George Galloway: Bradford vs Bethnal Green (UPDATED August 2012)

Update 14 October 


The Guardian assesses the effect of his rape comments on his Bradford spring: ' He insisted his comments had not caused a setback in Bradford. "I haven't lost support in Bradford, no. The people who spoke to you, or the ones you are speaking to me about, never supported me in the first place," he said. While it is true that national membership of Respect continues to grow – having reached 2,000 now, compared with just 300 before the Bradford byelection, according to the party secretary Chris Chilvers – it is disingenuous for Galloway to claim he has not lost support in the constituency.

At the beginning of this month George Galloway said he would sue the NUS (BBC) for accusing him of being a rape denier.

"Notorious" article on Charedi men cleared by Press Complaints Commission

This blog has more than once referred to an article written by Jewish Chronicle columnist and historian Geoffrey Alderman - mainly as an example of how heated the debate between different sections of the Jewish community can become.

Diane Abbott: a list of race rows

Diane Abbott has a long history of involvement in race rows. The latest concerns a 'racist' tweet on Twitter which said: "White people love playing 'divide and rule' We should not play their game."

But the BBC doesn't sound convinced by her explanation that her comments were taken out of context. It has been reported that Ed Miliband spoke to her but has not asked her to resign (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16424851)

This week she appeared to accuse the rank and file of Hackney police of being racist on Newsnight in a debate about Stephen Lawrence.

It would be great to get a full list of race rows/debates she's been involved in. I'm sure there are loads I've missed out.

A trawl through Blood and Property's Diane Abbott archive came up with these:

Nov 2010

In a Guardian comment about Phil Woolas she said: "The Labour Party should never get involved in the politics of racial division."
She said that his campaign had involved "a conscious strategy to enrage white voters and frighten them into voting Labour. Is that a responsible path for an experienced MP to go down in a town that had already experienced race riots?"


June 2010

She suggestedWest Indian mothers were better than other mothers when defending her decision to send her son to a private school: "I’m a West Indian mum and West Indian mums will go to the wall for their children. It’s that kind of atavistic streak that we have. I can see them in the market on a Saturday morning. A kind of ‘touch my children and we’ll turn quite difficult'. Interestingly, until now, it’s the one thing that’s got me the most positive response from black women locally. They would come up to me and shake my hand. Because ultimately in their eyes it’s about doing the right thing for their children. But obviously people from other cultures didn’t see it that way at all."

December 2009:

Takes on Rod Liddle and his crime statistics....(also a link to the Chocolate Hobnob row)

2006

In a 2006 NASUWT-sponsored paper (Academy schools: case unproven) Diane said: "... We know what parent power means in London. In practice, it means giving power to small groups of white middle-class parents, or if not to capture by one ethnic group as opposed to another, the best organised. Actually, if you want to empower the breadth of the parent body in inner-city areas you have to look to the local education authority."

2006

Diane upsets her African constituents with an article entitled: "Think Jamaica is bad? Try Nigeria" which included phrases such as: "when it comes to corruption, Nigerians make Jamaicans, and every other nationality in the world, look like mere amateurs."(Guardian piece here)

In it she also mentioned that: "Nigerians are a deeply religious people with high levels
of church attendance and a host of remarkable pastors" some of whom may have been the targets of this..."

2005

Ban these witchcraft churches: "Multiculturalism is one thing, but I draw the line at being asked to respect the views of people who believe in demonic possession." (Links via Is the supernatural significant)


1996

(pointed out by a comment below) - she complained that the arrival of Finnish nurses jeopardized employment opportunities for black women. Darcus Howe said: "It is worse than careless for Diane Abbott to have made such remarks." (from answers.com) There was more comment at the time some of it here (an Independent article allegedly... and other bits).

Any more?

Hackney Vs Tower Hamlets - which model works?

In a few hours the Labour Party in Tower Hamlets will choose its mayoral candidate. Whoever wins will probably become the borough's elected Mayor.

