Sam Hallam interviewed by the BBC on the day he witnessed the Court of Appeal quashing his murder conviction as "unsafe."

East London Lines pays special tribute and respect to the people of Hoxton, East London who successfully campaigned for the overturning of Sam Hallam’s murder conviction and helped gain his release from prison Wednesday this week.

To every individual who signed any petition, attended and supported any of the imaginative cultural and campaigning events held across the area, and who joined with the voices who knew that Sam was innocent, well done.

Your efforts have strengthened our democracy and put humanity and fairness back into our failing criminal justice system.

It was done with time, effort, faith, commitment and so little money. These are the riches of community activism.

Sam Hallam has paid a price that is incalculable. He has lost his youth, all the potential of education, training and early career and that wonderful hope and horizon of late teens and early twenties optimism that is the privilege of youth.

The disorientation of his present position, joy at release but sadness and pain at what he has had to go through, is evident in the interview recorded by the BBC in Carey Street, behind the Royal Courts of Justice.

He spent these years in the dystopian nightmare of our overcrowded prison system. His mother Wendy and father Terry and the rest of his family went through an experience that no one would wish on their worst enemies. And Terry died tragically 15 months ago in despair at the injustice done to his son.

Sam had 2 mobile phones containing images of his family that if examined for his Old Bailey trial in 2005 would have supported his assertion that he was nowhere near the scene of the beating up of trainee chef Essayas Kassahun.

Appeal Court judge Lady Justice Hallett said in her ruling that Sam’s failure to remember where he was and what he was doing accurately on that fateful day was due to “faulty recollection and a dysfunctional lifestyle, not a deliberate lie.”

Sam, his family and supporters are perfectly entitled to say that the only thing dysfunctional about this sorry affair is the criminal justice system.

Could you accurately recall exactly what you were doing last Wednesday say at 7.30 p.m. when you are in a police cell, arrested for a murder you did not commit, advised by a solicitor to say no comment? What about Wednesday last month? Or Wednesday 6 months ago?

The all surveillant digital trail of modern communications, while Big Brotherish, in their potential to triangulate our everyday behaviour, are now available and should be used to exonerate and protect us from wrongful accusation and arrest.

But those three Appeal Court judges sitting on high in the mock gothic splendour of the Royal Courts of Justice should be quick, along with other members of the judiciary, legislature and executive, to reflect on just how dysfunctional our system of justice is becoming.

The legal profession and system reflects a society as class-ridden and unequal as it was before the Second World War.

Hundreds of law graduates in this country leave university without the hope of gaining professional status and qualification. You need between £10,000 and £15,000 to pay the fees for a year of solicitor or barrister education leading to professional qualification. And then you have to fight for the dwindling paid pupillages and legal training contracts that will turn you into practising lawyers.

Law centres and legal aid practices have been shut down.  Magistrates courts and local police stations are being closed. The centralisation of resources is deracinating our local infrastructure of the expertise and service needed to protect young people such as Sam Hallam.

Not one of the main political parties has any policy recommending root and branch accessibility for justice. There are hundreds of young people in this country willing and able to perform the role of qualified “street law” attorneys with modest salaries equivalent to those of teachers.

The legal world seems to be dominated by a repugnant ‘goody bag’ culture of barristers’ chambers that look more like the lush offices of Los Angeles Hollywood agents, salaries in city law firms that compete with the discredited and hated bankers’ bonuses.

The hard-working and surviving economically “modest” communities of London such as Hoxton, that you find in all of the East London Lines boroughs, are always ready to welcome “prono bono” legalling from young lawyers or even the established and successful ones on their “days off.”

But these communities want long-term structured legal professionalism and public defenders that can protect them from the injustice experienced by Sam Hallam. It is not enough that the Criminal Cases Review Commission takes 7 years to right the wrong, via the Thames Valley Police and then a second Court of Appeal hearing.

Understandably the Sam Hallam campaign have raw feelings towards the Metropolitan Police.

