August 1998

Campaign vigil for "innocent" lifer (10/8/98)

Pickles promoted to shadow minister (6/8/98)

"Road to Nowhere" gets go-ahead (1/8/98)

Campaign vigil for "innocent" lifer

Campaigners staged a vigil outside Bradford Police HQ today for Michael Singh, who they claim is wrongly imprisoned for a murder he did not commit.

Michael Singh was convicted, along with two others, of murdering 19 year old Dalwinder Singh (no relation) in February 1988. He was sent to prison in June 1989. He has always maintained his innocence. The trial took place against the backdrop of the anti-Rushdie riots in Bradford.

Howard Oakes, speaking for the campaign, said: "The point of the protest is to publicly launch a petition to ask West Yorkshire Police to release information which was not used at Michael's trial. Specifically the statement of the WPC who retrieved the murder weapon at the Barrack Tavern pub shortly after the killing."

The case for Michael Singh

How the trial was reported

Pickles promoted to shadow minister

. Eric Pickles, former Tory leader of Bradford Council and now MP for Brentwood and Ongar in Essex, has been promoted to the shadow cabinet. He was given the job as shadow Social Security minister by William Hague.

Pickles was reported as saying: "I have lots of reading to do. My office is full of books on social security issues which I will plough my way through over the summer.

"There's going to be a big review of housing benefit in the autumn and my time in Bradford will come in very useful for that."

Pickles town hall reign was marked by his conversion to Thatcherism and massive cuts in programs for the city's poor.

"Road to Nowhere" gets go-ahead

As expected, the £64 million Bingley "Relief Road" was one of 39 road schemes approved for building by the Government yesterday, after a year under "review" following Labours election success in May 1997. The announcement came just 2 weeks after Deputy leader John Prescott came to Bradford and met Chris Leslie, MP for Shipley, and council leader Ian Greenwood, to let them know his decision.

The news was greeted enthusiastically by local politicians and businessmen who have led an unprecedented campaign for the road. Many residents in Bingley also supported the scheme in the hope of relief from the terrible traffic congestion on Bingley Main Street.

Road protesters at the Rye Loaf camp said in a statement: "The immediate effects of this road being built will be increased levels of congestion and air pollution in the Aire Valley. Furthermore it will open the floodgates for the destruction of local countryside by luxury housing developers. Sadly, the only real measure that could have helped the town of Bingley, that is, traffic reduction, seems likely to be overlooked for some time." And Tony Plumbe of BETA said "Bingley will lose its identity forever. It will become a commuter dormitory traversed by a traffic sewer."

A high level of secret lobbying and misinformation has marked the campaign for the road, fronted by the Telegraph & Argus. Last year KDIS exposed a Council claim that the new road would reduce pollution as a deliberate lie - pollution will increase. Road protesters proved that MP Chris Leslie had once produced a leaflet OPPOSING the road. Leslie later helped promote a phoney "environmental" group BEAT which campaigned for the road whilst claiming "neutrality".

And for 12 years the main opponents of the Relief Road were Bradford Council itself. Even as late as 1994 they said in a report that building the Relief Road will bring "unacceptable traffic pressures on Saltaire, Shipley and North Bradford ..." Nothing has changed.

However, the road lobbyists have a secret agenda - to push for an extension of the road along the Aire Valley to Shipley. Even as the Bingley scheme was being announced yesterday, MP Terry Rooney said ominously "We now have to start the battle of completing the Shipley end".

See also background details on "Road to Nowhere"

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