Hackney's mayor, Jules Pipe, has his critics but at least these usually focus on his policies. In Tower Hamlets it is only about the latest scandal (And for that you couldn't get much more graphic than this investigation by Andrew Gilligan - posted on his blog yesterday)

The difference seems to be that, in Hackney, the Labour Party still suffers the scars of its factional implosions and its damaging vote rigging scandals. The result has been a shunning of "communal" or race politics by the current Labour administration.

Last year Jules Pipe told Blood and Property: "It is unhealthy for democracy if people vote for candidates from their own community for that reason alone and not on merit. It is also unhealthy for community cohesion – whilst there are specific communities within Hackney, we are all part of one wider civic community."

Andrew Boff, Conservative Mayoral candidate for Hackney, seemed to think that everyone was over reacting, particularly to what was going on in Tower Hamlets. Blood and Property asked him several questions about what his party was doing in Hackney, he ended up talking about Tower Hamlets.

In an interview with Blood and Property Boff answered questions 3, 4 and 5 together saying they were "distasteful". The questions were:

3. How would you respond to the criticism that the Conservative Party in Hackney is a vehicle for an (ultra) orthodox Jewish political agenda rather than anything to do with the Conservative Party? (Must read for Hackney Politics)

4. Do you agree that (ultra) orthodox Jewish councillors rarely stand against each other in elections? Do you think it would matter if there was some kind of agreement within the Orthodox Jewish community for candidates not to stand against each other? Have you spoken to your Orthodox Jewish councillors about this issue? (Democracy Problem in Stamford Hill)

5. Last year Mayor Pipe accused Councillor Steinberger of putting the planning needs of the Orthodox Jewish community above the financial needs of the rest of the borough? (23,000 residents used as a bargaining chip, mayor claims) - are you concerned that this kind of prioritisation may be taking place with 2/3 of your councillors coming from the Charedi community?

ANDREW BOFF: Who is the criticism from? Nobody has said this to me. I'm not really one for conspiracy theories especially when it's directed against one section of the community. It's rather sinister. I've recently spoken out against the dangerous islamaphobic nonsense that Channel 4 and Jim Fitzpatrick MP have spread about the London Muslim Centre and these appear of the same ilk and I find them rather distasteful. Still, if I have to answer such questions - of the Conservative candidates in Hackney 11% are Orthodox Jewish 18% have a Caribbean/ African heritage, 4% are Turkish/Kurdish, 4% Polish and 2% Asian. The Conservative Party is a "vehicle" for all of us."

In Hackney the political opposition - the Conservatives and Lib Dems - are both linked to the borough's Ultra Orthodox Jewish community. The ideologies of both parties can appear submissive to an Ultra Orthodox Jewish agenda. Now the ideological inconsistencies look a bit raw as the community worst affected by the Con-Lib coalition's policies is the Ultra Orthodox Jewish one.

Meg Hillier, who was elected in 2005 after Hackney's darkest years, believes that ethnic groups in places like Hackney can be selfish - that that's how multiculturalism works. In the run up to this year's elections she spoke to Blood and Property:

Blood and Property: Do you expect communities to be self-interested for a multicultural system to work?

Meg Hillier: We have a party system in this country and people will look at what policies work for them. People don’t necessarily vote down ethnic lines. They wouldn’t necessarily vote for a Vietnamese councillor because they are Vietnamese or for a Turkish councillor because they were Turkish or African councillor because they were African. People tend to vote more for the party of their choice and I think that’s healthy.

Blood and Property: 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: That’s what politics is about.

Diane Abbott: homophobic cultures have "very fragile grasp of masculinity"

Why can't gay men hold hands in Hackney? In an interview with Pink News Diane Abbott blames rampant homophobic bullying in schools - fostered by a homophobic Jamaican reggae culture and some fundamentalist churches.

Pink News writes: Ms Abbott has been the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington since 1987, when she became the first black MP to be elected.