But all credit to Commander Simon Foy for issuing an immediate statement of deep regret that Sam has lost all these years of liberty for a murder conviction that is so manifestly “unsafe.” The Metropolitan Police recognises that it has lessons to learn.

Let’s hope the judiciary, and the rest of our legal and political establishment are prepared to learn these lessons as well. Our society cannot afford to condemn young people such as Sam Hallam to the hell that he has been through and he did not deserve.

Police “deep regret” over Sam Hallam’s loss of liberty.

“I don’t want anybody else ever to suffer what I’ve been through.” Sam Hallam’s murder conviction quashed. 

Sam Hallam freed on bail. Prosecution do not resist appeal.

GB Olympic Football Image: Leon Puplett

East London Lines wants your views on who should represent Britain for Olympic football  challenge.

The draw has landed Great Britain’s men’s team in a group they will do well to qualify from.

So is this a chance for some youngsters like Wales’s Aaron Ramsay to make their mark on an international stage? Or should England’s ‘also-rans’ get the opportunity? Does David Beckham warrant inclusion by virtue of personality alone? Vote now to form the East London Line GB dream-team.

Our sister site East London Olympics asked the people of South East London who should make the Team GB football side – see what they said below!

Uruguay will present England with their sternest test.  Several members of the Copa America winning and World cup semi-finalist sides will be representing their country, including Liverpool’s Luis Suarez and Inter Milan veteran Diego Forlan. The squad will largely be comprised of the side that reached the South American Under-20 Championships.

Senegal are not the force that saw them reach a World Cup semi final in 2002 and are coming off the back of flopping at this year’s African Cup of Nations. Despite this, the Teranga Lions are always a formidable physical challenge and have recently appointed as coach Pierre Lachantra. Lachantra won the 2000 Olympic Football tournament with Cameroon in Athens as well as the African Nations cup.

Two of the Premiership’s outstanding players this year, Newcastle’s Demba Ba and Papiss Demba Cisse, could both feature.

The United Arab Emirates are – to use a Match of the Day Pundit’s favourite get-out for lack of knowledge – an ‘unknown quantity’. A hurried Googling will tell even the most ill-prepared of writers that the UAE coach Srecko Katanec was ditched half way through an unsuccessful World Cup 2014 qualifying campaign and a permanent successor is yet to be announced.

As for Great Britain, coach Stuart Pearce is hamstrung by the requirements to select only three players aged over twenty three, and agreements that no players appearing for England or the Republic of Ireland at the European Championships can be picked. If you think you know better than Pearcy make your views known now.

pic: Michael Pooler

Despite its promise as a new and refreshingly quirky comedy-drama, Derek, aired as a one-off last night on Channel 4, is a reversion to type in the worst way possible for Ricky Gervais. Populated by thinly-veiled stereotypes that stumble through an unconvincing narrative, it was a resoundingly unfunny production by a funny man whose comic Midas touch appears to be deserting him.  

The eponymous character is a sweet and innocent man who works in an elderly persons’ home as a care assistant and is hopelessly in love with his colleague, Hannah (Kerry Godliman). Other than her, his only friends, it seems, are the senile and deaf old people he looks after and the establishment’s misanthropic janitor (Karl Pilkington).

We are immediately made aware however that Derek is not ‘normal’, as he has some kind of learning difficulty or mental health condition. Whether his idiosyncratic behaviour and strange mannerisms are supposed to provide some kind of comedic counterpoint or empathy to the docility of the residents is unclear. What is clear is that we are in the familiar territory of Gervais’ brand of offensive humour, based upon a series of stereotypes that are supposed to be endearing.

In essence Derek repeats that same and tired line from Gervais, that by revealing a human quality in his characters he is actually poking fun at the bigotry and prejudices of us, the audience, when in truth he is doing little other than indulging his own.

