Select Committee on Home Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)

9 NOVEMBER 2004

MR BEN WARD, MR LES LEVIDOW, MR GERRY GABLE AND MR PAUL DONOVAN

  Q40 David Winnick: Could I pick you up on that, Mr Gable? You said something like "tut-tut" or a similar expression was the response of the Muslim community when a terrorist outrage occurred. If I correctly interpret your remarks, it does not really amount to much. Is it not a fact that the Muslim Council of Great Britain sent a letter to mosques saying that anyone who has any knowledge of terrorism should notify the authorities? Is that not an indication—and you smile—that they take terrorism very seriously indeed?

  Mr Gable: I think you have to look beyond that letter. The letter is good and fine. Then leaders of that organisation turn up on Newsnight or on Radio 4 and for the first three minutes of the interview they say, "We have sent a letter. Of course we condemn this. This is terrible" and then you get the "but" —"but you can understand the feelings of people who are driven to doing this". You cannot take both positions. You either say that terrorism is wrong per se or it is not. You have to be honest.

  Q41 David Winnick: As someone who is totally opposed to suicide bombings, however much I am opposed to the Israeli Government and its policies which in my view are totally unacceptable, indeed more than that. I raise that because is there not the possibility that Muslims are, in my view wrongly, trying to explain away suicide attacks in Israel but do not say the same about 9/11, Madrid, Istanbul and other places where such terrorist atrocities are taking place?

  Mr Gable: How can you actually separate British nationals, Muslims going into a café full of young people in Israel and blowing themselves and the café to pieces? From Bali to Madrid the mindset is the same.

  Q42 David Winnick: But it does have this difference, Mr Gable, and you and I have the same views, as indeed virtually everyone, and I hope Muslims as well, against suicide bombings wherever they occur, and that includes Israel. Since the threat to this country is on the same basis as in other countries, apart from Israel, leaving Israel aside, would it not be a fact that Muslims accept, and indeed when we have had witnesses here from the Muslim organisations they have said this, that when 9/11 occurred, when Istanbul occurred, when Madrid occurred—obviously, Istanbul being in a Muslim country—Muslims were murdered as well. They recognise that if there is a terrorist attack on our country, Muslims are likely to be included, in the same way as when the IRA launched their terrorist attacks, the IRA did not seem to worry one way or the other if Catholics were murdered. Why should they, because they were carrying out a campaign of mass murder? Do you accept that?

  Mr Gable: I think all that stares me in the face are the statistics of the rising amount of attacks on the Jewish community. I am not calling for breaking the law here. I would far rather see the young Asian Muslim kids in Burnley, Bradford and Oldham venting their anger against the BNP than going along and beating up congregants coming out of the synagogue on Friday night or Saturday morning. There is a clear distinction here. Over the years, Nazis in the Sixties burnt 34 buildings in London, including synagogues. They went to prison and there were quite severe sentences. You get Nazis involved in cemetery and synagogue desecrations, but we have never seen figures at this level of young Asian kids attacking people going to and from worship. I do not think there is like with like because Jews are not doing this. Jews may be vocal against Muslims but there is no sign of anything organised or propaganda going on within the Jewish community that is urging young Jews to go and beat up people outside mosques.

  Q43 David Winnick: Let it be said, Mr Gable, when it comes to fighting racism, over half a century or more, no-one has a better record than yourself. Do you consider that racial violence has increased on a large scale since 9/11? I am talking about in Britain of course?

  Mr Gable: Absolutely, and it has given a whole range of very nasty people the opportunity and adding to that the conflict between Israel and Palestine. If you go and look at demonstrations now, you will see all sorts of people turning up and you think it is a demonstration against the war in Iraq—and I would be sympathetic to those demonstrators. Then you suddenly see there are people there from fascist organisations. It is the same right across Europe. There is evidence to show that. There is photographic and video evidence to show that the people who are the old original Nazi anti-Semites are using that as a cover to work alongside other people. That is of great concern, but the whole use by the BNP and other fascist groups of 9/11 and other terrorist acts has given them an opportunity they have never had before.

