 my name's John Hamilton yep we have a megaphone my name's John Hamilton and I'm glad to see you here to support this glad to see you here to support my election campaign to become the next mayor of Lourish on my new home and I expect most of you have read my campaign manifesto have seen my literature so my first speaker I'm going to invite to come up is Lubna Zaitan Zitan sorry I'm so sorry I got it wrong um who's a Palestinian living in this country and she's going to take the microphone the megaphone thank you hello am I loud enough first of all thank you all so much for your solidarity and standing here with us it's a very sad time for every Palestinian and every human in this world with a heart all the events that we've seen have done nothing but break every ounce of any hope I had especially in the labor government who I voted for through my whole life and to see them supporting and being complicit in a genocide against my people never again we said never again and that didn't say oh we're not going to include the Palestinians this means now for everyone and as long as justice prevailed injustice prevailed in Palestine this will prevail everywhere no one's going to be safe as long as this happens now and I stand here I have my Palestinian father who endured the horrors of occupation long before now as we all know and those of us who know our history this started long before the 7th of October over 75 years of illegal occupation of brutality of arrest of living in an open air concentration camp being star of everything from education foods the electricity power and they're right and we deemed as human animals we human animals we commit a genocide if we human animals what I ask is Israel and UK in their complicity and America and all of those that support a genocide it's just it's a disgrace I can't believe I have to stand here and address this I'm an artist I'm usually a preacher of solitude I paint the only thing I've been able to paint is stop the genocide banners and asking the world to boycott and apartheid it's devastating to see the scenes the horrifying scenes coming out of Palestine our family members you know my father's cousin the last words from his mouth were screams as he was crushed to death by an Israeli tank and this was before the 7th my dad was brutalized under their occupation he had to flee he was imprisoned he had to take up arms and defend his right to exist from the age of 16 where is his childhood there is no childhood there he let he taught me how to ride a bicycle and never himself learned because he was busy picking up body parts he was busy trying to exist trying to eat trying to study and he include in us all of these qualities the respect the love for life and when governments are trying to divide us with their falsified propaganda the lies let them know it's not anti-semitism to be anti Zionist and anti-apartheid to stand together for the right to exist and resist we have every right and the occupier cannot claim self-defense when they occupy us when they brutalize us when they kill our children we have you seen the amputees they they're having to insure the horrific horrors of amputation with no unassetting to be starved to death have you seen the bones being pulled out from the rubble and we're complicit shame on the government and their divisive propagandas and terms they try to divide and split the people it's not about his man it's not about Judaism it's about humanity this is about our standing together we have Jewish friends and brothers who stand here with us against this against this and we must continue to stand united against disparities in Palestine and everywhere and we must use the power of our vote to elect the government that will not be complicit in this we must use our voices and not be harsh not be gagged and exercise every right we have to exist and that is our resistance and I thank you all and I hope you join us also at Greenwich Palestine action we've been challenging Greenwich council who wouldn't even hear us for a minute of silence that we requested for our people I'm sure you heard the cries of our family member Hint and she was trapped in the car while Israeli tanks were shooting there to death and their perfect child bodies found at the end with the paramedics also who came to rescue her obliterated and another 25 members of our family killed in one single strike this is a history that has to end and we have to stand on the right side of it and thank you all for being here again it's nice to see humanity exist with the people even if not the government free free the tragedy that has affected her own family Bob's got come from a meeting in Ilford so he's probably going to be a bit late so Jacob is here on the right next to me I'm going to ask Jacob twice to speak for a few minutes please long long free free Palestine free Palestine brothers and sisters friends Jackie half until bob can't get here so my name's john hamilton as some of you know and I don't know it's going to hi grenton um I thought you were a heckler right one of my best fans grenton slowly he was done more for knife crime in this borough and in southeast London than anybody else so my name's john hamilton I only recently joined the workers party but I'm not new to lewish and politics as most of you know I have slept a week on this lawn in a little house that we built to shame the labor council about their housing policy you can see the video of it on my website johnhamilton.org.uk we slept here in january in a little house made of estate agent poles and placards it was cold it was noisy police cars going up and down in the middle of the night with their sirens on sometimes but the mayor see bullock at the time was um to kind of avoid the criticism he said not only would he have built 250 council houses he would up it to 500 but of course he didn't build more than about a dozen um the problems in this borough are mainly caused I think by the executive mayoral system obviously there's other contributing factors but the mayor has all the power the councillors have none right from the time that first was brought in I planned to change that in 2006 I started the campaign to get rid of that the government changed the law and said you have to have 10 years between referendum so I'm hoping that if I win as mayor this election on Thursday then it's easy I can just call a referendum but if I don't win and there is a slight possibility gentlemen and ladies uh then I hope you will all join me in becoming campaigners to abolish the mayoral system to do that we need 10 000 signatures collected within a 12 month period but I don't want to wait 12 months I want them done by next Christmas because if we can get the the signatures by Christmas 10 000 voters from the electoral roll then there will be a referendum next May in 2025 when we can abolish the mayoral system so I'm hoping that this will be the last mayoral election I can test um and uh that will be really good it only takes a hundred people to get a hundred signatures and we can do it go to my website and look at the bring back democracy page or go to Facebook Facebook and look at bring back democracy that will explain how to do it now to win the election on Thursday it may it may not be possible when I've been giving out these leaflets this is the latest one with george's