Admittedly, some of Derek’s lines and childlike traits are quite funny. The interplay between him and Hannah is genuinely touching at moments, brought out by a delicate delivery. But the fact remains that the humour is entirely premised on Derek’s ‘abnormality’. Indeed, Gervais’ acting is akin to somebody in a pub doing an impression of a disabled person: pure caricature, and lacking any real perspective of a person in that situation.

You would think comedy based on mocking disabled people had been consigned to a cringe-worthy and forgettable past. Sadly recent programmes like Little Britain and Come Fly With Me confirm the opposite.  The only difference here is that Gervais tells us it is OK as he is being ironic and because the characters in question are likeable. In the end this faux sentimentality, which fails to challenge the stereotypes it depends upon, is no substitute for good scripting.

The same goes for all of the characters in the pilot who, cast in the mould of Gervais’ archetypes, are purposely pathetic and defined by their defects. Allowing for little complexity or colour, they are two-dimensional – but ‘sweet at heart’. And of course that must make us want to like them – surely?

Hannah, while sympathetically played by Godliman, is almost a carbon copy of Dawn from The Office: a fundamentally good woman resigned to a life of dreary dissatisfaction yet dreaming of escape, incomplete because she lacks a man. Arguably the most offensive portrayal is that of the older people at the home, who really are nothing more than grey props to the protagonists – a powerful statement that says a lot about the prevalence of ageism in society.

The format of this pilot episode, essentially based on the formula of The Office, is similarly staid. The candid asides from the main characters strip away any of the potential drama as the flow is broken by the open-heart bare-alls. You feel you know what the characters are going to say straight away; it is boring and predictable.

Perhaps it is too early to give a damning verdict after one episode. After all, it wasn’t until its second series that The Office actually captured people’s attention, never mind their hearts. And it took a gradual build up of Maggie and Andy’s relationship, their hopes, dreams and fears before Extras reached its truly touching crescendo.

If he wishes to add to that collection of dust-gathering Baftas with future episodes of Derek, then Gervais will need to do more than simply recycle old characters, themes and formats. More importantly he will have to learn that it’s not OK to make fun of old and disabled people, even if he thinks doing so makes him more intelligent than everybody else.

Pic: Aaron Lee

Cheap tricks in an electoral race? This is classic Boris, says Aaron Lee

Elegance isn’t Boris Johnson’s style and neither is playing by the rules. As if having his own freesheet wasn’t enough already, now he’s hijacked a Twitter account and redirected web users in an attempt to boost his re-election chances. Labour kicked up a fuss – and they were right to. Boris has rightly been forced to back down.

I’m sure lots of people secretly harbour a desire to hijack a public radio station for their own pursuits, but I’m not sure how many of those in public office would attempt it. Boris, on the other hand, has no such qualms. His takeover of the mayoral Twitter account and redirection of www.london.gov.uk visitors to his own re-election campaign site, backboris2012.com, was foul play.

Of course, in Boris’s view, it doesn’t matter who sets up a social media page registered to a public office. It’s about personality, which is something he believes voters see in him: “I don’t think anyone is any doubt that the amount of followers have been built up on [the @MayorofLondon] account are directly because it is Boris Johnson’s. Does anyone really think that a man [Ken Livingstone] who has just 5,000 Facebook friends compared to Boris’s 125,900 would have built up a following on Twitter of 253,100?”

Getting elected has always been about politicians getting their policies, and their personality, in front of voters. Facebook and Twitter have changed the rules of political campaigning. Boris knows how to play the game. His multi-platform campaign already spans everything from social media to letterbox bombardments. If he‘s so confident about his gift of gab, he shouldn’t need a boost.

Next week, EastLondonLines have a series of special reports for the upcoming GLA elections.

Tabby Kinder

Increasingly I feel awkward and embarrassed when walking around my city. Most mornings, upon leaving my house, I attract the attention of at least one lecherous motorist, or a pair of wayward builders. When I step out into the open, I am stepping into a man’s world, where I must be reserved yet sexual, demure yet demanding, and attractive, without allowing myself to become an exhibit.

