Should Hackney politicians have serious views on the supernatural?

Last week, during a shameful episode of self-Googling, I discovered that a 2009 Blood and Property post had been revisited by Iain Sinclair in his 2011 book Ghost Milk. Here's a link to the excerpt in Google Books:  http://bit.ly/1GeCbXe  

The original posts he referred to were:

Is the supernatural significant (in Hackney politics)?
Survey responses in Do Hackney Politicians believe in ghosts?
This was interpreted by Chris French, Psychology professor at Goldsmiths.
And Iain provided a quote about it too at the time: Sinclair scorns councillor ghost stories.

With the General Election coming up, is it worth putting a question like this to Meg or Diane? Last time (2010) Meg said: 'To be brutally honest I've got better things to do with my time than answer questions like that' - but she did answer lots of other questions about what she hoped to do as an opposition MP.

Otherwise, to find out what policies you really like when the party labels are removed take this survey here: Voteforpolicies.org.uk.

Is Tower Hamlets vote fraud really unprecedented?

It is clear from the comments following this post on Trial by Jeory and recent national newspaper coverage that concern is growing about election fraud in Tower Hamlets. Councillors say the evidence is unprecedented.

In his piece Ted Jeory writes: "The council consistently tells us there isn’t a problem. They point to the lack of prosecutions and boast of their stringent controls."

Here's an example of how council officers dealt with unprecedented election fraud evidence back in  2006 - just in case anyone expects them to do anything helpful.

George Galloway: Bradford vs Bethnal Green (UPDATED again)

AV: not the end of the line in Hackney

Of the 149,606 people eligible to vote in Hackney, 30,969 voted for the Alternative Vote - about 20% of the entire electorate of Hackney. (Hackney Citizen report here said that Hackney had the highest yes vote in Britain and the FT pointed out that Hackney was one of only 10 areas across the whole country that voted in favour of AV. It was also one of only four London Boroughs that came out in support of AV: Lambeth, Hackney, Islington and Camden.)

Unfortunately it is not possible to see how the vote broke down across the borough's two constituencies but more people in Hackney support AV than their individual MPs - Meg Hillier in Hackney South won 23,888 votes in 2010 while Diane Abbott won 25,553.

The support for a change was high but the one Hackney South candidate who focused almost entirely on electoral reform in the last election only won 95 votes.

Denny De La Haye's campaign website 'Get a Vote' outlined his plan to create an online voting system that would allow Hackney voters to direct his votes in parliament.

Meanwhile Meg Hillier, the victorious MP for Hackney South did not support the Yes campaign. The question is whether the issue will die away in Hackney as it is expected to do elsewhere?

Believe this conspiracy theory or be a racist

With Mayoral elections due in Tower Hamlets I thought I'd re-post this.

I was a newspaper reporter in Tower Hamlets between August 2001 and August 2005. During those years I was presented with dozens of corruption allegations made by members of the Bangladeshi community about other members of the Bangladeshi community.

The constant stream of claim and counter claim led me to assume that the Bangladeshi community had a problem with fraud. It didn't cross my mind that this view might be racist.

It wasn't until I read a judgement by Richard Mawrey QC on a massive electoral fraud scandal in Birmingham that I found out that, in the eyes of a judge, I was a racist.

Initially I wanted to justify my views but I gave up. I'm not sure if this was because I didn’t want to be a racist or because I was persuaded my views were wrong. My research was not particularly rigorous or conclusive but I suspect it is more than most others have done.

The evidence that electoral fraud is a problem in these communities appears to be real. The picture below is of the Returning Officers report on the Ocean Estate in 2002 where I believe Tower Hamlets council still requires photo ID from voters because electoral fraud is so rampant.

It is hard to tell if the problem is getting worse, but in 2007 Mawrey was presiding over vote rigging claims in Tower Hamlets and in 2008it was slough. In these cases the protagonists were Asian Muslims.

For some people it may be easy not to attempt any interpretation of the high incidence of electoral fraud in Muslim Asian communities. I wasn't one of them. This may have been because I had to write about it - which required some kind of interpretation - or it may be because prejudice is my default setting when faced with a confusing information.

However I think anyone attempting to interpret the existing information on electoral fraud is on dangerous territory even if they don't have racist tendencies.

At the moment the cure - the antidote to believing Muslim Asian communities are solely responsible for the high levels of electoral fraud - is little more than a conspiracy theory.

It revolves around the idea that political parties in the UK offer no-questions-asked public funds for community projects in return for blocks of votes. The Ocean Estate won a £56m regeneration grant in 2000, the elections mentioned in the photo above were to the board which distributed this cash.

I believe this theory - that UK political parties are partially responsible - but I don't know how many other people who read press coverage of election fraud will be are aware of it. This means that all they see is that electoral fraud seems to be committed mainly by Asian Muslims.


Private Eye opens can of worms























The leader of Tower Hamlets Council, Lutfur Rahman, has accused Private Eye of printing "Filth. Racist, Islamophobic, homophobic filth" (According to the latest issue of Private Eye (10-23 July 2009))

For three consecutive issues the magazine's Rotten Boroughs page has told readers about the financial rewards received by Labour councillors, mainly Bangladeshis, in the borough: “25 of Tower Hamlets 33 Labour Councillors now have paid positions in addition to their basic allowances.” These paid positions include two committee chairs whose roles have earned one £88 per minute (yes per minute) and the other a staggering £806 per minute.

Why?

The Private Eye pieces hint at an underlying cause: the Labour leadership needs to keep a majority of the fractured Bangladeshi community on side, or its power in the council will disappear. If Private Eye is correct, this is being achieved partly by paying them a wage.

