Letter from Tower Hamlets
Here's an article I wrote for 'British Church Newspaper' about Tower Hamlets in May 2005:
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Letter from Tower Hamlets
Councillors accused of half-million pound fraud, Christian place-names removed, Palestine terrorism financed
analysis by a correspondent
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A Christian has sent us a lengthy letter giving us an updated account of developments in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. We print excerpts of his letter below with some analysis by our correspondent.
“Tower Hamlets was where General Booth founded the Salvation army. Now, however, Tower Hamlets Council seems bent on wiping out any reference to Christianity and turning Tower Hamlets into an exclusively Moslem area.
“Today, 30 out of 51 Tower Hamlets Councillors are Moslem, mostly Bangladeshi. Tower Hamlets has the largest Bangladeshi community anywhere in the world outside Bangladesh”. Unemployment in the Bangladeshi community of Tower Hamlets is running at around 45%.
CHANGES
“There have been many changes in Tower Hamlets over the past two decades. St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic School in Wapping has been forced to close, the East End Methodist Mission which has been serving the people of Tower Hamlets for over 100 years has closed. St. Mary’s Churchyard, Aldgate, has been renamed Abdul Ali Park”. This was after the murder in the 1980s of a Bangladeshi teenager by white youths in what was widely accepted as a racist attack.
“The Council election wards previously named St. Mary’s, Holy Trinity, St. Peter’s and St. James have been abolished, whilst the wards of St. Dunstan’s and St. Katherine’s have been renamed with non-Christian names. The ancient Stepney parish church of St. Dunstan’s was recently burgled, while eye-witnesses said they saw a group of Asian youths running from St. Dunstan’s churchyard after it had been vandalised recently.
“The Council’s annual diary this year printed details of all religious festivals of the main faiths except Christian ones; even Christmas Day and Easter were omitted this year. The Council’s annual Christmas lunch has been re-named ‘Festival lunch’.
“The Council has over the past decade voted literally millions of pounds to Palestine welfare organisations. It is well known that this money is largely channelled to Palestinian terrorist groups such as Hamas who use the funds to buy weapons. Tower Hamlets is twinned with Jenin in Palestine, known the world over as a hotbed of Palestinian terrorism.
ADVOCATING TERRORISM
“A recent BBC radio documentary said that: ‘In the streets of the East End, there are people openly advocating terrorism with the Police apparently powerless to stop them, there are secret conferences and study circles. There was a danger that the extremist element could snowball’.
“In a recent incident, Asian thugs beat up a 63-year-od white woman, spat at her, and shouted racist abuse (too foul to print in this newspaper). They added: ‘This is our country, not yours’.
“According to a recent News of the World report, several bogus colleges in Tower Hamlets have been offering bogus diplomas to illegal immigrants to enable them to obtain students’ visas from the Home Office.
“On 3rd March this year, the East London Advertiser carried the headline: “£495,000 Theft”. The Police have charged one serving Tower Hamlets Councillor, Kumar Murshid, and one former Councillor, Nasir Uddin, with a total of 43 counts of thefts relating to the alleged fraudulent spending of money and false accounting in connection with the Youth Action scheme, of which Mr Murshid was the director. The total defrauded by the two men is said to total £495,000. Mr Uddin lost his seat on the Council after failing to turn up to any Council meetings for six months. His brother, Ain Uddin, is charged with six counts of theft totalling £29,000 and a Mr Shalim Khan with two counts of conspiracy to defraud.
“The Council is currently investigating an alleged false reference given by Councillor Abbas, Leader of Tower Hamlets Council. He wrote a glowing, but apparently false, reference for his Councillor colleague Ataur Rahman to help him get a Council job”.
Pubs in the main Moslem areas of Tower Hamlets have been subjected to repeated arson attacks and few are left. The area’s main shopping area is known in the East End today as ‘Banglatown’.
GHETTOISATION
Last year Tower Hamlets Council was accused of ‘ghettoisation’ over plans to house 40 elderly Bengalis in a purpose-built old people's home, Sonali Gardens. Tower Hamlets Age Concern backed the scheme, despite it appearing to be a blatant breach of the Race Relations Act 1976, in that acceptance for the housing project would clearly be based only on race and therefore be discriminatory. The Council claimed that, with more than 30% of its population of Bangladeshi origin, it was not breaching the Act, stating that “unmet need can only be addressed by providing services under one roof. This means it can employ staff who speak the same Sylheti dialect as residents and arrangements for halal food are simplified”.
A report on the controversial recent General Election campaign in Bethnal Green and Bow appears elsewhere in this issue.
[report by Tony Bennett, 18 May 2005]
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