But what women have accepted as the norm for a lifetime – some of my friends even find it “flattering” – is now attracting retaliation. On Monday evening, blogger London Feminist launched a twitter hash-tag encouraging people to share experiences of street harassment and sexual abuse that they had never reported.

The response to #Ididnotreport was extraordinary, demonstrating the overwhelming social stigma that still exists around “low-level” gender-based abuse. Some tweeted: “#Ididnotreport because reporting the first time ruined my life,” and others: “#Ididnotreport because some ‘friends’ think that you shouldn’t cause a scene when a stranger puts his hand between your legs.”

The ‘taboo’ subject attracted the attention of public figures. Brave and moving was Laurie Penny’s contribution: “#Ididnotreport the man who date-raped me when I was 19. I did tell mutual friends, who called me a liar.”

Out of solidarity, I felt moved to offer my own experience – a possessive and jealous ex-boyfriend who manipulated me until I felt so worthless that I didn’t know I deserved better.

Some criticise the modern dependence on social media as a dangerous move away from accountability and interaction, to anonymity. But #Ididnotreport has given new levels of depth to Virginia Woolf’s belief that: “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.” Anonymous is still a woman, but now faceless interaction has allowed us to share and assimilate in a way never before possible.

Twitter has given women a platform to tell the world the things they were too scared to tell their families, friends, or the police. As a collective, women who have suffered abuse silently become a more powerful voice than they could ever have been alone.

On the same day, parenting forum Mumsnet launched their “We Believe You” campaign. Like #Ididnotreport, the campaign aims firstly to bring into the open the huge number of rapes and sexual assault that are inflicted on the ‘weaker sex’, and secondly to pull apart the many myths surrounding rape that lead to women not reporting sexual assault out of the fear they will not be believed.

Rape and sexual assault are far more common than the world at large wants to admit, and the vast majority of cases are never even reported.  Some women feel ashamed or embarrassed, many fear they will not be believed, and more say that low conviction rates put them off reporting an assault.

A survey by Mumsnet found this week that one in ten women have been raped, and more than a third have been sexually assaulted in some way. In two-thirds of cases, the women knew the person responsible.

83 per cent of women who had been sexually assaulted or raped did not report the crime to the police. One quarter did not tell anyone at all.

It is time to dispel the victim-blaming attitudes surrounding ‘rape culture’. You didn’t deserve it because you dressed provocatively; yes, it can still be rape if he is your friend or boyfriend. When people buy into these myths, they limit women’s freedom of movement by implying that rape can be prevented by avoiding certain places.

Like rape, street harassment restricts girls’ and women’s access to public places. Catcalls, sexist comments, public masturbation, groping and assault make public places unfriendly, frightening and dangerous for many girls, women, and LGBT people.

Anti-street harassment week begins this weekend, March 18-24. “Meet Us On The Street” is the rallying call for the movement started by Stop Street Harassment, which promotes equal access to public space and civil rights. Anyone can get involved in the international week of action by raising awareness on social media, educating your children about sexual harassment, or by starting a Meet Us On The Street program in your town. For more suggestions on how to get involved, see the campaign website here.

On International Women’s Day last Thursday, one ‘lad’ I follow on Twitter tweeted the following: “Have a good one girls, because the other 364 days belong to us #IWD.”

Needless to say, this ‘joke’ did not feel very funny. However, in the wake of my anger, I realised that it wasn’t his ignorance that offended me so greatly, but the fact that he was, largely, right.

Women do two-thirds of the world’s work, produce half of its food, yet earn just 10 per cent of its income, and own 1 per cent of its property. And – it is increasingly obvious – own zero per cent of the streets we walk around in.

Channel 4 are laughing at gypsies in the name of documentary, says Tillie Cox, and their advertising campaign is about as David Attenborough as Big Brother.

“BIGGER. FATTER. GYPSIER.” roars a gargantuan advertising board near the ever-frantic Old Street roundabout in east London. The face of a young boy stares defiantly out from behind the text, his eyes narrowed. Is he angry? Or just squinting into the lens? The aggressive capitals decide for you.

