Last night I took a half-hour walk from my home to York Hall in Bethnal Green, an East End landmark I first heard of when listening to radio commentaries on boxing matches as a child. Yesterday evening it hosted an assembly of Telco, the east London component of London Citizens. This capital-wide coalition of faith groups, supported by trade unionists and others, promotes a vigorous and progressive programme of social activism which includes holding politicians' to their promises with a rigour that makes Paxman look apologetic.
Their accountability assembly in April was a highlight of the mayoral election campaign. It was there that Boris Johnson pledged his support for the London Living Wage and, in a more hedged way, to amnesties for over-stayer immigrants. Last night Johnson's deputy Richard Barnes was invited to renew the LLW commitment and Lutfer Rahman, the leader of Tower Hamlets and three Olympics chiefs - David Higgins, the ODA's chief executive, Howard Shiplee, its Director of Construction and Tom Russell, who's in charge of legacy delivery at the LDA - were asked to do the same. The Olympics chiefs were also asked to sign up the Citizens' demands on affordable homes.
All obliged on all counts. I can't vouch for their sincerity but I'm confident that they had little choice. With east London's Catholics, Methodists, Muslims, Baptists, Anglicans, Buddhists and everyone else - including a couple of boys from Ray Lewis's Eastside Academy - colluding in an atmosphere of revivalist-type expectation, dissent was hardly an option. Good thing too.
