Rahman and The Man
I’ve been around the block a bit, I think. I’d like to say I have seen most of the more bonkers behaviour of the human race, so that nothing much can surprise me. But life can still surprise, and my “ghast” has been well and truly “flabbered”.
Last week the electoral court disqualified Lutfur Rahman from acting as Mayor of Tower Hamlets after finding a host of examples of bribery, vote rigging and various offences. A link to the judgment can be found here: The High Court Judgement on Lutfur Rahman. I have read the judgment (of Mr. Richard Mawrey, QC) in some detail. It is long, but a masterwork of clarity, realism, balance, understatement and at times dry wit.
Last weekend I opened my Sunday Times to find this: Christina Shawcroft, a member of Labour’s ruling national executive committee, is incandescent at the appalling treatment of the saintly Rahman. As the judge in the case noted, Ms Shawcroft can be regarded on the far left of the party, and a long-standing supporter of Mr. Rahman. By the way, she actually gets a decent review from the judge – unlike Labour’s NEC. According to the Sunday Times, she claims he has been a victim of “Islamophobia” and the judgment of the court was “a complete travesty”. She allegedly continued: “The whole weight of the British Establishment seems to be crashing down on Tower Hamlets for no other reason than it had the temerity to elect a Bangladeshi mayor. It is disgusting, absolutely disgusting.” Perhaps she should read the judgment. But perhaps it wouldn’t make any difference, just as there are people who believe the earth is flat, on resting on pillars of turtles, and all pictures from space which might indicate the contrary are the manipulations of space lizards.
In any event, leaving aside the litany of malpractice, lies, false evidence, bribery and intimidation which the judge set out in coruscating detail, that is a rather odd conclusion. “The Establishment” appears to have been more than turning a blind eye to unlawful practice. The case was not brought by the Electoral Commission, or a political party, not even the Labour Party (which the judge criticised for many matters, not least its unwillingness to do so when its own candidate, Mr. Biggs, had been falsely accused of being a “racist”). No, the case was brought by four individual citizens of Tower Hamlets who had the guts to put themselves and their financial future on the line, and had to do so precisely because “the Establishment” did not want to get involved. But it wasn’t this that set me off. No, it was the seemingly perverse behaviour of the Metropolitan Police.
First off, they get a side swipe in the judgment. One of the issues in the case was the raucous picketing of polling stations by Rahman’s supporters. This came very close to outright intimidation. There were two sides to this. There was clearly a huge amount of pressure. Rahman’s case is that there was a happy, festive, carnival atmosphere. The petitioners said it went far beyond that. This from the judgment starting at paragraph 556:
“556: As the court commented perhaps somewhat wryly, listening to the evidence would convince anyone other than a hardened judge that the witnesses had been describing two entirely different elections or, perhaps, the same election but in parallel universes.
577: The Petitioners’ witnesses painted a picture of rowdy mobs of THF [Rahman’s party] supporters at polling stations, in red T-shirts or with THF rosettes and sustained by food and drink handed out from the boots of campaign cars, haranguing voters, obstructing entry to polling stations and generally putting as much pressure as they could on voters who were Bangladeshi (or otherwise appeared to be Muslim) to do their duty to their community and their faith by voting for Mr. Rahman and THF.
578: The witnesses called for Mr. Rahman, on the other hand, painted a picture of a jolly family atmosphere at the polling stations with everyone in high spirits, excited to be voting, friendly and welcoming.”
Here are some examples taken from the judgment…
“596: Ms Janet Digby-Baker OBE, who had worked in the Borough for over fifty years and had been honoured for services to children and families, told the court of overt harassment outside the polling station at Cyril Jackson Primary School mentioned above (as well as misconduct in polling booths). She felt sufficiently outraged to write an article about it for the East London and Docklands Advertiser, only to be subjected to a torrent of abuse from partisans of Mr. Rahman on that newspaper’s website. The court had no hesitation in accepting her evidence and, to be fair, Mr. Penny made no submission to the contrary.”
