Last week’s Dispatches discussed irregularities in the voting patterns in London’s 2008 mayoral elections. This Daily Telegraph article goes into more detail in how this was an attempt to secure victory for then-incumbent Ken Livingstone:
In an election lost by Mr Livingstone, the Islamic Forum of Europe helped secure massive and unexpected swings towards him in its east London heartland.
In one ward, Spitalfields, his vote share rose from 29.6 per cent in 2004 – an election he won – to 68.4 per cent in 2008, a rise of nearly 39 percentage points.
In every other ward in Tower Hamlets and Newham with a sizeable Muslim population, his vote rose by between 23 and 36 percentage points. His vote in other Muslim and ethnic minority areas of London also rose, but by far smaller amounts.
Mr Livingstone’s economic development body, the London Development Agency, had agreed to pay more than £1.3 million to the East London Mosque, controlled by the IFE, and described by critics as hardline.
Emails leaked to The Sunday Telegraph show that a senior LDA official furiously protested against at least £500,000 of this grant, saying there were “major concerns” about the mosque project and “no case” for giving it the money.
However, the official was overruled and the grant was paid.
Ken’s response upon having these matters brought to his attention:
Mr Livingstone said he could not recollect the project, or whether he had been personally involved in approving the payment. He refused to comment on the activities of Muslims 4 Ken and said: “You are a liar who is stirring up racism.”
Ken also forgot to mention that it is “Islamophobic” to discuss irregularities in Council funding involving he and the East London Mosque.
12 Comments
The Telegraph report is dynamite.
The alleged electoral fraud exposed is more characteristic of the fragile so-called “emergent democracies” of the developing world, where such rigging tactics are commonplace.
This is a real threat, not just to democracy in Tower Hamlets, or London; but to democracy across the UK – and it needs to be stopped now.
I agree entirely with Abu Faris because he’s recently been kind to me.
Except…from the voting ‘fraud’ angle, just this bit
1) isn’t the D.T. still the ‘flagship’ of the conservative party ?
2) were these 64.8 % frogmarched down to the polling station at stick-point ?
3) were they at liberty to vote for who they liked, once actually in the booth ?
4) did they get paid to vote for Ken ?
5) is the suggestion that these voters didn’t know what they were doing ?
6) would anybody be so bothered about, say, ‘Buddhists 4 Boris’ ?
(obviously if there was a constituency with 64.8% of Buddhist voters) &
7) wouldn’t most democrats be pleased, if there was an overall 64.8% turnout in the next election ?
There’s a lot I need to know yet, and I’ll kneel to be corrected, but this looks suspiciously like they may’ve just preferred Ken over Boris. Perhaps this was democracy in action afterall.
J
Don’t blow my cover – I’m developing a reputation for being cantankerous, volatile and cranky. That and a love of the sound of my own voice (and failing that the sight of my own opinions) and I am the perfect image of the Romanticised Celt. However, I have to work on the flowing locks, burning eyes and general poetic, self-destructive mien. Duw Duw!
The editorial line of the Torygraph is often right-of-centre, agreed; and its readership profile is traditionally more of the Bufton Tufton than the man-servant in his loft, perhaps. However, this should not and does not overtly effect the content and accuracy of the copy. Hacks at the Torygraph are just as likely to mutate into Grauniad staffers as evolve into any other form of
winojourno. One cannot judge a book by its cover – and just so, one should not judge the content of an article by its inclusion in the favoured broadsheet of Sir Henry of Rawlinson End.Most certainly we have not yet reached that stage. I have, in so-called emergent democracies in Asia and Africa, witnessed nearly as much – but I would hazard that the local bovver-boys in TH are not quite ready to be that blatant. The point is that, given the natural demographic growth rate in the Borough and its electoral wards, the sudden spike in voters looks rather as if a spot of “bussing in” of voters is going on…
What is worrying is that it becomes tantamount to the disenfranchisement of the real residents of the electoral division by a flooding out of their votes in favour of an agenda they may or may not actually share by the recently and conveniently arriviste new voters. In other words, the fairness of the vote as a measure of the views of the electorate is being imperilled.
Pork-barrelling is a long held tradition in Tammany Hall. For G-d’s sake, don’t challenge Ken on this – he will claim you are being a racist and endangering the very existence of the galaxy and everything there within.
No; but there is the suggestion that the local IFE louts have got the cadres out and about falsifying petitions, signing up out-of-ward people for other wards and other shenanigans.
More, I would hazard than would say “ordinary Muslims for Ken” given Ken’s dalliances with JI/IFE Islamists who -as the recent Dispatches programme made quite clear – are actually as about as popular as a turd in a swimming pool with very many ordinary Muslim voters in TH. Hence the need for the spot of rigging and dodgy electoral practices if the IFE want to run TH.
I once witnessed a presidential election in which there was a reported 98.7% turn-out. What concerned me and others was the fairness of the election (it was rigged), not the huge turn-out. I would be happier with a free and fair election in which 20 people turned out over a rigged or falsified election that will bring democracy into further disrepute.
Look, if you ran a Red Setter on the Labour ticket in some local authorities, the hound will win. Not so much matter of fancying the Newt Fancier, as not loving the Boris.
Another factor not picked up on much is the seemingly amazing levels of political consciousness and interest in international affairs supposedly being exhibited by voters in local elections in Tower Hamlets. This is rather unusual, actually – and even at the Westminster division level too.
Agreed that in a constituency with a high number of people who can trace their families fairly recently back to largely Muslim cultures in South Asia, one might expect some heightened interest in matters concerning (in this case) Bangladesh.
