Eight Under Investigation!
A recent meeting of the Labour Group were told that some eight members of the Group were currently under investigation by the Labour Party. This is unprecedented. Fully 12% of the Labour Group are being investigated by the Labour Party for breaches of their rules.
Unfortunately the names of those under investigation are not mentioned, so we will make some educated guesses.
Islamophobia
What seems to be a new organisation calling itself London Muslim Community Forum, which purports to speak for 200,000 Muslims has written to our mayor and the Chief Exec. They wrote in late 2020, but little has yet emerged from their complaint.
They have raised serious allegations of Islamophobia in respect of councillors Omna Gangadharan, Terry Paul and Pushpa Makwana. They claim that three were caught out posting “extremely hurtful Islamophobic” material on social media. The Forum has called upon the Labour Party to suspend all three.
They also accuse the London Borough of Newham of perpetuating a “culture of Islamophobia” and providing a detrimental service to Muslims demanding an inquiry, which, so far as we know has led to nothing.
Cllr Gangaharan we know has been suspended because she reposted a video put up by “Anne Marie Waters - the far-right leader of the racist, far-right, Islamophobic, For Britain Party”. We understand that the Fiaz regime would welcome a negative finding in respect of Gangadharan as this would allow them to be rid of a troubling Hindu who could be replaced with someone more to Fiaz’s liking. So Gangadharan is likely to be the first of the eight to go.
Cllr Makwana posted the following image.
We have no information about whether Cllr Makwana is a member of the RSPCA or any of the plethora of animal rights groups, but this seems to be something, that certainly the latter would sympathise with. It doesn’t actually mention Islam, but we’re not sure that any other groups currently practice animal sacrifice. However, the letter makes it clear that in India, this image was used to inflame anti-Muslim hatred and led to significant rioting against Indian Muslims. It is implied that this is what Cllr Makwana was attempting to do in the UK.
We have reported on Cllr Paul before, and the letter goes into some detail about the incident where Cllr Paul approvingly retweeted a post about a female Muslim councillor in Islington, who was resigning because of the ‘discriminatory behaviour’ she had experienced at the hands of her Labour colleagues. Cllr Paul added “Excellent News”.
In their defence it seems that neither Cllr Paul nor Cllr Gangarharan read the items they reposted. That apparently is their defence.
We understand that Paul is ‘protected’ as an ally of Fiaz, so we don’t expect any movement there. With regard to Gangaharan, we are less sure. The re-election of Makwana to the post (Group Treasurer) that she is demonstrably ill equipped to fulfil suggests that she too is being offered a life-line.
Antisemitism
And then there are Labour’s anti-Semites and their facilitators.
There isn’t a suggestion (as far as we are aware anyway) that Gray is an anti-Semite. The accusation against him was that he allowed or facilitated the use of a Labour Facebook site for the promulgation of antisemitic material and allowed this to go unchallenged. It may be that the Labour Party considers his demotion to be sufficient punishment. They may need to. Because if Gray was caught out for his failings, so was Fiaz. In the same report that led to Gray’s removal as Deputy Mayor, Mayor Fiaz was put in the spotlight for essentially doing the same thing. Gray gets the boot. Fiaz remains in office. You work it out.
We know that former Deputy Chair, Nazir Ahmed has been suspended by Labour for antisemitic postings so he is clearly one of the eight.
But then there are several more who have been caught out. There are former Chair of Council Mushtaq Mughal and former Group Chair ‘Suga’ Thekkeppurayil, both of whom have been noted for injudicious statements and postings in respect of the Jews.
We don’t know if Cllr Anamul Islam is one of those being investigated. Just about everybody on Newham Council has now heard the words “Hitler was right” on a recording that purports to be of Cllr Islam. What we don’t know is whether the Labour party sees this as sufficient grounds for enquiring into his involvement with antisemitism. What we do know is that Islam and Fiaz have fallen out and she would not be too unhappy if Islam were edged out by the Labour bureaucracy.
So, there are nine possibilities. Let’s see what Labour says about them. Being represented by this lot must by now be beginning to concern the general public.
