The banner gives the game away: last night’s sham hustings and shambolic TTIP rally, attended by just two election candidates, including the ‘star’ of the show, Donna Murray-Turner (right), of the Taking The Piss Party
ELECTION SKETCH: It was billed as a ‘hustings’, but was really nothing other than a rally for fringe party TTIP’s star candidate. KEN TOWL went along, so that you – and hundreds of others – didn’t have to
“Somebody at this table is going to be voted in,” announced our host, Anthony King, sweeping his hand to his left where the candidates sat in a row, a little before the fireworks started. We were at The Well, a community hub on Whitehorse Road, at an event described as “Meet Your Next MP!”
King was wrong, of course. Or at the very least, highly likely to be wrong. Only two of the four people seated to King’s left last night are even candidates in the General Election to become Member of Parliament for Croydon West.
The elephant in the room was that the person almost certain to be Croydon West’s MP (the Electoral Calculus website puts it at 100%) was not in the room. Sarah Jones, the Labour candidate, will be at Thursday’s (genuine) hustings at the Stanley Halls. Anthony King, “community activist”, wouldn’t be going to that, because of the football.
At the front of the room, on the far left, physically and politically, we had the affable revolutionary socialist Deji Olayinka, who was standing in for April Ashley, the candidate for TUSC – the Trades Union and Socialist Coalition. She was unable to attend due to a prior commitment. Like all the candidates, bar one, she had only been given very short notice of this event.
Next to Olayinka sat another surrogate, Marley King, who until a couple of weeks ago had been the Green Party’s candidate, until she dropped out. She was sitting in for Ria Patel, on whose behalf she apologised, due to prior commitments and very short notice.
Then there was Simon Fox, the official Conservative Party candidate for Croydon West, who started the evening looking petrified and shrank into himself evermore as the evening went on.
Ahsan Ullah, from George Galloway’s Worker’s Party of Britain, despite the short notice, had been expected to attend, but he was a no-show. Probably a wise move.
Last, but definitely not least, was the supposed star of this show, the Taking The Initiative Party candidate, Donna Murray-Turner, who sat next to a large banner that read “TAKING THE INITIATIVE PARTY. A POLITICAL PARTY THAT VALUES PEOPLE OVER POLITICS”.
The first three representatives were introduced to muted applause.
Candidate pitch: Tory Simon Fox says he can dig a hole, at a time when the nation needs MPs capable of getting us out of one
Murray-Turner’s name, as soon as it dropped from King’s lips, was greeted with whoops and cheers. “TTIP are taking over the whole room,” said King. And he was right.
Many of the audience were wearing TTIP rosettes. This was a TTIP event with a TTIP-friendly host and, as became apparent, almost entirely TTIP questions designed to elicit TTIP answers. TTIP’s Murray-Turner wasn’t happy, though.
“I was supposed to say my name,” she chided King.
Once the cheering died down (King: “You got some fans in the house!”), we got to hear the opening statements. Olayinka advocated for a Militant-style takeover of the Town Hall, alluding to Liverpool in the 1980s.
Marley King spoke about her background, her life in a one-bedroom flat struggling to provide for her children with complex needs, to explain her support for the Greens’ policy of building 150,000 social homes, a universal basic income and a four-day week.
Fox channelled a cross between Tigger and a candidate for head boy of a minor public school. His was a rapid-fire cri de coeur: “I have lived in the constituency since 2022, I am super-passionate about being a great elected representative… I go to community barbecues… I’ve planted trees in Thornton Heath… one of the most amazing experiences of my life… I’ve published a petition recently and I am working on a second.”
He stopped when he ran out of breath.
It was time for Donna Murray-Turner to lower the bar.
Sham hustings: the Eventbrite ticket for last night’s event, disguises how it was really a TTIP rally
She was born and raised in the constituency. This made it sound like she was channelling Jason Perry, the Tory Mayor of Croydon, who constantly emphasises his own geographical origins because, well… that’s all he’s got.
Murray-Turner started with housing, and the damage to communities caused by Section 21 no-fault evictions, and asked where were Labour when this was happening? No one called out “In opposition!”, nor mentioned that Labour policy is to stop no-fault evictions immediately.
The audience response was a call of “Solid!” and then “Amen!”
Murray-Turner truly was preaching to the converted.
Next, Anthony King asked, “What issues are you hearing about from the community as you go around the constituency?” It became apparent that candidates would continue to answer in the same order. Murray-Turner would always have the last word.
Olayinka cited the struggle against austerity and racism, Marley King talked about poverty and prices. This appeared not to be the correct answer. King, the supposedly neutral compere, interrupted: “So you haven’t heard nothing about knife crime? You haven’t heard nothing about violence against women?”
Marley King quietly said that she had.
Fox took the cue, said that crime was important to him, especially drug crime. He had been on patrol in Wandle Park. “South Norwood?” Anthony King interrupted. “Duppas Hill,” responded Fox.
Police support: Anthony King, through his work with MOPAC-funded MyEnds, has often expressed support for the institutionally racist Met
This exchange of park names continued faster than I could write them down, like some bizarre Croydon park-based version of Mornington Crescent. King seemed to have won, announcing that it appeared Fox was only familiar with the “leafier” parks.
