I hear the governing body of American football IAFA is demanding that they merge with and adopt the name of global football’s governing body FIFA.

They have told FIFA president Sepp Blatter that they too play football, that theirs too is a healthy outdoor team sport, that their supporters – while admittedly a small global minority restricted to North America – are just as passionate about their game, and that an IAFA name-change and merger with FIFA would give global recognition to American football and show the world it is exactly the same as conventional football.

Politicians and policy-makers at FIFA are sometimes corrupt, frequently foolish and certainly weak enough to be swayed by the decibel level of the noise accompanying the American demands.

Ordinary football supporters on terraces around the world know that the two games are different. But the Americans say they will just have to get over it.

I made my first visit to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan last month and outside Lahore I met Jesus.

That is, I met with Christ’s compassionate heart and caring hands in the ministry of Pakistani Christians amongst the poorest, most oppressed of their neighbours, the brick kiln people.

My colleagues and I stayed in Youhanabad, the Christian-majority area of Lahore – the largest slum in Asia I was told – where the poverty and deprivation were bad enough. The filth, the free-flowing sewage and the sheer physical brutality of the area were depressing, and relieved only by the cheery welcome and genuine warmth of the believers.

But if Youhanabad was depressing, the dry bleak brick kilns outside Lahore were distressing. There whole families including children as young as six spend all day outdoors – in summer the temperature can rise to an unbearable 45 degrees or more – trying to make their target number of bricks in order to pay off loans from the brick kiln owners. They are entirely in the owners’ unregulated hands. They live on the desolate sites in crumbling fly-blown cattle sheds, are usually illiterate, receive no reliable or independent verification of how much they owe, and may be forced to stay on the brick kilns into a second or third generation as they have no way of knowing if or when their debt has been repaid.

The first couple we met had nine daughters all working all hours every day by crouching down and shovelling brick clay into moulds with their bare hands. It’s pitiless mind-numbing shoulder-wrenching work. The next family were doing the same. They had taken a loan out from the kiln owner to pay for the parents’ medical expenses following a road accident. They could neither read nor write, had no idea how much of the loan was outstanding, and in practice could be forced to remain on the brick kilns for a lifetime paying off the debt.

In polite circles this is called bonded labour. In fact they are simply slaves.

I felt anger rising in me. And, reminded of the UK’s Factory Acts, Chimney Sweepers Act and other worker-welfare legislation pioneered by ‘Poor Man’s Earl’ Lord Shaftesbury and 19th century social reformers, I naively asked our Pakistani hosts whether authorities or activists ever intervene. “No. Nothing is done. There’s too much corruption at all levels,” they explained quietly. There’s also no political will for change. I looked across at two small boys, six and ten, turning over endless rows of bricks to dry in the hot sun and clenched my fists…

But soon I found that my hosts were too reticent. They themselves are intervening brilliantly.

They took us to a row of hovels that pass for homes where we were introduced to a group of girls at a Sunday school that takes place any and all days of the week. Like a normal English church Sunday school, the girls learn Bible stories and how to worship and pray. But they also learn how to read and write in Urdu and English, and elementary Maths too.

And, most amazingly in this male-dominated Islamic country where girls usually are bottom of the social pile, they are taught to sew, crochet and embroider so that, as our hosts explained, they can set up their own small businesses and thereby finance their way out of the brick kilns. “It’s economic empowerment,” smiled the teachers, self-consciously employing western jargon.

And there was more. A few days later we assembled at a Lahore church with 300 girls, all transported by bus from brick kilns around the city. It was the annual Graduation Day organised by our hosts, where the nimble-fingered efforts of the girls were honoured and 104 of them stepped up to receive a graduation certificate and their own brand-new Victorian-style hand-powered sewing machine (here). The smiles, the laughter, the tears of joy, the prayers and hymn-singing, the varied colours of the girls’ saris and shalwar kameez, the scent from the garlands of rich red roses – it was an astonishing and emotional event.

While in Pakistan I enjoyed other astonishing occasions too. I spent an hour with a young man who had been an Islamic fundamentalist and member of the banned militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba that gained global notoriety by their 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai (here). One night he met Jesus Christ in a dream, read some verses from an available New Testament and converted to Christianity. His wife promptly left him. Then she herself had a dream about Jesus and returned to her husband a Christian too. They had to leave their home in the fundamentalist stronghold of Faisalabad and now live elsewhere in Pakistan with their four young children.

