Harrow Council for Justice support call for Bob Blackman's suspension while investigation carried out

From Harrow Council for Justice

Open letter to honourable Prime Minister Theresa May and Home Secretary Amber Rudd for their action and response

We would like to draw your attention to a very recent article in the Times:’Tory MP Bob Blackman hosts anti-Muslim nationalist Tapan Ghosh’.

An Indian extremist Tapan Ghosh, the keynote speaker at the meeting on 18 October 2017 hosted by your MP Bob Blackman in the Commons, has been reported making inflammatory statements like ‘he had created a “Hindu Defence Force” in his state to protect Hindu communities against Muslim violence’ and that ‘Your girls and daughters are threatened by grooming but in our country our land is threatened and our existence is threatened’.

Before this, Mr Ghosh was pictured with the UK far-right leader Tommy Robinson at a meeting in London on Monday. Also some of Mr Ghosh tweets are widely known:

Considering your position on dealing with extremists, hate-preachers and hate crimes, it is unbelievable that you allowed Mr Ghosh, an Indian Hindu-nationalist with extreme attitudes, to enter in the UK!

Not only Mr Ghosh smoothly entered the UK but Mr Blackman, a Conservative member of the communities and local government committee, hosted him in the Commons during an event called “Tolerating the Intolerant”.

We are concerned that if such a hosting at the Commons is not meaningfully dealt with, then inviting and promoting extremists at the Parliament would have no limits – it could be an anti-Semitic guest next!

We have nothing about MPs using the Parliament resources to support community events but holding any divisive/ hateful activities, especially with religious overtone, could only reflect badly on our graceful Parliament.

We don’t wish to draw political party parallel here but the Labour has set good example in dealing even with any allegations of negative comments (past or present) about any communities by its members/ MPs.  For example, it would be unthinkable for a Labour MP to host an anti-Jew speaker at the Parliament (or anywhere) and getting away with it.

We need to have one standard in confronting extremism and MP actions.

We would like you to appreciate that socio-political contradictions play a great part in triggering ‘extremism’ and ‘radicalism‘ and the state enforcement arrangements without the community cooperation and support are not enough to effectively address these.

We support the call to Suspend & investigate Blackman for inviting extremists to Parliament   from Mr Blackman’s highly marginal Harrow East constituency.

We look forward for your action and response!

Jaiya Shah
Chairman
Harrow Council for Justice

Bob Blackman MP condemned over invite to anti-Muslim Hindu nationalist Tapan Ghosh

Bob Blackman, Conservative MP for Harrow East has been condemned for hosting a visit by Hindu nationalist Tapan Ghosh to the House of Commons last week. (See previous post)

According to Middle East Eye LINK : 

A spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain,  said it was "astounding" that Ghosh was "welcomed with open arms" to parliament given that he "trades in propagating hatred against Muslims in India.

It added: "Ghosh is a founder of a far-right party in that country and in this year we have heard of shocking murders against Muslims, very often linked to the kind of anti-Muslim rhetoric emanating from people like Ghosh.

"If we are to tackle extremism as the government has stated it wants to, then we should not see it emanating on its own doorstep and apparently condoned by its own MPs."

TellMAMA the organisation that monitors anti-Muslim attacks made the following demands LINK:

We are calling for the following:

·       That Parliament’s Sergeant-at-Arms open up a formal investigation into how Ghosh came to be in Parliament and that some serious questions be asked of Bob Blackman MP. The investigation should then be published as a learning tool for other MP’s.

·       That Blackman be removed from the DCLG Committee that he sits on, until he can explain his actions and apologise for hosting an anti-Muslim extremist in our country’s Parliament.

·       That all MP’s and their offices receive a notice from the Sergeant-at-Arms regarding undertaking due diligence checks on speakers whom they invite in.

·       That Blackman contact us and meet with a Rohingya refugee, to listen first hand at the appalling genocide that has been conducted against this defenceless people by Burma’s military junta, which itself has been legitimised by Aung Saan Su Kyi.

