'Don't look now, but Keir's scored a win on knife crime'
If it seems to you that the government can't do anything right, it may be because the Opposition, the media, and all the other problems you can see, combine to provide a constant drumbeat of national collapse.
It is that sort of tone which did for the Tories, although it took 14 years, Brexit, Partygate, AND Liz Truss to put the last nail in their coffin. In a country where most newspapers are Tory-supporting, most people are socially conservative, and all previously-existing problems have not magically evaporated, it's not a surprise - if you think about it properly - that the same tone applies to a single year of Labour being in power.
All journalists kick a government harder than an Opposition. That's the problem with a pedestal. But this column is nothing if it is not scrupulously fair and accurate, and so one year and one month into Keir Starmer's administration it is time to announce that he is finally able to declare a win on one of the most hideous trends in living memory.
Knife crime is down. Overall, the figure is 6%, and in some places as much as 25%, but it's down in all the worst hotspots except Greater Manchester. That means less pressure on courts, on hospitals, on police, less trouble for teachers, and more importantly, fewer parents and siblings sobbing over a teenager who has suffered unsurvivable wounds by the sort of blade John Wick would think twice about using.
Finally, it's safe to leave the house without checking your will is up-to-date. You can send your children to school with a little more confidence they won't be getting shanked on the way home. And the horror headlines so many have had to live the reality of - 'machete thugs', 'teen stabbed at bus stop', or 'Idris Elba asks for help' - can finally start to ebb from the front pages.
The knife crime surge was directly linked to the austerity years' slashing of community centres, youth mentor schemes, and outreach work by charities and local authorities which was considered worthless by the Bullingdon thugs who ran the country and our capital city for so long. Fixing that damage was so overdue, and the means so bleedin' obvious, that the bar was low enough to qualify as an archaeological dig. And it's only a 6% drop, which means there'll still be plenty of knife crime next week for Starmer's enemies to wave around.
But the real problem the Prime Minister faces is not that politicians and media can always find something to criticise about whoever's in power. It's that the win is completely intangible - no mother will be aware that her child was otherwise not going to come home today, and that instead of fish fingers for dinner it would have been a trip to a hospital mortuary.
All good deeds that avert disaster have the same problem. The Covid vaccines, state education, the NHS in general - because we do not live in the world that does not have them, we do not see what it saves. We count only the cost, of the vaccine-damaged, of teacher pay deals, hospital scandals. We look at the budget column we can see, and not the one we can hug.
READ MORE: Mum of teen murdered with ninja sword makes powerful plea on day of major law change
For years politicians vowed to get tough on crime, and all they did was redefine "tough" and what counted as a "crime". There's a thousand mothers out there who'd say shutting community centres should have led to jail time, and the cemeteries are evidence enough that all the trumpeted crackdowns did was break a few more hearts.
If you ask a stranger which is the "party of law and order", they'd probably shrug and say whichever one whose leader last took a picture with a police dog, or attended a dawn raid with TV cameras. And you can bet your bottom dollar some cycnical so-and-so in Westminster is, as I type, trying to find an asylum seeker who committed a knife crime, just so they can prove a link with a different dog whistle.
The truth is that knife crime didn't get tackled by the Tories because they caused it, because it was usually poor kids, and because it was usually black kids. The real force behind this win isn't Starmer but his Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who actually listened to police officers, to parents, to community groups, and then put in place what was needed.
She gave an interview today in which she spoke about meeting the parent of a murdered teen, and the 'privilege' of seeing some footage of their last hug before he left the house on the day of his death. The reporter said she teared up, then spoke of all the policies she put in place as a result. That's good politics, effective leadership, real commitment - normal, human, determination to do better. And it won't resonate as it should in an August news lull, because there's plenty of bad news still churning about.
Yvette achieved a feat of political alchemy. She turned a foundational failure into meaningful, life-saving change, with grown-up, boring competence of the kind we haven't seen in Westminster for a decade. And she won't get the plaudits she should from people who can't see what they didn't lose.
But that's what happens when you treat bad news as a problem to solve, and not a stick to hit your rivals with. It's not surprising so many young people have grown up to lash out, over-react, and fail to think things through, when their formative years were spent in a nation led by people who jerked the knee twice a day and only ever sought to escalate anger.