We also visited Gojra where tragically in August 2009 a mob of Muslims slaughtered eight Christians, injured eighteen and destroyed over 100 homes (here). The courageous Christians are rebuilding their lives and homes despite the prevalent fear of further attacks – we met one young man who had been shot in the street by a Muslim assailant just a month before our visit.

But it was the work of the Pakistani believers in the brick kilns that stuck with me most. If Jesus Christ visited Pakistan in person today, that’s exactly where he would go – amongst the poorest and most oppressed. It’s amongst them first that he would preach the gospel, heal the sick and set the slaves free.

But of course that is what he’s doing by his Spirit anyway through the stunning work of his Pakistani followers. They are light in a very dark place.

I returned to London humbled and inspired.

Top of my manifesto when I stood for London Mayor in 2008 was the promotion of “marriage and stable family as a long-term solution to youth crime, educational underachievement and child poverty.”

Top of my manifesto when I stood for Newham Mayor in 2006 was the promotion of “marriage-based family and parental responsibility – for our children’s sake.”

An MP told me a few years ago that it was politically impossible to mention the M word in the House of Commons during the Blair years as an argument in favour of marriage was immediately vilified as an attack on vulnerable single mums.

Life has moved on, and today the defence of conventional marriage is vilified as a homophobic attack on gays and lesbians. That’s nonsense of course, but it’s notable that the whole out-of-touch London political elite – all three party leaders and all four main candidates for London mayor – have swallowed wholesale and undiscerningly the Stonewall claptrap that gay marriage is about equality.

So I’m doing my bit and sending out this email:

“There is a war going on at the heart of the nation. The political establishment, having fragmented our strong rich and cohesive Christianised culture by promoting corrosive relativism and silo multiculturalism, is now planning to fracture the bedrock social ideal of marriage as a life-long union of a man and a woman.

‘Gay marriage’ is not a human rights or equalities issue as civil partnerships fulfil those requirements. Rather it’s a deep cultural and ideological – even civilisational – war over a word, a war declared unilaterally by the power-hungry intolerant and insatiable Stonewall Gaystapo et al.

Conventional marriage was “ordained for the procreation of children” and is easily the most stable, healthy and committed domestic environment in which to bring up the next generation, our future. On the other hand and by definition, gay marriage cannot be about procreation – nor about nurturing the next generation.

Rather gay relationships are a sexual and generational dead-end which of course people should be free to choose if they wish. But they should not be used to redefine and undermine society’s time-tested fundamental institution of marriage.

Furthermore, once gay marriage is conceded to the miniscule minority who will actually tie the gay knot, there is logically no argument against the legalisation of Islamic polygamous marriage for which there is already significant demand in the UK. Then, logically, what’s to stop group marriage and even marriage to other mammals? All bets and brakes are off.

Women’s rights campaigners never argued that women should have the right to be called ‘men’. But gay campaigners insist on the right to be called ‘married’. They are clearly not on about claiming equal rights. They are campaigning to capture someone else’s word and idea. It’s an ideological battle pure and simple. And it’s at the heart of our national culture and a vital key to our future.

Please urgently sign the petition at the Coalition For Marriage website: www.C4M.org.uk

 Please also forward this to your friends and contacts. Many thanks, Alan”

It’s encouraging that, to date, over 400,000 people have signed the petition (here). There’s a grassroots groundswell against redefining marriage but, guess what? The political establishment, in awe of London’s left-leaning and loaded luvvy liberal elite, aren’t yet listening.

We sat in the back of a 4X4 discussing sectarian violence in Nigeria while we toured dirt-poor villages outside Jos, Plateau State, in the central belt of the country. He was the Nigeria researcher at the Washington office of international NGO Human Rights Watch and I was making my second visit to Jos.

My previous visit in November 2010 (here) had been so disturbing that I pulled together a small group of London-based Nigerians and we formed LoveJos (here), an organisation aimed at increasing awareness of the deteriorating situation in Jos and Plateau State amongst the UK Nigerian diaspora. We staffed an information stall at the massive Festival of Life at ExCel in Docklands (here) in April, held a conference in September and a vigil outside the Nigerian High Commission in January.

So I went back last month to assess the latest situation and spent a day visiting outlying Christian villages that had been attacked by Fulani Muslim settlers. In one we met a young man who lost all his family. We examined the bullet holes in the mud-brick and corrugated-iron huts that serve as homes, and paid our respects at the earthen graves out the back where he’d buried his family.

