The crusader Daily Telegraph London Editor Andrew Gilligan has been 'hailed' by a blogger known to visitors of some blogging sites for his role in covering Tower Hamlets in the East End. Mr Gilligan was already quite famous even before his Channel 4 Dispatches programme on the same area broadcast in March this year. His only achievement so far has been the claim that he so exposed a Tower Hamlets Council assistant chief executive in that Channel 4 programme that the person was left with no option but to resign. What else has Mr Gilligan achieved? It appears that to date he has only generated a lot of hatred if the 'comments' appearing underneath his 'reports' are anything to go by. We think that the public deserve to know some very important things about Tower Hamlets today which are not contained in Mr Gilligan’s Channel 4 programme of March 2010 or in any of his published Daily Telegraph reports and blogs. With the knowledge of the true events and forces at work right now [which Mr Gilligan has left out, in what appears to be consistent with a pattern or even an ‘agenda’ which he may himself be not consciously aware of], society may even avoid some unpleasant repercussions and consequences including the waste of scarce public resource and conflicts in the community.


London
Saturday
18 September 2010

Mr Gilligan has contradicted himself from the start. Or at least he has published statements that have been contradictory.

He claimed, in the context of his assertion that the Labour Party in Tower Hamlets was being taken over, Militant-style [as made notorious by Neil Kinnock who had ‘fingered’ the grouping as it operated from the Merseyside area so ferociously linked by the Rightwing media with the antics of Derek Hatton, the deputy leader of the then Council there] by an outfit he identified as the ‘Islamic Forum Europe’ [IFE]. Chief witness in Mr Gilligan’s media prosecution was one of the two local MPs at that time in the East London Borough, Jim Fitzpatrick. As the latter was still in post as a sort of junior minister in Gordon Brown’s [soon to be outgoing] administration, that fact added to the appeal of the charge of infiltration being made. In the months since Mr Gilligan began his very noticeable project, a number of significant events have taken place in context. One of the events is the reported prospect – admitted by Mr Gilligan himself- that there may be an elected mayor in the Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is this post and the money that the post holder will have control over that appear to have exercised Mr Gilligan mostly about that aspect of the claimed infiltration. Originally Mr Gilligan claimed that the call for an elected mayor [‘executive mayor’] was very much traceable to the IFE in effect.

One of the celebrated phrases that Mr Gilligan has been celebrating about himself has been “secret recording/s”.

This refers to the allegedly secretly recorded clips which showed the alleged agenda on the part of alleged IFE operatives to acquire control of the elected mayor post.

So why did Mr Gilligan suddenly drop all references to the fraud that might – we stress possibly might if through investigated – have been found to have been used to produce the council, Parliamentary and the referendum results as dated 6 May 2010 in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets?


In the broad frame of references to that, Mr Gilligan also brought in the alleged links between the IFE and the still sitting MP [over the months since the Gilligan reports began to appear] for Bethnal Green and Bow Mr George Galloway. The ‘conclusion’ suggested by the facts as they were presented by Mr Gilligan was that George Galloway and his grouping called ‘Respect’ and the IFE were working hand in glove and not transparently, to achieve the object of infiltration and that a significant prize of a successful infiltration would be the office of the prospective mayor. Mr Gilligan then changed his approach to the notion of an elected mayor, immediately after the result were formally announced of the ‘credendum’ about whether the electors in the Borough wanted a directly elected mayor reportedly held in Tower Hamlets on 6 May 2010. The change in Mr Gilligan’s approach was noticed in the fact that he stopped accusingly referring to Mr Galloway’s grouping or to the IFE for having brought about the situation in which a referendum had to be held over the options available to the electors about the state of democracy and accountability in the Borough Council. In the dozens of comments that Mr Gilligan has published since 7 May 2010 about Tower Hamlets, there is no reference whatever to the original claim about the mayor thing. Instead, there is a plethora of positive references to the referendum and to the mayor thing.

Why is that so?

Had the morality, the ethics and the laws that Mr Gilligan must have been concerned for changed dramatically during the 48 hours before and after the actual votes cast on 6 May 2010?

Mr Gilligan has not explained the reason or the influence that he followed to omit the line of hostility that he had published about the mayor thing before that date.

In fact he has referred to the elected mayor thing mainly in the positive. The only negative reference to it has been the likelihood, in Mr Gilligan’s publications, that the coalition of George Galloway and the IFE might end up getting hold of the post!

Every other possibility around the referendum and the eventual outcome of the ‘call’ for an elected mayor in Tower Hamlets has been left out.

Only in his latest offerings has Mr Gilligan begun to look at possible irregularities concerning membership of the ‘Labour Party’ in the Borough.

So what has he left out that is important?

For a start, he should have addressed the question of the referendum and its conduct.

If he had done so, he would have found that he could even cite George Galloway as a ‘witness’ in support of one of his contentions about elections in Tower Hamlets.

That contention being that you cannot treat as ordinarily reliable any election that is held in Tower Hamlets these days.

And in the present context, elections also refer to the odd referendum locally organised as we have been referring to.


How could Mr Gilligan cite even George Galloway?

There is evidence that Mr Gilligan had spoken to Mr Galloway’s then supporters back in 2006, especially when as a reporter on the London EVENING STANDARD Mr Gilligan carried out a series of reports on electoral fraud and misconduct going on in Tower Hamlets. In 2006, just before the local council elections held in the Borough in May that year, Mr Galloway was the only locally installed and recognisable politician in office who made an issue over false voter registration and electoral fraud.

And that fact was made most noticeable to the public by none other than Mr Andrew Gilligan.

So logic, evidence and history would suggest that Mr Gilligan would have wanted to find out where Mr George Galloway or his supporters stood in March- April 2010 on the very same subject.

