Trial by Jeory

I’ll write more about last night’s full Tower Hamlets Council meeting when I have more time, but the tensest exchanges came during a debate about the infamous character reference Mayor Lutfur Rahman gave to a crown court judge on behalf of minicab molester Zamal Uddin.

You’ll remember that after I reported on the reference here, Lutfur wrote to me to give his explanation here.

After last night’s council meeting, the East London Advertiser’s Mike Brooke, who is a former BBC journalist, asked the Mayor about the issue.

Mike reports here:

Mayor Rahman later told the Advertiser: “This man’s family tricked me. They wanted a character reference but didn’t say it was for a court case.I knew nothing about any criminal case—they switched the reference and used it in a court case.”

Yet, as Mike points out (although in the old school tradition of not crediting those considered journalistic rivals, he declines to mention the name of this “blogsite”), Lutfur told me in his letter last month:

Based on the information provided by the family I was told that the named person was in court due to a revocation of his driving licence as he was not currently insured. They made the case to me that this was an oversight and that a reference would help him to convince the judge that he be allowed to retain his licence as it was a one off mistake.

The East London Advertiser reports on Shelina Akhtar, the Tower Hamlets councillor who I first wrote about here. She was elected as a Labour councillor last May and was then expelled from the party after she declared her support for Lutfur Rahman’s independent Mayoral bid in October.

A serving Tower Hamlets councillor has been charged with fraud.

Shelina Akhtar, 32, of Blackwall Way, Poplar is accused of false representation and three counts of failing to notify a change of circumstances which would have affected her entitlement to benefit.

The independent councillor works for Spitalfields and Banglatown ward.

Hazera Akhtar, 21, of Glasshouse Fields, Limehouse has been charged with fraud by false representation and two counts of failing to notify a change of circumstances affecting entitlement to benefit.

They have been bailed to appear at Thames magistrates’ court on Tuesday 26 April.

It will be interesting to see if she turns up to the council meeting tomorrow evening. For legal reasons, I’m not allowing any comments on this thread. (Photo courtesy of Dan McCurry.)

Oh dear…despite having the DLR, the Tube and an extensive bus network, Mayor Lutfur Rahman doesn’t seem to be a fan of the public transport network that his pal Ken Livingstone so frequently boasts he improved.

The Tower Hamlets Tories have just issued the following press release which reveals that despite having to make savage public spending cuts, he’s been spending £400 a month of our money on taxis for himself.

PRESS RELEASE

Mayor of Britain’s poorest borough spends £2,191 on taxi fares

Since his election as Executive Mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman has charged the residents of Britain’s poorest borough £2,191.04 on taxi fares, according to information received by way of an enquiry, up to the end of February 2011.

Enquiries from council members show that Mayor Rahman, his deputy and two other leading members have racked up substantial taxi fares.

Black Cabs have regularly been seen outside the Tower Hamlets Council offices with Lutfur Rahman written on card and placed in thier windows. Mayor Rahman is paid £65,000 a year and owns a very smart car which he regularly used and parked at the town hall.

Councillor Peter Golds, leader of the Conservative Group has asked for furthrr details of both hirings and journeys and how much has been paid to taxis to wait outside of buildings.

Says Councillor Golds:

“Administration members driving around in taxis when they have cars and the right to park in both residents bays and Civic buildings throughout the borough, is ridiculous. For a council which constantly complains about  “cuts” and has reserves of over  £68 million, why is the leadership wasting this money on taxi fares?”

Notes to Editor:-

• Cllr Golds received a response to a formal enquiry made on March 24th and numbered 526 573 579, which confirmed from taking up office on Monday 24th October 2010 and February 28 2011 the council had paid a total of £2,191.04 for taxis for Mayor Lutfur Rahman.

• In addition Deputy Mayor Cllr Ohid Ahmed used taxis for atotal of £102.72 and Cllr Rania Khan £138.29 and Cllr Oliur Rahman, £51.18. Both Cllrs Khan and Rahman are cabinet members.

Perhaps he just prefers being driven around so he can play with his Apple iPhone4 in the back seat?

While the nation excites itself over the AV referendum, the Tower Hamlets Labour party will next month engage in its annual bout of first-past-the-post regicide. For as the days grow longer, that time of year is here again when the clouds descend on the incumbent leader of the borough’s most comical political group.

It was this ritual fight to the death and its frequent changes in the council leadership that persuaded many to move to a directly elected mayoral system. This year, of course, is the first since the early Nineties when Labour has found itself out of power. The winner of the party’s Annual General Meeting contest in four weeks’ time will merely be crowned Leader of the Opposition.

