A childhood friend of Stephen Lawrence spoke today of his ambition to become mayor of Lewisham.
Duwayne Brooks was with Stephen, 18, when he was murdered in Eltham by a group of white youths chanting racist abuse in April 1993.
Mr Brooks, 38, is now a Liberal Democrat councillor in Lewisham and aims to stand for election as borough mayor next year. He says his first move if elected to lead the council would be to send letters to gang members inviting them to meet him at the town hall.
He says his struggle since Stephen’s murder means crime families respect him and will take him up on the offer.
“Gang members will be told to come and see me,” he said. “There will be two choices. One will be to engage and come on board and follow me to help make Lewisham a safer place. Or, if you want to continue in this gang stuff, then I’ll get rid of you and your family.”
He added: “It’ll be easy peasy.” He said borough police had done “good work” hassling unco-operative gang members over minor infringements such as TV licences, and this approach would be key to driving them out.
Mr Brooks claimed he knew gang members from his time growing up in Deptford, and those in Lewisham “all know of me”. “My aim is to ensure no parent has to get that dreaded phone call saying your child has been stabbed or caught in crossfire,” he said.
Lewisham’s Labour mayor, Sir Steve Bullock, was re-elected in May 2010 for another four years.
I don't know anything else about Mr Brooks, but my first reaction is that this is an incredible opportunity to change Lewisham.
I follow him on Twitter- @DuwayneBrooks - as I do other Lewisham councillors who I've identified. To be honest, I can't make sense of a lot of what gets tweeted, but from remarks made by local Labour Councillors, I get the feeling they are well on top of any challenge to their control of Lewisham, seeing the Lib Dems as divided and probably now, thanks to the unpopularity of the coalition, thoroughly demoralised.
Like most people, I find the idea of an outsider challenging the Establishment attractive, but if you're serious in politics, you need to be well-organised, and I'm not sure that Duwayne Brooks is.
His comments on Twitter are often downright bizarre and I think his choice of medium when bringing up certain issues is not appropriate. But, having met him once albeit briefly, he seemed like a nice-enough chap.
I see. Yes I'm not in Lewisham anymore - not so up to date on these things. I read this short article and thought, "Wow! This could be great!" Ah well.
Thanks for the replies. I'll check him out on twitter etc.
Claire
I'm not a fan of his. He commented on a situation where I used to live and basically lied through his teeth. I don't think he is mature enough to hold a position in office as yet and still has a lot of (understandable) pent up anger in him that he needs to loose first. Funnily enough the situation where I lived was due in part to the current mayor being totally hopeless.
I think we need a new mayor, new ideas and fresh blood. But I don't think it's Mr Brooks. Not yet anyway.