This evening I went along to the Zizinia restaurant in Bloemfontein Road in White City where the Labour Party were holding a meeting addressed by Ken Livingstone. Residents on the White City Estate had been leafleted telling them it was a "crisis meeting" as the Conservative Council was planning to throw them out of their homes - leaving them homeless or "being sent to Barking and Dagenham."
I went along with the Council leader Cllr Stephen Greenhalgh to hand out leaflets to those attending pointing out that these allegations were straight pure lies. Only two estates are under consideration for redevelopment, which are n West Kensington not White City. Furthermore in the estates that are redeveloped residents would be offered new homes locally.
About 50 people turned up to the meeting - mostly Labour activists. The remainder were not entirely supportive. One said: "I live in Hammersmith and Fulham because I was deported from Newham where the Labour Council had an estate redevelopment. Hasn't the Labour Party doing what you are accusing the Conservatives of planning?" Another said: "The Conservatives have cut my Council Tax by 3% a year. Are you prepared to make me a better offer?" Neither question got a terribly convincing response.
It relies on a quote from his Centre for Policy Studies paper No Man's Land:
You bring your children to school and they learn far more about Diwali than Christmas. I speak to the people who are from Brent and they’ve been having Muslim and Hindi days off. What it does is rob Britain of its community. Without our community we slip into a crime riddled cess pool.
Curiously it did not include the following quote from the same paper:
I can see the argument of taking religion out of the state, out of politics, but as a moral guideline – arguably our laws are Christian-based – well, they need to be maintained. Losing them has meant that people have come here and had very little respect for us. That lack of integration and that lack of saying to people: if you are going to come to England, this is what we expect. That is why the Muslim religion is so powerful among the Muslim people. I spoke to a Muslim I met abroad, and he said to me, “Oh yeah you come from that England where they have no God at all.” It’s like we are ashamed of where we have come from.
Or from the section on challenges of child rearing this one:
None of this is helped by the lack of married families – except among the Muslim community and some of the older whites.
Does Gordon Brown believe it is fair to portray someone who believes in integration rather than multiculturalism as anti Muslim? If not let him disown this contemptible leaflet from a Labour candidate willing to stir up division to get a few votes in the hope of averting defeat at the polls on Thursday.