A good place to check out the details of some of these claims is this piece (by former East London Advertiser journalist, Ted Jeory) originally written for the Sunday Express but posted on Harry's Place here where the comments provide some more background.

This comment is of particular interest: "What Lutfor Rahman has been able to do is to bring together a classic south Asian block of votes which are bought and sold by power brokers from the leading villages, Shiramishi, Habigonj, Hashimfatimapur and the others.

"He is now in a position where he doesn’t need the Labour Party to stay in control of the council and could form his own independent block by promising his supporters all sorts of favours in terms of jobs and grants."


















Is cash for votes a real problem?

The idea that blocks of Muslim Asian votes are exchanged for public funds is not confined to some off-the-wall fringe. Government sponsored reports by Ted Cantle (Cantle Report) and David Ritchie (The Ritchie Report) on the 2001 race riots, or Richard Mawrey's judgement on the electoral fraud scandal in Birmingham in 2004, provide various incarnations of the claims that political parties are engaged in this activity.

The Ritchie Report said that electoral irregularities in Oldham “were a source of tension and concern” adding: “There appears to be a clan or client based approach to politics and public life within the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities which does not fit easily with traditional British processes and which has been exploited by white party leaders, to get votes, and Asian Community leaders, to secure influence.”

"It has not been helped by the area-based nature of many recent regeneration initiatives, which have encouraged people to think that there is a block of funding which, if they have the right placemen in the right positions, they can ultimately control."

The Cantle Report said something similar: “In some areas, the Asian community has drawn our attention to a situation where some local political activities, including the selection of candidates, owe more to familial and other inappropriate connections, than to the legitimate and pressing concerns of the local electorate.”

“It was suggested to us that some councillors had either solicited votes in return for support for community projects, or succumbed to undue pressure and representations. All institutions must examine their relationships with the different sections of the local community and ensure that there are no further ‘sweetheart deals’ with self-appointed, and often unrepresentative, community custodians.”

On 31 May 2009, former British Ambassador turned human rights campaigner Craig Murraysaid in his blog that Lord Patel got his peerage for "enforcing the New Labour vote among the Muslim community of Blackburn" and Baroness Pola Uddin for doing the same thing in Tower Hamlets.

He said: “The ennoblements in fact only symbolise an entire system whereby Muslim communities in the UK are kept dependent upon great streams of public money... Blackburn is soaked in EU regional funds and urban regeneration grants. It bristles with community centres, cultural organisations and community workers. The council is the biggest employer. I could go on and on.”


Why has no one dug into these issues?

An alarming quote from Election Commissioner Richard Mawrey's judgement following Birmingham's notorious 2004 electoral fraud epidemic might explain why so little is said about this: "This (the failure of the police to investigate electoral fraud) is not helped by the invidious position in which a police force is put when investigating electoral fraud in a local authority context.

"The alleged fraudsters may, after all, be members of the political authority to which the force is answerable. The noble cop who fights corruption at City Hall at risk of his career may well be a staple of Hollywood movies but he is much rarer in real life."

So it seems unlikely there will be any conclusive evidence that political parties are engaged in what Ted Cantle calls “sweetheart deals” that lead to communities relying on a political status quo for their jobs to be safe – which in turn leads to electoral fraud whenever there is a threat to this status quo.

The issue is rarely reported in the press. The story in Tower Hamlets has won more than usual interest because the allegations throw the East London Mosque and Saudi fundamentalism into the mix.

The racism problem

Mawrey asks the obvious question. In a section of his judgement called “The Asian Factor” Mawrey said: “Patently, most of the protagonists in these Petitions are members of the Muslim Asian community. Is this relevant?” His answer was ‘No’.

He said: “To suggest that Muslim Asians are prone to frauds of this kind whereas other communities are not, would be racist and moreover would not be justified by any evidence before this court.”

That was his view in 2005 and it was this view which alerted me to the fact that my own ideas about the Bangladeshi community were racist. In 2007 Mawrey was presiding over similar vote rigging claims in Tower Hamlets and in 2008 an electoral fraud case in Slough outlined in this piece from the BBC which resulted in Six jailed for postal vote fraud in May this year, 2009.

None of this changes the fact that it would be racist to say that Asian Muslim communities are more prone to electoral fraud because they are Asian Muslim communities.

So, unless you think there is an academic justification for racism, there must be another explanation.

The conspiracy theory cure

Ritchie, Cantle, Murray and, to some extent, Mawrey, all point to problems beyond the Muslim Asian communities as the causes of their problems. They all suggest that the communities themselves cannot be blamed. However, none of them can offer anything more than anecdotal evidence.

Because their argument lacks evidence, there is a danger that it could be written-off as a conspiracy theory. This is made worse by politicians and authorities who deny that any such activity goes on.

In April 2005, Sion Simon, Labour MP for Erdington, was offended by Mawrey’s take on Muslim Asian politics in his constituency and defended his councillors in Parliament: “Will the Minister reassure them that their reputations... will not be sullied by this judgement, whose suggestion that the corruption was city wide went beyond its remit and beyond the available evidence?” Ritchie also faced some criticism: Oldham officials attack riot report. And in 2007 the findings of Mawrey's short-lived investigation in Tower Hamlets into similar vote rigging claims were rubbished by the council.

Unfortunately, if these conspiratorial theories are fantasy, then the only culprits left in the dock are the Muslim Asian communities. At the moment this suits the Labour Party and the politicians who benefit from the deal making. But it also suits the BNP and any one else who wants to interpret the evidence in a racist way.

Is it responsible to believe in conspiracy theories?