That may be Starmer's real win. A national conversation that is unexciting, but competent. It won't make Twitter explode but for thousands of families, it means the world. The centres of their universe, their sense of security and ease, their pride, their hope. The generation who'll learn how to be grown-ups. The sort of thing that nobody notices, because you can't put a price on it.
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Times
16 minutes ago
- Times
Violent, lawless, broken Britain? The facts tell a different story
When Mexico warned its citizens about the risks of visiting Britain, it sounded absurd — like a parody of a Foreign Office travel alert. 'Robberies and physical assaults, mainly involving knives, have increased,' says the official advice. Britain is 'relatively safe' but, if visiting, it's still best to 'maintain regular contact with loved ones' back in Mexico and 'inform them about your situation and schedule'. This from a country where cartel violence claims tens of thousands of lives each year. But it chimes with what a great many Brits now believe. Poll after poll finds the public convinced that crime is getting far worse — and ready to believe Nigel Farage's summer campaign about 'lawless Britain'. NHS hospital data shows knife assaults last year fell to a 25-year low, with the number treated for violent assault close to half what it was in 2000. Crime surveys agree. By such measures our streets have seldom, if ever, been safer. So what's going on? The answer is not just about crime but about the way social media now acts as a distorting lens through which millions see their country. When shrill voices dominate, hyperbole wins — and Britain is portrayed not just as troubled but in ruins, terrorised by immigrant-driven crime, even close to civil war. And if the official figures show none of this? Well, then those figures must be wrong. Once this might have been dismissed as digital drivel. But in an era where more people get their news from social media than any newspaper, it matters — and it can change politics. If enough voters think that Britain is descending into chaos, it creates a new political force, one where 'the British state' is secretive, malign and run by the reviled elite. Such language is working well for Nigel Farage, whom polls put on course to be the next prime minister. Rather than challenge all this, the Tories are trying to copy him. • Precrime profiling is no longer a fantasy The gap between the public debate and reality becomes so wide that many voters may no longer see the country they actually live in, or recognise the real progress that's been made. It becomes impossible to believe what the facts do seem to suggest: that our society, for all its faults, is probably safer, richer and better than any before it. Today, progress is the truth that dare not speak its name. Major environmental and social achievements are barely known and, when mentioned, universally disbelieved. The global fall in crime — driven by advances in forensics, the ubiquity of cameras and smarter policing — has been met with a global disbelief. Such scepticism is partly human nature: as living standards rise, expectations rise faster. What was once extraordinary soon becomes the baseline; discontent becomes the norm. Which is just as well, because discontent remains the engine of human progress. But in Britain, there's more to it. Some crime is genuinely surging, such as shoplifting and snatch theft. This is all too visible, while the fall in violence and burglary is invisible. This imbalance hits perceptions: people who notice their local store starting to security-tag lamb joints will not believe crime has halved. The picture isn't helped by improvement in how police record crime, which can make it harder to disentangle reporting quirks from real trends. Most crimes have always gone unreported. That's why the Thatcher government set up the Crime Survey, asking thousands of households if they have suffered crime and, if so, what type. It shows that over the past 20 years — that is since the start of Strictly Come Dancing — robbery is down 60 per cent. Bike theft and car theft have both halved. Burglary is down by two-thirds. And all violent crime? According to the survey, it has halved since 2005. When Tony Blair won his third term, even he would never have dared to predict that a collapse in crime was under way. Even now it is, quite literally, unbelievable. The Violence Research Group at Cardiff University keeps a tab on this, checking surveyed crime against hospital trends. 'Serious violence in England and Wales has decreased substantially,' it concludes in its latest report. 'This message needs to be much better known, not least because it reflects better prevention and because fear of violence, often stoked by reports of rare tragic violent events, corrodes individual and community wellbeing.' Why isn't the message better known? When violence strikes, it can be spectacular. When progress happens slowly, invisibly or against the grain of received wisdom, it lacks a natural spokesman. The Tories won't be believed and their new opponents want to tell a very different story indeed. 