In another we sat in the shade with 20 villagers while in their Berom tribal language they quietly recounted a horrific Fulani assault on their community one night. A boy still has a bullet lodged in his body and women showed us their appalling machete wounds. A number of villagers died during the attack and the grief and mourning continues unabated for the rest…

During our back-of-the-car discussion it became clear that my HRW companion made no moral or political distinction between Muslim and Christian violence. He drew attention to Christian attacks on Muslims and argued that for virtually every instance of Muslim violence he could point to comparable Christian attacks. He made a simple mathematical equivalence between the two.

His neutrality is right in part of course. All sectarian violence is to be deplored wherever it comes from. And certainly Christians have killed and maimed Muslims, occasionally in substantial numbers.

Furthermore (he didn’t mention this naturally) insofar as Christians participated in retaliation attacks rather than self-defence they denied some of the central tenets of their faith. Forgiveness, loving your enemy and leaving ultimate justice and judgement to God – these are vital distinctives that Christianity offers the world, for “Vengeance is mine,” says the Lord.

Also the New Testament has no concept comparable to Islam’s jihad or war in the cause of Allah so that the Crusades, for instance, while plausible on straight geopolitical grounds, were an unacceptable religious aberration when carried out in Christ’s name. Jesus doesn’t do war; the only violence known to him was that which was done to him.

But I was puzzled at my companion’s detached mathematical equivalence for, as someone said, context is everything. And the dominating issue which dramatically changed the context in north and central Nigeria is the abrupt imposition of Sharia law by local Muslim authorities and traditional leaders in twelve northern states in 1999/2000, and the consequent dhimmi (second-class) status of non-Muslim minorities. Straightaway religious identity came to predominate, religious differences were highlighted, and the major Nigerian fault-line became that between the Muslim-majority north and the chiefly Christian south. It was Nigeria’s political 9/11, a constitutional earthquake that many predict will lead eventually to the Sudan-style breakup of the nation.

Minorities in the north protested (here) but to no avail. And as Nigerian Islam continued its increasingly assertive path, suspicion grew that there were further expansionist Islamic aims and that neighbouring states like the predominantly Christian Plateau State were to be targeted for similar Islamification. The explosion of violence and mass slaughter following an incident outside a mosque in the Congo-Russia area of Jos, Plateau’s capital, on 7th September 2001 showed how tense inter-faith relations had become. Other violent sectarian crises followed in the city and its surrounds in 2004, 2008 and 2010 (here).

Formed two years after Sharia law was instituted, nurtured in this assertive and increasingly zealous Islamic atmosphere and fuelled also by poverty, unemployment and corruption, the violent Islamist group Boko Haram burst onto the national scene in 2009 with attacks on the security forces in northeast Nigeria. Probably affiliated with Al Qaeda and supported by some local Muslim leaders (here), their aim is to create chaos, fear and paralysis in order to further establish Sharia government.

Suspicion of Islamic expansionism was vindicated when Boko Haram declared recently they intend to force another seven states including Plateau State to embrace Sharia law, and Jos as Plateau’s capital became a target for their deadly campaign. While I was in the city in February they threatened an attack and since I returned home they have undertaken two suicide bombings at city-centre churches (here) and (here).

Sectarian reprisal attacks are never acceptable, especially by Christians. But there is a moral difference between offensive and defensive violence – I met a Jos pastor who legitimately reached for a gun when he saw a baying mob coming down the road towards his home and church.

So in the light of the aggressive and fundamentalist Islamic darkness descending from the north, my companion was plain wrong to sweep all Plateau State’s Muslim and Christian violence together as equivalent. Context and back-drop are indeed everything.

“Benedic, Domine, dona Tua in usum nostrum, et nos in servitium Tuum, per Iesum Christu, Dominum nostrum. Amen.”

I was back at the Oxford Union last week in the snow, this time to oppose the motion ‘This House believes that the dividing line between religion and politics should shine brightly’. We were at the formal black-tie pre-debate dinner and the Union President, a friendly and confident young woman called Lauren, had called us all to stand while she prayed the traditional Latin grace. (Translated, it read “Bless, O Lord, us with Your gifts and us in Your service, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.”)