Since losing to Lutfur Rahman last October, current leader Helal Abbas has known his time has been up, or as he told me today: “It is time to hand over to other people and for a fresh team to lead and hold the Mayor to account.”

He is still an influential mover and shaker of course and he is till trying to get his favourites in the leading positions, more of which in a bit.

Who are the runners and riders? At present, I’m being told there are possibly four candidates: current deputy Josh Peck, finance guru David Edgar, council chairman Motin uz-Zaman, and possibly former anti-crime spokesman Abdal Ullah.

With the party still split and in turmoil about whether to readmit Lutfur, the election is being seen by some as a bellwether of its resolve. However, I’m not so sure. Lutfur’s fate in that regard is linked more to Ken Livingstone’s potential future at City Hall next year. (Indeed, Ken also needs Lutfur’s connections to the East London Mosque and the criminal linked Channel S television station – this is one of the reasons why so many of Ken’s cronies have taken up roles in the charmless world of Mulberry Place.)

So who will emerge triumphant next month? Josh is considered the front-runner; David has a strong chance; Motin can de discounted completely; and Abdal is trying to play a kingmaker’s game. Fourteen votes are needed and it’s all about deals, innit.

Josh, who is firmly opposed to Lutfur’s readmission, is said to have the support of the likes of Rachael Saunders, Carli Harper-Penman, Denise Jones and five others.

I hear that Abdal believes he has the support of the seven rebels who broke the party whip at the council budget meeting last month (Shahed Ali, Rofique Ahmed, Marc Francis, Shafiqul Haque, Kabir Ahmed, Ahmed Omer and Abdul Asad were all told by regional party boss last week that any more rebellions would be curtains, by the way).

David’s position is more intriguing. Formerly known as one of those closest to ex-leader Michael Keith, he avoided four years of poison having cleverly lost his seat in 2006. He can therefore afford to be more open-minded about Lutfur’s future and straddle two camps…but is more compromise what Labour needs?

Curiously, it is the position of deputy leader that is actually the more crucial in this election. With most believing that either Josh or David will win, it is a certainty that both will want a Bengali as their number two. Shiria Khatun, who has managed to get herself selected as a GLA candidate in Tory Havering and Redbridge, has all but declared her hand. She craves the position and Abbas told me tonight that she “would make an excellent deputy”. It is thought she could team up with Josh Peck and form what they think would be the dream ticket.

Abdal Ullah, meanwhile, who also wants to run for the GLA, would also, I’m sure, want to join the group’s top team. My guess is that he will back David Edgar and that could well trump the dream.

Thank goodness for Labour, eh: what would we do without their silly games?

UPDATE – Friday, April 9, 9am

A councillor has pointed out to me that Abdal Ullah of course avoided having to make the tricky decision of voting with or against the party whip at the council budget meeting because he was ill that night. To be fair to Abdal, he has never broken the whip and that enhances his chances of getting on the GLA list. Another councillor, this time one from his own party, also tells me that Abdal was also absent, presumed ill, from last week’s showdown with Ken Clark and Len Duvall. “They seek him here…..”…

Last November, I expressed astonishment about the level of factual inaccuracy contained within what its authors hoped would be major academic report on Islamophobia.

The report, Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: UK Case Studies, was written by Dr Robert Lambert and Dr Jonathan Githens-Mazer of the European Muslim Research Centre at Exeter University. It was part funded by the questionable Cordoba Foundation, more about which you can read in my original.

The academic report contained a chapter on Tower Hamlets called “Barbarians at the gates of the City” with the sub-heading, “A case study in the subversion of liberal democracy in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets”. A footnote said that section has been written anonymously by someone who has “worked extensively in Tower Hamlets politics”. It used several bits of information supplied on this blog and from my previous life at the East London Advertiser.

Last November, I wrote:

Now, in the all the time I’ve covered Tower Hamlets politics I’ve never seen either of the good doctors at the Town Hall. And neither did they or anyone else call me or try to contact me about this report, which, given that they have cited my name and quote extensively much of my work from this blog and from my time at the East London Advertiser, is a bit lazy to say the least.

If they had have done, they might have avoided the simplified and inaccurate rewriting of history – designed, no doubt, to meet their pre-determined conclusions – that this section of their report actually is. I read it agog.

Several other figures in Tower Hamlets politics experienced the same emotion. They complained to the University and now it has been forced to issue the following apology here and withdraw the offending chapter.

