The United Families & Friends Campaign (UFFC) is a coalition of families and friends of those that have died in the custody of police and prison officers as well as those who died while detained under the Mental Health Act, in psychiatric and immigration detention. It also has members and supporters from campaign groups and advocacy organisations from across the UK.

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The Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody report published in 2011 states: in total, there were 5,998 deaths recorded for the 11 years from 2000 to 2010. This is an average of 545 deaths per year. Despite the fact there have been 11 unlawful killing verdicts since 1990 there has never been a successful prosecution.

US civil rights veteran, Rev Jesse Jackson supports the inquiry campaign.

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UFFC Facebook Group > 
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Our joint efforts have yielded some results. The police self-investigation of deaths was replaced by the Independent Police Complaints Commission and the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman now investigates deaths in prison and immigration detention. The Attorney General was forced to undergo a review of the role of the Crown Prosecution Service, and corporate manslaughter laws are now extended to custody deaths.

However, these reforms have not addressed the lack of justice in outstanding cases. We believe that equitable dispensation justice in the UK must be done and be seen to be done if the general public are to enjoy high levels of trust and confidence in the fair administration of justice.

The poor quality and speed of independent investigations conducted by the Independent Police Complaints Commission and an Inquest process that is seriously under resourced, subject to delay and limited in remit and is not fit for purpose. Both critically fail to protect or support the rights of victims or their families.

Our Demands:

1. Replacement of the IPCC to ensure open robust transparent and thorough investigations from the very outset of police deaths in custody – with a removal of all ex-police officers for it to be a truly independent body.

2. The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman should be placed on a statutory footing.

3. Deaths in psychiatric detention and / or of those detained under the Mental Health Act must be subject to a system of properly funded investigation that is completely independent of the Health Service..

4. Officers and officials directly involved in custody deaths are suspended until investigations are completed.

5. Immediate interviewing of officers and all officials concerned with the death.

6. Officers and officials should never be allowed to collude over their evidence and statements of fact.

7. Full and prompt disclosure of information to the families affected.

8. Prosecutions should automatically follow ‘unlawful killing’ verdicts at Inquests and officers responsible for those deaths should face criminal charges, even if retired.

9. Implementation of police body cameras and cameras in all police vehicles in the interests of both the officers and the public.

10. There should be an automatic right to non means tested legal aid for families. There is a lack of funds for family legal representation at Inquests whilst officers and NHS staff get full legal representation from the public purse – this is unbalanced.

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The riots and uprisings that took place around the country and to a lesser extent in Castlefield, High Wycombe are rich pickings for a writer like me. You see the true side of people and commentators both locally and nationally baying for blood in a frenzy of blame and shame. As I said on Facebook,Twitter and in the press we should not be fanning the flames we should be asking what caused the fire in the first place. As an ex youth worker in the town I’ve added my own views from some of the work and observations from the ground (my partner in crime Zia Ullah were out to midnight one night talking to young people)

http://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/news/9194532.Castlefield_youth__feel_anger_towards_police_/
http://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/news/9194776.Youth_worker__Investment_key_to_solve_Castlefield_problems/

Yup moral outrage has been the flavour of the last few month and the local blogs in the Bucks Free Press have been full of people queuing up to add their indignation to the mix. As part of the research of the novel I have been looking at the industrial history of the town and going through old newspaper cuttings and photos (big shout out to Paul Burnham) and reading articles about disputes and strikes. There is a rich history in this little town of standing up to power and privilege going back to 17th/18th Century and in the last century action against factory owners by workers in 1913-14 - http://chs.revues.org/index198.html

Found this extract from the above article which is quite revealing:

“Tuesday last brought the most disorderly scenes… it was evident that the attacks made upon a number of chair-manufacturers was pre-arranged. The disturbances started at mid-day when a workman was set upon immediately on leaving the factory. He was very roughly handled, blow upon blow being rained upon him. Directly afterwards a number of men deliberately marched into the factory of Messrs. Randall Brothers. They preceded their entry with a volley of stones on the windows… the hooligans entered some of the workshops and smashed a couple of chairs to atoms… the rowdies did not leave until they had smashed quite 50 windows in the factory. A furious storm of stones and other missiles was showered upon Messrs. Bartlett’s buildings lasting some minutes… Not only windows were broken, but window frames smashed, and the front of the property was considerably defaced. Afterwards the quantity of stones lying both inside and outside the factory gave ample evidence of the fury of the attack… An eye-witness to these incidents described the scene as “Hell let loose”, and declared that the girls in the procession cheered heartily at the destruction. To the strains of music from the Band the wreckers smashed up shops in the West Wycombe Road”