At a local level Harrow East Liberal Democrat spokesperson for Harrow East, Adam Bernard,  condemned the invitation as 'unacceptable and dangerous'  LINK:

“An area as religiously diverse as Harrow East deserves better than an MP who invites hatemongers to inflame tensions between communities.

“Mr Blackman needs to realise that his job is to represent people from all communities and of all faiths and nationalities.

 “If he can’t get the hang of that, perhaps he should consider a change of career?“

In a tweet, Navin Shah, Labour AM for Brent and Harrow said:

 “Hardly surprising to see Bob Blackman rubbing shoulders with Tapan Ghosh &Tommy Robinson. Most appalling & disgusting. Deserves condemnation“.

Emma Wallace, The Green Party's General Election candidiate in 2017 said:

'Whilst I am saddened to read that the MP for Harrow East hosted such a divisive figure in parliament I am not particularly surprised.  As we have seen previously with Mr Blackman, he seems more concerned to court certain electorate groups that will keep him in power, rather than represent his diverse constitutents. At a time when the UK appears increasingly divided, with religious hate crime has increasing considerably it seems particularly important that MPs try to unite and form cohesive communities rather than divide.  It is unacceptable that Tapan Ghosh was invited to Parliament, there should be no platform for him to spread his false or harmful views in this country or anywhere else.'

 Meanwhile the Home Office moved to distance Home Secretary Amber Rudd from Ghosh:

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The Home Secretary fundamentally disagrees with Mr Ghosh’s views on Islam.

“The Home Secretary accepted an invitation from the Hindu Forum of Britain to attend an event in Parliament last week to celebrate Diwali. She did not speak to Mr Ghosh and was not present when he spoke.”

There is this Hope Not Hate petition people can sign to condemn Bob Blackman for hosting Mr Ghosh:

We condemn MPs for hosting Tapan Ghosh in Parliament '

Bob Blackman accused of hosting Islamophobic speaker at House of Commons event

Tapan Ghosh and Bob Blackman at the House of Commons meeting

Bob Blackman, Conservative MP for Harrow East and former leader of Brent Conservatives has been accused of hosting an Islamophobic speaker at a House of Commons meeting.

Blackman courted controversy at the General Election by supporting Hindu nationalist opposition to making discrimination against Dalots ('untouchables') unlawful under the Equalities Act. LINK

The Zelo Street blog LINK commenting on Tapan Ghosh claims:

Tapan Ghosh frightens his supporters by repeatedly talking about the Muslim “reproduction rate” - the same tactics as those talking about “breeding”. For him, “moderate” Muslims are “really very small in number”. He endorses wacko fringe websites, which naturally includes Breitbart, Voice of Europe, and of course anything from Hindus who share his worldview. He has endorsed Stephen Yaxley Lennon’s Islamophobic agenda.

All of this is not difficult to discover. Yet Blackman has been happy to host Tapan Ghosh, who dressed up his bigotry in his talk “Tolerating the intolerant” as “800 years of defending human rights”. And that is not all: this talk not only took aim at “800 years of Arabic Islamic aggression” (Muslims in Bengal are not Arabs), but also “200 years of European Christian aggression”. Tapan Ghosh is as anti-Christian as he is anti-Islam.

A few days after the House of Commons meeting, according to Buzz Feed's Aisha Gani LINK, Ghosh met up with Tommy Robinson, former leader of the English Defence League and tweeted:

Other Tories at the meeting included Amber Rudd, Damien Green, Priti Patel and Sajid Javid. They might argue that they did not know Ghosh's reputation and their attendance did not mean they endorsed his views and that it was a wider event to celebrate Diwali but Blackman has no such excuse.

This compilation of tweets demonstrates Ghosh's beliefs:

Click to enlarge

This is much more serious than some of the current controversies surrounding other Members of Parliament.