Or this…
“603: At the Tiller Leisure Centre the Petitioner Ms Moffat actually saw a young Bangladeshi man in tears after being told that he would not be a good Muslim unless he voted for Lutfur Rahman.”
Of all of this, The Met and relevant authorities seemed blissfully unaware. At paragraph 579 the judge wryly observed: “With a few exceptions, the witness statements for the returning officer covering events outside the polling stations (mainly police officers) and inside (mainly polling staff) described an atmosphere of hushed, almost cloistral, calm. In the light of the two other groups of statements, an unkind person might remark that the policemen and polling staff had appeared to take as their role models the legendary Three Wise Monkeys”
Anyway, with the litany of unlawful behaviour found AS A FACT by the judge, one might expect the Met to get their act together and be having a word with Rahman and his cronies. Well, certainly they are hot on the trail…but not of Rahman. The suspect Plod wants to have a word with is the lead petitioner in the case, Mr. Andy Ehrman. Even as the electoral judge was delivering his damning and detailed judgment, he got an e-mail asking him to come in to be interviewed by El CID. Indeed, a week before the case the police had turned up on Mr. Ehrman’s doorstep in an attempt to arrest HIM for “perverting the course of justice”. His crime: allegedly asking a witness to give false evidence. Exactly the opposite of what the judge found had plainly been going on in the case, with false evidence being manufactured on Rahman’s behalf.
Here is a link to an article in the Sunday Telegraph, and it is disturbing reading…
The judge concluded with these damning but accurate remarks:
“On past form, it appears inevitable that Mr. Rahman will denounce this judgment as yet another example of the racism and Islamophobia that have hounded him throughout his political life. It is nothing of the sort. Mr. Rahman has made a successful career by ignoring or flouting the law (as this Petition demonstrates) and has relied on silencing his critics by accusations of racism and Islamophobia. But his critics have not been silenced and neither has this court. Events of recent months…have starkly demonstrated what happens when those in authority are afraid to confront wrongdoing for fear of allegations of racism and Islamophobia. Even in the multicultural society which is 21st century Britain, the law must be applied fairly and equally to everyone. Otherwise we are lost.”
Quite so. It is a curious world we live in. I hope the Met’s investigation into a brave citizen who took on the intimidating Rahman machine will be conducted in the full glare of publicity. In the meantime, evening all. It should that be “Eid, y’all”?
Sigillum
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May 1, 2015 at 9:13 am -
May 1, 2015 at 9:35 am -
I see “Unite” has formally cast it’s ballot. Follow the money.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/30/unite-leader-len-mccluskey-backs-dismissed-mayor-lutfur-rahman -
May 1, 2015 at 9:36 am -
Astonishing.
Fifty – or even thirty – years ago, one would have assumed with complete conviction that such things could never, would never happen in England.
How have we come to fall so far and so fast?
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May 1, 2015 at 9:39 am -
Education. Education. Education. Might be taking the Advance Level after next Thursday. Things can only get better… remember?
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May 1, 2015 at 9:49 am -
In a bizarre twist Rahman has actually said he wants to have people who send him “insulting” tweets arrested by the Met. Meanwhile there was an excellent piece by Rod Liddle in the Spectator this week. He really let rip.
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May 1, 2015 at 3:34 pm -
Thanks for that info Gildas, I shall make sure that I make a point of insulting this corrupt Bearded Savage on Twitter as soon as possible.
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May 1, 2015 at 10:36 am -
Naturally we scorn bad behaviour, and flatter good behaviour.
Unfortunately the State ethics of a socialist system, like ours, will determine ‘behaviour’ not just by moral actions, but also by type; such as ‘race’ or ‘gender’, in accord with Socialist principles of ‘equality’. Therefore discerning natural differences, that are characteristic of a type, becomes illegal.
It follows that scorn of bad behaviour can be dodged by claims of prejudice; and flattery of good behaviour loses its value as a gift, when it becomes obligatory.
Thus socialist equality perverts natural behaviour, by undermining discernment by the moral individual.