South Bucks Free Press 7th February 1914

We have had strike action and pickets in more recent times – the Pinzi Plastic Strike in 1987 which was a battle to gain union recognition and better pay.The troubles in 1988 when there was action from predominatly young blacks in the town in the Multi-Racial Centre against racists in the local pub and where there was looting of a local camera shop and other places. So all that trouble took place in Castlefield has to be placed in this context – the target in this case was the police and against a background of the high number of stop and searches and due to the deaths in custody of people like Habib Ullah and Marcus Cottoy there is understandable anger and some serious grievances that need to be addressed otherwise there will be more comeback. In the words of Jean Paul Sartre in the introduction to Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon he writes:

“It is the moment of the boomerang; it is the third phase of violence; it comes back on us, it strikes us, and we do not realize any more than we did the other times that it’s we that have launched it.”

West Richardson Street has been written with all this history central to it’s plot and narrative. I feel that Black communities in this country exist out of history – local history/national history and our experiences and stories become ahistorical. With this novel I am making my contribution to putting our voices and narratives central to the stories of towns and areas like Wycombe.

No wonder my fav Star Wars film was always the Empire Strikes Back!

Peace

Saqib D, October 2011

Some promises to you/moi

• That I will post more on this ting. Discovered an app that will enable my thoughts to be put up here. Always.
• That I will make time to write the novel on my phone, laptop, tablet (which is broke) even on a freaking bus ticket (as my daughter would say). I owe it to myself and to the public to get this out – even it kills me.

Story has to come out & I need to translate this so called talent I have into something that will be meaningful and give me the final destination that I crave.

The picture?

I was walking down Mere Road in Leicester (an amazing road – as a foot soldier I got an obsession with these). I look down and see a bust up jewellery box on the side of the kerb. Not sure what happened here but it’s shit like that gets my creative juices flowing. I mean it could be that there was a robbery if some kind or some kind of domestic situation. What did do is remind me of High Wycombe & lads robbing their own Mums & Aunties gold to sell for crack. There was a sadness when I looked at that box that is about the crap that we go through in this country and what some of our yout are engaged in.

I have to get West Richardson Street out.

Saq
May 2011
Posted from WordPress for Windows Phone

Photo by Nigel Edgecombe http://nigeledge.com/

http://www.channel4.com/learning/main/netnotes/content/pdfs/guides/TRPD.pdf

p13 ‘Kissing Asians’

Used to have another life as a performance poet. For three/four years 1989-1993 I was all over the country doing stuff. This is all pre-internet so not too many records. Got a few cuttings that I need to scan in one one time…

Every so often I come out of retirement and bust a few lines, maybe should do this more as I only see a few young guns doing this kind of work

Still working on the novel and establishing behind of scenes material. Occasionally get a good buzz from it but my day to day runnings take over.   Being a first time novelist ain’t easy in these merciless recessionary times.

Be good

Saq

October 2010

Love this pic and may use it for the cover of the novel or for the visuals

Always knew that writing ‘this thing’ would take time but now ‘this thing’ seems to be drifting. Can’t say that I haven’t been working on it – been researching, reading stuff, thinking about plots & characters. Just that the actual writing has been hard after the first year of frantically piecing together the first few fragments. Have made some time in my packed life/schedule for the odd day to work on it but its not been easy and as ever you prevaricate when you just need to get down and do it.

Need to write something everyday – got a laptop, pda and looking to get a netbook soon so got plenty of ways to get stuff down. The inspiration is always there as well, as there are so many crazy things that go on in this town :

http://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/news/4652151.Wycombe_man_jailed_over_New_York_bomb_hoax/

Not sure what kind of draw/spliff/cannabis this guy was on but following on from the ‘transatlantic plot’ involving peeps in HW this was not a clever move…but is exactly the kind of thing that one of the characters in WRS might do but then they do say that life is stranger than fiction…

Anyway as promised  a section of the novel just for you:

