Long before the Crossrail Bill Select Committee [House of Commons] formally 'heard' some of the evidence against the CrossRail hole Bill threat to the Brick Lane and Whitechapel London E1 area, Khoodeelaar! the campaign against CrossRail had decided on a set of actions that included a specific constitutional dimension. After witnessing the blatant obstruction against key presenters of anti-CrossRail evidence in the Committee during June 2006, Khoodeelaar! Has now decided to test the UK law in a way that will perhaps bring the Human Rights Act 1998 into very unexpected focus.
1. The main constitutional law allegation that I could find against the Secretary of State was that he lied in and to Parliament, he misled parliament and he wrongly failed to tell the House of Commons fully and duly of the requirement that UK law had to comply with the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental freedoms.
2. That was based on the preliminary and literal reading of the contents of the Crossrail Bill, as introduced to the House of Commons by [the then] Transport Secretary Alistair Darling on 22 February 2005.
3. Having observed since that date the many activities of the Transport Secretary and the rest of the groupings that make up the ‘promoter’ of the Crossrail Bill, it is clear that compatibility with constitutional requirements is not at the top of the priorities of the UK executive seeking to get the Crossrail Bill through Parliament.
4. It has been clear from the behaviour of the two successive holders of the office of Secretary of State at the UK Department for Transport over the past 24 months that compliance with the Treaty obligations on ECHR is nothing more than a nuisance to them and to the Blair regime. They have shown remarkably consistent evidence of hostility to the rule of law and due process and constitutionality for the promotion of the CrossRail project
5. It was only through the sustained campaign on the ground over the past 31 months backed up with original Khoodeelaar!! Legal analyses of the UK executive's behaviour that we have been able to show that the Secretary of State was wrong to have introduced the Crossrail Bill in the shape it was introduced and that he was wrong to have flouted the UK’s constitutional law making treaty obligations that he did.
Especially, as I have pointed out on dozens of occasions already including in pieces carried on indymedia UK and international sites, about the abuses of the executive powers to make several hundred million £ available to the promoters without any justification.
That abuse of public money has included the abuses of the local tiers of peoples and community representation.
Where Ruth Kelly herself lives, the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Council has been one abysmally antidemocratic, anti-community, cabal of corruption, misrepresentation of the local people that is found anywhere in the whole of the UK.
And has Ruth Kelly’s aid a word in opposition to the corrupt Tower Hamlets Council?
Has she spoken a word in support of the community that is threatened by Crossrail?
To those who have sought to make light of our legal action programme, we can only say, WATCH this space.
© Muhammad Haque
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