In his recent book "Voodoo Histories, The Role of The Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History", David Aaronovitch says: “It is important not to overlook the smaller theories, since if believed, it seems to me, they eventually add up to an idea of the world in which the authorities, including those who we elect, are systematically corrupt and untruthful.” (Page 5)

Aaronovitch is not a fan of the conspiracy theory believing that they have huge potential to do damage. His first chapter describes the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” a false document that whipped up hatred against Jews.

He cites the principle of Occam's Razor: “This can be restated as “Other things being equal, one hypothesis is more plausible than another if it involves fewer numbers of new assumptions. Or, far more vulgarly, “Keep it Simple”.

The question is, if Aaronovitch, or anyone else applied this to electoral fraud in the UK what would they end up with? If they lived in Tower Hamlets, Oldham, Blackburn, or Slough, how would they explain the frequency of electoral fraud in Muslim Asian communities? And would their views be racist?

http://bloodandproperty.blogspot.com/2009/07/believe-this-conspiracy-or-be-racist.html:

Hackney's 1600 'ghost' workers and 28 'ghost' claimants

When constituency boundary changes came into effect in April 2010 - before the General Election - the number of Job Seekers Allowance claimants rose by 391 in Hackney North. In Hackney South the number of JSA claimants fell by 602.

Together this meant that the number of people claiming Job Seeker's Allowance should have fallen by 211 across the borough as a whole.

+ 391
- 602
= - 211

But according to the Office of National Statistics figures, the net fall in JSA claimants in Hackney, over that period, was 183. (Figures from documents listed on this ONS web page)

This 183 figure matches the ONS's breakdown of male/female JSA claimant figures in the borough but not its Hackney North/Hackney South total. I don't know if this kind of discrepancy is normal - it didn't happen in the month prior to the boundary changes.

The change in constituency boundaries also seemed to generate an estimated 1630 new working-age people in Hackney North. This wouldn't have been surprising if they had previously existed in Hackney South. But the figures suggest that they didn't.

The boundary changes saw the Hackney South working population fall from 72,500 (average of three figures) to 69,000 (average of the two figures). So, across Hackney South, there appears to have been a decrease in working population of about 3500 (72,500-69,000=3500)

Meanwhile, the Hackney North population rose from 69,780 (average of three figures) to 74,910 (average of two figures) - meaning that the Hackney North population increased by 5130 (74910-69,780=5130)

So, the boundary change seems to have resulted in about 1630 previously non-existent workers appearing in the borough (5130-3500=1630) all of them in Hackney North.

The Boundary Commission changes (details below) were made because the number of voters in Hackney constituencies were considered too low to justify having two MPs.

Latest Hackney JSA claimant count:

2010: working population extrapolated from figures in red.
May: 9,616 (6.7%) (9,616/.067=143,522)- next is Tower Hamlets with 6.6%
April: 9,663 (6.7%) (9,663/.067=144,223) - next is Tower Hamlets with 6.5%
March: 9,846 (6.8%) (9,846/0.68=144,794) - next is Tower Hamlets with 6.6%
February: 10,044 (7%) - next highest is Tower Hamlets with 6.7%
January: 9,905 (6.9%) - next highest is Tower Hamlets at 6.6%
2009
December: 9743 (6.7%) - next highest was Tower Hamlets at 6.5%
November: 9,795 (6.8%) - next highest was Tower Hamlets at 6.7%
October: 9,827 (6.8%) - equal highest with Tower Hamlets.
September: 9,884 (7%)
August 9,826 (6.9%)
July: 9550 (6.7%)

Divided into constituencies: - Diane Abbott (North) and Meg Hillier (South) -

Hackney North
May - 4,081
June - 4,118
July - 4206
August - 4,331
September - 4,338
October - 4365
November - 4386 (6.3%)
December - 4331 (6.2%)
January - 4,402 (6.3%) - (4,402/0.063=69,873)
February - 4,450 (6.4%) - (4,450/0.064=69,531)
March - 4,336 (6.2%) - (4,336/0.062=69,935)
April - 4,727 (6.3%) - (4,727/0.063=75,031)
May - 4,637 (6.2%) - (4,637/0.062=74,790)


Hackney South
May - 5,296
June - 5,190
July - 5,344
August - 5,495
September - 5,546 (7.8%)
October - 5,462
November - 5,409 (7.5%)
December - 5,412 (7.5%)
January - 5503 (7.6%) - (5503/0.076)=72,407)
February - 5,594 (7.7%) - (5,594/0.077=72,649)
March - 5,510 (7.6%) - (5,510/0.076=72,500)
April - 4,908 (7.1%) - (4908/0.071=69,126)
May - 4,959 (7.2%) - (4,959/0.072=68,875)


Background from Boundary Commission Report: "3.12 The constituency with the lowest 2000 electorate in London will be Hackney South and Shoreditch BC with 57,204 electors: this will be the second lowest electorate in England after that of Wirral West BC. This constituency electorate is 12,731 below the electorate quota, but only 2,991 below the Hackney borough average of 60,195. Although the borough average is within 260 electors of the 10,000 threshold, we nevertheless considered pairing Hackney with a neighbouring borough. However, we concluded that there was no suitable partner that was not already paired with another borough or one that met our criteria for pairing.

25. In relation to the second counter-proposal as it affected Hackney, the Assistant
Commissioner reported that, from the evidence gained at the inquiry and as a result of his own observations on site visits, the Dalston ward was more closely associated with Stoke Newington and the northern constituency in terms of local community and transport links, and that the King’s Park ward was more closely associated with Hackney South and Shoreditch BC. He stated that, were it simply the question of the King’s Park ward, he would have been less persuaded to recommend a departure from the provisional recommendations.However, the close association of Dalston with Stoke Newington appeared to him to be compelling. For these reasons, he recommended that the changes put forward in the second counter-proposal in relation to Hackney should be adopted and that there should be no change to our provisionally recommended constituencies in Islington.

