" By © Muhammad Haque
London Sunday 1850 Hrs GMT 25 July 2004
CBRUK campaign continues this week in defence of the Brick Lane area situated in the East London inner city borough of Tower Hamlets with the Committee for Bangladeshis' Rights in the UK renewing its challenge on Monday 26 July 2004 to the chief executive of the Tower Hamlets Council to disassociate herself from a racistly divisive comment that has been attributed to that Council in the context of the local campaign.
The Guardian newspaper in London published on 21 July 2004 a report containing an allegation that the 'local council' which can only be Tower Hamlets Council (legally there is no other local council empowered to make specific legal decisions concerning or making local plans affecting land use in the Brick Lane area) had been spreading a smear that the people who had been opposed the Crossrail plan to dig a hole and tunnel in the Brick lane area were merely white middle class moaners.

Muhammad Haque open letter to the Tower Hamlets Council in London , which was published in London on Saturday 24 July 2004 is self-explanatory:

Here is its full text "Who is abusing 'race' or 'ethnicity' or 'class' to undermine the campaign against the planned Crossrail hole assault on the people and the community in the Brick Lane area ?

By © Muhammad Haque London Saturday 24 July 2004


So is it time that certain elements are spreading the smear that the main opposition to the planned Crossrail hole and the linked assaults on the Brick Lane area is being mounted by white people ? Who is saying this? And on what evidence?

If the relevant contents in the piece ( 'Tough funding talks ahead after green light for £10 Billion Crossrail link' by-lined to Hugh Muir and Andrew Clark ) in the Guardian newspaper on Wednesday 21 July 2004 is to be believed then it is apparently the Tower Hamlets council.

The Guardian piece reports 'Campaigner Caroline Hamilton' as saying that 'local people felt let down.' "The local council is saying that we are white middle-class moaners. How dare they. "

Who has been saying 'in the name of Tower Hamlets Council', that the opponents of the Crossrail plan for the hole package of attacks on the Brick Lane Area are (a) 'white middle class moaners', (b) only 'white middle class moaners', (c) nothing but 'white', (d) nothing but 'moaners'?

I would certainly like to hear their names and find out what evidence they base that smear on.

So who, precisely, are the people in or on 'the local council' or who is the person in that 'council' who is apparently being advised by that Council's chief executive Christine Gilbert and or by that Council's 'chief legal officer' Mark Norman, to issue or to authorise or to spread the smear ?
If neither Christine Gilbert nor Mark Norman has knowledge of the smear or if neither of them agreed the smear or approved it, will they tell CBRUK why the smear is about and why at least one member of the community feels confident enough about the source of the smear to go public about it and to do so via a recognised UK daily newspaper?
Will Christine Gilbert publicly disassociate herself from the smear as reported in the Guardian newspaper? For the CBRUK organisation is founded on the universally applicable principle of human rights which include the utterly defensible right to defend a community under attack.
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