I struggled to offer our invocation to the Almighty as I was smiling inwardly at the irony. Attending the dinner and subsequently proposing the motion in the debate were Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, Lord Warner of Brockley, chair of the Parliamentary Humanist Group, and Dr Peter Cave, chair of Humanist Philosophers of Great Britain – all colleagues and, apparently, each an avowed non-praying atheist.

For me the irony was double and delicious as I knew that the London-based National Secular Society was in the process of hauling little Bideford Town Council (16 councillors for a population of 14,000 in sleepy north Devon) through the courts over their insistence that the council holds prayers at the beginning of their municipal meetings. Properly elected Bideford councillors had democratically voted twice to keep council prayers, but that wasn’t enough for the militant secularists at NSS, represented at the dinner and in the debate of course by the amiable and courteous Keith Porteous Wood. What, I wondered, is going through his mind as the President called us publicly to pray – an overtly religious act in that formative hot-house for thrusting young politicians and future prime ministers (here). Obviously no brightly shining dividing line there.

Next day as I returned to London the news came out that NSS had won their case in the High Court. However, although their argument rested on three points – that the prayers were discriminatory against atheist councillors, that the prayers were a breach of human rights laws, and that the council had no lawful authority to hold prayers as part of its formal meetings – it was notable that Mr Justice Ouseley rejected the first two claims about discrimination and human rights and only upheld the third more minor legal/technical one.

Before the High Court ruling the Guardian’s assistant editor Michael White had argued that local communities “should surely be allowed to sort out their own arrangements without the help of the NSS complaining that… human rights have been infringed” (here).

And Equalities & Human Rights chief Trevor Phillips said that he “dropped his coffee” when he heard Keith Porteous Wood saying on the radio that he wanted to use the Human Rights Act to prosecute councillors in Devon. Phillips reckoned the move was “nonsense on stilts” (here).

And in the event, while NSS celebrated their win on the minor technical point, they lost the major human rights and discrimination cases (which, apparently, they cannot appeal as they won the other) and have been exposed as proponents of a hard-faced small-minded illiberal secular fundamentalism that acts against free choice and local democracy. And on the way they’ve stirred up furious controversy and helpful public debate.

Thus they’ve lost the plot, scored an own goal and Communities & Local Government minister Eric Pickles has promised to rub their noses in it by using new localism powers to make council prayers legal again.

Explaining why, he said yesterday: “The High Court judgment has far wider significance than just the municipal agenda of Bideford Town Council.

“By effectively reversing that illiberal ruling, we are striking a blow for localism over central interference, for freedom to worship over intolerant secularism, for Parliamentary sovereignty over judicial activism, and for long-standing British liberties over modern-day political correctness.

“Last week’s case should be seen as a wake-up call. For too long, the public sector has been used to marginalise and attack faith in public life, undermining the very foundations of the British nation. But this week, the tables have been turned” (here).

Exactly right Eric. We owe you a curry (here). And to cap it all diminutive Bideford Town Council voted two days ago to appeal the High Court ruling (here).

Thankfully the issue has legs and won’t go away quietly. Someone, it seems, has been praying…

If you followed November’s synthetic furore over my October Church of England Newspaper article (here) about the bully-boy tactics of the UK’s gay leadership – I borrowed gay journalist Johann Hari’s apt term ‘Gaystapo’ to describe them – you may be interested in a recent statement by the newspaper’s Chair of Trustees:

“In October 2011, the Church of England Newspaper published an article by Alan Craig entitled “Confronting the Gaystapo”. The article was clearly identified as a personal opinion by a named individual. Its theme was that the gay rights lobby uses aggressive methods to advance its cause and should be confronted.

“The newspaper is a forum for informed debate on matters of Christian interest, of which gay rights is one. There is no topic that we regard as “too hot” for us to debate. In the following edition, the newspaper published responses taking a different view. The overall editorial policy of the newspaper is determined by a board of trustees of which I am the chairman.

“With the benefit of hindsight, it would have been better had Alan Craig’s article been written more gently and if he had avoided references to Nazism. However, even with that caveat, both his article and the subsequent responses are within the scope of the editorial policy of this newspaper.

“Certain members and supporters of the gay lobby responded vigorously, and even reported the newspaper to the police who have taken no action. By doing so, they have added credence to the main thesis of Alan Craig’s article.

“In the course of dealing with this organised agitation, a statement was made by the newspaper to one reader that appears to have gained some currency.