Here’s the academics’ climb-down:

Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: UK Case Studies

21st February 2011

The first version of this report published on 29 November 2010 contained a section ‘Barbarians at the Gates of the City’ that has now been removed from the report and the University of Exeter has issued this apology:

“The University has become aware that a third party account in the chapter entitled ‘Barbarians at the Gates of the City’ contained in an earlier version of the academic report ‘Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: UK Case Studies’ contained serious errors of fact which may lead a reader to misconstrue the conduct, actions and the intentions of Councillors Helal Abbas, Denise Jones, Ken Clark, Joshua Peck, Rachael Saunders, Michael Keith and Jim Fitzpatrick MP.

Whilst the purpose of publishing the third party account within the report was to reflect the views and opinions of an individual Muslim citizen, the University has received information and comments from the above individuals, and wishes to make it clear that it is not the position or finding of the University that the actions and intentions of those individuals were Islamophobic or racist in any way. Those individuals have passionately stressed to the University that they have worked throughout their careers to fight racism, discrimination and inequality in East London. The University have therefore removed the section from the report, and apologises unreservedly.”

In the circumstances we have sought to curtail distribution of that version of the report and to replace it with this revised publication.

Robert Lambert and Jonathan Githens-Mazer
Co-authors and Co-directors
EMRC, 21 February 2011

I’m not sure who wrote the original chapter, but Dave Hill of the Guardian says it was Kazim Zaidi, a political adviser to Mayor Lutfur Rahman. If so, his credibility has suffered a blow, just like the research centre at Exeter University.

Further to my post here yesterday about Lutfur Rahman’s court reference for the convicted minicab molester Zamal Uddin, the Mayor has sent me the following explanation:

Dear Ted

I refer to your blog post dated 11 March. I do not usually comment on correspondence of this nature but given the circumstances it is important that I set out clearly what happened.  Before I do so I want to make it crystal clear that I condemn all forms of criminality and my thoughts are with the victim in this case.

The family of this man resides in my ward of Spitalfields. They approached me on numerous occasions to give a reference for their brother who I also know as one my constituents.  I was not aware of the nature of the charges against him and had no reason to believe or suspect him of any such conduct.

Based on the information provided by the family I was told that the named person was in court due to a revocation of his driving licence as he was not currently insured. They made the case to me that this was an oversight and that a reference would help him to convince the judge that he be allowed to retain his licence as it was a one off mistake.

Elected politicians are often approached with reference requests particularly where a family’s livelihood is at stake – however no one in the past has abused my trust in this way and had I known about the nature of the offence I would never have agreed to supply a reference.

I gave a reference as did many other councillors, who clearly were misled as to the nature of the offence. I am in the process of seeking advice so as to retract the reference and make my views very clear that such offences should be punished without any form of leniency and that I wholly support the judgment of the court in this case.

I hope this seeks to clarify my position in some ways.

Regards

Lutfur

I then asked him when he supplied the reference. He said: “The reference was sent well before the court hearing [on February 15 January 18]. As I stated earlier, I would not have even contemplated sending a reference if it was for a criminal offence, let alone a sexually motivated one.”

I also asked him if it was written on council stationery, and he has now confirmed it was.

Lutfur’s decision to respond shows how serious this matter is. He is a professional solicitor and a member of the Law Society. That he failed to check and verify the nature of the charge on someone for whom he was providing a character reference beggars belief. It seems as if there is a bunch of “elected politicians” out there chucking around criminal character references like confetti.

I’ve spoken to a legal source about this, who sits as a judge. They tell me it is “absolutely incredible” that someone of Lutfur’s standing would supply a reference without checking what the charge was. And just so I’m clear, the source used the word “incredible” in its literal sense.

Lutfur’s decision is I think seriously damaging. At the very best, it shows great naivety and a major lack of judgment, two criticisms that have been chucked his way in the past. As I’ve said before, if I were him, I’d be a bit more careful about the friends I keep.

[By the way, I also told Lutfur I was extremely surprised that Takki Sulaiman’s council press office had decided to provide a “no comment” when I called yesterday. Here’s Lutfur’s ominous reply: “I agree with you, this could have been dealt with earlier. I will look into that.”]