West Richardson Street: Tales of Danny Raja

Lets get this straight – Danny Raja was a clown. But he was also the most gifted and intelligent bloke that Asif had ever met. He lived around the corner but he was a year or two older so they hadn’t met at school. Truth was he was nothin’ special then – just another Jhelum lowlife with a hoodie. But he changed after his sixteenth birthday. Whatever made him Danny Raja and connected him to the neighbourhood went beyond his partaking off magic mushrooms by Roundabout wood or the week long benders he would go on. He was one of the guys who was probably stranger when he was sober and not charged. Some of the missions that Danny got up to were legendary and were embedded in the folklore of these roads. Only talking about his demise broke the laughter and the tears. They had been blessed to be around him and when he took his fall a lot fell with him or fell right into line. Asif smiled thinking about the time Danny led a one man crusade against all the fast food places in Desborough Road and Green St. The brother had been outside these shops with his placard and leaflets – challenging the staff and punters. He would just tell folks that the food was killin’ them and they needed to eat stuff that was made with love so they in turn would spread love. Danny hated the fact that all these crews were eating out rather than eating their Mum’s roti. It got so bad that Mr Cod took out an banning order against him which meant that he was not allowed on the pavement outside – he just climbed a balcony by the new shiny shopping centre and shouted abuse at them. Crazy thing was Danny always made sense – no one could fault the strength of his arguments in English or in Mirpuri. The guy could drop it hard and even the local imams were in awe of him. But unsurprisingly Danny made enemies – shop and taxi base owners, some of the bigger dealers and the local Asian Councillors. He hated them most of all – those he felt were self righteous and self appointed, their stooges and chumchay.  In any other generation he would have been 50% village idiot and 50% shaman. His folks had moved back to Pakistan as some of his antics had driven them up the wall. Some of these very walls he had daubed cryptic messages and crazy graf that the local crews had adopted as their own. Danny had skills – he would chat the same way to local prozzies that he would chat to the Mayor or Police Sector Commander.

But then he fell and one night a group of the Councillors snapped after he had exposed some dodgy planning application for yet another Fried chicken establishment. They had said he had held a girl hostage in the old playground and after the Police helicopters had left the scene he had been led away and taken to Haleacre the local loony bin. Enough of the brothers together with the local youth worker had campaigned for his release but the men in white coats had taken him away. Life was never the same afterwards and even when he came back out for brief periods the fire in his eyes was lost and he wasn’t the same Danny Raja. Pumped full of drugs he was too zonked out to have any perception of where he even was. Asif was sad when he died but he also knew that Danny had died that day the marvey had picked him up. He had never seen so many peeps turn up to a funeral – two sixth forms closed and seven taxi companies shut up for that day (one stayed open to mop up business and was subsequently boycotted and closed down in six months). Women were seen crying in the streets and little snotty kids hugged each other in recognition of what they had lost. Three junkies overdosed and a dozen lads got married in the space of a month.

Danny dying woke a lot of them up – but their eyes and minds were not fully open enough for them to pick up his message and run with it. Maybe that would be asking too much and they all had dollars to make. But he lived on fuelling booze and spliff filled nights where all the old stories would come out and cold hard pauses would meet the dawn with the slow realization that they had to get up and face the day without him…

© Saqib Deshmukh 2009

Keep watchin this space

Saqib D , Sept 08

Freur ‘Riders in the night’

Blue Nile ‘Headlights on the Parade’

Klashnekoff  ‘It’s Murda’

Opposition ‘Sand and Glue’

Ghost feat Verb T ‘Exactly’

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan ‘My Heart My Life’

Johhny Osbourne ‘Truth & Rights’

Eyeless in Gaza ‘Lie Still Sleep Long’

Niraj Chag ‘Khwaab’

Fierce ‘Dayz like that’ (Full Crew remix)

Mark B & Blade ‘The Unknown’ (Azad mix)

Zion I ‘One Chance’

Shara Nelson ‘Down that Road’ (Underdog mix)

A boys gotta have some tunes while he’s working… Some are these are standard trax from my collection of several thousand records, cd’s & cassettes (remember them?) whilst others are just plain off the beaten track. Still researching and digging away – working on character development and the various stories are always alive in my head as I weave plots and people together. One way or another its got to come out as its’ been gestating for so long.

Stay wise

Saqib Dec 07

Been reading Animal’s People by Indra Sinha which has been nominated for a Booker award and was struck by its power & subject matter. The way Indra conjures up the town of Khaufpur and roots the incidents that took place in Bhopal in 1984 as the backdrop for the novel is just amazing and blew me away.

Read some interviews with the author and what struck me was that he said it had taken him some time to find a ‘voice’ for the book – a character that would drive the narrative forward and he found it in the shape of the novels main protaganist – Animal, a lad who had been disabled in the chemical accidents that the ‘Kampani’ from ‘Amrika’ had unleashed and now who walks on all fours. Animal drives the story on and is just a crazy & wonderful creation.

Me? Been researching away and writing loads more of the back story to flesh out the story of the four main characters. Looking at old pictures and maps, reading recollections of the first Asian & Caribbean immigrants who came in the 50′s and 60′s and finding out about life in the slums around Newlands. I think you’ll maybe need to know Wycombe for some of the stuff to resonate but I think I’m  capturing that small town vibe that the place has in common with many others.