I tell her that I know gay men who live in Hackney – her constituency – who are too scared to hold hands with their boyfriends in public for fear of being attacked.

She's thoughtful and eloquent on this issue, seeing it as a problem perpetuated by men who have a "frail grasp of their own masculinity".

She says: "I think it's related to the issue of homophobic bullying [in schools]. In some ways, I think, homophobic bullying is more of an issue now than it was when I was at school. I can't recall people being bullied for their sexual preferences. Now it's a very common thing, to be honest, in city areas like this.

"And it's very oppressive for young men growing up and the way that they use the word gay as a term of abuse. It's all part and parcel of the same phenomenon. And I think we need to work more in schools, actually, to counter this type of thinking. I think kids, it's men, who have a very frail grasp of their own masculinity. They feel so threatened and challenged by sexual difference. but we need to challenge it."

She isn't afraid to link the issue with certain cultures, citing reggae artists from her parents' homeland in Jamaica who have "horrible homophobic lyrics".

She said: "You challenge them and they say, oh no, we don't have homosexuality here. But I go to Jamaica all the time, and there are gay people like everywhere else. I think it's interesting why people of certain cultures feel the need to be so radically homophobic and as I say, i think it's a matter of a very fragile grasp of masculinity.

"We need to challenge it in schools, primary and secondary schools, I think there's been a tendency in the past of teachers to shrug it off as teasing or bullying, but we need to take a much firmer line. We wouldn't allow people to be racially abused in schools. If you can deal with it in schools, you've got some chance of avoiding the sort of bullying and harassment that goes on in the street now."

On the issue of religious rights and gay equality, she contends that religious objections to issues such as civil partnerships and gay marriage are generally a "cover for homophobia".

Could Columnist face lynch mob over Stamford Hill rant?

This article in the Independent appears to have started a war of words about racism and anti-semitism. This article in the Independent describes who has joined in.

Christina Patterson, who wrote the offending piece, said things like: "When I moved to Stamford Hill, 12 years ago, I didn't realise that goyim were about as welcome in the Hasidic Jewish shops as Martin Luther King at a Klu Klux Klan convention."

The second article said: "Jewish columnists rounded on Patterson in unison with Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, accusing her of "unrelenting unadulterated anti-Jewish bigotry". Miriam Shaviv, one of the paper's most prolific columnists, waded in with her own response to the article which she said was "one of the ugliest, most vile pieces ever published in the British press."

Meanwhile, the Jewish chronicle's own columnists aren't always positive about the ultra-orthodox community: "Must read for Hackney politics" or this debate between Geoffrey Alderman and Abraham Pinter.

No doubt this is a sensationalist point, but should Patterson worry for her own safety? The community's critics haven't always had an easy ride: like this Rabbi who was chased out of Stamford Hill by a 200-strong lynch mob in 2008 (as reported in the Jewish Chronicle)

Andrew Neil: Isn't that a racist remark? Diane Abbott: I've got nothing more to say.

In her return to the This Week sofa Diane Abbott faced some justifiably harsh questions from Andrew Neil. On Taxi bills she was relaxed, on Trident she was relieved, on her comments about West Indian mums she was extremely uncomfortable. She said "I've got nothing more to say" several times.

She made the decision about sending her son to a fee paying school back in 2003. Back then she told This Week that her constituents would understand her decision - "particularly black mothers who know the position I'm in" - does that mean that she's always had this view about West Indian mothers?

Diane Abbott plays dodgy race card - would she let her son carry a knife?

In an interview with the Mirror, Diane Abbott suggested that West Indian mothers fight harder for their children than mothers from other cultures - and that this was why she sent her son to private school.

Her interviewer, Brian Reade commented in the piece: "I struggle with her defence that it’s a West Indian mum thing. As though non-Caribbean mothers don’t face the same problems in inner-city schools and wouldn’t fight to the death for their sons."

Reade had asked her why politicians from the left were so upset by her decision to send her son to a private school.

