from the
Mayor is insufficient to allow him to vacate state-subsidised housing
intended for the poor. A secured tenancy on the property not only
entitles Jasper to the house for the rest of life; he can pass on the
tenancy to another member of his family when he dies. Our social
housing system is clearly deeply inefficient and unjust, and in urgent
need of radical reform.
***
The first and only time I have heard Lee Jasper’s divisive
and irresponsible tub-thumping in person was at the annual London
Schools and the Black Child Conference, which is being held again today
at the QE11 Conference Centre. Ken Livingstone and Diane Abbott host
the gathering to address the underachievement of black pupils in the
capital.
Of course the left’s anti-education ideology has hugely contributed to calamitous rates of educational failure in our inner-cities. I am sure that Livingstone and Abbott both oppose the policies that would transform outcomes for black (and all other) kids, from an insistence that synthetic phonics is used in the teaching of reading, to giving parents and community groups the right to set up state-funded but independent co-operative schools. Tabernacle School, a remarkable low-cost independent school in west London which has helped many disadvantaged black children, has invited Dianne Abbott on more than one occasion to visit and learn from its success. Unsurprisingly, she has declined the invitations.
***
To end on a positive note, congratulations are due to Eastside Young Leaders Academy, which this week collected one of the Guardian’s prestigious charity awards.
Eastside, led by the inspirational former prison governor Ray Lewis,
works with black boys at risk of exclusion. After school three times a
week, on Saturday mornings and during school holidays, boys attend the
Academy where they receive educational instruction and participate in
team exercises and community service. It is a no-nonsense regime in
which the boys quickly learn to say ‘please’, ‘thank you’ and ‘Yes
sir!’. Military drill is used to improve listening skills, team work
and personal discipline. Encouragingly, the Guardianistas have been
able to recognise the project’s undoubted success, even if its methods
are difficult to reconcile with their liberal sensibilities.
You are right to accuse Livingstone of indulging in victimhood - it is his unique selling point and cynically plays on voters' natural sympathy for the underdog.
Victim of Margaret Thatcher.
Victim of Tony Blair.
Victim of the press.
Victim of the Standards Board.
Vote for the Victim, support the little guy...
It's wearing thin now.
Posted by: Roger Evans | December 08, 2007 at 10:30 AM
I watched Lee Jasper squirm on TV when ITNs Alistair Stewart challenged him to sue the evening standard and Andrew Gilligan if the allegations were not true. Jasper started to baulk and said that litigation was a complex issue, was expensive etc.
The sad fact is the ethnicity-industry, like all other government off-shoots, is open to exploitation by gravy trainers who syphon off cash into 'other causes'. The victim-culture is created as a sponge to soak up taxpayers money. When are we as a nation going to move away to the patronizing culture of doling money out to specific ethic groups. Are we not all Britons? All on an even keel? The ethnicity-industry is just a gravy-train that uses black people to cream money out of government. Time we shut this industry down.
Posted by: Tony Makara | December 08, 2007 at 10:38 AM
I wonder if Lee Jasper uses any of his £117k salary to pay a mortgage on another property? That would violate the lease of most social housing....
Posted by: Dave McBay | December 08, 2007 at 10:59 AM
Apart from the fact that I've had to rewrite my article for tomorrow, Cameron (!) - this is great stuff. I was hoping Conservative Home would help to magnify the impact of Andrew Gilligan's devastating series of reports on Jasper this week. Jasper is Livingstone and the removal of the former from his poisonous grip on public life will be the first substantive step in ridding the capital of the egregious presence of the latter.
Posted by: Graeme Archer | December 08, 2007 at 11:23 AM
Frank Dobson lived for years in taxpayer subsidized housing opposite the British Museum-I dont know his present arrangements
Posted by: anthony scholefield | December 08, 2007 at 03:54 PM
Is Mr Jasper's detailed job description available, together with the recruitment and selection process for that job?
Posted by: Paul Kennedy | December 08, 2007 at 06:33 PM
I believe Mr Dobson still has a council flat in London. Let us not forget John Prescott's many dwellings, and his unfortunate lapse of memory about paying council tax.
Why has the majority of the MSM been so reluctant to touch the Lee Jasper story, other than the Standard?
Posted by: dougal | December 09, 2007 at 12:52 AM
I well recall Lee Jasper organising a demonstration outside Brixton Police station.It was clearly designed to raise tensions in the borough & delivered as many thought it would - degenerating into rioting & looting.In fact it was this which probably brought Lee Jasper to public attention & paved his rise up the political ladder.Ethnic tension & division is what his career was built upon.Unfortunately - like most agitators - he has no answers.
Posted by: John Phelan | December 11, 2007 at 04:45 PM
Very interesting. The Mayor's Office kept an event last summer with Miriam Makeba in Trafalgar Sq combined with VIP event in South Africa House, which I attended. Whilst in South Africa House the Mayor circulated and engaged with the public as well as taking photographs with them. Lee Jasper on the other just looked angry and when he joined a group of business men that I was sitting with, whom he was clearly trying to impress, they asked him if he knew me and introduced us. Lee looked at me as if I was an insect and then continued his discussion with the business men - who after he left commented on his rudeness. Several weeks later my 24 year old son visited me and discussed an encounter that he had had that week with Lee Jasper. My son who is a keen photographer, was at an event taking pictures and was talking to a young woman when Lee walked up and was standing near them. The young woman said to my son "so you're a photographer". Lee interupted and sneered "he ain't no photographer". My son was deeply embarrassed in front of a peer and felt undermined by Lee's comment. Lee is absolutely grotesque and most members of the African Caribbean community have no time for him because of his rudeness and arrogance, my own short experience and that of my son leads me to agree with the majority of my associates who have no respect for Lee - and we are all black!
Posted by: Rosa Parkes | February 18, 2008 at 12:17 PM
I'm no fan of Jasper but I thought Gilligan's investigation was into misappropriation of funds at the GLA and LDA. It seems from the above report that the investigation is in to Jasper himself: "Andrew Gilligan is to be commended for his impressive Evening Standard investigation into Lee Jasper, Ken Livingstone’s equalities and policing czar".
Further to that, is this the same Gilligan who was handed a job after leaving the BBC in a cloud of controversy by Boris Johnson who is er, oh, ahem.
Maybe Lee Jasper is Derek Conway's long-lost son?
Posted by: DSD | March 04, 2008 at 02:14 PM