UPDATE, Monday, March 14, 10.30am

I’ve just spoken to Snaresbrook Crown Court. Zamal Uddin’s plea and directions hearing was actually on January 18 and not mid-February as originally thought. His sentencing hearing was on March 8. Why the January hearing was only reported in the Daily Mail and the Telegraph a month later, I don’t know: I can only think that the news agency decided to have another stab at pushing the story. However, it means that there was a gap of seven weeks between Uddin’s guilty plea and the sentencing at which the Mayor’s reference was mentioned in court. That is seven weeks in which the full nature of Uddin’s crime was known – time enough for the mayor and the councillors to both find out what had happened and then retract their references.

Also, I emailed Lutfur yesterday to ask for a copy of his reference and to ask why he failed to contact the court before the sentencing hearing to retract it. He has yet to respond.

Fellow blogger Tower Hamlets Watch spotted it first. The following article appeared as a small item on page 3 of this week’s new-look East London Advertiser.

Headlined “Cabdriver molested passenger”, it read:

An unlicensed cabbie who was slammed by a judge for not bothering to learn English was caged for grabbing a passenger’s breasts.

Zamal Uddin, 44, twice sexually assaulted the 26-year-old in Hoxton last October after she got into his illegal taxi after a night out with friends.

Judge Timothy King had blasted Bangladesh-born Uddin, who was aided in court by an interpreter, for not learning English after moving to the UK in 1992.

And before passing sentence the judge was handed testimonials on Uddin’s behalf from several Tower Hamlets councillors and the borough’s mayor Lutfur Rahman. Judge King said they all seemed “to be in ignorance of your background and personality”.

Jailing Uddin for 18 months, Judge King described how he leaned over and touched his passenger’s breasts in the cab before following her after she fled into an alley where he pinned her against the wall and touched her under her clothing.

Uddin, of Rogers Estate, Globe Road, was also ordered to sign the sex offenders’ register for 10 years. He admitted two charges of sexual assault and driving while disqualified.

The italics above are mine. It was this somewhat buried sentence that caught the attention of Tower Hamlets Watch. I spoke today to the agency reporter who filed the story and no more details were read out in court. The judge neither named the other councillors who had provided references nor disclosed their contents. He didn’t actually name Lutfur, but said the reference came from the “mayor of Tower Hamlets”.

So I sought confirmation from the press office at Tower Hamlets council that Lutfur had indeed provided a reference. The answer from Takki Sulaiman’s office was: “The mayor does not comment on private correspondence.” Well, given that he used his public and elected title in his correspondence to the court, there is an argument that he should. I’m also waiting to hear if Lutfur’s letter was written on council logo stationery. [UPDATE AT 7pm: council press office refuse to comment on whether letter was written on official stationery.]

Meanwhile, can anyone please help shed some light on Zamal Uddin? Who is he and why is he so popular with the mayor and other councillors?

I wonder what Uddin’s victim thinks of such heavyweight support.

By the way, the original court case was reported in both the Daily Mail and the Telegraph.

Apparently there was a bit of a bust up at the council meeting last night when my old mate and Lutfur’s biggest fan did a bit of an ambassadorial role for the borough by boorishly leading the cheers from the public gallery.

There was also some homophobic and anti-Semitic abuse thrown in from some sitting nearby, it has been alleged.

The police are now investigating. If I were Lutfur, I’d tell Mr Haque to stay away in future. I saw his behaviour first hand in December and it was not only ugly, it was intimidating.

And if I were Shiraj and after lucrative contracts to supply the Olympics with his curries, I’d also stay away…

Anyway, I wasn’t there and I’ve not been able to comment on it because I’ve been away on the other side of the world. And I don’t mean Newham.

Back next week.

It takes a certain quality of brass neck to rewrite history in a history library. But that’s precisely what happened at the re-opening launch of the Tower Hamlets Archives and History Library in Bancroft Road last Monday night.

In front of several dozen guests, first Mayor Lutfur Rahman and then one of the council officers responsible for jeopardising the future of the former Mile End Vestry Hall almost three years ago spun a yarn that would have made our story-telling camp-fire forebears purr with delight.

A fairly accurate account of the events that saved Bancroft can be read here, a website that has input from Tower Hamlets’ most formidable historian Tom Ridge. I say ‘fairly accurate’ because it also fails to tell the whole story.

During the spring and early summer of 2008, I was studying on a history course at Birkbeck College. While undertaking some research at Bancroft, I was told that plans were being advanced to sell the building to Queen Mary College.

The plans included breaking up the collections, which included all back copies of the East London Advertiser, between two sites at the Museum of Docklands and the archive at the Royal London Hospital. If the hospital archives were unable to take any records, locations outside the borough were to be considered.

