VIDEO: EAST END HOMOPHOBIA: PUBLIC MEETING

Last Thursday representatives from the police and local councils covering Shoreditch and Hackney organised a public meeting in response to community concerns about the problems of hate crime in the area.

As we reported, there have been an increase in the number of homophobic incidents in the streets around Arnold Circus and Hackney Road.

Police representatives stated that the reason for the meeting was to invite people to come along so that the police could hear people’s concerns about what was going on in the area, as well as helping to encourage people to report any incidents of hate crime to the police. They expressed concern that the true number of homophobic incidents weren’t being fully reported.

Anyway, here’s a video:

Since the recent attacks, here’s what’s been going on:

• Police increasing patrols and visibility around Arnold Circus and Hackney Road
• LGBT Police Liaison Officers regularly hold licensee meetings to discuss issues in the area
• Tower Hamlets organise a regular LGBT Community Forum and need people from the LGBT community to join in and get involved
• No Place For Hate campaign around Tower Hamlets
• Anti-hate crime workshops in youth centres
• Reduce street drinking in the area
• Plans to increase street lighting around streets off Arnold Circus and the local churchyard
• Police working with Schools Out campaign and LGBT History Month to raise awareness and understanding of LGBT issues within the local community
• Improve reporting of hate crimes by new reporting centres
• LGBT and Inter-faith Forums in Tower Hamlets working together to discuss religion and sexuality

An interesting question rose from the audience by a youth worker that these crimes were often not homophobic crimes, but race crimes – something that, if is the case, needs to be further explored by local councils.

Despite all the good work that both the local councils and the police are doing to reduce homophobic hate crime, there does still appear to exist a chasm between the local youth who have grown up in the area – and those who are new to the area. Whether it’s a race, religion, class or culture problem, it poses some difficult questions for the future cohesion of London’s East End community, and is a problem that’s not going to go away overnight.

Additionally, as a community we also should be asking ourselves what we can be doing to help to reach out to those who hate us, and not simply leave the problems with the police and the councils. We need to get involved and come out of our gay scenes and find out why they hate us, not simply sit back complaining about hate crime from the safety of our Gaydars and gay bars.

It was interesting to note also, that no other members of the gay press were present at the event, nor representatives from local religious organisations.

Note: At the start of the meeting, members of Tower Hamlets Council handed out letters to attendees stating that HOMOVISION had not contacted Tower Hamlets Council in its reporting. Something we firmly deny as we had contacted Tower Hamlets press office on a number of occasions prior to our story.