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May 1, 2015 at 10:48 am -
In view of the apparent manipulation of the electoral roll and the postal voting system in Tower Hamlets, one can perhaps conclude that the Electoral Commission is either staffed by deaf-mute imbeciles or criminally negligent THF supporters.
I hope investigative journalist Mr Andrew Gilligan will now turn his attentions to the part this august body should have played before, during and after the events so clearly outlined in the High Court.
I would also be interested in seeing whether Mr Rahman, his family and his close friends have gained financially from the seemingly unfettered access they have had to the £1bn plus of cash finding its way into the Tower Hamlets petty cash box each year….
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May 1, 2015 at 12:55 pm -
But it’s not only Tower Hamlets – that case is one very rare occasion where a little disinfecting sunlight has managed to shine briefly on the festering underworld that is ethnic electoral practices. Next Thursday the same corrupt ballot-rigging processes will be studiously ignored by the Returning Officers, Electoral Commission and Police in many of our major towns and cities, just as the organised sexual abuse of young girls has been ignored by the responsible authorities for decades.
Must be a coincidence that it’s the same group behind both types of condoned criminal activity . . . . . . or maybe not.-
May 1, 2015 at 2:45 pm -
No, it’s certainly not only TH, nor even only London…
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May 1, 2015 at 10:50 am -
I think some of this extreme pro-Muslim prejudice derives from the effect of Enoch Powell’s “rivers” speech. The reaction was “We must do absolutely anything to prevent that happening. If that means bending over backward to keep immigrants happy, it is still better than massacres.”
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May 1, 2015 at 11:02 am -
Except back then Enoch was more concerned about our Commonwealth cousins from the Caribbean, who generally seem pretty happy these days, notwithstanding the odd Carib youth being gunned down by the Met every few years. That is my memory of who were to be “frightened of” back then anyhow. I don’t recall anyone being scared of that nice Mr.Patel from the corner shop back in 1968.
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May 1, 2015 at 12:09 pm -
I do wonder about the Electoral Commission. I seem to recall that they were most unwilling to take any sort of meaningful action a few years ago following a blatant abuse of postal votes in the Midlands. Even more worrying, the government of the day didn’t seem too bothered, either.
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May 1, 2015 at 12:12 pm -
No more they were – ‘frightened of Mr. Patel from the corner shop,’ I mean. But then, Mr. Patel would be a Hindu, not a Moslem.
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May 1, 2015 at 12:53 pm -
Much like folk would comment that the Trinidadians were okay, but the Jamaicans were a bit on a bit on the bolshie side presumably.
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May 1, 2015 at 1:05 pm -
I started off my business career in the fibre trade and did business with various people in Bangladesh. It was all astonishingly bent and corrupt, so I am not remotely surprised by these developments. I left it for the more honest and straightforward practices in the Grain market.
But Tower Hamlets has been a Soviet for some time, hasn’t it?
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May 1, 2015 at 1:28 pm -
Can you imagine such an outcome if the hearing had been held in one of the inner city areas where Sharia courts are “allowed”?
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May 1, 2015 at 7:12 pm -
Eh, Sharia election courts? Where are they?
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May 1, 2015 at 4:28 pm -
It is quite odd how the supporters of this judgement cheerfully quote the aspects of it which will render it most susceptible to judicial review. Mr Mawrey may have had his views on outside ‘events of recent months’ but he was actually charged to decide whether the petitioners case was proved to the criminal standard i.e beyond all reasonable doubt on the actual facts in front of him.
In point of fact he did not decide that the offence of voter intimidation had taken place, though you would not guess it from the numerous reports on the case. What is more disturbing is how he dealt with the evidence before him. It appears (from Ted Jeory’s excellent blog), that the petitioners evidence came from 4 or 5 people only, one of whom was a rival political candidate. Much of it seems to have been ‘what I saw happening to an (unknown and unexamined other). Oddly, for such a heated election, there seems to have been no video evidence available at all for the court to consider.