29. We agreed with the Assistant Commissioner that there was no need to group Hackney,
Islington, and Tower Hamlets. We also agreed with his recommendation that the Hackney
Borough ward of Dalston should be included in Hackney North and Stoke Newington BC, the Hackney Borough ward of King’s Park ward should be included in Hackney South and
Shoreditch BC and the Newham Borough ward of Canning Town South should be included in
West Ham BC.

Recommendation

32. We therefore recommend the adoption of the following eight constituencies in Hackney, Islington, Newham, and Tower Hamlets containing the wards listed in Appendix C:-

2000 electorate

Hackney North and Stoke Newington BC 63,185
Hackney South and Shoreditch BC 57,204
120,389

Meg Hillier: Zero tolerance of Lib Dems

There's not much in this piece from the Times other than: "Harriet Harman, acting party leader, later convened a meeting of Labour MPs where anger was voiced towards the Tories’ new partners in government. Meg Hillier, a former Home Office minister, demanded that Labour abandon co-operation deals with the Lib Dems on local councils."

Both of Meg's Labour MP predecessors in Hackney South defected to the liberals...

UKpollingreport.co.uk: "Oddly enough two Labour MPs for Hackney South in a row have defected to the centre party. Ron Brown, MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch from 1974-1983 defected to the SDP in 1981, when he was defeated by Labour`s Brian Sedgemore. Sedgemore in turn defected to the Liberal Democrats shortly before 2005 when he stood down from Parliament. In the 1990s the Liberal Democrats enjoyed success at a local level here, but it never translated into Parliamentary strength and following a difficult period of Liberal Democrat-Conservative control of Hackney council they largely collapsed, leaving every council seat in this ward in the hands of Labour."

A tale of two Labour Parties? Conservative implosion

A TALE OF TWO LABOUR PARTIES?

Hackney Labour Councillors now outnumber opposition councillors by more than 6 to 1. The number of opposition councillors has fallen from 12 to 7 while the number of Labour Councillors has risen from 45 to 50.

Labour's gains were achieved without fielding any ultra-orthodox Jewish candidates - an impressive feat considering the size and political clout of this community in Hackney. In addition, Jules Pipe and his Labour group appear to specifically avoid making deals with ethnic/religious groups.

Meanwhile, in neighbouring Haringey, Labour councillors staved-off the threat of a Conservative breakthrough by pushing through planning concessions that will help large families - a demand that has been made by the ultra-orthodox Jewish community in Hackney, with the support of the Conservative group - but which was refused by Hackney Council.

The reason for the deal making in Haringey appears to have been the by-election in the Seven Sisters ward last year when the Conservatives fielded an ultra-orthodox Jewish candidate who lost by just 64 votes.

But the planning deal may have been unnecessary. Last week's elections saw a massive turn out for Labour in Seven Sisters with all its candidates more than 1000 votes ahead of the Conservatives - including the same ultra-orthodox Jewish candidate who nearly won last year.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

Before the elections Rabbi Abraham Pinter told Blood and Property that the Seven Sisters ward in Haringey would prove or disprove claims that ultra-orthodox Jews will only vote for candidates from within their community. The claim was made by Jewish historian Geoffrey Alderman and the leader of Hackney's Lib Dem Group, Ian Sharer.

However it is unclear whether Pinter or Alderman and Sharer have been proved correct by the election result. The huge London-wide turnout for the Labour Party swamped local subtleties.

But, whether it needed to or not, it appears that the Haringey Labour Party specifically sought the support of the ultra-orthodox Jewish community and it did so by offering planning concessions. This seems to be exactly the kind of deal making that Hackney council avoids and the last election seems to have put Hackney Council in a stronger position to resist the race-based politics that Geoffrey Alderman believes will eventually take over. (Stop worrying and learn to love race politics)


CONSERVATIVE IMPLOSION?

The Hackney Conservative Group has been reduced from 9 to 4. There are no longer any Green Councillors. However the Lib Dems gained one seat - Abraham Jacobson - who replaced Joseph Stauber (a Lib Dem who defected to Labour). (ALSO, A CORRECTION IS REQUIRED IN RELATION TO Cllr Jacobson, I referred to him as an ultra-orthodox Jew but he is modern orthodox. He left a comment at the end of this post.) The Lib Dems now have three seats.

The Conservative group's most obvious problem was in the Lordship ward where the party lost two of the three seats it held.

Ultra orthodox Jewish councillor Bernard Aussenberg was the only Conservative who held his seat in the ward, doing so with 1,401 votes. The other seats were taken by Labour candidates Edward Brown - took the most votes with 1,827 - and Daniel Stevens who took 1,378.

This left the leader of the Hackney Conservative Group, Matthew Coggins, in fourth place with 1,261 votes, too few to regain his seat.

The other Conservative seat in the ward that had belonged to another ultra orthodox Jewish councillor - Simon Tesler. But Tesler was deselected by Lordship Conservatives. His replacement, Alexander Ellis, failed to win enough votes.

There was some kind of dispute over Tesler's deselection which was intensified when Tesler stood as an independent. Coggins told the Jewish Chronicle: "Mr Tesler was deselected not because of the time he spent representing the strictly Orthodox community but because of his lack of attendance at council meetings. "

The cost of this dispute may have been at least one seat. Coggins won 1,261 votes and Ellis 1,079.

They were beaten by Labour's Daniel Stevens who took 1,378 votes.

