Ray Lewis and the battle to fix Britain's broken boys

The saga of Ray Lewis goes on - but perhaps where it should, in the struggle to lift black boys out of hopelessness.

This article from the Telegraph makes compelling reading, and reminds me precisely of the Ray I used to know: larger than life, offensive, charismatic, and the rest.

Do, please, take time to read it. I was struck by these paragraphs:

... it turns out that Ray has enemies, lots of them. And according to them, I could be quite wrong: the genial, hugely impressive and positive man I met could be nothing of the sort.

Let's start with the Bishop of Chelmsford, the Rt Rev John Gladwin, who put out a statement that referred to 'a misdemeanour of such seriousness that… the person concerned should not exercise his ministry for the time being.' The statement did not make clear what the misdemeanour was but note those last four words. Surely it can't have been that serious after all, then?

I spoke to the Rev Michael Fox, who was Archdeacon of West Ham when Ray was an ordained minister. He brought up two issues. The first concerned an internal church squabble over the management of the parish. From that he moved on to various financial matters: £6,000 owed to an unnamed student; £30,000 that was given to him by a parishioner, either as a loan or possibly to invest but which has since been paid back. And that's it. 'I'm quite certain Ray could do good work with youngsters, but I would never let him near a cheque book,' Fox says.

[Sir Ian] Duncan Smith [the former Tory leader] is furious about the Church's position. 'I have a real question mark over the Church in all this,' he says. 'They sat on Ray Lewis's file and they never went to him and said – ''Let's clear this up." I think they behaved in a disgusting and appalling manner… it wasn't the behaviour of a responsible institution.'

And these:

And finally there's local politics. Under the Freedom of Information Act, Newham Council sent me a review of the academy undertaken in September 2005. It begins promisingly. 'There is no doubt that EYLA offers a unique service. It aims to transform the lives of many disillusioned and alienated young black boys.' It continues: 'We spoke to senior teachers from three local schools who refer young people to EYLA. Without exception, they were all very supportive of the project.'

Those teachers might have included John Jay, head of the Green Primary School in Tottenham who decided to import EYLA methods when the school was performing poorly. 'Within a very short time, everybody could see the very positive effect that Eastside was having,' he is quoted as saying on the website of David Lammy, the Labour MP who himself describes EYLA as 'a fantastic organisation'. However, when I asked him for a comment for this piece, Lammy did not return my call.

The Newham report went on to question the 'quasi-military approach to discipline and the use of marching that has close connections to military life'. Soldiers, one assumes, do not make good role models. And the report concluded: 'We do not believe that Eastside has received enough support and training in child protection to enable the council to proceed with further investment.'

No money, then. But unfortunately, it doesn't end there. 'Newham Council hates him,' Duncan Smith says, bluntly. 'The Labour Party hates him. When David Blunkett was Home Secretary, he didn't even visit Eastside.' I put this to Newham's media manager, Gary Bird, who declined to get back to me. But later I caught sight of an internal leaked email, which makes shocking reading: '… no LBN member of staff is to work with EYLA in any capacity, nor fund or assist them in the delivery of any programme involving young people from this borough… Any action to the contrary will be regarded as a serious disciplinary matter and will be treated by me as such.'

Although, in the same email, the writer states that 'I never presume nor attach any guilt to EYLA or any of its staff', the result is the same. For the indefinite future, the academy is cut off from the very borough it tries to serve. Guilty until the council decides otherwise.

But read the article to read about the boys themselves. Read it and weep, because somebody should.

John R
19 October 2008

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So is Ray Lewis a hero or a villain?

("Maybe he's a bit of both. Most of us are.")

The boys are all black. Aged between eight and 18 and clad in blazers with white gloves, they march around the hall at the One Love Community Centre in east London. The movement is not quite military, but it is co-ordinated, synchronised and speaks of acting together. This is Eastside, the youth project which aims to turn dysfunctional black boys into leaders in the state schools from which many of them have been suspended or excluded.

The man behind the Eastside Young Leaders' Academy is Ray Lewis, who was forced to resign last week as deputy mayor of London. He shouts at his charges in a booming voice. Punctuality is at a premium and physical punishments, like press-ups, are imposed for infractions of the strict behaviour code. Boot camp is the shorthand that both fans and detractors use of the project.

But it is more than that. Eastside is a place where maths, English and science are taught – along with etiquette, deportment and a host of other old-fashioned virtues – to children of whom mainstream schools have despaired. Black boys like this are six times more likely to be excluded from school than their white counterparts. They have treble the chance of ending up in jail and a minuscule chance of getting to university.

In a poor borough such as Newham, many of the black children hang around on the streets from the time school ends until 8pm or later, when their single mothers come home from work. They turn to gangs for company, often dealing in drugs. It is the crucible in which the increase in gang-related teenage deaths isfomented.

