Posted for Paul Goodman MP who is the newest member of CentreRight but whose account hasn't yet been activated.
There is to be a new Government-supported “Young Muslim Advisory Group” – described, in a DCLG press release, as “the next generation of Muslim community leaders”. Hazel Blears presumably believes that British Muslims should be grateful to her for identifying their future leadership.
The group’s members will apparently “talk to Ministers and policy makers first hand about the issues affecting their day to day lives”. It would therefore be surprising if the subject of violent extremism didn’t crop up from time to time.
One of the group’s members is Sabiha Iqbal from Bradford, who is apparently “a member of the Socialist Workers Party and of the organisation Love Music Hate Racism. She also volunteers part time at the Barnados Charity shop and writes on a freelance basis for a number of magazines”.
I admire almost anyone who volunteers part-time, have no quarrel with Ms Iqbal personally, and believe that anyone who loves music and hates racism has got it the right way round. But Ministers should surely draw the line at the Socialist Workers Party.
Many Conservative Home readers will be familiar with the SWP, as it’s usually known. I first ran into it on my first day at University. It members were assailing a Centre for Policy Studies Freshers Fair stall: they eventually upturned the stall and assaulted the man who was minding it, while chanting “No nazis in York”.
The SWP, as Wikipedia euphemistically puts it, “is the largest political party of the "Far left" in the "United Kingdom" that stands in the "Revolutionary socialism"/ revolutionary socialist tradition”: i.e: it wants to use violence to help bring about socialism. The SWP traces its roots back to the Fourth International. Leon Trotsky is one of its heroes.
The setting-up of this group is a divisive and patronising continuation of the Government’s failed policy of state multiculturalism, as Sayeeda Warsi pointed out yesterday. And what on earth is Blears doing appointing an SWP member to advise the Government – especially if violent extremism is part of the conversation? Which tiny, violent, extremist faction will be next through Ministers’ doors at taxpayers’ expense?