“Again with hindsight, we can see that this statement could be read as questioning Alan Craig’s status as a Christian, and suggesting that the newspaper supports gay marriage. It was not the intention of the editor to convey any such impression. For the avoidance of doubt, the trustees affirm that the newspaper does not support gay marriage. We regard Alan Craig, and those in the church who agree or disagree with his views, as brother Christians.

“We further acknowledge that Christians do disagree on many issues. These are best addressed by temperate debate.”

Three things arise from the statement:

First, it’s now clear that the newspaper does not support gay marriage. My article drew attention to how churches across the spectrum are united against David Cameron’s shocking showboating proposal at the Tory Party conference, and it’s good that CEN has reaffirmed it follows the mainstream Christian line even under heavy pressure from gay activists.

Second, predictably, there was no police action over the article and threats of legal action proved hollow. That is because there was no hate speech in my piece. It was rational, reasonable and evidence-based, and drew an important distinction between the ordinary gay-in-the-street and the ambitious vindictive gay lobby leadership who are fair game for criticism.

Third, the statement draws attention to the vigorous response and “organised agitation” of the gay lobby which has “added credence to the main thesis of Alan Craig’s article”.

That’s the key point. Ben Summerskill’s reaction in the Guardian (here) to my article beautifully illustrated the ugly but sophisticated bully-boy tactics of Stonewall and other gay activist organisations. “We are sure that many of the paper’s advertisers, such as the University of Sheffield, will be deeply disturbed to read this crass and homophobic article,” he opined ominously to religious affairs correspondent Riazat Butt who dutifully published his words.

In other words, more bluntly, he said “Jump”.

“How high?” asked Sheffield’s academic authorities meekly as the next day they cancelled their CEN advertising (here). Thereby they raised severe doubts about freedom of speech at “one of the UK’s leading universities” (here) and demonstrated themselves unwilling to defend our democratic liberties.

So Ben Summerskill walked willingly into the controversy surrounding my article and unerringly validated my point about the illiberal and intimidatory nature of much of today’s gay activism. The Gaystapo are militant, politically powerful and sweeping all before them.

The rise of gay neo-fascism needs urgently to be confronted.

A colleague warned me tersely, “Beware; SOAS ISoc is full of radicals.”

I’d been invited to speak last Friday to the Islamic Society at the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS – the “world’s leading centre” for the study of subjects relating to Asia, Africa and the Middle East (here)) in central London, and he was concerned I was walking into a lions’ den full of bearded Islamic fundamentalists.

I didn’t mind if I was, but in the event the ISoc members were friendly guys who, if they had beards at all, they were more designer stubble than fist-length.

They invited me to talk about “What I would like Muslims to know about Christianity”. The ISoc organisers had outsourced the Islamic side of the discussion to an outfit called Muslim Debate Initiative (here) whose leading light, Sami Zaatari, was similarly asked to tell the meeting what he would like Christians to know about Islam.

I looked forward to the opportunity to talk full-length about Truth, Love and Jesus Christ – but I was also fascinated by Sami’s conundrum. I’ve engaged with MDI before, having debated in the past with both Sami – who is courteous and serious-minded – and Abdullah al Andalusi and having crossed swords with English convert Paul Williams when, nauseatingly, he salivated on his blog about the “hot-topic” of executing apostates (here). Suddenly exposed and embarrassed by his adopted Islamic morality, he was forced to take down his post.

MDI is seen as a fundamentalist organisation by progressive Muslims and certainly MDI’s usual debating tactics are taken from the confrontational ‘attack-is-the-best-form-of-defence’ school. They prefer to critique the beliefs of opponents (Christians, atheists or anyone else) than to justify Islam. Although limited, there’s nothing wrong with that method during formal debates where part of the skill is to not only persuade the audience of the strength of your own position but also to highlight the weakness of your opponent’s.

But ISoc’s meeting on Friday was not a debate. Rather, the organisers made clear, Sami and I were each to be given 25 minutes to explain our respective faiths and then we were simply to answer questions from the audience. Sami was not to talk about Christianity and I wouldn’t discuss Islam.

This, I predicted to friends, would be a problem for him. Sami is an arch-exponent of the MDI attack-dog approach; he’s never more comfortable than when he is attempting to stick the knife into Christianity. Yet SOAS ISoc was limiting him to one-sidedly promoting Islam.

