HIS and hers MPs Alan & Ann Keen, members for Feltham & Heston
and Brentford & Isleworth respectively, each continue to claim in the region of nearly £16,000 per
year in respect of an "Additional Costs Allowance".
This money is paid to them in respect of a second property which they have acquired, in London's Covent
Garden.
The intended purpose of this allowance is to enable MPs who live too far away from parliament (such
as in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the North of England or the South-West) to be compensated for the cost
of having to stay in or around London whilst undertaking their parliamentary duties. However the Keens live together
in Brentford - just nine miles from their place of work - and yet both of them claim the
allowance.
Neither of them is breaking any law, nor are the Keens the only MPs who are abusing the spirit of
this provision. But they are our MPs. Which is why we hold them to account.
Ever since this scandal was revealed the Keens have dodged, evaded and refused point blank to answer
any questions as to why they require a second home when their first is so close to their place of work. They refused
to attend hustings meetings in the run-up to the General Election in 2005 where they could have been questioned by rival candidates
or members of the public.
Instead they have depended on the services of an increasingly well-choreographed army of acolytes
who spring instantaneously to their defence whenever they are challenged, usually by means of behind-the-scenes manoeuvres
designed either to change the subject or to question the bona fides of those who are asking the question.
But the issue is not going away.
Community reminds Ann Keen of "the inconvenient
truth" about Heathrow
MEMBERS of the local community demonstrated outside
Holiday Inn, Brentford recently where Brentford & Isleworth MP Ann Keen hosted a screening of Al Gore's inspirational
documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which highlights the dangers of climate change.
Mrs. Keen arrived at the hotel early to avoid the demonstration, although fans arrived whilst
the demonstration was in full swing and were engaged by the protesters who gave them leaflets (see pictures below).
The demonstrators waved placards and handed out leaflets to draw attention to the fact that
the New Labour government, members of which were flaunted by Mrs. Keen at the event, had presided over an increase of nearly
40,000 flights per year at Heathrow since the general election of 1997.
The demonstration was organised by the Independent Community Group (ICG), and was supported
by members of the Liberal Democrats including the party's local group leader Councillor Andrew Dakers. Despite
having received an invitation to the screening, Councillor Dakers was later refused entry to the event by the Keens.
Also present at the demonstration was a delegation of residents from Cranford, led by former
Labour councillor Parmod Kad MBE. Members of Friends of the Earth managed to attend the event.
Leaflets handed out by the demonstrators pointed out that in October 2005 Ann Keen had voted
against a bill which would have limited the number of night flights using Heathrow - then a week later attended
a rally opposing airport expansion!
Speaking after the event, Community Group councillor Phil Andrews commented:
"Ann Keen is to be commended for staging this event, but the big names she flaunts are the very same people who are backing
the expansion of Heathrow at the expense of our local community.
"Mrs. Keen demonstrated once again in 2005 that her own career and personal advancement mean
more to her than her own constituents, who continue to suffer the effects of night flights.
"Under the circumstances this event would seem to have more to do with keeping her own name
in the headlines than with an honest attempt to highlight the very real problem of climate change."
Mr. Kad added: "Every time I see an aeroplane flying over Cranford in
the middle of the night disturbing our sleep and all day discharging noise and air pollution over Cranford, and every time
I see a young child or elderly person coughing with asthma due to air pollution in Cranford, I pray to God in desperation
for a better elected political representatives for Cranford and Hounslow who cared to understand our difficulties.
Lack of representation of Cranford councillors at this event exhibits their lack of commitment to the environment".
Left: Demonstrators outside the Holiday Inn protest against airport
expansion. Right: An ICG protester greets Labour councillors Nisar Malik and Pritam Grewal as they arrive at the event.
10.06.07: Gilligan and Standard prepare FIFTH hatchet-job against ICG at Keens' behest
THE London Evening Standard is preparing its fifth "exposé" of
ICG Organiser Phil Andrews' former membership of the National Front (see footnotes), the last four having appeared within
the space of fourteen months of each other.
And reporter and hatchet-man in chief Andrew Gilligan, better known for his role in the Dr. David
Kelly affair, admitted to Councillor Caroline Andrews during a brief telephone conversation that he is writing the piece simply
because he has been asked to do so by local MP Ann Keen, despite the fact that the story of Cllr. Phil Andrews' membership
of the NF in the 1980s and of his role on the new Executive of Hounslow Council has already been "revealed" by him to
Standard readers previously, thus exposing his own newspaper to ridicule.
The previous two articles by Gilligan accused Councillor Phil Andrews of having sustained a criminal
conviction for a racist assault, which is an absolute fabrication. Despite the fact that the Editor of the Standard
was advised after the first of these allegations that Gilligan had libelled Cllr. Andrews, no apology appeared and indeed
some months later Gilligan called Cllr. Andrews' bluff by actually repeating the same allegation, which by this time he must
definitely have known to be false, in an embellished form. This matter is currently in the hands of solicitors.