Channel 4, who created the multimillion-pound point-and-laugh franchise of Big Brother, has once again struck gold. In the name of social documentary, gypsies are propelled into the media spotlight, hoping that the world will see the ‘real’ them. The world runs off giggling at the cartoonish figures the TV people created in the cutting room. Television is once again the bitchy older pupil who befriends the outcast in order to mock them. And mock they have.

The hugely successful My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding television show is now in its second series, having started life as a one-off program documenting the lives of Romany gypsies and Irish travelers in the UK today. Calling it a documentary is troubling, though, as a group that had been notoriously private has now been given a public image based on a few isolated examples.

The show is full of clips, often of young children, saying things that will shock, that will elicit a response from the majority of viewers who will be appalled at young girls routinely using sunbeds, and wearing expensive dresses so heavy that they cause pain. By reducing a whole race of people to pink wedding dresses and orange skin, they are exposing them to mockery, to further ostracism and bullying. “Gypsier” only underlines the hyperbole, the hysteria with which the show toys.

In his brilliant book Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class, Owen Jones muses on the fact that the middle classes, so ardent in their opposition to homophobia and racism, think nothing of joking about “chavs”. The notion of the working classes as feral, lazy and as the “other” has become socially acceptable; a means of justifying the widening gap between “us” and “them”.

In depicting menacing boys and sexualised girls, Channel 4 tap into this middle class panic. Gypsies are a race, not a class, but they are still the societal other, and the same weapons are used against them: trivialization, a reduction to the absurd. Feminists may deplore the fact that women are generally expected to give up work after marriage – and spend their lives cooking, cleaning and having children – but without showing these people respect, how can we expect to have a dialogue with them?

Channel 4 argue that everyone in the campaign has seen and approved the images used, but they don’t seem to have considered the other communities that are inevitably damaged by association with this snide approach. This defence echoes the line The Sun uses to justify the sexualisation of women on page 3: the implications for the wider group being represented are never considered.

The London Gypsy and Traveller Unit has written an open letter to Channel 4’s head office objecting to the advertising. Channel 4 has responded saying the term “Gypsier” is not used in a negative context. Negative? Perhaps not, but it is provocative advertising, and hardly the language of “documentary”. There is no My Big Fat Arctic Expedition in David Attenborough’s pipeline, that I am aware of.

Will Coldwell

The Independent’s columnist Christian Patterson today described Ghost Bikes as ‘rusty eyesores’. Here, our writer Will Coldwell responds.

The first time I saw it – I understood.

The white bike chained to the railings of Dalston Junction was not to be ridden.

Laden with bouquets in varying shades of brown, with one fresh bunch still tied to the handlebars, this was marking the scene of a death – the death of a cyclist.

And although, as time goes by with the flow of traffic, the bike will decay by the hands of thieves, this simple act of remembrance will be passed on to more than just the grieving family, but to the community itself.

And this ‘Ghost Bike’ will, for the years to come, remind us that a human died, in a way no different from how we have commemorated death since time began; with a symbol of their life, and a point of pilgrimage for reflection.

And someone who had never seen a Ghost Bike before might think that it was simply a bike painted white, but the flowers and cards tell the real story – and they should realize instantaneously, the implication of the objects before them.

They might wonder how it happened, and indeed whether anyone was to blame or not. They will probably realise, as they reflect, perhaps with the bike now out of sight, that blame is an irrelevant thing to a grieving family.

They might find it sinister, to see a reminder of death like this. And that’s because it is sinister when a person is killed, crushed in a mess of metal, swept away by sirens, and forgotten.

Then, one hopes, they will spare a moment of time to consider this, and think of their own loved ones, before slipping away into the pulse of the city.

Because a memorial doesn’t need to be for someone you know to have meaning. The thousands of people who visit the Somme each year can tell you that, or the concentration camps of Eastern Europe, or even those who just sit on a bench in Hampstead Heath with a name engraved on it.

