Rev Paul Nicholson & Extra: Many people notably in London have fond reminiscences of the Rev Paul Nicolson (1932-2020), a redoubtable campaigner for the poorer members of our neighborhood. He seems one way or the other to have handed Wikipedia by however you possibly can learn extra about his life from many on-line sources. On Saturday twenty ninth March 2014 I photographed the Thousand Moms March in Tottenham he and Taxpayers Towards Poverty organised demanding demanding dwelling incomes, first rate really inexpensive houses for all and rejecting the bed room tax, the housing profit cap, unfair taxes, starvation and chilly houses.
Huff Submit tells us Nicolson labored within the champagne commerce from 1965 till he made a dramatic profession change in 1967 and was ordained by the Church of England as a Minster in Secular Employment. This meant he needed to discover a job in the actual world and he bought a job on the ICI HQ in Millbank as a personnel officer. In 1975 he took one of many first Employment Trununals difficult ICIs redundancy procedures and was later concerned in supporting different commerce unionists elsewhere. In 1979 he ventured into politics changing into an Impartial councillor the place he then lived in North Herts.
After a protracted battle towards the Ballot Tax in 1997 he based the charity Zacchaeus 2000 Belief (Z2K), primarily based in London, a bunch who had been had been deeply involved in regards to the influence of the Thatcher Authorities’s ‘ballot tax’ – a set fee from each grownup, no matter their earnings or circumstances. Z2K turned a registerd charity in 2005 and Nicolson left it in 2012 withdrawing to discovered Taxpayers Towards Poverty (TAP) to keep away from the restrictions on political campaigning by charities.
Maybe his most necessary motion was to fee Minimal Revenue Requirements analysis from the Household Funds Unity in 1999, which shaped the idea of the London Dwelling Wage, with Mayor Ken Livingstone establishing the Larger London Authority Dwelling Wage Unit in 2005.
What would have been an ever better achievement would have been the adoption by the authorities of the Memorandum to the Prime Minister on Unaffordable Housing he commissioned by Professor Peter Ambrose in 2005. New Labour learn it however did nothing, persevering with to focus on unaffordable housing. Had Corbyn been allowed to win by the Labour Occasion in 2017 we might have seen adjustments in the fitting course – however insurance policies like there have been why thy fought laborious to forestall his election.
In fact I’ve not talked about the best-known truth about Nicolson. It was whereas he was dwelling in Turville close to Excessive Wycombe that he allowed the BBC to take over his church to movie The Vicar of Dibley. Daybreak French was taking part in Grealdine Grainger because the Vicar, however the actual vicar was Paul Nicolson, although I believe he refrained from the cameras.
He retired and settle in Tottenham, changing into welll recognized for his campaigning within the space – and for plenty of arrests and trials. He had known as this march and its calls for had been neatly summarise on the placard hanging from a string round his neck: ‘We march for Freedom from Starvation, Chilly, Outrageous Rents – Combat for a Dwelling Wage’.
You possibly can learn a brief article on him within the Guardian which incorporates round 30 of his letters which had been printed by the newspaper in addition to hyperlinks to many extra. He really was a terrific campaigner.
I left the march because it handed Tottenham Police Station with Carole Duggan strolling in entrance of a giant banner with the face of Mark Duggan, her nephew, murdered by police in Tottenham in 2011.
Extra in regards to the march and plenty of extra photos at Moms march for justice.
I used to be on my technique to two additional protests that day which you’ll examine on My London Diary:
At Kilburn Sq. was a Kilburn Uniform Day protest the place the Counihan Battlebus Housing For All marketing campaign, together with the TUSC Towards Cuts and TUSC had been calling for rents to be capped and for everybody to have a house.
And in Parliament Sq., employees and college students from Oasis Academy Hadley in Ponders Finish had been protesting towards the Residence Workplace plans to deport fellow A-Degree Pupil Yashika Bageerathi to Mauritius.
She got here right here together with her mom and two youthful siblings in 2012 after bodily abuse from a relative and claimed asylum in 2012. The applying has been rejected and the entire household are below risk of deportation.
Yashika is now 19 and the Residence Workplace determined they might deport her on her personal and she or he had been in Yarl’s Wooden immigration elimination centre since March nineteenth. She and her fellow college students need her to be allowed to remain – at the least till she has taken her exams this summer time. The #FightForYashica petition had attracted over 171,000 signatures.
Makes an attempt by the Residence Workplace to deport Yashika failed earlier than this protest when strain from campaigners led to British Airways refusing to take right here. Ahe had been booked into an Air mAURITIUS flight for the day following this protest, however an avalanche of tweets led to them refusing to take her.
Lastly she was deported on her personal in April 2014 and happily was helped there to take her A-levels, receiving the grades she wanted to go on to school and finish her transient interval within the public eye.
Fellow College students Combat for Yashika.
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Tags: 2014, Blair’s deaf ears, little one abuse, Chilly, council tax, Counihan Battlebus Housing For All, Daymer, Freedom from Starvation, Kilburn Sq., London, London Dwelling Wage, march, March 2014, Mark Duggan, Minimal Revenue Requirements, New Labour, Oasis Academy Hadley, Outrageous Rents, parliament sq., peter Marshall, police murders, Ballot Tax, protest, Rev Paul Nicholson, college students, TAP, Thousand Moms March, Tottenham, Turville, TUSC, unaffordable housing, Vicar of Dibbley, Yashika Bageerathi. deportation
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