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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