'Politics is about sales,' Farage once said. 'It's about selling ideas, it's about selling hope. Sometimes, it's about selling fear.' The narrative of a migrant-driven crimewave — so powerful for European populists — has always been harder to get going in Britain. Our immigrant population has certainly doubled, but crime halved over the same time. But individual stories, especially horrific crimes, can be highlighted and amplified to create the idea of a national crisis. The AfD pioneered this in Germany with press releases ten years ago. In recent months some British social media accounts have started a kind of ethnic-minority Crimewatch, scouring the local press for stories, then presenting them as a national metaphor. • Man arrested over death of Shona Stevens more than 30 years ago Matthew Goodwin, a former University of Kent politics professor, now a GB News presenter, has become adept at all this and is emerging as philosopher king of political doomscrolling. If you wish to be told that our society is about 'to blow', or see his calculations about how white Brits will be in the minority by 2063, you can join the 82,000 subscribers to his Substack. As an academic, Goodwin established himself as the most thoughtful analyst of the populist right. His switch from observer to activist has been fascinating to watch. Other actors have rushed on to the new stage. An online video from Crush Crime, a grassroots group 'campaigning to make Britain safer', drew 3.6 million views after declaring 'theft has become legal in Britain'. Some '207,000 bikes were stolen in 2023', it proclaimed. It didn't say that this has halved over the past 15 years. When a poll found that 57 per cent of women feel unsafe in the streets of London, Goodwin popped up to 'say out loud' that 'a big reason is mass uncontrolled immigration'. If so, why would far larger surveys show a three-decade rise in the proportion of British women saying they feel safe walking home at night? All this is not fake news. It's truth-adjacent: the almost surgical use of a real figure to create a false impression, while avoiding context that would shatter the illusion. A 'think tank', real or concocted, can declare, for example, that Afghans are 22 times more likely to rape: a technically defensible but fundamentally misleading mirage. We now have a new digital news architecture hungry for such figures, unlikely to scrutinise their robustness or provenance. Government failure to publish real figures creates a blank canvas. This resonates because it's based on an important truth: a great many Afghans and others arrived on small boats, paying people-smugglers. They're unvetted. Lawbreakers. More of a risk. The Tories oversaw this and Labour can't control it, making fertile ground for Reform. But to make this into a tale of a 'lawless' country is impossible to reconcile with the general collapse in crime shown by the Crime Survey for England & Wales. So: what to do? Last week Farage came up with an answer. The Crime Survey is invalid, he said, 'discredited', simply because, being a victim-based survey, it excludes shoplifting. He'd stick to police records, which are easier to cherry-pick. But most of all, he said, 'We all know that crime has risen significantly over the course of the last few years.' On one hand, four decades of crime data and nationwide NHS hospital data. On the other hand, what 'we all know'. This is the politics of perception. What of critics publishing annoying, contrary data? Farage opened a recent press conference by dealing with one: me. Nelson thinks that 'all is well with the world and there's absolutely nothing to worry about at all', he said. I think there's plenty to worry about — but I'd also argue not just that the streets are safer but that, in general, this is probably the best time to be alive. That is to say: if you could choose any era to live in Britain, but not your place in society, you'd choose right now. I'm in no doubt how aloof, how Marie Antoinette-ish this sounds: the leitmotif of the out-of-touch elite. Farage has a point. I've lived in a Highland town and on a decaying council estate. I've lived on an overseas military base and, now, in suburbia. None of these experiences give me a national view. That's why I've spent a career collecting the data: to check my own instincts and prejudices. I started doing so as a young reporter at this paper, hoping to find stories and show how bad the world was. To my shock, the world was not just getting better but at an unprecedented pace. The turn of the millennium had ushered in a wave of globalisation that was lifting millions out of poverty, making the world not just richer but more equal. Incremental improvements had been changing lives more profoundly than the dramas that dominate headlines. Newspapers tend to accentuate the negative because readers want to know what's going wrong, what threats may be brewing. But newspapers also deploy balance and perspective, mixing darkness with light. Journalism is anchored to facts: no one pays to read junk. And almost no one pays for social media. It's