For the past seven years, Ray Lewis and his staff have not just rescued young blacks from this latch-key world. They have offered a vehicle, in Mr Lewis's words, to "get black kids from the courtrooms to the boardrooms". Some 80 boys are now on Eastside's books, attending after school every day during term time and on Saturday morning. During the school holidays the boys carry out community work in residential homes and projects for the homeless, garden and decorate for elderly people and volunteer for charities. Mentors drawn from a pool of successful black businessmen raise the boys' expectations. They are taught how to deal on the stock market. Read more

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Ray Lewis: 'this brave man'

From Melanie Phillips about my friend, Ray Lewis. She could have worded this bit better, but I know what she means: "Whatever his personal failings turn out to be, it would be social suicide if his approach to delinquent youths was also discredited. Even if Ray Lewis is to be taken out of the picture, we need more people like him to continue what he started."

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The resignation of Ray Lewis as the Mayor of London' s crime adviser is quite simply a tragedy, with profound implications far beyond the insular world of the capital's party politics.

Here is a man who has literally saved lives. Among the boys whose behaviour he has transformed through his Eastside Young Leaders' Academy in East London are those who, without any doubt, would otherwise have gone on to kill or be killed.

Yet Mr Lewis has suddenly been accused of a slew of torrid offences including financial irregularities, physical abuse and sexually inappropriate behaviour.

At present, we don't know the truth about these murky allegations. Mr Lewis has already robustly denied the more lurid claims, but perhaps some of them are true.

Maybe all those who have supported him in the past - ranging from the Tories' social justice guru Iain Duncan Smith to Lee Jasper, Ken Livingstone's (now disgraced) race adviser who described his approach as 'brilliant' - are thus shown up to be naive and credulous dupes.

If so, then I am one of them. I visited the Eastside Academy in July 2005, months before David Cameron used it for his first official photo-op as the new Tory leader. I saw for myself the impressive work Ray Lewis was doing.

He took black boys from shattered family backgrounds who were on the way to criminal careers and turned them into high-achieving model citizens. These were the toughest boys in the neighbourhood.

They had fought, bullied, smashed up their schools and set fire to them, barricaded teachers into the classrooms and been in accelerating trouble with the law. Yet when they left Eastside virtually all of them went to college and lived law-abiding lives.

Ray Lewis achieved this by plugging the crucial gap in their lives that virtually no teacher or social worker or probation officer can fill.

He was simply the father figure they so desperately needed but who was missing from their own fractured families. He was a tough, stern, authoritative, totally uncompromising black man - all factors crucial to gaining their respect.

All he achieved was through the force of his personality. The boys did what he told them to do, not because he hit them but because his disapproval was shattering to them.

He loved and believed in those boys, he gave them a sense of unlimited aspiration and he drove them very hard. And because they both feared his tongue and admired him, they responded by transforming themselves.

He made them conform to strict rules of discipline; there were military-style roll calls, they were instructed to make eye contact with their tutors and to walk in straight lines with no deviations and no talking.

The importance of such 'tough love' to boys who possessed not even the most elementary social skills, let alone self-discipline or respect for authority, cannot be exaggerated.

He had no time at all for sloppy teaching practices, nor the usual excuses for bad behaviour such as 'poor self-esteem'. His work was the most graphic rebuke possible to all those involved in making excuses for juvenile criminality.

As a result, he made serious enemies on the Left, who regarded him as some kind of fascist. On the local Newham council various councillors and officials badmouthed Eastside as a 'boot camp' and gave him only minimal funding.

This was simply because just about everything he stood for was a monumental rebuke to everything they stood for, and to the personal and social damage over which they so complacently presided. Read more

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Boris, the Mayoralty and Ray Lewis: Still not 'doing God'?

I was very pleased to see my old mate Ray Lewis had been appointed by Boris Johnson as a Deputy Mayor with special responsibility for tackling youth crime (though see here for a cautionary note about the title).

However, I was slightly bemused to find that although Ray is being described as a 'former prison governor' there is no mention of him being an Anglican clergyman. Indeed, I had to check more than once that this was indeed the Ray Lewis I knew when he was a student at Oak Hill, then curate at St Saviour's, Forest Gate and finally Team Vicar at St Matthew's, West Ham, just round the corner from where I lived in the confusingly named Mathews Park Avenue (one 't'), which gave the name to my own book imprint MPA Books.

Moreover, the GLA's biography of Ray seems to make it as hard as possible to detect his church role. Can you spot it here?

He began his career working as an administrative officer for the Civil Service before becoming a Clerk in Holy Orders for the Church Commissioners in 1990. During this time he gained a degree in Theology & Pastoral Studies from Middlesex University [ie Oak Hill Theological College].

As an Anglican clergyman I've described myself in various ways, but never as "a Clerk in Holy Orders for the Church Commissioners"! All this makes me wonder whether the new administration at County Hall is still going to be one that follows the Labour approach of not 'doing God'.

Meanwhile, good on yer, Ray.

Revd John P Richardson
7 May 2008

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