Hope not Hate use seminar organised by victim of Labour racism

Hope not Hate's 'Jihad news' - it's token attempt to make it appear to be targeting more than UKIP for the Labour Party and unions - was over the weekend pushing a BBC report of a 'counter-extremism' conference' held in Slough.

The conference was run by a Mr Zafar Ali, the chairman of the board of governors of the Iqra Primary School.

 

Mr Zafar Ali - victim of
Labour Party racism

We doubt whether Mr Ali appreciates being used as propaganda fodder by a Labour-front organisation like Hope not Hate as he had formerly been a victim of racism in the Labour Party, and successfully sued the party all the way to the court of appeal over its persecution of him and 4 other local Slough members.  In 1998, he along with 4 other men including 2 councillors were suspended from the local Labour Party for what was euphemistically described as 'membership irregularities'. Behind the scenes briefings expanded this to make accusations of bribery and corruption against Mr Ali. Despite these allegedly criminal activities, nothing was reported to the police by the Labour Party, and suggestions persist that the dispute was designed to ensure Labour got its preferred candidates to the top of the European elections list for the London Region.

Bad feeling unsurprisingly continued to persist between Mr Ali and the local Labour Party and in 2009 local Labour MP Fiona McTaggart was barred from visiting Iqra school unless she first apologised for criticisms of the Slough Islamic School Project made in 2006. Despite her unfounded criticisms, the Government later awarded around £8m to run the school in Grasmere Parade, Slough.

There is a double embarrassment for Hope not Hate however. Nick Lowles toured the TV studios in 2008 speaking about the leaked BNP membership list and persecuting people on it - many of them mistakenly -  while making sure that everybody who heard him was left in no doubt about where to find it on the internet so they could join in the persecution. Mr Ali, at the time chairman of the Slough Race Equality Council - was giving an interview to the 'Slough Express' newspaper on the same subject. In his measured response which showed considerably more appreciation for democracy than Lowles' had, Mr Ali said,

"I don’t support the leaking of personal data of this nature and irrespective of what party you believe in, you have the right to confidentiality... We would deplore any action of intimidation or violence against any BNP members.”

As Hope not Hate's actions seem designed to do precisely that, it would appear that Hope not Hate represent exactly the sort of extremism against which Mr Ali is directing his efforts. We wish Mr Ali well in his endeavours and hope that the Labour Party has now ceased to persecute him because of his race.



 

 

 

Gateway to Terror - a review: "Hope not Hate's very own 'dodgy dossier', culled exclusively from publicly available information"

There is much rejoicing at Hope not Hate this evening over the publication of their latest tract which focuses on Islamic extremism in the UK. Well, when they say Islamic extremism, what they really mean is a very small part of it in the form of Anjem Choudhary and his al-Muhajiroun organisation which - despite being on their list of targeted extremists - they have persisted in not mentioning.

Lowles - wants praise for 'fighting Islamic
extremism' in rehashed report

Their 60 page pamphlet - Gateway to Terror - is co-authored by Jo Mulhall and Nick Lowles, and is available for £7 including postage. Readers expecting to find out something they didn't already know look set to be sadly disappointed, as their own article advertising it simply rehashes information which has long been in the public domain, even if Hope not Hate didn't notice because they were more interested in attacking UKIP.

There are many examples of this, not least their turning of a Nelsonian blind eye to Islamic Emergency Defence, as we discussed back in late June. Hope not Hate were too busy trying to stop Pam Gellar and Robert Spencer from visiting the UK to discuss how Choudhary was deliberately and obviously circumventing government controls.

Lowles himself gets rather carried away in his attempts to sell rehashed media reports as a ground-breaking study. For example, he says:

"Fundamentally, they seek to impose a system that is intolerant of difference, does not accept anyone or anything that fails to conform and that is totally opposed to democracy and free will."

While apparently forgetting his own 'Purple Rain' campaign directed against UKIP which seeks to achieve exactly the same thing. Still, Lowles goes on to say:



Lord Pearson - berated as 'racist' for
fighting Islamic extremism

"This report will herald a more concerted campaign against extremism by HOPE not hate. Just as we will speak out against Islamophobia and racism wherever it emerges, so too we will begin to campaign against those extremists who justify their actions in the name of Islam."

We certainly hope so, but we won't hold our breath, as Hope not Hate has been saying the same thing for the past 3 years, but with precious little evidence to support it. When former UKIP Leader Lord Pearson said last week that "UK Muslim communities are home to "thousands of potential home-grown terrorists" - rather what Lowles and Mulhall claim in their pamphlet - he was attacked by Hope not Hate with the implicit criticism that he was a racist.

The truth is that once again, Hope not Hate have failed in what is supposed to be their core mission. While the current pamphlet will undoubtedly help swell the coffers of Hope not Hate Ltd, the full version of it contains nothing which was not readily found on the internet already. While the plots and links between key figures they describe are instructive, all they have really achieved is to draw together other people's work and put their own names on it. It may be that they don't realise this themselves, focussed as they are on trying to keep down UKIP's vote, so we'd hesitate to call it straight plagiarism, but as a piece of original research it is tepid at best. Lowles has clearly learnt well from Labour - this booklet seems to follow the pattern of the last Labour government's 'dodgy dossier', simply culling the most sensational stories from the internet and stitching them together to sound authoritative, while actually barely touching the minds of the authors. If you think this signals a return to fighting genuine extremism by Hope not Hate, be prepared to think again: by this time next week, they'll be back to bashing UKIP.

Is it worth buying? No, of course not: our copy was a preview version. Does it have any value? Again, no, it's just a rehash. The only thing noteworthy about it is the convolutions the authors go to in trying to say exactly what UKIP has been saying for years, without using the same words. Now that, as they say, is priceless.