  Q44 David Winnick: Would you take the view that those fascist gangs—BNP or any other of these Hitler lovers—certainly have no more love for Jews than they have ever had? Would it be right to come to the conclusion that from their point of view, their poisonous view, there is not much mileage in attacking Jews these days, for all kinds of reasons, but there is much more mileage in attacking and targeting in every conceivable way Muslims, so therefore Muslims have become the scapegoats instead of Jews. Would that be a fair way of putting it?

  Mr Gable: Let us say that there is a very cynical approach on the part of the leadership of the British National Party. At the end of the Eighties, Nick Griffin, their Chairman today, was in Tripoli with the begging bowl out to Colonel Gadaffi for financial support. A copy of National Front News when his political soldiers controlled it said, "The new alliance", the new allies, with a photograph of Louis Farrakhan, Khomeini and Gadaffi and the symbol of the political soldiers. So at that time it was the only importer in this country to bring the book from Libya. He was the only importer of Louis Farrakhan's newspaper The Final Call. At the time when WPC Yvonne Fletcher was murdered outside the Libyan People's Bureau, his officers were inside negotiating deals with the Libyans. These are facts. Today they see the opportunity, after 9/11, to go all out to attack the Muslim community because they think there is a resonance for that certainly in areas like Burnley, Oldham and Bradford. It is cynical.

  Q45 David Winnick: Mr Ward, do you share that view just expressed by Mr Gable about the way fascist gangs target Muslims now instead of Jews?

  Mr Ward: Plainly, my organisation is extremely concerned at the rise in anti-Semitic attacks in Europe generally. We have attended OSCE conferences recently on the subject and we have long been concerned about racist violence in the United Kingdom. I regret to say, though, that it is not a subject that we have examined in any detail, and so I am unable to shed any light on the causal links or connections that may exist.

  Q46 David Winnick: I am asking if you believe the fascist gangs are now targeting Muslims in the main for reasons which Mr Gable has just been telling us, that Muslims are in the firing line from these gangs like the BNP?

  Mr Ward: Again, we simply have not examined the question, I am afraid.

  Q47 Mr Clappison: I think we have covered some of the ground already, Chairman. Could I ask Mr Gable in particular to enlarge a bit more on his very interesting comments on what is a very difficult and uncomfortable subject of the tensions between minority communities, if I can put it that way. You have made some very interesting comments about the extent that this has been a problem, particularly since 9/11. Do you think the problem is getting worse today?

  Mr Gable: Yes, I think it is, despite good efforts of people in the Jewish and Muslim communities. There is bitterness over the world situation that is coming home very hard to young Muslims. I think one of the problems is that when the Home Office and often when Parliament wants to talk to representatives of the Jewish community or the Muslim community, although neither of those faiths are homogenous, the Jewish community has a well-established structure, and you can go and talk to people and get a broad band of opinions from being supportive of the current Israeli Government to critics of the Israeli Government, but there is some cohesion there. The tendency is always to want to invite the great and the good, and that is why I do not figure myself among them and why I am happy to be here today. I think we should tell it as it is and not as some group of people living in an ivory tower somewhere that just happens to be Muslim and telling the Home Office or telling the police. You have to be out there in the communities where young Asians are growing up and are coming under certain influences. That is where the work has really got to be done to pull cohesion back because it is not just a matter of what is happening between the Jewish community and the Muslim community. The hostility that is building between many communities—Hindus and Sikhs—against Muslims is very worrying indeed. Nobody has mentioned anything about the non-visible Muslims. It is one of the fastest growing faiths in Europe. I have worked with people who are white Muslims. We discuss this constantly. There has got to be a way of getting to the grass roots in these communities.

  Q48 Mr Clappison: Very briefly, Mr Ward mentioned the situation in Europe and that he has attended the OSCE conferences on this. Do you have a view on Europe? There are reports of worrying problems of perhaps an even worse scale than you describe in this country in other European countries such as France and Holland?

