immigrants

The Hammersmith Law Centre will lose 60% of its funding in cuts voted for by the Tory Hammersmith and Fulham Council, which is fairly disastrous.

This site is adding interviews with people who have used the law centre for legal help and advice over the years. Law centre clients are often immigrants and people seeking asylum. They're often from places the west is hostile to: Afghanistan, Iran and so on.

If you click on the 'read more' link below, links to all other articles and interviews on this topic will appear in the menu to the right.

Here's another guy who went to the law centre for help negotiating immigration law and the Home Office. He's from Iran. He's a witty, gentle type who is almost happy to talk about life as an Middle Eastern immigrant in these delicate times. He's a little reluctant to release personal details, like his name.

'Maybe I am too paranoid,' he grins. 'You can worry too much about them saying things out there about you.'

That is true, although there are times when paranoia is probably the rational option. This guy, now greying a little, did a bit of political organising in Iran when he was younger. He seems to have come to the attention of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or the Iranian authorities, at least, as a result. 'I mean, I was helping some students, and I helped some people do some political things... um, like taking part in meetings, organising meetings... so I decided to stay here.'

As we have been reporting, the Hammersmith Law Centre will lose 60% of its funding in cuts voted for by the Tory Hammersmith and Fulham Council. Thousands of poorer people in the borough will lose access to the free legal advice and representation that the centre has provided for nearly 30 years.

This site is adding interviews with people who have gone to the law centre for legal help and advice over the years. Law centre clients are often immigrants and people seeking asylum.

Below, law centre client Salah Almesaouil talks a bit about moving to London. He has been a client of the law centre for some years, and had help with Home Office and housing problems.

Salah Almesaouil is a small, witty guy from Syria who lives with his wife and eight young children in a three-bedroom council flat in a West London block called Hamlet Gardens. 'Good flat,' he says, as his four littlest kids stampede through it. 'Bit small, maybe, for ten of us living here. Bit small.'

He's not complaining about his general direction of travel, though: the UK remains a land of opportunity as far as he is concerned, and he and his kids are taking it.

His three eldest - teenagers Heba, Mohamad and Hamza - are doing well in school, particularly in the scary subjects: Heba is studying A-level chemistry, physics and maths, Mohamad, is taking A-levels in maths, applied science and computing, and Hamza is sitting GCSEs in science, double science, maths, English language and literature, RE, design and technology, history, French and Arabic.

They want to be doctors and computer engineers and that kind of thing. Almesauouil is a happy Dad.

Introduction:

Hammersmith and Fulham's Conservative council is planning to cut funding to a mighty range of longstanding local voluntary groups. That’s no big surprise from a Conservative council, although it was certainly delivered as one. Some groups have only just heard that they’re about to lose their funding, and mostly, they’ve heard it from each other. The council has not been too quick to let these applicants know that their money has gone.

The worst hit by far is the Hammersmith Law Centre – a longstanding charitable organisation that has been providing Hammersmith’s community and voluntary sectors with advantageous legal advice since 1979, and tormenting various council kaisers for about as long. The Law Centre is staffed by 12 lawyers - 12 experienced persons who know the law, continue to set national legal precedents with their work, give free legal advice to charities, unions, right-minded council officers and anybody else who suspects that the council or government office that they’re having to deal with is talking neocon garbage. It is perhaps needless to say that the Law Centre poses a problem for the council.

And so it is that the Law Centre is due to lose 60% of its funding. The Tories will try to point out (as their officer report on voluntary sector funding to the council’s Cabinet on Monday 16 April does, all over the place) that they are not cutting funding to the voluntary sector as such – they are merely redistributing it. Alas for council leader Stephen Greenhalgh, it is hard to mask this sort of surgery. The truth is that if you get rid of the Hammersmith Law Centre, you lobotomise the community and voluntary sector in Hammersmith and Fulham. You don’t need a lot of brain to get it around that one.

We will be looking at this issue in more depth over the coming weeks and talking to more of the people who are affected. This first story begins the discussion.

Note: voluntary groups affected by the proposed funding cuts will hold a protest at a Hammersmith and Fulham council cabinet meeting on Monday 16 April at 7pm in the Assembly Hall in the Town Hall on Kings Street in Hammersmith. This is a public meeting, and the affected voluntary groups would welcome support.

Hammersmith Law Centre

The Hammersmith Law Centre discovered that it was about to lose 60% of its funding not long before Easter. Staff there appear to have found out about on the day that long-time centre lawyer Tony Pullen just happened to see the council report that recommended the cut.

The centre is on the mailing list for Hammersmith and Fulham council agendas, and the agenda for the April 16 2007 cabinet meeting had come through the door, as the council agendas usually do. Pullen decided to thumb through the agenda - mostly, it seems, for the hell of it. He noticed that there was a report in the agenda called 'Voluntary Sector Funding, 2007 to 2009.' 'I thought 'that looks interesting,' Pullen says, raising his eyebrows.

Indeed it was. The report, which is still due to go before the Monday 16 April Cabinet meeting, recommended a £159,000 cut to the Centre's annual £261,000 grant – the most substantial in a list of very substantial hits. Pullen found himself a little flustered. 'We hadn't had any warning, and we hadn't heard anything from the council. This report was saying that we were going to lose 60% of our funding, and the cabinet meeting (where a vote would be taken on that recommendation) was only a few days away when I saw that report. I don't know how we would have found out if I hadn't seen that report.'