However, it is fairly unusual for the sort of questions that IFE are interested in (Caliphate, Shari’a, gay-bashing, Jew-baiting, dodgy beards, enforcing hijab) to detain the average punter of whatever cultural background for too long before the staples of local politics intervene. These are traditionally known as “dog shit and street lights” – you know the prosaic and mundane things that tick us off about our neighbourhood in the normal run of things.
Again, to reiterate, if you believed IFE propaganda, TH is a veritable seething mass of angry young men in nighties leaping up and down, ready to bring Shari’a to a town hall near you shortly on the back of the votes of vast swathes of other people similarly and most unusually minded.
A friend of my father’s reminded me once of the sort of voter attitude towards the “big issues” one normally encounters. Many moons ago, he attended a
beatmeet your MP session in the constituency of the very excitable Labour MP, Leo Abse. Leo jumped up and down and raved about nuclear armageddon, Word War III, ballistic missiles targeting Port Talbot, the state of the Pound, Harold Wilson (t’was the ’60s), the veritable white heat (I tell you, look!) of technology… the response from his audience of hard-bitten Welsh people was and is educational. One more elderly type stood up and in a beautiful lilt boomed a question to his MP, Leo Abse:“Now, that is fascinating, Mr Abse; but what I want to know is what the bloody hell you are going to do about the bloody livestock that keeps breaking across my fence and eating my bloody carrots!”
Most people are ordinary people with ordinary lives – no less the valuable for all that. They want to get on with life. Frankly, if someone tells me that the good voters of TH are any bloody different, I shall have to respond:
Pull the other one – it’s got bells on it.
Leo also once had a similar lack of flap exhibited by his electorate when he campaigned for gay rights in his constituency at a time when such matter were considered, at the very least, as “shocking”:
“Well, that’s Leo!” It is claimed one very proper Welsh lady voter breezily reported. “His father was a lawyer, you know!”
Leo Abse, MP for Pontypool/Torfaen. Gay rights campaigner, socialist, brave heart. Rest in Peace.
I can tell you what really interests people in Tower Hamlets is parking policies and parking fines. When Abjol Miah or Galloway get up to speak you never know whether its going to be Gaza or the parking situation that is the subject of their fiery oratory . So they’ve got their eyes on the dog shit and street light vote too.
Thanks for that information Rachel.
A case of dogma and dog muck.
An interesting light on the political acumen of ordure from Respect and IFE, then.
On second thought if they promised to do something about the dog shit I might look at them in a new light.
rest assured, the “be rude to jews / don’t apologise when carpeted because of it” is an excellent way of appealing to the muslim peanut gallery, islamist or no. it has been widely noted in the jewish community that ken gained a great deal of credibility both amongst leftie and muslim voters when he was seen to be “sticking it to the yahoods, sorry, zionists” as in the case of the “concentration camp guard” and “go back to iran” remarks. of course, he retained his wet slap of a figleaf deputy, nicky gavron, sending her to represent him at community events because he didn’t dare to show his own face, whilst also maintaining excellent relationships with the big beasts of property development (most of whom are jewish) except when it suited him to play dirty. the reuben brothers are big boys and i doubt they could care less what ken thinks, but the rest of us certainly noticed him play the “i’m not apologising to the jews, i didn’t even know they were jewish, i had no idea that david reuben was an iraqi jewish name, not a non-jewish iranian name” card.
as my eastern european co-religionists put it, “feh”.
b’shalom
bananabrain
BB,
I’m no fan of Ken, but as a Jew I didn’t feel offended by the ‘concentration camp guard’ incident and didn’t feel this was a case of anti-semitism.
I find myself at odds with what the ‘Jewish community’ and its ‘community leaders’ think probably as often as some of the Spittoon bloggers find themselves at odds with the so-called ‘Muslim community’ and its leaders.
What I learnt from Gita Sahgal among others is to be sceptical of these terms as they often serve to disguise differences within minority communities; as true for Jews as for Muslims.
well, that’s the thing, rachel, i don’t think it was anti-semitism itself, although it was rude and unbecoming of his office – what i felt it was (and the iran remark incident as well) was acting in a way liable to garner support amongst an anti-semitic segment of his support base, just as the quibbling about an apology and the willingness to fight every inch rather than be seen to cave was also aimed at that bolstering support from that particular constituency.
i couldn’t agree more, although the issues on which i differ from the community leaders are rarely transparent to and, moreover, not of much interest to those outside the community, in my experience. actually, i would say that it is more the *combination* 0f attitudes that tends to surprise people, in that being a strict traditionalist in my personal practice is not combined with frequently associated views, such as for example theocratic tendencies, right-wing politics, unreconstructed views on arab-israeli politics, condemnation of homosexuality etc. by the same token, i strongly disapprove of many of the views of the “progressive modernists” but for reasons which are rarely shared by people who are strict traditionalists, if that makes any sense. that does make me, however, somewhat of a radical within my community, albeit with support from movers and shakers across it. nonetheless, it also allows me to assist in the creation of linkages and conversations where they might otherwise perhaps be prevented by community “fiefdoms” and traditional alliances, which i tend to find both frustrating, self-serving and self-perpetuating. i tend to support things which cause disruptive innovation in the community consensus, things like limmud or the montefiore endowment rabbinic training scheme, because i can see they’re successfully challenging the traditional way of doing things. i have to be able to do that from within the existing community structures though, creating yet another alternative is not the answer.
b’shalom
bananabrain
Nice answer. I guess you lot on this blog have been thinking about these questions for awhile!
all the best