As this played out, I could see Marley King looking more and more bemused. What was going on?
She spoke: “This is a biased hustings!”
She suggested she was on the point of leaving unless questions were asked fairly. At this point, a TTIP rosette-wearer took the initiative and explained that “at TTIP and any other hustings, the host asks questions”.
They were pretending that the host was fair. They weren’t pretending this wasn’t a TTIP event.
Anyway, it was Murray-Turner’s turn to speak and she dedicated her answer to the scourge of knife crime and ended with a rhetorical flourish: “People are asking ‘Who is going to lead us out of this?’” I think we were supposed to work that one out for ourselves.
A plant in the audience who said that he ran a charity began his question with a statement “Donna has come into our office…” and ended with asking, “Are you guys going to come to our office?”
It was a bit of an own-goal because, obviously, all three of the other guests said “Yes!”
Murray-Turner tried to retrieve the advantage by claiming that, “it’s about building relationships that already exist, so I have an advantage over the others”.
Another plant with a purple TTIP rosette prefaced his question: “I noticed the Socialist and the Green merely waffled and the Conservative reads from his notes. The only one who spoke with passion was Donna.”
This clumsy stratagem also backfired. It gave Fox the grounds to explain that he had a stammer and reading from notes helped him to overcome this.
The candidates were asked about funding their proposals so that Murray-Turner could introduce her key policy, which turned out to be “using the status of MP” and the concept of corporate social responsibility to go to supermarkets and national chains to demand greater financial contribution to the community. She is literally a Poundshop politician.
‘This is biased’: Marley King called out the sham hustings for what they were
Eventually, a non-TTIP audience member was allowed to ask a question. It was the Gaza question. Unsurprisingly, Olayinka and Marley King were in favour of an immediate ceasefire, Simon Fox wasn’t.
What Murray-Turner said, however, was memorable.
She sympathised with the Palestinian people, she said, not just because it was fashionable now but because she had “that lived DNA experience of rape, warfare and harm. I almost feel like saying the Palestinians now know what it is to be black”.
She went on to claim that the other candidates were like bots that could only talk about packages of money, that none of them had mentioned the human aspect. This was patently not true, but, as yet another plant said, “Donna speaks with conviction.”
The next said, “We only see Donna in the community.”
This was an audience that believed that all would be well if only Sainsbury’s would be kinder.
At this point, Marley King apologised if she looked to Murray-Turner as if she did not care. She was neuro-divergent and sometimes this meant she did not show her emotions as clearly as most. She still felt them, she said.
Anthony King was having none of this, and, interrupted her again.
The representatives were given 90 seconds each to “wrap up”. Only it did not work out that way.
Olayinka was allowed some time for his final polite jibe at capitalism but when Marley King tried to list some of the Greens’ manifesto commitments, such as £3billion for social care, the audience started calling out questions about how this was going to be paid for and drowned her out. Only when she managed to mention the magic words that the manifesto was “fully-costed” did Anthony King intervene and ask the audience to let her speak for the next 30 seconds. I estimated that she had lost about a minute.
Preaching to the converted: Donna Murray-Turner (right) is a candidate for the Taking The Piss Party, who were behind last night’s event
Fox managed to rattle through his carefully prepared fluff about leaving “no stone unturned” in his “personal arsenal” before he was interrupted with more cries about money. “Where’s the £1.6billion?” someone shouted, and, as before, others joined in as if this was a cue to shout down the speaker. Fox looked grateful to be able to stop.
And then, the finale, the headline speech from the top of the bill that would send us all home with joy in our hearts.
Murray-Turner claimed that her rivals’ “disconnect from reality has been self-evident” and demanded more hubs. Nobody interrupted this speech. In a room of trumpet blowers, Murray-Turner blew her own the loudest. Once, that would have been enough to tear down the walls of Jericho. Now, it might get us what we want. And what do we want? More hubs! And for those hubs to be funded by the retail sector!
After the cheering had ended, I went over to a dazed-looking Marley King and asked how she was after what had appeared to be quite a bruising experience.
I have never met anyone so profoundly grateful to be, finally, released from standing for public office. I hope she, Fox and Olayinka aren’t put off forever, but I wouldn’t blame them.
- HUSTINGS UPDATE: One of the election hustings organised for later this week, the Croydon TUC event in Ruskin House on June 20, has been postponed (in part, at least, to allow Croydon East candidates to attend the event in their constituency on the same evening). We hope to publish more details as we get them.
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An extremely entertaining and informative report from Ken. A useful reminder how not to chair a meeting, organise a hustings or launch a campaign.
Making the genocide in Gaza all about yourself and your ethnic identity is not a good look
Absolutely. It was quite something to behold. Time after time I could not believe what I was hearing.
You might like to know that before the meeting began Donna Murray-Turner herself objected to the agent for April Ashley/TUSC handing out leaflets, asking him whether he had permission from “the organisers”, and accusing him of trying to get an “unfair advantage”. Very ironic, though probably unintended.