Monthly Archives: November 2006

Peer doubts race hate law resolve

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Lord AhmedThe will of ministers to tighten laws on racial hatred has been questioned by Muslim Labour peer Lord Ahmed.

Several ministers called for a review of the legislation after the BNP’s leader was cleared of stirring up racial hatred in remarks about Islam. But Lord Ahmed said the government had not delivered on previous promises to the Muslim community on race hate laws. It was time for the government to start treating Muslims equally and not like “subjects of a colony”, he said.

Lord Ahmed told the BBC that the government had made unfulfilled promises to the Muslim community earlier this year when a new law on religious and racial hatred was watered down as a result of a Commons defeat. The peer said ministers should have shown more determination to push their measures through.

He said: “What I have seen is that the government has been treating the Muslim community like subjects of a colony rather than equal citizens in the UK.”

BBC News, 12 November 2006

Double think on incitement

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In the wake of BNP leader Nick Griffin’s acquittal on a charge of inciting racial hatred against Muslims, editorials in both the Sunday Telegraph and the Observer come out against tightening the law.

Their arguments are ignorant – the Torygraph is evidently labouring under the impression that Mizanur Rahman was convicted of incitement to murder, when he was of course convicted of inciting racial hatred – and also incoherent. The Observer argues that Griffin’s case was different because his speech was made “in private” – though what that has to do with the issue of incitement is unclear. Does the Observer think it would have been OK for Griffin to incite people to go out and murder Muslims, as long as his speech was made at a BNP internal meeting?

Both the Telegraph and the Observer argue that words which fall short of actually inciting violence should not be criminalised – which is in fact an argument for abolishing most of the existing legislation against inciting racial hatred. No doubt the Telegraph would welcome such a step. We can only assume that the Observer agrees.

Muslims – ‘a community which is the source of such a great menace’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“If there are, indeed, 100,000 Muslims who cannot see the wrong of 7 July, then we are in trouble. The only people who can change this are Muslims, but there is no obvious effort to address the problem from within. The Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, couldn’t have been more bald about the Muslim community last week. ‘Their complaint often boils down to the position that it is always right to intervene when Muslims are victims … and always wrong when Muslims are the oppressors or terrorists.’

“If the perpetrators of these outrages are Muslim – sometimes rather well-to-do Muslims, it seems – and the members of the 200-odd cells that MI5 is investigating are Muslim, it is not good enough for Muslims to fall back on bristling victimhood. To the rest of us, it simply seems nonsensical that a community which is the source of such a great menace, and which has offered support to it, can at the same time claim persecution. We need leadership from British Muslims and a contract between their community and the vast majority, in which the same ideals of peace, law and order are agreed upon without reference to religious needs. For this is not a religious matter; it is about law and order in a secular society.

“Is this illiberal? No, and nor is the concern that Islamic faith schools are being used to distance a generation of young people from the values of the surrounding society…. These schools are undesirable in the extreme and steps should be taken to end the separate development that they posit. But the government would rather reduce all liberties than be seen to target a minority.”

Henry Porter in the Observer, 12 November 2006

Muslims are not doing enough to help this country fight terror, says Met Chief

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sir Ian BlairMuslims are not doing enough to help police crack terrorist plots, says Britain’s top policeman. Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Force Commissioner, says Muslims initially went into denial over the problem of terrorism. He believes that encouraging greater co-operation will be a “slow” and “delicate” process.

Sir Ian was speaking during a visit in Berlin, where he delivered a speech calling for an extension to the 28-day limit for the detention without charge of terrorist suspects. In an interview with the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, Sir Ian was asked how much help Muslims were giving to police anti-terrorist investigations. He replied: “We’re getting more, but we’re not getting enough.”

In his speech, Sir Ian pointed to opinion polls suggesting that between 40,000 and 120,000 Muslims in Britain believed that last year’s July 7 London bombings, in which 52 innocent people died, were justified.

A spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain said: “All Britons, regardless of their faith background, must fully co-operate with the police in protecting the safety and security of our nation. Our understanding is that the police have been receiving an increasing amount of help from British Muslims in this regard.”

Sunday Telegraph, 12 November 2006

Posted in UK

Race hate laws split the cabinet

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The government is facing a major split over race hate laws, with cabinet colleagues divided over whether the legislation should be toughened.

Two cabinet heavyweights – the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, and the Home Secretary, John Reid – differ over how to respond to Friday’s acquittal of the British National Party leader, Nick Griffin, and a fellow BNP activist.

The split comes as Brown, Reid and the Tory leader David Cameron all made moves yesterday to boost their credentials over anti-terror measures and law and order ahead of the Queen’s Speech on Wednesday. The speech will include sweeping new measures to tackle antisocial behaviour, immigration, reoffending and terrorism.

Brown responded to the BNP verdict by saying Griffin’s description of Islam as a “wicked, vicious faith” would offend “mainstream opinion in this country”. He said: “If there is something that needs to be done to look at the law, then I think we will have to do that.”

But Home Office sources said Reid was taking a more cautious line, ruling out new legislation until well into next year. They said he wanted to see how a new race and religious hatred law – watered down by amendments in the House of Lords – “bedded in” when it came into force in February.

The Brown-Reid divide was seen as particularly significant because the Home Secretary is being mentioned by some Blair loyalists as a potential successor to the Prime Minister.