Especially so when Mr Galloway and his supporters were quite publicly going around making very clear allegations that the same irregularities as 2006 were still going on in 2010.

To make things perfectly clear, not long part from polling day 2010, Mr George Galloway and his grouping were allowed an extended airing on the main bulletin of Channel 4 News with that programme’s Cathy Newman filing it.

As if that were not clear enough, days earlier, a resident in Tower Hamlets himself who was reporting for the daily paper the Independent was quite seriously assaulted during his own investigations into voter fraud that was being alleged at the time.

So why did Andrew Gilligan pay less than warranted attention to those?

And why had he decided on 7 May 2010 and afterwards that the ‘results’ of the voting on Council candidates and the two MPs in the Tower Hamlets wards and constituencies and that of the ‘referendum’ had been obtained by fair, legitimate and incorrupt voting and electoral participation?

Had he decided that George Galloway was complaining about nothing over the malpractices?

Had the journalist working for the Independent too been chasing a mirage?

Mr Gilligan has not dealt with the issue.

Yet he began attacking the possibility that the IFE might end up getting hold of the post of elected mayor.

It is evident in Mr Gilligan’s Daily Telegraph reports that that has been his main concern. He has not shown any concern about or interest in the very public aired allegations of widespread voter fraud or postal voting fraud or abuse.


This conclusion is reinforced by the trivial language Mr Gilligan had used in one report before 6 May 2010 that he had based on a trip on and about Mr George Galloway’s ‘campaign bus’.

Why didn’t Mr Andrew Gilligan investigate those allegations in 2010 as he had done in 2006?

By all accounts the intensity of fraud and abuse, as alleged, had gotten worse in 2010 as compared to the polls held four years previously.

Could it have something or anything at all to do with the fact that people like the ‘principal witness’ for Mr Gilligan’s prosecution of the IFE in the media, Mr Jim Fitzpatrick has turned out to be a ‘fan’ in a remarkable twist of events, of none other than ‘Lutfur Rahman’, the target of Mr Gilligan’s crusading reports?

Is it also possible that Mr Gilligan had attained a sympathetic attitude towards the elected mayor eventuality based on his ‘friendly sources’ who were assuring him post facto [the outcome of polling and preferences dated 6 may 29010] that Mr George Galloway might not go for that office himself after all?

Mr Gilligan has not so far addressed this and other questions that have arisen from his inconsistent and as yet unsubstantiated assertions about Tower Hamlets.

Nor has he addressed the questions that arose from the very strange part played in his Channel 4 Dispatches report as broadcast, by one of his on-camera witnesses who was coy to name the “guys” that had bee allegedly “terrifying” some ‘councillors’ on Tower Hamlets Council belonging to the ‘Labour Party’.

The alleged “guys” were linked by the Dispatches programme to the outfit called “IFE”.

Yet neither Mr Gilligan nor any of his sources on or off camera, on the record or otherwise, has explained what that outfit is.

Is it has because Mr Gilligan has learnt that most if not all of his initial sources have now changed their stance and are ‘backing’ Lutfur Rahman?

Is this why Mr Gilligan has begun to create a distance between Lutfur Rahman and his ‘backers’

Is this a precursor to Mr Gilligan finally exonerating Lutfur Rahman and beseeching his readers and viewers to fall in line behind Lutfur ragman in the event that he gets in?

In the meantime, we can get on with the important task of getting sued to accepting fraud, abuse and entryism in Tower Hamlets

Is it so because everyone is doing it? And Mr Gilligan knows this to be so?





There is no public knowledge about the outfit in the East End.

What there is is a lot of insinuation about an outfit that is called IFE.

Ordinary political or community activities are conducted in Tower Hamlets by ordinary groups about whom the community are aware.

There is no evidence decade that could point to a single community activity unconnected with a SECRETIVE PARTY OR FORCE behind it in which an outfit called the IFE has taken part in the ordinary way.

As repeatedly stated by Mr Gilligan, the IFE is a grouping that in East London is jointly run by persons who also in the main belong to the management and control of the ‘East London Mosque’ and the ‘London Muslim Centre’.

So why has Mr Gilligan left out the fact that in ordinary experience, the ordinary members of the population in Tower Hamlets – of any religion or ethnicity – are not active in those particular groupings?

And that those groupings have never been cited by ordinary people in the context of the community’s normal democratic movement or of the campaigns?

Reading his reports or watching his Dispatches programme, there is no explanation.

Other than the possibility that almost all Mr Gilligan’s initial aims have foundered and that even Jim Fitzpatrick cannot resist ‘endorsing Lutfur Rahman very strongly’!

The only thing that apparently still irks Mr Gilligan is the possibility that Lutfur Rahman might have been alleged to have engaged din untoward behaviour in the recruitment of members to the Labour Party.

And on that, Mr Gilligan has found one single complaint as he reports has been lodged with the Labour Party.

Is that a bit too thin after months of effort?

Mr Gilligan will have to explain why he has overlooked serious allegations against others that have been made in Tower Hamlets over the elections and the referendum.


If he leaves these questions unanswered, the impression will gain currency along the lines that may be Mr Gilligan was motivated by a secret Entryist agenda of someone – or of his very own - who has decided to deactivate the particular output over the ‘Gilligan Channel’ for now!

There has got to be an explanation.

How else are we to accept as credible anything that Mr Gilligan has suggested about the wrongdoings of any of his named and identified targets so far?

It is up to Mr Gilligan now to urgently clear the heavy fog that hangs over his Tower Hamlets assignment up to now.

And he should start explaining why he appears to think that alleged fraud or dishonesty by Lutfur Rahman is more important than alleged fraud and dishonesty by groups containing dozens or even hundreds of individuals in connection with vote registration, voting and participation in a referendum.