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Foreign policy? We never heard Hoque talk about it
• “Councillor defects over foreign policy” was the headline on your news item about Cllr Syed Hoque leaving the Labour Party (February 12).
Any rational reader will think that was far from the truth.
I have lived in Camden since 1975 but did not know or hear about Mr Hoque until his attempt to be a Labour councillor. He was not known to the wider community in Camden at all.
In February 2003 when more than two million people of all race, colour and creed demonstrated against the war in Hyde Park, Camden Labour councillors went there with their banner. Neither I nor anybody else recalls having seen Mr Hoque there nor have they ever heard him talking about it.
In recent weeks Camden Labour Party passed a resolution condemning the invasion of Gaza by Israel and demanded those Israelis responsible to be tried under the United Nations war crime convention. Mr Hoque was not there.
Nobody in any party could say they always agree wholeheartedly with every political decision their party takes. And as Camden’s Labour leader has said “I was not aware Camden had a foreign policy”.
At the last local election some Labour councillors used your columns to say publicly that they did not want Tony Blair to visit Camden during the campaign.
Mr Hoque stood for the Labour Party in 2006 whereas the invasion of Iraq was in 2003.
Where was he during the intervening three years? Did he defend Mr Blair in 2006 while none of his former colleagues did? Mr Hoque’s reason for resignation does not stack up.
Mr Hoque has never shared his thoughts with others.
He never protested about Iraq or Palestinian issues with anybody else and did not have the courtesy to discuss his intention to defect with his former party leader Anna Stewart. Mr Hoque should step down and have a by-election.
Mohammed Joynal Uddin
Address supplied
Let’s hope more follow his example
• Following Councillor Hoque’s departure from Labour there will be demands for a by-election in Haverstock but that is not necessary. Like all councillors, Mr Hoque was elected as an individual representative.
Mr Hoque is well-known and popular for his social work and community activism, so any party is lucky to have a man like him. He has every right to change his mind about which party he wants to support in the light of their performance and given Labour’s disastrous performance both at home and abroad there is little to be surprised at in his decision.
There is no need to involve the borough in the expense of another election. It is obvious Councillor Hoque would win again if there was a by-election.
The precedent is clear, though. When Councillor Jonathan Simpson defected from the Liberal Democrats to Labour in 2005 there was no by-election. He was going from an increasingly popular party to one falling in the polls, so he probably would have lost. The Liberal Democrats won his seat back the following year.
Mr Hoque, by contrast, has joined the fastest-growing party in Camden (winners of three by-election gains already since 2006, one of them in his own Haverstock ward) so his re-election would be a foregone conclusion.
Let’s not waste money on another election. Let’s hope more Bengali Muslim councillors take hope from what he has done.
Fawha Naznin (Rulie)
St Augustines House
Werrington Street, NW1
Working together
• Congratulations to Councillor Syed Hoque on breaking free from Camden Labour and joining the Liberal Democrats instead.
Cllr Hoque is a respected community leader and has worked as a diligent councillor in Haverstock ward since 2006.
It must be a sure sign of how friendly and
co-operative he found his two fellow councillors – Jill Fraser and Matt Sanders – that he has now elected to join them in a united Haverstock team.
That’s a really nice change from the majority of politicians who are usually trying to tell us how terrible are all those on the other side of the party divide.
Working together must be better than working against each other.
Jakir Hussain
Chalton House
Chalton Street, NW1
Now an alternative
• Syed Hoque says that Labour in Camden is “rude and arrogant”. He should know.
But I wonder who he is complaining about. Some of his fellow Labour councillors from the Bengali community are very well liked and respected, as is Mr Hoque himself.
But it will not be lost on the Bengali community in Camden that there is now a real alternative to Labour for them.
Councillor Faruque Ansari will be next year’s mayor, and he seems to have worked well with Mr Islam as his deputy this year. And the Lib Dems have also recently recruited the popular Mukul Hira, previously a candidate for Respect.