Simon Tesler won 467 votes.

Although 118 votes is pretty clear margin at this level, Coggins will probably wonder what would have happened if the disgruntled Simon Tesler had not decided to stand as an independent.

Who stood,
Who was elected
Hackney councillors

Are Hackney unions ready for the last stand?

The Governor of the Bank of England believes "whoever wins this election will be out of power for a whole generation because of how tough the fiscal austerity will have to be".

So Hackney's next generation of politicians will probably face an elongated economic disaster and the mounting hatred of council employees and everyone else in the borough.

But when the cuts come will they be properly scrutinised? That could depend on the state of Unison and whether the "witchunt" of four London reps - including Brian Debus - trade union activist, Hackney Unison Branch Chair is as serious as some reports make out? The four even won the support of the Daily Mail. But will the dispute, at a critical time, result in regular members suffering?

LAST QUESTION:

I know that the Mayor of Hackney will have a bigger impact on my everyday life than my MP. But the reason I aim to change the habit of a life time and vote for the first time is the existence of Denny De La Haye's direct digital democracy campaign.

De La Haye has killed-off some of my usual excuses for not voting and if I don't vote for someone this time I'll have to accept it's because I'm lazy.

I wish I'd asked other candidates if they'd adopt his technology if he doesn't win.

In this Blood and Property interview he was asked: Would you set up your system anyway and make it available to whoever does become MP - if it's not you?

Denny de la Haye: Yes, absolutely. I intend to continue setting up the system and make it available to every MP and PPC in the country. The difference is that I (and perhaps some other independents, over time) will agree to be bound by the polls - whereas any party MP is ultimately bound by their party whip.

Any way, the decision that I will vote is as far as I've got. I'll probably vote for Denny but I'm not sure it's a good idea (As Dave Hill points out on his Clapton Pond blog: "The temptation to vote for anyone who's shaking things up a bit is rather large.")

In fact it feels irresponsible to be voting on things I don't know about, with just a few hours to go. Does that bring me back to square one and not voting? I don't think so.

Judge: Don't trust the cops on election fraud

In 2005 Judge Richard Mawrey voided the elections of six Muslim Asian councillors in Birmingham. He didn't have any faith in the ability of the police to deal with electoral fraud.

In his judgement Mawrey said:

147. Quite apart from the lack of training, there is a marked reluctance on the part of the police to involve themselves in electoral matters. If they are presented by somebody else with hard evidence of fraud, they will investigate but they tend not to go out of their way to look for it.

148. This is not helped by the invidious position in which a police force is put when investigating electoral fraud in a local authority context. The alleged fraudsters may, after all, be members of the political authority to which the force is answerable. The noble cop who fights corruption at City Hall at risk of his career may well be a staple of Hollywood movies but he is much rarer in real life.

Christian Party flashes cash

Until recently Hackney's billboards were Conservative Party territory. But below is a giant poster on Lower Clapton Road proclaiming Hackney South's Christian Party candidate, John Williams. According to the BBC the Christian Party launched its poster campaign three days ago.





This story mentions that the Christian Party raised over £100,000 in 2010 - small fry compared to many other parties. However it seems to have been attracting cash from all quarters. "Hackney Christians: Money, power, demonic possession"

Rev George Hargreaves, the founder of the Hackney-based Christian Party, has caused controversy with his campaign in a Barking and Dagenham campaign, while his wife, Maxine, is taking on Diane Abbott in Hackney North: God on her side

Other news:

If you haven't seen it yet, take a look at Hackney Citizen's story on Hackney Council saying there is no Conservative Mayoral Candidate.

Learning Trust has "disgusting" attitude says Mayor

Mayor Jules Pipe said that the Learning Trust's treatment of Hackney nurseries, parents and elected politicians was "disgusting" at a hustings organised by the North London Muslim Centre (on Sunday).

The Learning Trust delivers education for more than 27,000 pupils in Hackney.

The Mayor made the criticism despite denying claims that the Learning Trust will cut funding for nurseries in the borough. Pipe said that he had very recently been told that funding had actually increased but that it was now being re-allocated to where it was needed.

It was, he said, the Learning Trust's failure to communicate this with parents and elected officials like himself that he found "disgusting".

However the 're-allocation' claims sound similar to those that sparked a class war over sure-start centres in March.

The newer concerns over nurseries were reported here by NurseryWorld and apparently there was a hustings on this issue on Thursday last week - does anyone know what happened there?

Is this open hostility between the Learning Trust and the Labour administration something new?

According to other audience members it is. After the hustings Andrew Boff, Conservative Mayoral candidate, told Blood and Property that he'd not heard Mayor Pipe being so rude about the Learning Trust before and said: "You've got to realise that that the majority of improvements to schools in the borough are down to educational institutions outside of the council's control."

I spoke briefly to all three mayoral candidates, the briefest of all was Jules Pipe who refused to talk to me once he knew I wrote this blog. All he said was "no", and "Pale, male, stale" probably in relation to this story: Jules Pipe: pale, male, stale apparatchik of New Labour? back on February 12 (The words were George Galloway's).

It was an odd grudge to hold considering he managed to answer an extensive list of Blood and Property questions in March: Jules Pipe answers Blood and Property questions. I was hoping to ask him if he approved of moves made by the Labour Party in Haringey to allow large families to build extensions on their properties: Will Jules Pipe back-track on ultra orthodox planning rules?

I lost my notes and can't remember the details of the rest of the hustings. But the event was filmed for the Islam Channel. Candidates: Andrew Boff, Mischa Borris, Jules Pipe - Diane Abbott, Keith Angus, Matt Sellwood and Darren Caplan said pretty much what you'd expect. All were impressive in their various ways. (For a proper report on the event try Hackney Citizen's report which covers pretty much everything.)

