London Mayoral Candidates' Endorsement, 2008
A major advance for the campaign came in the run-up to the London mayoralty election on 1 May 2008. At a public assembly organised by London Citizens on 9 April 2008, the four leading mayoral candidates all agreed to brand London a "Strangers into Citizens" capital, and to throw their weight behind the campaign.
The backing of the Labour and Conservative candidates was in defiance of their national party policies. Quizzed about Boris Johnson's stance in advance of the assembly, the Conservative Party leader, David Cameron, disagreed with him, but acknowledged that he was not bound by central party policy.
At the Assembly itself, Johnson expressed pride in his Muslim immigrant ancestry, saying that his Turkish great-grandfather who had fled from Turkey would be proud to have a descendant standing for mayor.
"If an immigrant has been here for a long time and there is no realistic prospect of returning them, then I do think that person's condition should be regularised so that they can pay taxes and join the rest of society," Boris Johnson told the 2,500-strong assembly.
Despite a Sunday Times report after the election the mayor had "quietly dropped" his commitment, Johnson has since become the campaign's highest-profile advocate.
Read more about this topic: Strangers Into Citizens
Famous quotes containing the word london:
“One of the many to whom, from straightened circumstances, a consequent inability to form the associations they would wish, and a disinclination to mix with the society they could obtain, London is as complete a solitude as the plains of Syria.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)