Firing a cheap shot in his campaign to be selected as Labour’s London mayoral candidate, Ken Livingstone has effectively branded the police’s Form 696 a racist instrument.
Ken Livingstone has attacked a police check form used by authorities in London, calling the way it was based on the ethnicity of a concert’s audience “divisive” and “wrong”… He added: “You can’t have a law on the presumption that one particular ethnic group is more violent than another.”
And yet according to figures released by Scotland Yard in July of last year, the majority of violent inner-city crime is committed by black men. Bearing in mind that the Police’s approach to licensing is based on experience and fact, not ‘presumption’, Livingstone is playing with fire here.
As Mayor he would remove the discretion of the Police to intervene in licensing music events for reasons of public safety. He specifically wants to lift restrictions on Grime and Hip Hop concerts which he feels are unfairly discriminated against because of their mostly black artists and audience.
Let’s have a look at some Grime and Hip Hop. The BBC’s report makes a lot of the ban on rapper Giggs’ concerts, so let’s have a look at Giggs as an example. The BBC voted Giggs one of its ‘Sounds of 2010’.
[Giggs - Verse 1]
You don’t know where my people coming from cos you don’t go there
Were jus tryna make dough [= money] here feds [= police] on our case so we moving mad low here
But shits movin mad slow here
Brown [= cannabis] went dead so I invested in coke [= cocaine] shares
I started seeing shit so clear so clear all courtesy of a coke square
And we gotta keep a strap [= gun] in da house cos we da niggas dat blagging black gang in da south!
So whats these other niggas yapping about
Talk shit around here get a slap in da mouth
Niggas know me I always swagger it out [= feel proud of my criminal acts]
The True Religion jeans might be matching the Ralphs,
Well seeing is believing cos we smashing them out!
You can find more of this kind of verbal sewage – and I mean whole sewage processing plants worth of more- on one of the burgeoning number of hip hop websites dedicated to promoting the rappers most affected by Form 696, such as Media Massacre.
One thing that every young man in these videos is at pains to display is a sense that they really mean what they say, and are tough enough to be part of the gun/gang fraternity. You would have to be a particularly gullible mug to believe that all these kids don’t mean what they say and aren’t looking for chances to prove it.
These are the kind of crowd that Livingstone wants to ‘set free’ to go to large public gatherings and practice what they preach.
It is a cheap bit of race politicking by Livingstone, and he should be picked up on it. Because if he abolishes Form 696, it will not be long until there is black blood on the streets, and on his hands.
