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Voters who are not the Labour Party’s ‘property’
• I AM writing to complain about the very unfair allegations against Camden Council leader Keith Moffitt spread by the mischevious and interfering deputy leader of the council’s Labour group, Theo Blackwell, on his blog.
Cllr Blackwell claims Cllr Moffitt tried to engineer a Liberal Democrat takeover of the Bengali Workers’ Association.
The BWA runs the Bengali community Surma Centre in Robert Street and has until now been in the control of a small Labour-supporting clique.
At the BWA general meeting on November 25 unopposed nominations were put forward for new officers and committee.
These nominations were made in full accordance with the BWA constitution and in the same way that the BWA’s management has been chosen for many years.
Many of those nominated by a select committee of community leaders were former officers and committee members who had already given good service to the BWA in past years.
They did, though, include some who had left the Labour Party disillusioned by its exploitation of Bengali and Muslim voters, by its failure to deliver on its promises, by its attacks on Islam abroad, and by its withdrawal of support for multi-culturalism in Britain.
Some, I know, have joined the Liberal Democrats or the Respect party.
Others have moved to the Conservatives or the Greens. Bengali Muslim voters, like all others in Britain, do have the right to choose.
They are not the property of the Labour Party.
The Labour clique and Cllr Blackwell, though, could not bear the idea of anyone else having influence in something that has been completely in Labour’s control so long. So at the meeting on November 25 the elections were disrupted by outsiders and non-members who invaded the meeting claiming that the system of choosing candidates by selection committee, used many times in the past without complaint, was undemocratic.
Though the election returning officer, Dr Richard Lefley, said three times at the meeting that he could find no fault with the procedure under BWA constitution, he eventually recommended, in the interest of community harmony, that the meeting be adjourned for two months.
Far from engineering a takeover Cllr Moffitt did not interfere at all, insisting it was for the community and the BWA to decide how to proceed.
Cllr Blackwell has no business interfering.
Yet on his blog he has the cheek to accuse me of having no standing in the matter “save that he is of Bangladeshi origin”.
Excuse me, Cllr Blackwell, but I was a member of the Surma Centre for years before you even set foot in Camden.
It is true that I left for a time when it became apparent that the place was dominated and monopolised by a Labour clique, because I have hated Labour ever since a Labour minister (John Stonehouse) robbed Bengalis of millions of pounds with his bank fraud before “disappearing” to Australia in 1974.
Labour’s record in Camden and Cllr Blackwell’s misrepresentations suggest to me that Labour is hardly more trustworthy now than it was then.
Cllr Faruque Ansari
Liberal Democrat, Kentish Town Ward
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