We can expect the Lib Dems to have more ethnic minority candidates at the next elections. Sharif Uddin
Address supplied
Betrayal of principles
• Councillor Syed Hoque has betrayed those who voted for him in Haverstock ward by defecting from Labour to the Lib Dems.
This makes a mockery of the voters. Is this a case of putting power before principles? What are his principles?
In defecting, Hoque turns his back on helping those on low incomes, supporting working-class families and fighting to create fairer local communities.
Those are Labour principles. Labour voters should therefore expect their votes to now be put to use extending Lib Dem policies such as doubling the cost of home care to the elderly, charging disabled council tenants who have locked themselves out of their flats (£200!) to get back in, clawing back balances from school budgets, having an allocation system for funding youth clubs that they admit is not fit for purpose and sitting on an massive surplus!
Sean Birch
Elizabeth Mews, NW3
He opposed Lib Dem cuts
• I was disappointed to read that Syed Hoque had decided to join the Lib Dems.
I remember how angry Syed was at the Lib Dems’ negative campaigning in the local elections in 2006. He wanted to improve things for local people, not engage in their brand of political point-scoring.
Subsequently, he had complained loud and hard against the service cuts the Lib Dems running Camden have implemented, especially those on social care.
In fact, he wrote in these letters pages only last month about these cold-hearted, draconian, cuts. Does he suddenly think the cuts are right for local people? Surely not. He may have strongly held views about foreign policy – so do lots of Labour councillors and activists – but they have nothing to do with local issues and how badly these Lib Dems are treating vulnerable residents.
I’m sure that, along with his political transformation, Councillor Hoque will suddenly think these cuts are fine. His constituents, who voted for a Labour councillor, will have longer political memories.
Mike Katz
Chair, Hampstead & Kilburn Labour Party
Following a proud tradition
• Our local councillor, Syed Hoque, can be proud of switching party from Labour to Liberal Democrat.
He follows an important tradition, in the steps of Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, Tom McNally and Vince Cable to name just a few.
Now that Labour has run the country into such big trouble economically, it is good to know that there is still a progressive, radical party capable of championing the underdog and standing up for human rights, and always there for the needy and the vulnerable.
There are many good people still backing the Labour Party today, and even good councillors here in Camden still accepting the Labour whip.
But it is no use propping up the hollow shell of what Labour once claimed to be.
It is time they followed Syed Hoque’s example, and made themselves really useful again – by joining the Liberal Democrats.
Shahin Ahmed
Seymore House
Church Way, NW1
Is it a fraud?
• Not long ago when a councillor defected from Lib Dem to Labour, the leader of the Lib Dems in Camden denounced the defection as “a fraud on the electorate”.
What do they say now?
John Wilson
Agincourt Road
NW3
A new type of politics?
• Syed Hoque mentioned Gaza as one of the issues that caused him to leave Labour.
I hope this does not signal the start of divisive religion-based politics in Camden.I saw with alarm a recent Lib Dem by-election leaflet in a ward with a large Muslim population in Redbridge. This depicted a dead or injured child, and anti-Israel message and an exhortation to vote Lib Dem, which was clearly aimed at Muslim voters. Whatever one’s views on Gaza, I hope we can all agree that war and conflict in another country should not be used for narrow party political gain in the UK.
True political leadership should be about healing divisions.
I hope Cllr Hoque will join me in condemning such cynical and divisive tactics.
Cllr Dawn Somper, Conservative,
Frognal & Fitzjohn’s ward
Not alone
• I was out knocking on doors this weekend in King’s Cross.
One of the issues that was coming up over and over again was the government’s failures on the Israel/Gaza situation. Camden Labour may not have any views about foreign affairs, but their party’s policy is letting us all down.
Gordon Brown has ignored Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg’s call to halt arms exports to Gaza. Gordon Brown’s policy is wrong; it has left many traditional Labour supporters feeling ignored and angry.
Cllr Syed Hoque was concerned about where the party which he had supported for years was headed, and what it stands for now.
He is not the only one.
Jo Shaw
Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Campaigner
Holborn & St Pancras |
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