Diane Abbott: "Yes, but they didn’t understand me. I’m a West Indian mum and West Indian mums will go to the wall for their children.

It’s that kind of atavistic streak that we have. I can see them in the market on a Saturday morning. A kind of ‘touch my children and we’ll turn quite difficult’.

Interestingly, until now, it’s the one thing that’s got me the most positive response from black women locally. They would come up to me and shake my hand. Because ultimately in their eyes it’s about doing the right thing for their children. But obviously people from other cultures didn’t see it that way at all."

So would Diane revise this comment from a speech she made earlier this year: "I was very shocked by one parent whom I saw at an advice surgery. A young boy came in and said to me that he was in trouble for carrying a knife at school. He told me that he had carried it to defend himself and his mother said, "Yes, he did carry it to defend himself and I allowed him to carry it to school to defend himself".

She went on to say: "Parents should know that there can be no circumstances in which they should collude with their child's taking a knife to school and I said that to that mother."

But do Diane's recent comments mean that she really would understand if it was her son defending himself? Or that she would understand if the mother was West Indian?

Meanwhile her past comments about giving parents any power in the state school system have been unsympathetic - as if the instincts of every parent should be distrusted as selfish and destructive to other children.

In a 2006 NASUWT-sponsored paper (Academy schools: case unproven) Diane said: "... We know what parent power means in London. In practice, it means giving power to small groups of white middle-class parents, or if not to capture by one ethnic group as opposed to another, the best organised. Actually, if you want to empower the breadth of the parent body in inner-city areas you have to look to the local education authority."

Below is a longer excerpt from the 2006 report to provide some context. It also seems to suggest that leaders of London's black communities may not have provided black parents with reasonable solutions to schooling problems:

Page 38: Diane Abbott, the Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, (whose lack of confidence in her local comprehensive schools was expressed in her decision to send her own son to the private City of London School) has led a movement to improve secondary education for Black children. With the support of the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, she has organised a series of ‘London Schools and the Black Child’ conferences which have produced a range of proposals to tackle the problem of underachievement by Black boys in particular. Among the sessions at the 2003 conference was one focusing on ‘Alternative Community Schools for African-Caribbean children’. Yet, despite attracting 200 participants to the session (there are in total 3,000 names on the database maintained by the conference organisers), the conference report reveals that the number of parents interested in taking it further was small: ‘over 40 participants signed up for follow-up action towards setting up and running their own schools’ (Mayor of London, 2003). The fact that the large majority even of those who attended the session did not show interest in such follow-up suggests that, while the problems of underachievement addressed by the conference are beyond dispute, the idea of tackling it by setting up independent schools for Black children attracts much less support.

Moreover, when it is proposed, the idea attracts robust opposition from within the Black community. When the London Mayor’s advisor, Lee Jasper, suggested that Black parents should group together to win state finance to set up separate schools, others, such as Tony Sewell, strongly opposed the idea. Moreover, former OFSTED chief David Bell warned that nation building and citizenship in Britain could be undermined by the approach taken by some existing independent faith schools. There is much more support for supplementary schools, run independently on Saturdays and after the normal school day, but precisely as supplements rather than replacements to existing provision. The ‘London Schools and the Black Child’ conferences have also revealed much stronger support for improving existing schools in various ways, to tackle what is seen as their institutional racism, than for replacing them. Diane Abbott herself insists there is no single solution to the problem, and highlights the point by both urging that there should be more Black leadership of schools and pointing to the successes of Sir Michael Kilshaw (should be Wilshaw), who is not Black, in raising the attainment of Black boys. Sir Michael is now principal of Hackney’s first academy, Mossbourne, but was previously headteacher of a Catholic comprehensive school in another East London borough, Newham. ‘After an article I wrote in The Observersome years ago, Michael Kilshaw (Wilshaw) wrote to me and said you ought to come to my school and see what I do about it,’ Abbott recalls. She took up the offer, and found a school with an ‘extraordinary atmosphere’ of calm and order. ‘It wasn’t a Black school as such but it was in Newham and it was 95 per cent Black and it got such good results that the Government used it as an example of what to do about Black boys,’ Abbott says. Key measures in the successful approach had been individual student targets, a system of after-school homework clubs and well-organised academic mentoring.