And if that memorial makes you think about how that death, or others like it could be preventable then that doesn’t make it a campaign. Leave that to the lobbyists. A memorial asserts a small pressure on the minds of society simply because we are capable of empathy.

Just sometimes, we need a little prompting.

@will_coldwell

Aaron Lee

By clamping down on journalists using Twitter, media organisations aren’t doing themselves any favours, says Aaron Lee.

The argument over Twitter and professional conduct took a step up this week when word that Sky News is clamping down on staff tweets sent ripples of indignation through media land.

In short, Sky is now ordering their staff to cease retweeting posts from rival journalists and users, and to pass all scoops to the newsdesk. Users quickly dubbed it a “draconian” move by the broadcaster, while some media commentators, like Forbes’ Ewan Spence, claimed Sky have every right to do so.

When it comes to verifying sources and protecting their brand, Sky is right to advise editorial discipline in the midst of rampant Chinese whispers. During last year’s Nov 9 student protest, EastLondonLines verified a number of rumours circulating on Twitter that turned out to be completely false.

But, what Sky is actually doing is imposing ownership over their employees’ Twitter accounts, regardless of whether they are personal or professional – and this issue is only beginning. Media organisations are getting nervous over their journalists becoming bigger than their brand, and they are taking action.

Political reporter Laura Kuenssberg took her 60,000 followers with her when she switched from the BBC to ITV last summer. The move caused heated debate over who owns journalists’ accounts. Concern over the personal Twitter accounts of BBC staff prompted a revision of the Beeb’s guidelines on social media, leading some of their staff, like Rory-Cellan Jones, to maintain separate accounts.

Journalism has always been about moving fast, and Sky knows this better than most. But what they haven’t grasped is that reputation and engagement are a far greater catch when it comes to their presence on social media – and one-to-one contact from journalists is what earns that currency. Users follow journalists for insight, expertise and opinion. But Twitter is also a conversation. Sharing links to other publications can led to debate, inform fellow colleagues of stories they may have missed and even generate fresh ones.

To enforce rules against tweeting rivals and, worse, other users, is to halt the process of mutual exchange that thrives on Twitter. Yes, journalists should absolutely exercise caution when retweeting, but to declare en mass that their social media engagements, however beneficial they could be, should remain mute is foolhardy.

Sky has set itself up for trouble by exercising micromanagement in a medium that’s growing laterally. It can pretend the competition doesn’t exist if it wishes, but that won’t help its reputation inside or outside its walls.

Claire Shaw

The idea that headteachers who earn over £100,000 a year should be “named and shamed” according to Union leader, Chris Keates, is irrational, unnecessary and simply unfair.

The UK press reported this week that there are over 1,000 teachers in the country who are earning more than £100,000 a year, 200 of which are based in London schools.

Out of the highest paid headteachers in London, 17 are from schools in Tower Hamlets – the borough with the second most improved GCSE grades in the country, after Darlington.

For schools situated in a deprived area of London to exceed the GCSE national average for the first time is a significant achievement, one that would have taken a lot of time and effort.

Headteacher, Craig Tunstall, earned £186,203 last year. He successfully improved four failing schools in Lambeth. To suggest Tunstall should be “named and shamed” for helping children gain a good education seems very unreasonable.

Critics argue the increasing number of headteachers earning over £100,000 is putting a strain on school budget pressures, on taxpayers, and local authorities, which are being forced to pay higher wages due to competition.

Over 100 of these ‘over-paid’ heads run academy schools, which are free to pay their staff what they like. But the idea behind academy schools is to raise attainment levels. If this is achieved, then heads should be rewarded with a high wage package.

It is no mean feat to run a school. If Education Secretary, Michael Gove wants to “restrain” what heads get paid, even when a substantial number of schools in the UK have seen big improvements over the last year, he is simply saying that, headteachers do not deserve a good wage for improving the standards of education in the UK.

Headteachers have the high-pressure job of raising education standards in the UK to ensure all children are given a good start to life. A job worth the money.