a device selling people's attention to advertisers, with algorithms designed to engage (or enrage), to keep you hooked. Yet most Brits now use social media as a news source. The overall picture people have is of a world getting worse, not better. Many big trends are almost unheard of, let alone believed. Take the climate. The Times commissioned YouGov to find out how many would think UK's greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by about half since 2000. The answer: only 12 per cent. And how many think the number of assaults resulting in hospital treatment each year in Britain has reduced by around a half? Just 22 of the 2,247 people surveyed: that is to say, 1 per cent. Sadiq Khan campaigned on London's air quality 'emergency' and he's quite right to say that dirty air costs lives. But what he doesn't say is that, even before Ulez, the city's air was far purer than at any point in its measurable history. In fact, nationwide, levels of every major pollutant — sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) — have at least halved since 2000. Our poll shows only 11 per cent are aware of this achievement. The recent alarm over river quality is a classic example. Rivers were long used as sewers: less so, as standards rose. Now we have real-time flow meters, in-situ water quality testing and more. New disclosure rules revealed the storm-water sewage situation, to justifiable outrage. But it's not new: it's just visible. Before, it wasn't. When the Kinks released Waterloo Sunset in 1967 the 'dirty old river' was biologically dead. Now the Thames teems with dozens of varieties of fish: as does the Mersey and Humber. When a child is killed on the road, it reverberates. Less so figures showing that airbags, speed limits and other safety advances have halved road deaths over the past 20 years. If you lose a relative to breast cancer, it's of no comfort to know that better detection and treatment has almost halved its mortality rate since 1990. Or that deaths from stroke and heart disease, two of our biggest killers, also halved over the same period. We bank these improvements: and we should. Far too many still die on the roads and from cancer. That's where the attention should be focused. But it shouldn't hurt to look back, to see how far we've come — and use that to inspire hope, rational optimism, in what can be achieved next. 'I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them,' said Andy Bernard in the American version of The Office. But was life really better in the 1950s, when thousands died from smog and most lived in what's now called absolute poverty? Or the 1960s, when just one in ten children made it to sixth form, let alone to university? Even going back to 1995 would mean an average 25 per cent pay cut in today's money. And none of today's digital comforts. Economic advances slowed to a near halt after the 2008 crash: today's living standards are still lower than then. A genuine scandal. But progress in health, tech, crime and the environment continued. The arrival of AI opens the prospect of another era of scientific, health and economic advances. The biggest problem facing any country is demographic collapse, and almost every country in Europe is bracing itself for a steep decline in its working age population. But not Britain. Alone in Europe, we're projected to grow at a normal rate. If demographics is destiny, ours is pretty strong. Our problems are significant: record taxes alongside creaking public services, and welfare dysfunction that scars communities. A small-boats crisis that the government is unable to resolve. Reform UK is being powered not simply by digital black magic but genuine despair at both Labour and a Tory party still unsure if it wants to fight Farage or copy him. Politically, it makes perfect sense for Reform to stoke despair by telling a story of Britain close to 'societal collapse'. It just doesn't make sense to believe it. Perhaps the ultimate sign of national confidence is the migration figures: not so much the arrivals, but the departures. Last year, just 77,000 Brits emigrated, the lowest since records began. Among those who remain, I like to think, are some who share my deeply unpopular belief: that in spite of our problems, this is an amazing country. And that now, more than ever, there is no better place in the world to call home.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Netanyahu's plan to take over Gaza sparks anger and threat of sanctions from allies