picture on with me uh which only came out this morning uh because we didn't know about the rochdale win until Friday of course I want you if you support me I'd like you to take a handful of leaflets from the workers party stall there as you leave and deliver them in your street please a finger full a centimeter is about 80 leaflets if you've got a long street please say two centimeters we can do it together that doesn't mean I will necessarily win and if you've got the time to talk to your neighbors or to give them to people in their hands explaining why you're supporting me then that's even more valuable than just putting it through a letterbox where it might get mixed up with pizza recipes oh really sorry thank you sorry you're absolutely right Paul thank you so um that was about um helping my campaign by leafleting we also have posters here and uh you're welcome to take posters for your windows or ask your local shops if they will put them in the window some people think it's a bit provocative it says don't vote Labour or Tory don't vote for genocide but to me it makes sense if you vote Labour or Tory you're supporting the genocide that's going on which they are not uh speaking out against so I also just want to come to an issue which has troubled me a little bit recently I'm in some WhatsApp chats uh about Palestine here in Lewisham and you know I've never met George until today uh but I know it came up actually I apparently I wrote a tweet a Facebook post in support of him which was quoted back to be my reporter this morning in an email accusing me of anti-Semitism but um what I just want to say was George and I may agree on many things but I'm also sure there's lots of things we don't agree with but that doesn't mean I don't want to vote for the same party that he's in and really these purists who say oh I can't vote for office gargle because of this or I can't vote for Jeremy Corbyn because of this or I can't vote for John Hamilton because he once invited a right-wing speaker to our hustings you know it's bollocks we all have to work together if we want to defeat the ruling class and I I'm not saying necessarily all join the workers party it's the one I chose to join but I do wish that we could all come together and at least the minimum is not fight against each other in elections and the maximum would be to form a united front in general elections whereby we can perhaps make an impact on parliamentary democracy I'm probably I probably shouldn't say this but I'm not a great fan of parliamentary democracy really bringing about the changes I want but at least we can try that can't we and when we've tried it maybe it will work as in chili or maybe it won't as in chili so I'd like to finish there by just hoping that you're not getting too cold we will have Bob Gill on very soon I hope he's an excellent campaigner he's a member of the workers party and actually it was when I saw an interview with Bob saying that he joined the workers party that I decided I would join as well because I know Bob from the save lewish and hospital campaign he's an excellent GP in sidcup he carried on seeing patients during covid which some didn't and he's also been the forefront of preventing nationalised privatisation sorry of the NHS hands up if you've seen his film the great NHS heist it's very good and should be recommended and we can try and arrange more viewings of it in this area I'm sure thank you very much all by you in the room as it were he's still parking George is happy to speak now thank you very much everybody a big hand we will we have a judgment what we did for freedom and this is the latest campaign politics has she soon act with these elevator heels hastily erected podium it's expense to make an attack on democracy and to make an attack on my state of panic that now exists and I can tell you having just left Westminster in the last hour and a bit everywhere there is a shiver running along the benches in the House of Commons looking for a spine for a spine to run up and failing so far to find one they are in a state of panic because straight for the workers establishment parties of the state of the cheeks of the same backside got a kicking got a spanking in the same evening in the same hall in the same town of Rochdale to come second the only just came third this is unprecedented never in the history of British politics have Labour and the Conservatives in the same election scored such a disastrous failure and suddenly they know the TV here I promise you they won't run are precisely the same but the Conservatives and the Labour Party are disastrous for our people disastrous for our country not just on war and peace to which I shall now turn those of our own people same ass they follow the same economic policy they have the same attitude to wealth and power in our own country there is no lesser of two evils in this picture I never believed in that approach to politics anyway because evil always wins if you vote for the lesser of two evils but now no one can seriously maintain that Keir Starmer is the lesser of two evils I could make a good case that Keir Starmer is even more evil than Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Party that he's supposed to be opposing and here in local government the same is exactly true who can say that Sadik Khan is better than Boris Johnson they were both bloody awful mayors of London for the ordinary people of this great metropolis who can say that Labour in Lewisham is better than the Conservatives will build more homes than the Conservatives will treat the working class in this butter better than the Conservatives somebody shouted me but he would have a very difficult job of showing me the reasons why anyone should vote Labour on Thursday in this by-election and I turn I turn to the elephant in the room which is a surprising number of people in politics imagine is something we can overlook is something we can ignore that will not affect the way we vote you said it was controversial John your poster but if you vote Tory or Labour you are voting for genocide you are voting for the slaughter of Palestinian children and their mothers their fathers their brothers and sisters that is a demonstrable fact there is no difference at all between these two parties towards the slaughter occurring in Gaza and I often ask myself the question how is it possible that our hearts are broken every time we open our telephone and look at social media look at the pictures and the videos how is it that our hearts are broken while their hearts are so hard so callous as to be scarcely human anymore how is that possible that you can see a child with no legs hanging on a hook how is it possible as the young lady just talked about the little girl hind how is it possible to listen to the video of her saying her prayers begging for mercy begging to be saved when the Israeli armed forces who call themselves the most model army in the world having already modelled her whole family the little girl was in the car with all the family and then they killed her as well how is it possible not to be moved by that they seem oblivious to the fact politicians say when people vote against genocide parties that we are extreme I'd just like to remind you of a couple of words and I think you'll know the one that follows change lewish them for good