Page 39: Sir Michael has taken such techniques to Mossbourne, and yet Diane Abbott comments: ‘The trouble with the academies is that, popular as they are and supportive as I am of Mossbourne, there is a danger that they take us back to that past. All the research shows that if you introduce an element of selection, working-class children will lose out. If you have a borough like Hackney and have four academies and four wonderful heads there will still be a residue of children and I know what those children will look like.’ She adds: ‘We know what parent power means in London. In practice, it means giving power to small groups of white middle-class parents, or if not to capture by one ethnic group as opposed to another, the best organised. Actually, if you want to empower the breadth of the parent body in inner-city areas you have to look to the local education authority.’ In a number of cases, parents groups struggling with insufficient local school places have had to take different routes in efforts to exercise power in the system, as the case studies below illustrate...

Pipe: too much fuss over white middle-class victims

Last week Jules Pipe was criticised for his comments about the London Fields Shooting. ("Despite this very worrying incident, hundreds of people were able to enjoy the event in London Fields safely and without interruption.”)

Criticism of his comments (Hackney Citizen) (and Hackney Hive) led to a revision in which he said he was "deeply concerned" by the incident.

But did he mean it?

On Friday May 28, nearly a week later, the Guardian claimed that Pipe: "suggested the shock and indignation at the shooting stemmed in part from the background of the victim, who is white." (According to the Hackney Gazette the victim is "of Lebanese origin")

Pipe's actual quote was: "You can almost grade the coverage and shock that society gives to these events," he said. "If a victim was a white, middle-class passer-by, it is when it would be on the front page of a tabloid."

Will Hackney residents get the impression (again) that the Mayor's balanced views are based on not caring about black or white victims in equal measure?

Also could his observation about unbalanced "coverage" in favour of white people be just as easily aimed at his own Hackney Labour group? At a glance 38 out of his 50 Labour councillors appear to be white with British sounding names ranging from Akehurst - Webb meaning 76% of the Hackney Labour group is White British when it should be nearer 48%.

Hackney Council's Key Facts and Figures says that 61.8% of Hackney residents are various versions of white. But, in a small note at the bottom, it says that white categories include Stamford Hill's ultra-orthodox Jewish Community (7%) and the Turkish Community (6%) which, between them, make up 13% of the borough's population (this estimate is higher still in the Council's 2008 study: Estimating and Profiling the Population of Hackney ). That means, to be representative of the borough, the Hackney Labour Group should be around 48% white British. Judging by the names and appearance of councillors (a dangerous thing to do), it looks as if the Hackney Labour group is 76% white British... that's not including the white Mayor.

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)

Abraham Pinter responds to Geoffrey Alderman

Abraham Pinter has responded to points raised by Geoffrey Alderman in Stop worrying and learn to love race politics. In the piece Alderman says that Hackney politics are driven by religion and ethnicity, not class, as elsewhere in the UK.

Pinter says that Alderman is looking at the Hackney Jewish community as an outsider and is both out of date and out of touch.

COMMUNAL VOTING:

Perhaps the most contentious issue is whether the ultra-orthodox Jewish community only votes for candidates from within its own community.

Pinter does not agree that this issue is described correctly by Alderman and says that both of their views will be put to the test on May 6th in the Seven Sisters ward in Haringey.

Pinter said that the Conservative party had come close to defeating Labour in the ward last year. He believes that this was due to 90% of ultra-orthodox Jewish voters supporting the Conservative Party which happened to be the only party fielding an ultra-orthodox candidate. He also said that this, combined with growth in the ultra-orthodox community over that short period, should point to a success for the Conservatives.

But he said that Labour would retain the seat because of the work done by the party to improve relations with the community – particularly over planning issues.