And he had another problem: in its fundamentalist form Islam is a parasitical religion – like a tick on a dog but more so. It doesn’t have the spiritual, moral or intellectual capacity to stand alone and subsist by itself. Rather it has to have an ‘other’ from which it can suck life and vitality and against which it can measure and express itself. It cannot live peaceably alongside others. It defines itself by hostility to the ‘other’ which it has to take over, suck dry and either dominate or destroy, if necessary by force.

That’s why, globally, wherever fundamentalist Islam arrives on the scene, inevitably in due course there is conflict. Central Nigeria illustrates this dynamic: Jos, for decades a peaceful and popular Christian-majority city, is currently being torn apart by the influx of hard-line Islam from the Sharia states of the Hausa and Fulani north (here).

So given the spiritual and intellectual poverty of his Islam, what would Sami talk about? He had an uninterrupted 25-minute opportunity to promote his beliefs in front of a friendly attentive audience; what would he tell them?

In the event of course, not a lot. Precluded from his default position of attacking Christianity, he spoke for just 16 minutes about Islam… and then dried up. Despite all his speaking experience and all his commitment to his religion, he had nothing more to say. When the ISoc moderator indicated he had another 9 minutes to speak, he declined.

His lack of words summed up the emptiness of his Islam, truly a belief system worth only 16 minutes.

Happy Christ-mas!

Last weekend the Christian Peoples Alliance co-hosted with Christian Concern a fascinating conference in London. Part-funded by the European Parliament, the event was titled ‘Beyond Individualism – Why Civil Society Needs Christian Political Engagement’ (here).

Heavyweight speakers included the ever-persuasive Bp Michael Nazir-Ali, radical-orthodox theologian Professor John Milbank from Nottingham University and political ethicist Dr Jonathan Chaplin from Cambridge.

But for me it was Red Tory Phillip Blond (here) and Blue Labour Lord Maurice Glasman (here) who provided most stimulation.

Phillip Blond, director of ResPublica think-tank (here) , is widely credited as the big thinker behind David Cameron’s Big Society. He set off at a merry pace, professing Christian faith for himself and Christian values as the required ethical underpinning for a successful Big Society. Subsidiarity, mutualism, solidarity, reciprocity, mediation, the value of all persons, objectivity & contingency – this was his rapid-fire set-menu of necessary Christian values. He also gave rapid delivery to a list of the Coalition’s current legislation that in his view has grown out of Christian values, but my pen didn’t want to keep up.

I loved his insights into our illiberal liberal society; our centralised state that rules imperiously over fractured, fragmented, individualised citizenry; and our disempowered ‘little platoons’ (Burke’s words) that currently constitute our flaccid disembowelled civic society – a middle ground that ought instead to be a vibrant creative bridge and bulwark between the state and the citizen.

And I enjoyed Labour peer Maurice Glasman’s contribution too even though the delivery was more downbeat. Jewish himself, he reckoned that Christianity has been central to citizenship for 2,000 years. He also claimed that the Labour Party had been the only institution successfully to heal the rifts of the Reformation by bringing Catholics and Non-Conformists together under its umbrella and citing Cardinal Manning’s role in the dock workers’ victory at the London Dock Strike of 1889.

Glasman liked his alliterative triplets (“relationships, reciprocity, responsibility”; “vocation, values, virtue”) but it was an unmusical phrase containing one particular word that stopped the show for me. Commentators have noted (here) that unusually for a politico he is not afraid to talk about LOVE, and it was that word’s inclusion in a four-word description that made it memorable and, like a flash, summed up the compassion-free New Labour managerialism that I challenged for eight years on Newham Council.

“Secularist materialism without love” – that was Glasman’s characterisation of much mainstream politics today, and it’s certainly a bulls-eye accurate description of politics at Labour’s showcase town hall in Newham. No love. No community-building. No concern for ordinary Newham people and their relationships. Just self-regarding spin and cold target-driven management by mirrors and bulldozers.

I’m not sure how Glasman is rated today within the national Labour Party as just this year he’s been on his way out (here) and on his way back (here). But if my experience with his party compatriots in Labour flagship Newham is anything to go by, in the long term he is stuffed. Secularist Newham Labour doesn’t do God. Materialist Newham Labour certainly doesn’t do love either.

The word, I think, will sink him.

On Wednesday I received this email from the acting editor of Pink News:

Dear Mr Craig, Thank you for your email, I appreciate you may have had a lot of requests to deal with today.

I’m pleased to keep a line of communication open in order for you to exercise your right of reply, and assume you are happy for these and other comments to enter publication unless otherwise indicated?