  Mr Gable: France may be the exception to the rule. The Jewish community is a very important community there and the Muslim community is very important. There is hostility that still remains from France's colonial past, particularly Algeria. It makes it the exception maybe against the rest of Europe, but certainly the way the neo-Nazi movements have moved in on the peace movement in Germany, and sometimes in Scandinavia, is very worrying.

  Q49 Mr Clappison: Could I just throw one final question on this section to any of you who cares to answer it from the panel. We have been talking about the problems in the Muslim community. I feel sometimes the danger that we spend a lot of time lecturing the Muslim community, saying "Don't do this, don't do that", and so forth. What are the ways in which we can build bridges with that community?

  Mr Ward: As I was preparing for this session, I was thinking about the proper way to evaluate whether or not counter-terrorism measures are being properly constructed. It struck me that the principle of non-discrimination is an absolutely fundamental core of any assessment of the impact of evaluation of counter-terrorism measures and that that may be a way of beginning to look at the problem, the notion that measures taken in the fight against terrorism do not discriminate on the basis of race or religion or ethnic origin. If we can construct counter-terrorist measures that satisfy the requirement of non-discrimination, then it seems to me that as a society we will be in a much stronger position to reach out a hand of friendship to all of the communities who live in this country, and indeed for those communities to feel that they are not being singled out, that those measures represent their interests and not simply the interests of the majority.

  Mr Levidow: There are many ways to build bridges with migrant communities in general and Muslim communities in particular, but all of these are being undermined by the systematically racist use of the  anti-terror laws. I am turning the question somewhat upside down. The way to build bridges is, firstly, to criticise strongly this systematically racist use of the law, which is done in collusion between the police, the intelligence services on the one hand and the mass media on the other. Migrant communities are being treated as suspected terrorists in systematic ways, and Muslims in particular, for example through their charities, through the intimidation of people who run these charities.[4]

  Q50 Chairman: By "migrant communities", you are talking primarily about a settled British community. The Islamic community in this country is not really a migrant community these days except for small minorities. I want to be clear that you are talking not just about a recent migrant community but that which is now an established British community?

  Mr Levidow: Yes.[5]

  Chairman: I would remind the committee that, at the risk of falling foul of Mr Gable, we will be having the great and the good from most of the major faith communities in future sessions. We also have an evidence session coming from young people and some engaged with the local communities. I hope that over the round of the inquiry we will have a different range of views, including some of the issues that people may wish to respond to. There will be opportunities in those further evidence sessions to do that. Can we move on now to look at the issue of media coverage of these issues?

  Q51 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Mr Gable, just a quick question to you to begin with, as a result of what you said earlier: do you think the BNP are increasing the amount of severity of racist attacks following the media coverage of asylum issues?

  Mr Gable: It goes back many, many years. When the Ugandan Asians came to this country, I remember seeing the headline on the Sun, which three days later turned up on a smashed-up Asian shop word for word painted across the front of the shop; this headline caused the offence. I think that they are fed up with this quite deliberate action. If I can tell you something very briefly, before the Oldham and Burnley riots, there was a national directorate meeting of the BNP which took place in Oldham. Their officers came from all over the country and were greeted by the local organiser, who said, "Welcome to Oldham, the front line in the coming race war". That was before there was any fighting and burning. The very next month, Identity, which is their monthly magazine, published a front cover that had flames on it and again, "Race war coming to Britain", and the flames were in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford, which by then were burning, but for other places that were not burning the police caught on to this and took extra measures to secure these areas because there were attempts to start arson and riots in those areas as well. The greatest aide to the BNP is the constant headlines in the newspapers, ranging from the Mail to the Express group. You get this almost schizophrenic situation where in the 2003 elections and the 2004 elections my colleagues worked very closely with the national press. The headlines of the Sunday Express and the Daily Express, and the centre page spreads, were all brilliantly anti-Nazi, good stuff, and on the day of the June elections this year, there was a headline that would have done justice to the BNP. It is as though the owner cannot put the two things together. There have been protests by members of the National Union of Journalists working there about what they are being asked to put in that paper. I have always been a bit critical of the Lawrence Report but one thing that Sir William said in his recommendations I thought was really a lesson for everybody. He said, "We really need to have the situation where people in positions of power and responsibility, such as press barons and so on, will live up to that responsibility and stop fanning racial difference in this country". I think there has been a failure by the Press Complaints Commission and all these bodies to tackle this head-on. There was an instance in Kent about four years ago. The National Front demonstrated against the arrival of asylum seekers and the local paper week after week fanned the flames. There was arson and assaults. The police went to the editor and said to him, "If you do not stop this, somebody is going to seek action under the Race Relations Act". I certainly do not want to live in a country where the police go and tell the press what they should be printing, but we need some responsibility.

