Sunday 6 February 2011

Tower Hamlets politics run from Bangladesh?

The heading for this post would hardly set the world on fire, everyone and his dog has known this for years. Bangladeshis in Tower Hamlets have been broadly aligned to the two largest political parties in Bangladesh - the Awami League and the BNP. A smaller number have links to Jamaat-e-Islami, which a few years ago formed a coalition with the BNP.

So, the politics of Tower Hamlets has been a proxy for the rather nasty politics of Bangladesh. Currently, the Awami League, which has a history of violent support, holds sway, as it has in LBTH. Not that I'm singling the Awami League out, all the Bangladeshi parties appear to have blood on their hands and are corrupt to the core - they make our MPs look parties seem almost angelic.

But I hear rumour of some rather shady deals between leading Awami League figures in Tower Hamlets and... Andrew 'Peace TV' Gilligan. My sources tell me that Gilligan has been holding secret meetings with Awami League activists since at least 2009. Gilligan's offer was this: I'll help you get your people back in charge in Tower Hamlets by smearing your opposition, you help me to stop Ken Livingstone make a return as Mayor of London. To achieve this, he returned to his old trick: tell the world that Ken is the 'friend' of 'nasty' Muslims. That seemed to work when he was at the ES.

The first stage in this was his collaboration with Awami League supporters to make his Dispatches programme. Most of the Bangladeshis included in the programme turn out to be core Awami League activists. There is, of course, a historical enmity between the Awami League and Jamaat-e-Islami, so targeting the IFE and ELM makes perfect sense when seen in this context. None of this background is even hinted at in Dispatches, but several blogs have since taken pains to make an explicit connection.

The second stage was to ensure the Awami League faction in Tower Hamlets Labour Party regained its ascendency. In this, Gilligan's efforts failed spectacularly! When the people of Tower Hamlets voted by a significant margin in the referendum for an elected mayor, Gilligan pulled out all the stops to get Helal Abbas elected, the choice of the Awami League. He attacked Lutfur Rahman relentlessly by linking him to IFE and, therefore, JI. Gilligan failed to deliver, Abbas sank after a miserable defeat, and the Awami League felt Gilligan had left them short-changed.

But Gilligan's battle with Ken is far from over. I understand he's taking his political tie-up a giant leap further. His last blog entry spoke of a "secret mission" to "foreign parts". Well, I don't think he's joking; if my sources are right, he's engaged in a series of high-level, secret meetings with the Awami League - in Bangladesh!

I have nothing against Bangladeshis being interested in the politics of their country of origin, or even retaining their party affiliations. But using the politics of Tower Hamlets to fight their Bangladeshi battles is bang out of order, and the contemptible Gilligan's secret exploitation of this for his own vendetta against Ken is simply outrageous.

Do we have to let Gilligan back in, can't the Home Secretary recognise he's a preacher of hate and turn back at the airport?

UPDATE

As if to affirm the plans of anti-Muslim bigots to exploit bitter memories of a forty-year-old war, the vile 'Lucy Lips' from our favourite hate-blog, Harry's Place, couldn't help using this line to try and sideline the MCB:
The Muslim Council of Britain is a Jamaat-e-Islami controlled organisation, which favours the very opposite of liberal democracy. Jamaat-e-Islami members are implicated in serious war crimes committed against Bangladeshis in the War of Liberation.
 Gilligan likes Harry's Place, although they dismissed him as a Nazi propagandist.