chastisement', but current legislation stops actions that lead to a reddening of the skin – which for a lot of my non-white residents isn't really an issue."

The politician said parents in Tottenham had to raise their children "with knives, gangs and the dangers of violent crime just outside the window", but "no longer feel sovereign in their own homes" because of the laws.

"The ability to exercise their own judgment in relation to discipline and reasonable chastisement has been taken away," he said.

Lammy has set out his support for changing the smacking laws in his book, Out of the Ashes: After the Riots.When the terrified shout of “fire!” was heard among the wooden houses densely packed into the streets of 17th-century London, there was no point in hoping for a speedy response. A complete restoration of a rare surviving fire engine to working order by the Museum of London has demonstrated that it was so heavy it would have been painfully slow to move it through the narrow cobbled streets. It also had such a short range that it would have had to have got dangerously close to the fire to be any use.



The engine has been restored by a specialist firm of coachbuilders, sponsored by London guilds including the Worshipful Company of Coopers whose ancestors probably built the original models. The restoration is for the museum’s major exhibition opening