  Chairman: Mr Gable, what you say is fascinating, Can I ask you to give slightly shorter replies otherwise we will run out of time.

  Q52 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: I want to press you on this because apart from saying something about the Press Complaints Authority and something needs to be done there, do you have anything specifically in mind which you feel would be constructive but, at the same time, not inhibit the freedom of the press and the right to free speech? Are those two things compatible?

  Mr Gable: People have the power of their money. If I owned a big company that advertised in the Express, I might think about stopping doing that.

  Q53 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: That is the action of an individual rather than the action of the Government to try, in fact, to improve racial harmony.

  Mr Gable: I think my suggestion was that I would rather have punitive laws against the media. Maybe Mr Desmond and some of his colleagues should come here and talk it cover with this Committee.

  Q54 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: That might be a good start. Do you think, Mr Ward, that there should be an offence of incitement to religious hatred?

  Mr Ward: That is not a subject that my organisation has looked at in detail. I would be hesitant to create a new offence where it had not been demonstrated that the existing laws protecting people against violence and incitement to violence were inadequate to respond to the concerns and I would also be very concerned about any impact that such an offence might have on freedom of expression. I think it is very important to keep in mind that the European Court of Human Rights has emphasised that freedom of expression is a right upon which many other human rights rest and unless it can be shown that free speech is directly inciting violence in a causal way then restrictions on that speech should not be undertaken.

  Q55 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Mr Donovan, I have read your submission to the Committee with great interest and it prompts two questions. You argue that police counter-terrorist operations are deliberately timed to deflect attention from the Government's political difficulties. Why do you think the police would collude in this?

  Mr Donovan: There was one specific quote from Amanda Platell, the Sunday Express editor, which coincided with political events. I think to try and make a link between the police colluding with the Government is maybe a step too far.

  Q56 Chairman: What was Amanda Platell's other job, can you remind us?

  Mr Donovan: Working for William Hague.

  Q57 Chairman: She did work for the Leader of the Opposition, so I wonder if she is entirely objective. Do you have any other evidence other than that statement by a newspaper editor?

  Mr Donovan: That was it really. It did seem strong evidence.

  Q58 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: So no objective evidence underpinning that other than the view of Amanda Platell?

  Mr Donovan: And her statement stood up because those three things did happen at that time.

  Q59 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: It was just based on these three events. There has been no evidence of police collusion or support of the Government's agenda here?

  Mr Donovan: No.


4   Note by witness: More specifically, charity bank accounts have been frozen on mere suspicion that some funds may eventually assist "terrorist" activity abroad. See the CAMPACC submission to the Privy Council review, section 5. Back

5   Note by witness: However, the UK has many refugees from Muslim countries. They have been targeted by "anti-terror" arrests and by internment in particular. Special Branch officers have warned relatives and friends of the internees: "Have no contact with their families-or else you may be next" (see CAMPACC submission to the Privy Council review, section 4 on internment). Before today's hearing we were asked: are such threats systematic or isolated cases? According to lawyers for the internees, two people who were threatened were subsequently interned themselves. So such harassment of the Muslim community is not simply the initiative of individual Special Branch officers. Back


 
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