I went back to the office and advised my editor. I said this decision would cause local and national outrage. He agreed and we were right. Our decision to launch a campaign to save the building was, as one senior figure in the Bancroft hierarchy said to me on Monday night, “the absolute key” in its ultimate survival. He said prior to that there were a number of other groups lobbying behind the scenes, but it was the weight we threw behind it that made them all “coalesce” .

Over the next few weeks, we assembled a series of star names to back us, launched an important petition on the Downing Street website (helped, it has to be said, by East End Life editor Laraine Clay’s generous decision to publicise it in the council freesheet), informed a shocked and angry Stan Newens (the former Bethnal Green Epping MP) and held meetings with various groups.

But it was the conversations behind the scenes that were also important. Labour councillor Marc Francis was then (possibly still is…) Lutfur’s right-hand man. This was June 2008 and Lutfur had become leader only a few weeks before. When I raised Bancroft as an issue, Marc couldn’t understand the fuss.

He said the building was under-used, no one knew about it, that it was inaccessible by public transport and that surely it was better to contain the records and the service in a more modern and appropriate building. He said he and Lutfur were adamant that the decision would go ahead. We had a long row on the telephone about it. I said his argument about accessibility didn’t wash: Bancroft was a five minute walk from Stepney Green Tube. I said that if it was under-used, then wasn’t that perhaps because the council under-used it, that it didn’t realise what a gem it was sitting on. Why not improve the sign-posting towards it in the area, why not create a museum/history information room there, why not stage more events there?

All these points were met with intransigence. I told him everyone knew there were serious concerns about Lutfur and that he had here a major opportunity to show everyone his attitude towards the heritage of the borough. Marc scoffed at the suggestion, calling it ridiculous. I told him that if Bancroft was sold off and the collections disbursed, that would be Lutfur’s tainted legacy and that’s the way our readers would see it.

And so the penny began to drop. As the campaign gathered momentum and attracted national attention, Tom Ridge’s meetings with Marc and Lutfur became more productive. And eventually we all won. The ELA later won the regional newspaper industry’s campaign of the year award for our efforts.

On Monday night, however, a slightly different version was told. The East London Advertiser’s contribution was completely whitewashed from the record. Shamefully, neither Stan Newens nor Lutfur nor Judith St John, the head of the council’s library service and one of those most responsible for putting the library at risk in the first place, mentioned the paper’s campaign.

The omission was also noted by many of the historians and campaigners who stood listening to the speech. Many refused to applaud. In particular, they were disgusted by the back-slapping congratulations of the council officers who were forced by the library’s many fans into action.

That said, the library has survived and that’s a quite brilliant thing. As Tom Ridge said to me, “It’s great that when so many libraries are being threatened with closure, that Tower Hamlets is bucking the trend. As a former teacher, I now hope that the building can be used for schoolchildren as a first class education centre.”

The campaign was a fantastic example of the potential influence that a local paper can have when it works with and mobilises its community. Sadly, too many of them no longer do that.

Tower Hamlets Council has been rightly praised by the likes of Stonewall for its gay-friendly workplace policies. However, the council is not the borough.

The area around Spitalfields and the Shoreditch boundary is home to a growing and vibrant gay scene, but there is also a dark side. According to figures from the Met Police, a homophobic crime is committed in Tower Hamlets at the rate of more than five a month. I suspect the true level is much higher.

The gay community around Brick Lane frequently worry about being abused or attacked. Some of that abuse comes from idiots handing out leaflets outside the Whitechapel Idea Store or the East London Mosque (the mosque itself condemns such actions).

And today, this poster has just sprouted around the Hanbury Street area of Spitalfields and Whitechapel.

A friend spotted one on the entrance to the Brady Centre and several more on lampposts and other street furniture along Hanbury Street. One was also on the door of Davenant House on the Chicksand estate.

The posters say “Arise and Warn” at the top and declare the neighborhood a “gay free zone”.

Sinisterly, they say if not, “fear Allah” and risk punishment.

He removed most of them and is reporting them to the police.

He’s also worried; he didn’t want me to publish his name for obvious reasons, but said: “It’s very serious and really worrying for us. There are lot of gay men and women who live around here.

“It’s another sign that extremism has not gone away.”

If anybody sees any more of these posters, do please let me know.

UPDATE: Sunday, Feb 13. 3pm

I’m being told that more of these posters appeared this morning outside Swanlea School in Brady Street, Whitechapel. They’ve also now been removed.

UPDATE: Monday, Feb 14th – 8.30pm

The Association of British Muslims has now condemned these leaflets and has asked Peter Tatchell to intervene.