“The Labour Party took seriously what happened and they’ve taken steps to recognise the needs of the community.”

He said: “It is a test but I am confident. We know what goes on in the community because we are a school and we get a lot of feed back.”

If Labour retains the seat it would, he believes, disprove some of Alderman's claims. The victory would be achieved despite the Labour party having no representative from within the ultra-orthodox Jewish community, while the Conservatives do.

However he did acknowledge that it is common within the community to vote for a recognisable name, but he said that if a non-Charedi candidate could prove that he or she had the community’s interests at heart, they would be supported. He said that the Labour Party in Haringey had achieved this.

THE ROLE OF WOMEN:

Pinter said that Alderman was out of touch on the role of women in the community. One of the organisation that Alderman talks about is Agudas Israel and Pinter points out that its chief executive of Agudas Israel Housing Association is Ita Symons.

He said that Symons was one of the most powerful people in the community. As a Labour supporter he said he didn't think the accolade of the Jewish community's Margaret Thatcher was a compliment, but said that the comparison had been made.

Pinter also pointed to Interlink which he said may now be a more powerful organisation: “Interlink is one of the most powerful organisations in the community and it is politically run by women. He pointed to a recent article in the Jewish Chronicle: Come on, women, lets get equal."

He said that Bella Sharer standing in the Brownswood ward in Hackney would only be a novelty if she won. He said it was common practice for wives to stand as paper candidates in seats they have no chance of winning. Unlike Ian Sharer, he does not believe the Lib Dems have much chance in Brownswood.

IS THIS A RACIST COMMUNITY?

One of the issues raised by Geoffrey Alderman in Stop worrying and learn to love race politics referred to an article written in the Jewish Tribune back in 1978. Alderman said that the article had demonstrated a set of anti-black attitudes that still exist in the community, but which are not published because of the reaction from beyond the community.

But Pinter said the author of the article had been an older member of the community and that the sentiment had been that Jews should not fight battles on behalf of the black community – or they all faced the risks of a backlash.

He said that there were a number of the problems with making an argument like Alderman’s.

Pinter pointed to his own attitudes at the time: “The way I grew up, when I was an 18-year-old - 45 years ago - when I saw a successful black person, I always felt myself to have positive views, as in "isn’t it wonderful that a black person can do well here" now I think that this view might be racist because it is patronising. But that’s the way it was back then."

He said that views of society at large had changed and they had also changed in Hackney's ultra orthodox Jewish community.

He said: "I think it's worth mentioning that the Hamodia is now the main newspaper read by the community and not the Jewish Tribune, but as I said Alderman is an Historian."

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.

BNP to stand in Hackney Mayoral elections this year

According to this website - www.londonpatriot.org - the BNP is aiming to find a candidate to stand in Hackney's Mayoral elections 2010.

The site is not officially BNP. In its "about us" section it says: "We are an independent site for London nationalists. We fully support and will promote the British National Party as we believe it is the only serious vehicle for the advancement of British Nationalism. However, any opinions expressed in posts or comments are those of the authors and not necessarily that of the British National Party."

I couldn't find any mention of the plan to stand in Hackney on the BNP's main website and I don't know if the BNP often stand in Hackney elections either.

According to Londonpatriot, a BNP spokesperson said the party needed money and candidates.

Al Sharpton visits Hackney Schools: a good idea?

A press release from Operation Black Vote says Al Sharpton will be visiting schools in Hackney this week.

Sharpton, civil rights activist and politician, is not seen by everyone as a positive or peaceful force.

Some blame him for the deterioration of race relations in the US. In 1991 Sharpton said: "If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house" - that was in the run up to the bloody Crown Heights riots which pitted the black and Jewish communities against each other.

All of this stuff resurfaced last year when right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal condemning Sharpton. Sharpton threatened to sue Limbaugh but the story is still on the WSJ website.

In its press release OBV director Simon Woolley said that there was no greater figure to awake the “sleeping giant” of the Black vote than Sharpton.

