A year on we still face same issues, says Tottenham MP - The Sun

IN a few weeks, Spurs fans will walk up Tottenham High Road to see the first home game of the season.

A year ago they made the same journey to see their team take on Atletico Madrid in a friendly.

Half a mile away a peaceful protest by friends and family of Mark Duggan was taking place outside the police station.

Just five hours later, the High Road was ablaze, families were fleeing burning homes and the landlord of the Pride of Tottenham pub was being chased out of a window by knife-wielding thugs.

Spurs fans will walk up the same road as they did a year ago, but so much has changed. Shops are boarded up and the High Road has lost its supermarket, post office, Fitness First and the iconic Union Point Building, which defied the Blitz, but sadly not the rioters.

Our future has always rested on small businesses, yet shop owners are being battered by the recession, riots and government incompetence.

Some traders are still waiting for compensation a year after the riots, and business is down 40 per cent. We can only hope that this never happens again. Yet police officers of all ranks think it will — and that they won't have the numbers or equipment to do anything about it.

I worry that they are right. Although so much has changed — for the worse — on the High Road, in others ways nothing has changed since last August.

We still don't know how and why Mark Duggan died. Rumours of "execution" and "conspiracy" are as prevalent today as in the days after his death.

We will never heal the community's wounds if we don't find these things out, but the current law tells us that we can't have a proper inquest into Mark's death.

Imagine that. A young father dies at the hands of the police, his family learn of the death from watching TV, his death leads to five days of rioting in most major towns in England — and we're not allowed to know why he died.

It is a disgrace. The Duggan family need an inquest, so do the families that saw their homes burned to the ground. So do the families of the three young men who died in Winson Green, Birmingham.

For all these people, I have called on the Government to change the law and to give us the inquest that we need.

I also worry that the police are right because the problems that led to the riots are still there.

We still live in a "grab, grab, grab, me, me, me" society where everybody knows their rights, but fewer know their responsibilities.

The rioters who trashed and looted shopping centres in Wood Green, Croydon, Birmingham and Salford thought that they had a right to the latest pair of trainers or to a flat-screen TV. They never thought that they had a responsibility to work hard for those things.

In many ways they are like the MPs who thought they had a right to lavish expenses and the bankers with enormous bonuses. We all have rights, but we have responsibilities as well.

But some of our rights are being denied. We have a right to a decent job if we can work, but unemployment keeps rising.

We have a right to a decent home, but still hundreds of thousands of us live in cramped, damp places without enough money to heat or light our homes properly.

We have a right to see our kids, yet too many of us have to take on two jobs just to make ends meet.

Maybe we should all think a bit more about our responsibilities, and the Government should think a bit more about our rights.

Many people have done their best to bring the High Road back to life — we have had a High Street Fund, the post office has re-opened and Aldi is coming back — but still there are more boarded-up shops than busy shops.

Groups like the Boxing Academy do great work with difficult young people, but still many of their friends think they have a right to new trainers without a responsibility to work for them.

Businesses keep saying they want to hire people from Tottenham, but still the dole queue grows and grows.

We've learned one thing in Tottenham — there's no substitute for doing things yourself. We can expect a hand-up from government, but not a hand-out.

We have to be tough, and we all have our part to play. I held a jobs fair at Spurs to give young people the skills to get jobs online.

I'm helping schemes get Tottenham teenagers into the best universities and into apprenticeships with the best City firms. I don't see an N17 postcode as a barrier to achieving at the highest levels, and neither should anybody else.

Because the Tottenham that I grew up in is nothing if not resilient.

People are rebuilding their lives and their communities.

Gladesmore School didn't wait to be told to release "Everybody Dreams", their song for Tottenham. They just got on with it, and I am very proud to be in the video.

Last year shook our community and we still haven't fully recovered.

But, despite all my worries and concerns for our future, I still have faith in my home — Tottenham.