Some people claim that Green Street in Newham is to travellers from South Asia what Oxford Street is to North Americans. It provides a colourful variety of predominantly Asian clothing, foods, confectionery and jewellery usually of high quality and at relatively low prices. At weekends it is usually packed with shoppers looking for bargains, especially at the extraordinary Queens Market which is more of a bazaar or souk than a traditional East End street market.

We live just off Green Street so last night my family and I walked along the road to participate with our neighbours in the lively Pakistan Independence Day celebrations. The police had closed off part of the street to facilitate the event, and crowds of mainly young people bedecked in the national colours of green and white and blowing on hooters promenaded along Green Street enjoying the party. It was good fun.

But I also had a heavy heart. Just two weeks ago some eight of my co-religionists (including children) at Gojra in Punjab, Pakistan, had been brutally butchered (here) by a murderous crowd whipped up to a frenzy by militant leaders of local mosques. Some of the Christians – who form a small vulnerable minority in Punjab and indeed in Pakistan – were burnt to death in their homes while the local police looked on.

At the last count there were some 20,000 Pakistani-background people living in Newham, about 8.5% of the population. They are a minority but a respected one, and I was pleased to see Newham police actively cooperating while they celebrated their national independence from Britain that took place 62 years ago.

The contrast between the treatment of the respective minorities on Green Street and at Gojra was painful, so I wrote today to the Pakistani High Commissioner in London:

Your Excellency,

Atrocities against Christian minority in Gojra
Last night my family and I attended the Pakistan Independence Day celebrations on Green Street here in the heart of Newham in London’s East End where we live. It was a safe and vibrant street party for all and particularly for the large Pakistani minority in our area, thanks in part to the local police who closed off the road in order to protect and promote the event.

On Saturday 1 August a number of Pakistan’s Christian minority in Gojra were butchered by a mob apparently inflamed by leaders of nearby mosques over accusations of ‘blasphemy’ against the Quran. During the massacre the local police stood by, unwilling to intervene while Christians – including children – were burnt to death.

Reports indicate that a senior Gojra police officer has now been suspended. Nonetheless as a Newham councillor and a Christian I felt deeply the tragic contrast between the happy event for Newham’s Pakistani minority on Green Street last night and the gut-wrenching atrocity perpetrated with police collusion against the Pakistan’s Christian minority in Gojra two weeks ago.

The Gojra massacre follows a similar if non-fatal mob attack on minority Christian homes a few weeks earlier in the Kasur district of Punjab, also following accusations of ‘blasphemy’.

I am writing therefore to insist that the Pakistani government urgently:

(a) Ensures that the mosque and Muslim leaders who inflamed the violence together with the actual perpetrators are brought to justice;
(b) Carries out a full investigation into Gojra police collusion with – and inactivity during – the atrocity, makes sure that officers responsible are appropriately and severely punished, and guarantees that in future police attitudes towards all minorities is respectful and in line with Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s inclusive founding vision for Pakistan;
(c) Provides generous compensation for the grieving families and the traumatised Christian community in Gojra; and
(d) Abolishes or drastically amends the notorious Pakistan blasphemy laws that are used abusively against non-Muslim minorities and others, often in pursuit of non-religious petty disputes.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Councillor Alan Craig

I’ll update you on his reply and any developments in due course.

Newham Labour Party has an interesting turn in personal insults, and their primitive invective is an outer reflection of the inner nature of the party. ‘Things that come out of the mouth come from the heart… evil thoughts… false testimony… slander. These are what make a person unclean.’ (Jesus Christ)

I previously have quoted Labour activist John Gray’s views about CPA members (here), among the most revealing of which are his opinion that my colleague Simeon Ademolake is a ‘thoughtless thug’ and a ‘bigot’, and that I am a ‘squalid, grubby, tin-pot politician’ and a ‘super-egotist’. I’m not sure a senior local activist dolling out such personal abuse helps the high calling of politics in Newham, but it certainly tells us a lot about Gray.

Now we have some more, the crown of which is that ‘CPA are a bunch of scumbags’ – according to Clive Furness, Labour councillor and Newham mayoral adviser, who attributes this scintillating soubriquet to his colleagues. As you see, Newham’s power-driven ruling party doesn’t do sophistication, nuance or self-restraint – or even maturity; the cave-man’s club and the brutalist’s bludgeon are their weapons of choice.

This Labour name-calling came about as follows: 

Colleagues and I recently commissioned an independent ComRes poll of opinion in the borough about the mega-mosque proposed for West Ham close to the site of the 2012 London Olympics. Amongst other things ComRes came to the promising conclusion (here) that the majority of Newham Muslims would prefer a mixed-use development on the site rather than a mega-mosque. However this is the first such survey and it is early days to come to a settled conclusion.

Furness has been an avid proponent of the mosque project. He even used his executive authority at the town hall to invite voluntary sector leaders in the borough to the mega- mosque’s botched Open Day last year. Such promotion would normally be the responsibility of the project’s smooth PR agents, Indigo Public Affairs, but Furness stepped in and instructed a council officer to dispatch Open Day invitations to over 270 community workers across the borough. I publish the facts; you join the dots.

Last week Furness had a letter published in the Newham Recorder that criticised our survey and contained factual errors about our campaign (here). I’ve been wanting to raise public discussion about the mega-mosque and to this end I even made it one of the main planks in my London Mayoral campaign last year (here) – but Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson both managed to cleverly skirt round the issue at hustings and elsewhere. So last Friday I emailed Furness (copy to the Recorder) challenging him to a public debate about the mega-mosque, never thinking he’d agree. Why should he? Labour doesn’t do democracy or public debate within its Newham fiefdom as it can see no party advantage, and Furness’ favoured mosque project has survived so far by keeping its head down and avoiding public scrutiny wherever possible.  

(Interestingly Indigo has been increasingly mocked by journalists for being the only hired PR agency that refuses to promote their client to the media. A Finnish TV crew became so incensed at Indigo’s Trappist silence one day, that after covering the mosque story they went off to film the company’s office building in Berkeley Square for a news piece about a dumb London PR agency – apparently to be accompanied in part by a silent soundtrack.)

At first it appeared I might be wrong. Furness seemed to rise to the bait and by return he accepted the challenge. We agreed on an independent chair for the debate and he proposed some rules for the event to be held sometime in September. But then came the sucker-punch that laughably – and presumably deliberately – torpedoes the whole event. He emailed his Labour colleagues’ preferred motion, ‘The CPA are a bunch of scumbags pandering to racism’, before making his own ‘more moderate’ suggestion.

Receiving such mindless abuse from the ruling party goes with the territory in Newham, and CPA has been in Labour’s sights for years. Furness’ colleague James Butler got in early by opining in the national press that CPA ‘are every bit as evil as the BNP’ (Sunday Express, 1 October 2006).

I am of course interested to know which of my warm-hearted colleagues in our multiracial Christian and democratic party is a BNP racist scumbag. Is it…

Councillor Denise Stafford or Councillor Simeon Ademolake?

Or perhaps, maybe… it’s me!

Furness is now on holiday but he’ll be wriggling following his rash acceptance of the challenge. The Labour Party will be leaning on him to not engage in public debate as democracy is against party policy in Newham. He’ll be looking for a way out, and proposing silly motions and setting impossible conditions should provide him with a smokescreen for escape.

Watch this space. Let’s hope I’m wrong.