OBV also said Sharpton would hold a reception with Black MPs and church leaders, and visit schools in Hackney and Lewisham: "Sharpton’s trip is aimed at inspiring the UK’s Black communities to get involved in politics and make their voices heard ahead of the forthcoming general election."

No one was in the Operation Black Vote (OBV) offices on Friday to say whether or not Sharpton's Hackney schools visit is still going ahead.

Candidate 8: Labour promotes ghettoisation

Candidate 8: Jonathan Fryer, Lib Dem

Jonathan Fryer lives in Tower Hamlets but he said that Hackney appears to be a happier place. The reason is because different communities in the borough interact with each other. But he doesn’t believe this happiness has much to do with Labour Party policies, which he thinks encourage ghettoisation.

Candidate 8 described his home borough as “an odd place” where the poor and the rich, the large communities of white British and Bangladeshi exist side-by-side, but their paths rarely cross.

He said: “Hackney seems to be a happier place. There’s much more interaction in Hackney. In Tower Hamlets there’s a bit of a problem with the community not having much interaction, they don’t have the level of contact they do here.”

He was critical of the Labour approach to race relations: “The way that the Labour Party sees people in class terms and in groups and doesn’t understand that while there are group identities and community identities, if you deal with people entirely as groups and de-personalise them it can be quite negative."

Fryer said that the focus on groups resulted in "ghettoisation" but he said he believed that Britain was a leader in Europe when it came to community cohesion. He said that while Labour figures like former Bethnal Green and Bow MP, Oona King, had been working on this issue, the Labour approach was flawed.

I asked him how bad he thinks the financial crisis will it get?

“I have a lot to do with Vince Cable. He believes that, in the short-term, it is going to get very bad. He saw this crisis years ago and got barracked in the house of commons as a doom and gloom merchant.

Fryer said that there was not a great deal of faith in the government talking about “green shoots” of recovery.

But he said: “Part of it is rebuilding confidence. When people are worried about the possibility of unemployment or generally not confident they’re not spending the markets are getting less and then they start closing down. We don’t have to run far from where we are now to see shops closing down and it’s not always because people haven’t got money, they just aren’t spending it.

I asked how people in Hackney could not be spending if this is one of the poorest boroughs in the country – and they can’t afford not to spend it. So any change in spending won’t be as great as it is in richer areas?

He said: “To a certain extent people in Hackney are poor but they will have been stashing some money away. If they’re west Indian, then it’ll be for a trip back to Jamaica, or for their kids and they’re not spending it, they’re saving it. It would be interesting to know to what extent this is happening. It’s depressing when you see accounts of burglaries and people saying they had £3000 or so in cash stolen from them.”

He said one of the key issues for Hackney was transport: “Clearly there are big transport problems and I think that some of the things we were promised won’t happen and as long as Hackney isn’t plugged into the underground system it is going to miss out.”

I asked him what sort of relationship he would have with MPs?

“Here in Hackney it is Labour. MPs have to have a good working relationship with their MEP to know where EU funding would be possible.” He said that ten years ago MEPs couldn’t go into the House of Commons except by the same route as normal members of the public which he said was “grotesque” but while this had improved, there needs to be far more contact between MPs and MEPS.

Do you eventually want to be a normal MP?

I don’t want to be an MP. An MEP is the height of my ambition.

One of his main hobby horses is that Britain is not educating its children to be European: “The government scrapped learning a second language from the age of 14 a few years ago. And British kids are competing against kids in Germany where they speak 2-3 languages.

I asked if this meant that boroughs like Hackney, which have hundreds of languages, might be seen as a resource?

“One relevant thing is that with Turkish, it is a marginal language in the EU (Cyprus is a member but not north Cyprus). Turkey is very likely to become a member in 10-15 years. I think it would be useful to say to Turkish families here to make sure they keep their language skills because it is going to be very useful and British born ethnic Turks will have a really strong position in the Europe of the future.”