Israel is facing a growing chorus of international condemnation and potential sanctions following Benjamin Netanyahu 's decision to occupy all of Gaza in a renewed offensive. The plans, revealed after a marathon meeting with his cabinet, include a total evacuation of Gaza City - said to completed by October 7 this year - after which the north of the strip will effectively be a free-fire zone for Israel's forces in their final attempt to wipe out Hamas. Netanyahu's new policy has tested close allies as Israel faces accusations of driving Gaza's 2.1 million people close to famine and as its prime minister is indicted for war crimes. In Israel, families of hostages held by militants in Gaza and opposition leaders condemned Netanyahu for a decision that they said would put hostages' lives at risk, adding: 'We can't leave them in the hands of these monsters any longer.' Sir Keir Starmer denounced the decision as wrong and urged Israel to reconsider the new offensive, or it will 'bring more bloodshed'. 'What we need is a ceasefire, a surge in humanitarian aid, the release of all hostages by Hamas and a negotiated solution,' he added. Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey went further, saying: 'Rather than sitting on its hands and issuing strongly worded statements, the UK government needs to take decisive action. Keir Starmer needs to stop the export of all UK arms to Israel - today - and sanction Netanyahu and his cabinet.' Germany, a key European ally of Israel, immediately banned the export of weapons to Israel that could be used in Gaza, a move Netanyahu criticised for rewarding Hamas terrorism. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said van would remain in place 'until further notice' after the 'even harsher military action' by the Israeli military made the chances of a ceasefire increasingly difficult. Elsewhere, Norway's vast sovereign wealth fund is also reviewing its investments in Israeli companies. Ursula von der Leyen, the EU Commission's president, demanded that the plan to take over Gaza 'must be reconsidered', while EU Council President Antonio Costa added that the plans "must have consequences for EU-Israel relations". In its response, Belgium summoned the Israeli ambassador for a dressing down, saying its foreign ministry wanted to "express total disapproval of this decision, but also of the continued colonisation... and the desire to annex the West Bank'. The Netherlands said the Netanyahu plan was 'the wrong move' and was expected to intensify its efforts to impose economic sanctions on Israel by demanding that the EU end its 'association agreement', which gives it some free trade access to Europe. Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey all condemned Israel's plans for what, effectively, will be the open-ended reoccupation of Gaza, which was last controlled by Israel in 2005. Netanyahu is keen to avoid the use of the term 'occupation' and refers to the planned campaign as a 'takeover'. However, there was a resounding silence from the US and Mike Huckabee, Trump 's ambassador to Israel, said that some countries appeared to be putting pressure on Israel rather than on the militant group Hamas, whose deadly attack on Israel in 2023 ignited the war. The Israeli military says it controls around 75 per cent of Gaza. Amir Avivi, a retired Israeli brigadier general, estimated that if the military did take Gaza City, it would give Israel control of about 85 per cent of the strip. Around 900,000 people now live in Gaza City, including many who have been displaced by the military. Under international law, an invading nation is responsible for the well-being of the occupied people – regardless of whether the incoming forces want the responsibility. Netanyahu said on Thursday that Israel did not want to keep the Gaza Strip, but to establish a "security perimeter" and to hand over the territory to Arab forces. Hamas has warned the Israeli government that seizing control of Gaza City would mean 'sacrificing' the hostages inside the besieged enclave. The militant group said the Israeli government "does not care about the fate of its hostages', adding in a statement: 'They understand that expanding the aggression means sacrificing them.' There are an estimated 50 hostages still held in Gaza, of whom Israeli officials believe 20 are alive. Most of those freed so far emerged as a result of diplomatic negotiations. Talks toward a ceasefire that could have seen more hostages released collapsed in July. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of Palestine, described Netanyahu's plan as 'dangerous' and one that could result in an 'unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe'. He added that it is part of a wider policy of 'genocide, systematic killing, starvation, and siege'. The president's office made a direct appeal to Mr Trump to 'intervene to halt the implementation of these resolutions and, instead, to fulfil his promise to end the war and pursue lasting peace'. The Palestinian foreign ministry also warned that the move will push civilians into a 'certain death spiral'. The ministry accused Israel of waging a war against civilians 'without justification', and condemned the UN Security Council's failure to act. Netanyahu has said there will be no end to the war until Hamas is disarmed. A full occupation of Gaza would reverse a 2005 decision in which Israel withdrew thousands of Jewish settlers and its forces, while retaining control over its borders, airspace and utilities. Hamas-led militants triggered the war when they stormed into Israel on 7 October 2023, killing around 1,200 people and abducting 251 people. Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed over 61,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.