Mawrey’s treatment of the police and polling station evidence is again a hostage to fortune. I would imagine that there were some incidents of rowdyism: in inner London elections there sometimes are. However, there seems to have been far more evidence from the police and the polling station administrators that on the whole the voting process was unexceptional. These latter, for anyone who has not participated in an election, come from all walks of life both within and without the councils. Dismissing them all as liars, which he effectively did, had better be based on something more than Mawrey’s own views on political correctness gone mad. Although there is no right of appeal from a commissioner’s judgements they do have to be rational.
There seem to be findings based firmly on fact which would have been enough to disqualify Rahman, but of course, they would have had quite the same ring to them.
I’d also point out to all those right wing libertarians who are just loving all this that although Mawrey has sought to define undue religious influence in a way which would let candidates standing on a christian religious ticket, or campaigning on an anti abortion manifesto, off the hook, things don’t always work out that way. In fact, the whole notion of undue influence generally is a can of worms. As is ‘cronyism’. On my council a large group of Independents hold sway, with the Conservatives. Purely personal manifestos, and all mates together. It’s not unusual and it’s not unlawful. And, people obviously like it that way as they keep getting voted in.
Finally, ‘cronyism’ bubAs to whether some people are too stupid to votei
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May 1, 2015 at 4:34 pm -
Final sentence scrap….I don’t seem able to scroll up and down my comment box. Is this a device to keep us short and sweet?
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May 1, 2015 at 4:50 pm -
No scrollbar on the comments box? Depends on your web browser settings. If you’re stuck, use your keyboard arrow keys.
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May 1, 2015 at 5:54 pm -
As the judge said, parallel universe….
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May 1, 2015 at 10:30 pm -
Yes, well I feel that on this point at least Mawrey has chosen the more fantastic world. Out of interest I tracked down the what I think is the article by Miss Digby Baker in the East London Advertiser shortly after the election. She doesn’t at that time mention voter intimidation at all: but women going into the poll booth in pairs.
http://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/news/limehouse_woman_s_anger_at_cyril_jackson_primary_school_polling_station_1_3614552
Any abusive emails she received seem to have been removed, so it’s hard to know if they were more offensive than some of the anti THF comments which have appeared and appear now on articles about TH, many of which are highly personal.
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May 1, 2015 at 5:48 pm -
God bless the judge.
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May 1, 2015 at 7:23 pm -
God save us……
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May 1, 2015 at 7:53 pm -
Not if Allah has anything to do with it, he won’t.
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May 1, 2015 at 8:09 pm -
This issue has been going on far too long.
Behaviour that would have been unremarkable more than a century ago here, & is accepted as the norm in certain foreign parts.
We worry about which party will be elected to rule the bear garden of the Commons, but for many things affecting us day to day, local government makes a huge difference. Will that supermarket development on the High Street be welcomed or rejected; just who is that social housing being provided for; why are floodlights being installed on the rec you were pleased to move in next door to before it became a non-league football ground?
And yet…. having been involved myself, I know that most councillors are honest, even trustworthy. The problem I’ve most often seen is that the few that are prepared to stand are er… sometimes the last people you might want involved. Normal people don’t do it.
The answer is obvious, get involved, check what they’re doing, or stop complaining. -
May 3, 2015 at 4:45 pm -
“leaving aside the litany of malpractice, lies, false evidence, bribery and intimidation which the judge set out in coruscating detail”
I’d love someone to repeat them because none of the media has. I’m at a complete loss to know what this man has been convicted of apart from regular mentions of groups outside polling stations. The whole business smacks of student politics with bad losers desperately trying to find a way to bring down a popular winner.
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May 5, 2015 at 7:33 pm -
“Shock! Horror! Metropolitian police racists prosecuted an ethnic minority political fraudster, despite a mountain of evidence proving his guilt.
“Honorouable and decent members (ahem!) of the Labour National Executive Committee leaped to the defence of Lutfer Rahman, elected mayor of Tower Hamlets who was recently convicted of electoral fraud and a host of other crimes related to electoral fraud. Their evidence of his innocence, “he’s a mulim”, he has dark skin”, people who oppose him are racists.”
And the Labour sheeple, poor, brainwashed, half wits that they are, accuse UKIP of being bigots and neo fascist nut cases.
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