If you would like to respond to Mr Strudwick’s comment published today, please let me know. The comment can be found here.

Many thanks, Stephen

I replied as follows:

Dear Stephen, Thank you for your email. I read Patrick Strudwick’s remarks and note that he reckons my “comments are… libellous…”

I’m sorry he thinks that. But surely he knows that truth is a complete defence in law.

There is growing public recognition of the menace of liberal fascism and it is certainly a truth that Stonewall et al are guilty of fascistic intolerance. It is Stonewall who led the charge (here) against mild inoffensive unassuming Peter and Hazelmary Bull who had for years, literally, minded their own business in the far south west corner of the country and who now in their evening years have been forced to the courts (and Peter off his hospital bed) to defend their livelihood and Christian beliefs. Such vindictive bullying beggars all belief.

And as mentioned in my previous email, it is Stonewall who just the other day chose to vilify and demonise Melanie Phillips with their nauseating Bigot of the Year Award. Who exactly are the real bigots here?

Gay journalist Johann Hari is frequently a stimulating and insightful commentator despite his recently-exposed transgressions. It is from him that, indirectly, I borrowed the term ‘Gaystapo’ which featured in my original article and caused so much controversy. And it is he who not only points out that many of the most vicious of the past Nazi leadership were gay but also, more importantly, makes a jaw-dropping observation about fascist leadership today (here):

“The twisted truth is that gay men have been at the heart of every major fascist movement that ever was – including the gay-gassing, homo-cidal Third Reich. With the exception of Jean-Marie Le Pen, all the most high-profile fascists in Europe in the past thirty years have been gay.”

If true (Hari names the names) this “twisted truth” is an inconvenient truth for many Pink News readers no doubt; it is certainly a shocking, revealing one for the rest of us. In the light of the current nightmare persecution of private Christians like the Bulls – let alone more public figures like Gordon Wilson (here) – and the recent fact that influential gay leaders have now become firmly established in the UK’s commanding heights and corridors of power, it seems vital for our liberties and liberal democracy that further independent research should be undertaken urgently on the link between fascism and gay leadership.

I wrote in my article that the Gaystapo “want to change our language, manipulate our culture and thereby impose their world-view on us all. Cultural domination is their aim…”

In many ways they have already achieved these Orwellian objectives. For instance Advocate for Mental Health (here) is an independent agency that provides support for service users in hospitals and mental health units and in particular for the LGBT community of Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea. In their guidance to health staff who serve LGBT people, AfMH informs them that they should “Not bring their religious beliefs to work”. I’ve personally seen a copy of this directive.

So not only can Christians be penalised (here), disciplined (here) and fired (here) for giving outward expression to their faith but Christian doctors and nurses working with LGBT people may with impunity be instructed by an authorised agency to leave their inner beliefs, motivation and core identity at the hospital entrance. This is the new discrimination and persecution and yet another step on the Gaystapo’s long march through the institutions.

It must be clear even to Pink News readers that there is a Stalinist sickness and totalitarian intolerance that is corroding our liberties and our culture. It should also be clear to them who is responsible for fostering much of it.

I’d be grateful if you would publish these comments in full through your news service.

With best wishes, Alan Craig

PS. I said in my previous email that I would be happy to meet you to discuss these issues. I’ll up that – I’ll be delighted to buy you lunch.

Yesterday I received this email from the acting editor of Pink News:

Dear Mr Craig,

I am contacting you to see whether you would like to expand on the comments made in your piece “Confronting the Gaystapo”.

Concerns have been raised that, inter alia, an instruction for people to “rise up” against gay “leaders” could be construed as an incitement to hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation.

If you would like to make any comment please contact me as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely,

Stephen Gray

Acting Editor

This is my reply:

Dear Mr Gray,

Thank you for yesterday’s email asking me if I’d like to expand on my comments in my piece “Confronting The Gaystapo.” I would.

I accused Stonewall et al of fascist-type intolerance. I note they recently awarded Melanie Phillips their Bigot Of The Year Award. Whatever you think of her views, she argues rationally, reasonably, includes factual evidence and incites no-one to violence (it’s known as public discussion within a liberal democracy), yet she has been subject to this Nazi-style pillorying and demonisation.

She is Jewish. She will no doubt recognise the tactics from 1930s Germany.

Is the Stonewall Award a yellow star for her to wear?

I’d be happy to meet with you to discuss this further.

Yours sincerely,

Alan Craig

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