Caplan stood his ground on Iraq and Afghanistan. The hustings organisers were spotted coaxing a couple of angry men away from him after the meeting. The audience heard that Diane Abbott had actually been to Afghanistan

Video slanging match - Abbott, Boff, Angus and others

The main row is about 38 minutes into this debate and is about whether people should feel guilty about not voting - but most of it is worth watching anyway.
http://www.worldbytes.org/programmes/015/015_002.html

Earlier story:
Suzanne Moore: 'help' from friends and family

Suzanne Moore: 'help' from friends and family

Were friends and family of Suzanne Moore, prospective MP for Hackney North, testing out bold new PR techniques yesterday?

In the Jerusalem Post her friend Julie Burchill, godmother to her three daughters, wrote that she: "gave her (Moore) the green light to take up with my second (Jewish) husband shortly before I dumped him. “Why don’t you ‘comfort’ poor Cosmo?” was the way I phrased it, to her slightly repelled fascination. Didn’t stop her, though!"

In the Guardian her daughter chips in: "Her middle daughter, Bliss, 19, has just wandered in and out in search of toast, and on hearing that this is an interview, has said that all she really knows about her mother's life is she was "a junkie for about 10 years."

The Guardian writer points out this was a joke and, later in the interview, Moore says: "I'm not a junkie, like Bliss said, but I can say that I've taken drugs and liked it. I can't pretend otherwise. The fact is that, now, if you're of a certain generation and you haven't slept around, taken drugs, you're just not normal, so what are we going to do? . . . Do you want the people who represent you to be flawed, or to embody this perfect ideal? Because we've had the perfect ideal, and that's given us the bloody expenses scandal and two wars."

Will Jules Pipe have to back-track on ultra-orthodox planning rules?

According to the Jewish Chronicle, Tottenham Labour MP David Lammy is doing his best to win support from the ultra-orthodox Jewish community.

In an article published yesterday the JC said: "Despite the slim chance of an upset, both Labour and the Tories are going out of their way to court the Charedi community in south Tottenham."

In Haringey the pursuit of the Charedi community's vote appears to have been behind the recent planning victory for Ultra Orthodox Jewish families living in Haringey.

When this was reported the community said it was also setting its sights on persuading neighbouring Hackney to change its rules too.

But in Hackney the Labour administration has fought-off planning exemptions for large families and Mayor Pipe has accused ultra-orthodox Jewish Consevative councillors of pursuing that agenda at the expense of the rest of the borough. ( 23,000 Hackney tenants used as bargaining chip)

So what were the reasons why Hackney didn't want to go down that road? If the Hackney Labour Party sticks to its position will it be condemning what's happened in Tottenham? Hopefully Jules Pipe will say, before the election, if he thinks his Tottenham/Haringey colleagues have taken a wrong turn.

According to the Labour-supporting, ultra-orthodox Abraham Pinter, the whole battle will centre around the Seven Sisters ward in Haringey where the Conservatives think they can win as they field an ultra-orthodox candidate against a Labour candidate who is Jewish, but not ultra-orthodox.

The pressure is already being applied on Hackney Council but Jewish Historian Geoffrey Alderman says the ultra-orthodox Jewish community should be careful with its new-found power. In a piece called Hacking off Hackney voters he said: "Jewish "communalism" is a major trigger of anti-Jewish prejudice. It may look clever but its victories, purchased at a high price, are invariably short-lived." Although would a back-lash be expected if concessions were made to any other religious or cultural group? Geoffrey Alderman interview here: Stop worrying and learn to love race politics

However Meg Hillier, MP for Hackney South, says that this is exactly how mulitculturalism works. In an interview Blood and Property asked: "Does it matter if you have large, politically active communities, that do act with a certain level of self interest – or promote issues that affect this community?"

Meg Hillier said: "That’s what politics is about."

The north south divide - in Hackney

Three stories:
1 The Independent reports a remarkable 15% rise in voter registrations in Hackney. But did they register because they wanted to vote? I'm one of the newly registered - my mind was made up because of a £1000 fine threat.

2. New varieties of diametrically opposite views from Meg Hillier (Hackney South) and Diane Abbott (Hackney North) are still being discovered.

Last night Diane told "This Week" viewers that the worst thing about Gordon Brown calling Gillian Duffy a bigot was that it raised the issue of immigration. When asked her why talking about immigration might be a problem, she didn't have an answer.

Moments later she said that Hackney was an area with a high level of illegal immigration.

Then she said that she supported the idea of an amnesty for illegal immigrants - she specifically approved of the one proposed by the Lib Dems.

Compare that to Meg Hillier. According to this piece in the Guardian, Meg told the people of Barking and Dagenham: "We deport someone every eight minutes... We fingerprint anyone who comes in for over six months. Foreigners now have to carry special national identity cards."

3. Another interesting story: The Jewish Chronicle adds some extra detail to Simon Tesler's decision to stand as an independent candidate (Chops changes and councillor controversies) against his former Conservative colleagues. According to the JC, Tesler says he was dropped because he spent too much time working on ultra-orthodox Jewish issues. Matthew Coggins, leader of the Hackney Conservative Group, had a different story: "Mr Tesler was deselected not because of the time he spent representing the strictly Orthodox community but because of his lack of attendance at council meetings."

It also reports Labour supporting Abraham Pinter saying he is disappointed that Joseph Stauber couldn't be found a Hackney seat to stand in by the Labour Party. Some of these issues were discussed in Blood and Property: Chops changes and councillor controversies

Is Hackney fragmenting? Is Diane's support fragmenting?