The Chancellor’s suggestion that the law might have to be tightened also prompted a strong reaction from the Liberal Democrat peer who helped lead the Lords’ opposition to last year’s bill.

Lord Lester, a leading human rights lawyer, said he and others would strongly oppose tougher legislation, and criticised the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, for bringing a prosecution against the BNP leader. “What we need is not new laws but a more sensible attorney-general,” he said.

Goldsmith is planning a meeting tomorrow with the Crown Prosecution Service lawyers who prosecuted Griffin and the other BNP member, Mark Collett. “He will examine whether prosecutors have sufficient powers to take the necessary action,” a spokeswoman in the Attorney General’s office said yesterday.

Last year’s bill, before it was diluted by the Lords amendments, would have allowed people to be prosecuted for using “threatening, insulting or abusive behaviour”. Under the final version only “threatening” behaviour is covered. The prosecution will also have to show intention to foment hatred rather than just recklessness.

Observer, 12 November 2006

Mad Mel rejects ‘Jewish/fascist axis’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“In the Communist Party’s Morning Star newspaper last September, Geoff Brown cited both the BNP’s support for Israel against Hezbollah, and chairman Nick Griffin’s support for the Jewish writer Bat Ye’or who has warned of an Islamist takeover of Europe, as evidence of a Jewish/fascist axis. As was clear from this article, such a vicious attempt to link the Jews with the fascists was prompted in large measure by an attempt to bury the link between Islamic fascism and the left.”

Melanie Phillips in the Jewish Chronicle, 10 November 2006

In fact Brown’s article was mainly a critique of the ludicrous claim made by the All-Party Parliamentary Committee on Anti-Semitism (under the influence of Searchlight) that the far right has allied itself with Islamists in order to incite hatred against the Jewish community. Brown pointed out that, as far as its public propaganda is concerned, the BNP has almost entirely ditched anti-semitism in favour of inciting hatred against Muslims, and in doing so openly promotes the Islamophobic rantings of Bat Ye’or.

Addressing the future evolution of the BNP under Griffin’s leadership, Brown wrote that “the possibility of the BNP making a pitch for the support of a right-wing minority within the Jewish community on an anti-Muslim programme, as the far-right party Vlaams Belang has successfully done in Belgium, cannot be excluded” (emphasis added). How exactly does that amount to “a vicious attempt to link the Jews with the fascists” or to “smear Jews … as being the neo-fascists’ natural allies”?

You can understand why Mad Mel might be a bit sensitive about the idea of fascists finding common ground with right-wingers in the Jewish community. Last year a BNP writer name-checked Phillips as one of the newspaper columnists whose opinions BNP supporters “feel most closely match their own”.

Muslims thrown off flight

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cops marched four Asian men off a plane after a passenger said their behaviour made him nervous. The men – in Islamic robes – were arguing in a foreign language and then all went to the toilet, one after the other. A fellow traveller on the Luton to Glasgow easyJet flight demanded they be kicked off – just as the plane was to taxi to the runway. Cabin crew alerted the captain and cops were called, who took the men, all in their 20s, off the plane.

Everyone else on board was then ordered off with their hand luggage while the crew searched the cabin. The jet took off an hour and ten minutes late at 10pm on Wednesday.

Another passenger said: “A Scottish bloke in his 20s who was sat beside them clearly thought something was up. He was arguing strongly that these lads were up to no good and should be taken off. Considering they had just got on a minute before, their behaviour was pretty bizarre. I think other people were worried. The men were all wearing jackets over long Islamic robes. They had beards and looked like Muslims.”

The Sun, 10 November 2006

Politicians ‘left vacuum for BNP’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jon Cruddas (2)Mainstream politicians have left a vacuum for the British National Party to get votes, a contender in Labour’s deputy leader race is due to say. Backbench MP Jon Cruddas says the acquittal of the BNP leader, Nick Griffin, on a charge of inciting racial hatred is a wake-up call.

In a speech to the Searchlight conference for Labour and union activists, he will say: “Some communities have been badly affected by a decline in traditional industries, a shortage of affordable housing and changing migration patterns.”

He will also say: “We have to be honest in saying the debate over the veil, talking tough on immigration and race or the language used in the ‘war on terror’ does not reassure people but actually makes the situation worse. It creates fear, tension and suspicion. It divides communities and plays into the hands of extremism.”

BBC News, 11 November 2006

Cabinet rethinks race hate laws after jury frees BNP leaders

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Race hatred laws may have to be revised following the acquittal of the British National party’s leader, Nick Griffin, for the second time on incitement charges, senior government figures said last night. Gordon Brown, the chancellor, and Lord Falconer, the lord chancellor, said the laws may have to be looked at, while a spokesman for John Reid, the home secretary, said he would be “taking soundings” from cabinet colleagues about changing the laws.

“Mainstream opinion in this country will be offended by some of the statements that they have heard made,” said Mr Brown. “If there is something that needs to be done to look at the law then I think we will have to do that,” he told BBC News 24. Lord Falconer told the BBC that it was time to rethink the race hate laws. “What is being said to young Muslim people in this country is that we as a country are anti-Islam, and we have got to demonstrate without compromising freedom that we are not,” he said.

Guardian, 11 November 2006

See also the Independent, 11 November 2006

And BBC News, 11 November 2006