Scottish Sun
an hour ago
- Scottish Sun
Scots crime queen confronted top Tory with tin of MINCE
The events are charted in a new BBC Scotland podcast series - The Ballad of Big Mags Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) NOTORIOUS crime matriarch Big Mags Haney confronted top Tory Michael Forsyth with a tin of European mince at a public meeting that would propel her into the public spotlight. The astonishing moment helped Haney earn a reputation as a fearsome community campaigner in Stirling's troubled Raploch estate. 3 Big Mags Haney was jailed for drug dealing after an astonishing rise and fall. Credit: Alan MacGregor Ewing - The Sun Glasgow 3 The new podcast explores the events that unfolded in Stirling's Raploch in the 1990s. 3 Former Tory MP Michael Forsyth came face-face with Mags Haney at a Poll Tax demo She went on to further infamy by rallying locals to a vigilante campaign aimed at ridding the estate of paedophiles - before she was hounded out herself as the head of a crime family from hell. The events are charted in a new BBC Scotland podcast series - The Ballad of Big Mags - that explores her incredible rise and fall during a turbulent period in the late 1990s. The first episode hears from witnesses who watched as Haney barked at the then Secretary of State for Scotland during an Anti-Poll Tax gathering. Fearsome Haney took centre stage as Mr Forsyth was quizzed by locals who had gathered to protest against Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher's hated tax regime. Raploch local Billy McChord who saw the confrontation said: 'He came to a very busy meeting at the Raploch Community Centre. 'I think it was the chief of police he came with. 'So we were in this meeting and it was getting chaotic with folk shouting at him. 'It was going well until Mags turned up with one of those wee blue bags that folk tend to get carry-outs in. 'The policemen started looking really, really nervous. 'She pulled out what was one of these European tins of mince that you were given at the time. 'The look on Michael Forsyth's face was hilarious. He was like, 'What's this about?' 'She went, 'You expect us to eat this? Well, I'll tell you, we feed our families better than this. 'You take your tin of mince up to your house and you can eat it'. 'The place just erupted in laughter.' Billy added: 'She had a bit of a reputation as being a bit of a character, shall we say. 'And she brought a lot of energy to the place. FAMILY FROM HELL By Graham Mann NEIGHBOUR Caroline Dunbar tells of her family's nightmare at living in a flat below Mags Haney whose daughter Kim ended up setting fire to their home. She tells of her ordeal at the hands of the family from hell who made threats to ruin her wedding day and broke into her home. Recalling the year she spent living beside Big Mags, she said: 'It was just unreal. My mum couldn't sleep at night with them banging down, banging the windows. 'You didn't have security doors at that time, they used to break them and everybody used to go up and down, up and down every night. Every night, seven days a week. 'They actually went into my room and stole my television. 'My window was open a bit and I must have been in the living room with my mum, my dad and my brother and a couple of my pals were in. 'They jumped in the windows and stole my television that my dad got me four months before for my birthday.' She also tells how she was on the receiving end of threats including that they would throw eggs at her wedding car. Matters reached a terrifying conclusion when Kim Haney torched their home with Big Mags, who went on to turn her daughter over to cops. The girl, then 16, pleaded guilty at Stirling Sheriff Court in October 1994 to endangering the family's lives and the lives of other neighbours by starting the blaze. She stood on a rubbish bin and leaned through an open window with a cigarette lighter. Sheriff Norrie Stein noted at the hearing the Haneys had inflicted misery on the Raploch community with seven Haneys involved in hundreds of court appearances. Reports from the time reveal Big Mags said she would meet her solicitor to consider referring the sheriff's comments to the Lord Advocate. She said: ''He's branded us another family from hell.'' 'But she was funny as well, I can't deny that, she was funny.' But the documentary also shines a light on Haney's darker side that ended with her being jailed for 12 years in 2001 for heroin dealing. In the years before she had been hailed in the media as a powerful community voice who even appeared on a prime time TV show. She had become a self-appointed figurehead of a Raploch vigilante furious that convicted sex offenders were being housed on their estate. One of her granddaughters tells how Mags even used a child's karaoke machine to rally locals at her anti-peado protests. Recalling stories from those who watched her late gran in action Cassie Donald says: 'If I remember correctly one of them said that she had a child's karaoke machine, out with the mic kind of rallying the local community to get involved in the protest.' Explaining what drove her gran's actions, she adds: 'I think there was something at her core that she really believed was wrong. 'Kicking a dog when it's down, the community was suffering enough without placing paedophiles in the community. 'It was a time when children roamed the streets. 'We knew everybody in the Raploch area so we were able to just run along to the park or go along to the shop and you were not going to meet anybody that you didn't know. 'So to put someone in that could potentially cause danger to her children or her grandchildren didn't sit right with her. 'She wasn't the only person who stood up, she just happened to shout the loudest.' But Mags' status as a community champion was short-lived as locals grew increasingly angry over her rise of a woman who was up to her neck in crime. Haney was herself on the receiving end of mob justice when a 400-strong band gathered outside her flat to make clear she and her family were no longer welcome. Just a few years later in 2003 she was sentenced to 12 years in prison for her role at the top of a drug dealing family who had terrorised the area for years. Journalist and host Myles Bonnar reveals new insights as he speaks to people closely connected to her and intimately involved in the astonishing events. He said: 'Many people only partially know the story of this controversial figure and this series will give a full account of how she rose to fame and became a source of fascination to the media and public before her criminal life was exposed.' Haney died, aged 70, in 2012, after a cancer battle. The six-part series is available on BBC Sounds now.