Would the leaflet pictured below qualify as communalism? Or the opposite? The message is from Muslim Lib Dem councillor, Dawood Akhoon, and he is calling on Muslim brothers and sisters to vote Lib Dem. As his two Lib Dem colleagues in the Cazenove ward are both ultra-orthodox Jews, Ian Sharer and Abraham Jacobson, it is hardly what you'd expect in a propaganda leaflet aimed at Muslims.

But the person who sent it to Blood and Property believes it has a bearing on the debate about communalism. It is clear that this leaflet was not intended for general release - so does it confirm the views of Geoffrey Alderman that Hackney Politicians have to interpret the community along racial or religious lines? (for the opposite view: Abraham Pinter responds to Geoffrey Alderman)

Not sure if the photos below will be legible but the leaflet starts off with "Dear Brother/Sister in Islam" and goes on to say: "As Muslims and residents of Hackney, we have many challenges ahead both locally and nationally."

It ends saying: "We have always served and supported the Muslim Community and we are all committed to continue to do so."

Meanwhile Diane Abbott laments the days when ethnic communities stood shoulder to shoulder against racists. In a piece in the Independent she writes: "The other strength of the anti-racist movement of that era was that it was genuinely multi-racial. Black, white and Asian went to Southall to resist the fascists. Since then we have seen a regrettable fragmentation. First Asian people resisted being called black. Now Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus all insist on a separate identities. A distinct cultural identity is one thing. But the struggle against racism has been immeasurably weakened by the political fragmentation we have seen in past decades."

Could Diane's vote base be suffering from the same problem? Earlier this week her Lib Dem opponent Keith Angus claimed that Afro-Caribbean voters were deserting her - Diane has yet to reply to Blood and Property's questions on this.

But what about Hackney's African population? Are Nigerians still smarting over Diane's 2006 article: Think Jamaica is bad, try Nigeria? Christian Party leader, George Hargreaves has focused on British-Nigerian voters. Could African voter identify more with his Christian Party? Could Diane's voter base, as well as the anti-racist movement, be suffering from fragmentation?

(Hackney Christians: Money, power, demonic possession)

Stop worrying and learn to love race politics

Ethnicity and religion drive Hackney politics, not class, says Professor Geoffrey Alderman, a leading academic on British elections and modern British Jewry.

Alderman, a columnist for the Jewish Chronicle and writer for the Guardian and the Times (profile) tells Blood and Property that politicians are deluding themselves if they don't accept that people vote along ethnic lines.

GEOFFREY ALDERMAN: I went to Northwold Road school and then the Grocer’s Company's School Hackney Downs, which, in its time was the best state school in the country. From there I went to Oxford. I am the official historian of Hackney Downs school and when I went to the school it was so Jewish that it closed on the Jewish holidays, there was no point in keeping it open. The few Christian boys there wanted to know when the Jewish holidays were so they could find out when the school would be shut.

I’m not sure if the Jewish community is larger or smaller than it was, probably larger now. My grandfather moved from Spitalfields to Hackney circa 1937 and rented the property my parents later bought in Walsingham Road. The Jewish community I grew up in in the 1950s and 60s was traditional but, on the whole, not a strictly practising Jewish community. The black hat Jews of Stamford Hill today were in a tiny minority then and they were exotic oddities.

The area began to change character in the 1960s after the Hungarian uprising which the Soviets brutally repressed. The Hassidic Jews survived the holocaust in Hungary and began to move into Hackney in the 1960s. Now they form the majority of Jews there.

But as a youngster I never saw many Hassidic Jews, may be one or two, now they form the majority of Hackney Jewry and demographically they are the fastest growing section of British Jewry. In Stamford Hill and Stoke Newington you will find families of of 11, 12, 13. This has been one of the pressures for planning permission.

In Modern British Jewry I deal with the political organisation of the Orthodox Jews in Hackney. When I was doing the research in the late 70s and early 80s it was already evident to me that the growing ultra-orthodox community (acted) through Agudas Israel, an organisation which functions as a mini-welfare state, and which publishes a weekly paper, the Jewish Tribune, .

A very important part in this community has been played by Joe Lobenstein, four times Mayor of Hackney. In my book The Jewish Community in British Politics I mention him and the pioneering work he was doing especially in reviving Conservative politics amongst Jews in Hackney.

But he, I believe, was getting ultra-orthodox Jews to vote for him because he was Jewish, not because of the party he was in. This tendency was definitely being observed by me in the late 1970s – Jews voting for Jewish candidates irrespective of their party politics.

One might ask, is this democracy? Well of course it is. These Jews are British, they pay taxes and they vote. Who are you or I to tell them how to vote? If they want to vote in a particular way then that is their right, whether you celebrate it or despise it.

May I make a general point here? I don’t think we in England, or London have yet got used to the idea of an ethnic political system. In the US, ethnic politics is so conventional they don’t bat an eyelid. There’s the Jewish vote, the Irish vote, the Italian vote. They are used to an ethnic based politics. We are not.

When I started investigating it in the 1970s everyone was talking about class and how you had to understand class. Class - it was said - was the basis of the British political system, everything else was embellishment. But I saw something else in Hackney and it was more like the situation in the US, where socio-economic class is less important and ethnicity and religion are - often - much more important.

In the book I also refer to the fact that Agudas Israel was already beginning to acquire a level of sophistication. In another book I published in the 1980s on London Jewry, I also noted how Agudas Israel had taken the trouble to rebrand itself to get resources for its community as Hackney descended into a battleground between competing ethnic factions.