Thus when Gilligan, for once, bothered to contact Cllr. Phil Andrews for his side of the
story, his request was treated with the contempt that he and it deserved. Cllr. Andrews commented: "I have nothing at
all to hide and have always co-operated with the press for as long as they are prepared to behave honourably. Gilligan
has already repeated an allegation against me which he knew to be false and presumably intends to again, and I've no desire
to converse or co-operate in any way with such a low-grade individual.
"He can write whatever comes into his head and take his chances, but if he gets it wrong I'll act
decisively."
The purpose of the Standard campaign is to advance the local New Labour agenda of attempting
to associate the entire ICG with the brand of politics once pursued by Cllr. Andrews, which he publicly rejected and
denounced two decades ago. Locally New Labour still believes that political mileage can be extracted from the issue,
despite the evidence of repeated election defeats, by scaring vulnerable people from ethnic minority communities into voting
Labour to avert the "threat" posed to them by the ICG.
Why the London Evening Standard, which is not traditonally Labour's strongest ally in the
media, should feel obliged to repeatedly publish over and again an article which is in itself of negligible interest to a
London-wide readership, is a matter for conjecture. It is believed that the Keens acquired a certain amount of "bargaining
power" following the Standard's article about their scandalous expense claims back in 2005.
Our investigations continue.
FOOTNOTES:
1. Councillor Phil Andrews is the Organiser and a founder member of the ICG. He is also Leader
of the Community Group on the London Borough of Hounslow, having been elected in 1998 and then successfully defended his seat
in 2002 and 2006.
2. In 1977, at the age of fifteen, he joined the National Front as a result of what
he describes as having been "a juvenile fascination with fascism". However he became a solid advocate for NF policies
and progressed through the organisation to become Hounslow Young NF Organiser (1978), Hounslow NF Organiser (1982), NF North
& West London Regional Organiser (1983), National Young NF Organiser and a member of the NF's National Directorate (1984)
and, briefly, a member of the NF Directorate's five-man Executive Council (1987) before resignaing from the Directorate in
1988 and leaving the NF completely in 1989.
3. During this time, in November 1986, he sustained a criminal conviction following an incident at
Borough underground station some months beforehand. He was accused of randomly throwing an object from the door of a
train into a wholly white group of police officers, one of whom was allegedly injured as a result. There was no suggestion
of any racial motive. He pleaded Not Guilty and has ever since denied having thrown anything, however he was
found guilty of ABH and sentenced to six months' imprisonment. He was released in March 1987.
4. Through the later years of his NF membership he developed an interest in community participation
and "total democracy". This prompted him to write an article for the NF publication Nationalism Today in 1984
headed "New Structures for Winning Recruits" in which he argued for NF participation in and infiltration (based on similar
tactics which he had witnessed being employed by the Labour Party in his own community) of residents' associations.
This article, written at the age of 22, is mischievously cited by the ICG's opponents as "evidence" that the ICG is an extension
of the same strategy, although a cursory glance at the article clearly reveals it to be something entirely different.
In 1986 he acted as Election Agent for three non-NF community-type candidates in a local election in Isleworth, an exercise
he was to repeat in 1990 and 1993.
5. After having left the NF in 1989 along with several other activists from Hounslow he formed
a locally-based group called Liberation which, like the latter-day NF, still tried to reconcile community-based
democracy with racial ideas. Liberation was affiliated to a far-right umbrella organisation called the International
Third Position, which still exists today.
6. However in 1991 he and a fellow officer of Liberation folded the organisation and severed any remaining
links with the far-right. Over the ensuing months he rejected racist and fascist ideas outright and publicly declared
as much. Other than for the Isleworth South by-election of 1993, when he actively supported community candidate Tom
Reader from Ivybridge, he did not involve himself in politics of any kind for over two years.
7. Following the Isleworth South by-election of 1993, Tom Reader and Phil Andrews decided to launch
a new, locally-based venture known as the Isleworth Community Group, which later became the Independent
Community Group. From humble beginnings the ICG now holds six seats on the London Borough of Hounslow and is
part of a minority coalition with the Conservative Group which finally deposed New Labour from office in the elections of
May 2006.
8. As Executive Lead Member for Community Safety Councillor Phil Andrews chairs the campaigning and
co-ordinating group Hounslow Against Racial Harassment, and has taken the lead in initiatives against racism,
homophobia and hate crime around the borough. He recently presented the Cantle Report on Community Cohesion to to the
Council Executive and has spoken on the threat of racism and his experiences as a former far-right activist at national
venues alongside senior political figures from all of the major parties.