It had previously described itself as Jewish rather than as representing an ethnic minority. Previously the Jews of Hackney had projected themselves as British people. Agudas Israel was sensitive to the rise in ethnic politics and said: “We’re not part of the working class, we’re an ethnic minority and we're discriminated against. We need resources."

Agudas Israel went along to the Ken Livingstone-led Labour faction that then controlled the Greater London Council. This faction paid attention. Agudas Yisroel played the game brilliantly.

I am fascinated by the relationship between the left-wing Diane Abbott and this community. On the face of it they have nothing in common. She stands for things such as democracy, free speech and women's rights. These are anathema amongst the chassidim of Stoke Newington and Stamford Hill. One has only to read the anti-feminist and anti-black rhetoric put out by the Jewish Tribune to see that this is so. As for the gays, the Tribune wouldn't even dare mention the term.

I recall that in 1978 there was terrible scandal when the Yiddish Tribune ran a piece criticising Greville Janner for defending black people in Parliament. The publishers didn’t realise that other people might speak Yiddish and the following week the West Indian World translated this appalling editorial. That doesn’t happen any more, but not because the views have changed but because the Jewish Tribune knows other people can understand Yiddish."

How many Jewish councillors are women? None. Why? Because the type of orthodoxy in Stamford Hill allocates a certain role to women: to get married, have as many children as possible and to maintain a Kosher home. And in the home it is the woman who is the boss, not the man.

How many female Orthodox Jewish school governors are there? Only the minimum required by law. However they can be teachers and head teachers but they cannot be in a position of political leadership. And as far as this community is concerned there is no such thing as a female Rabbi. Outside the home it is a male dominated society. It is ruled by Rabbis, it is a theocracy. (Alderman said that this might be changing as Bella Sharer, wife of Ian Sharer, leader of the Lib Dems in Hackney, is standing in the May 6 elections.)


Every article, every advertisement in the Jewish Tribune is approved by a Rabbinical censor. If you are defamed by the Jewish Tribune you can’t go to the PCC, it is one of only a handful of UK papers that is not a member.

That said, the community is generally disinterested in wealth and its members do tend to help each other when help is needed. The men "learn" Talmud all the day and it is the women who go to work. Interestingly, this community has no problem in principle with women working and there are some very wealthy women in the community.

Whether you or I like the community is irrelevant. The community is very well organised, very hospitable and very successful. Its members may dress in ways we find peculiar, but you won't find its youngsters involved in gun and knife crime that is, alas, so rampant now in the Hackney I once knew.

Lib Dems leave Hackney strategy in a pub - is there an opposition conspiracy?

Apparently the Lib Dems left their election strategy for Hackney in the Wellington Pub on Balls Pond Road last week. Blood and Property has been told that the Labour activists who found it were not particularly surprised by its contents but were pleased for the confirmation.

The document allegedly says the target wards for Lib Dem canvassing are Cazenove, Brownswood, Hoxton and Hackney Central.

A source told Blood and Property that the combined campaign efforts of the Lib Dems, Greens and Conservatives look as if they may have been co-ordinated. So are opposition parties doing their best not to step on each others toes?

The conspiracy theory is that the Greens are targeting Stoke Newington Central and Clissold while the Conservatives are concentrating on the wards they already hold but also on Queensbridge and De Beauvoir.

If all of these were successful, then Hackney would have a hung council.

Matt Sellwood spotted the Labour Party habit of pushing this hung council phobia earlier this month. He provided a detailed break down with pie-charts and all: Labour's hung council ploy

Hopefully there is some truth in the conspiracy theories. May be the opposition parties should be working together. With any luck they'll have a bit more power to hold the Labour monolith to account after May 6.

Hackney South Conservative responds to conflict of interest claim

Blood and Property received this email from Simon Nayyar - Hackney South and Shoreditch candidate for the Conservative Party - in response to this article: Darren Caplan and Simon Nayyar... is this criticism fair? (Link to Darren Caplan's response is here.)

Simon Nayyar wrote: "I should be happy if you would post the following response on your blog so that readers can know exactly where I stand on this issue:

1. I am totally and unambiguously committed to supporting small businesses in Hackney South & Shoreditch. Because of Labour's disastrous management of the economy and lack of empathy with their needs, small businesses in Hackney have really suffered over the past few years. They deserve the support of all of us: for it is small businesses that will power Hackney out of recession and generate the jobs that Hackney desperately needs.

2. I support the role that larger companies can play to generate wealth, create jobs and, through the corporation tax that they pay, help reduce Britain's national debt which, thanks to Labour's reckless spending, is now at record levels. A diverse economy needs a diverse range of businesses to provide consumers with the choice they want and have a right to expect. I do not see supermarkets posing a threat to small businesses. On the contrary, supermarkets and small businesses alike can play an important part in generating jobs in Hackney South & Shoreditch which, because of Labour's policies locally, has one of the highest levels of joblessness in London.

3. I do not personally advise ASDA or any other supermarket chain.

4. It is a matter of record that I work for a public affairs business. I have never made any attempt to hide the fact. On the contrary, my website specifically says that this is the kind of work that I do: http://www.simonnayyar.com/index/aboutsimon.

5. The business I work for seeks to be entirely transparent about the clients that it advises and, as such, voluntarily subscribes to the Code of Conduct and Register of the Association of Professional Political Consultants: www.appc.org.uk

6. I believe that public service is a privilege. Unlike the Labour MP, Meg Hillier, I have already publicly stated that, if I am elected on 6 May, I do not intend to claim for parliamentary expenses. Also, unlike Meg Hillier, I will make immediate arrangements to move to live in the constituency.

Simon Nayyar
Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Hackney South & Shoreditch
020 8144 4458

www.simonnayyar.com