Breakaway Labour Group sees fraud in Bangla vote

Surely there is not another Borough in England where those who have lost an election cry “fraud” more often.  But when did you last hear groups of white, Chinese or Somali residents accused of fraud?  The accusations always seem to be hurled at residents of Bangladeshi origin: and outside Tower Hamlets it is acceptable, understandable that Bangladeshi people won’t uphold the fine standards of democracy of the British.  (The fine democratic standards of the British, when operated on the Indian sub-continent, usually consisted of keeping native populations in their place by force of arms, of course – but we digress again.)

When accusations of Bangladeshi vote-rigging are made, those who make a living out of attacking Bangladeshis or Muslims jump on the bandwagon.  And because these people have Bangladeshis in their sights anyway, they sometimes go to great lengths to find some facts to support their theories.  Accusations of ballot-rigging should therefore be made with great care, because they stoke the racist and islamophobic backlash in the UK.

The recent round of accusations surfaced – of course, we were waiting for it – in the Spitalfields by-election.  Reporters from the Daily Telegraph (accompanied, rumour would have it, by at least one councillor) went door-knocking, demanding to know if residents had had their postal votes harvested.  Now, when Jehovah’s witnesses come a-calling, some people are minded to buy a copy of the Watchtower as quickly as they decently can and agree that the end of the world is nigh to speed them on their way.  It has never occurred to the Daily Telegraph that some people might just agree with them to get them off their doorstep.  The Telegraph duly reported, you will recall, that after a day’s efforts they had found two people who claimed to have had their postal votes taken away by Gulam Robbani’s supporters, and they looked at a photograph of Cllr Khan holding some paper.

There’s that bandwagon setting off, then: and the first person to jump in is Judge Richard Mawrey.  Judge Mawrey over-turned the election of six (Asian) councillors in Birmingham in 2004, where candidates won seats against the trend in the city and where there were allegations of intimidation, bribery, vote-buying, impersonation and the mass collection of postal votes which were all filled in by the councillors.  This experience makes him an expert, so he didn’t lose a moment in telling the Huffington Post that the postal vote system was still open to fraud.  The Huffington Post pointed out that his comments came as a group of Labour Councillors in Tower Hamlets made a complaint about the election procedures to the Electoral Commission, which referred the complaint to the police for investigation.

We do not know which complaint the Huffington Post is referring to.  But we do know that a document is available on Twitter which appears to be a letter from six Labour Councillors alleging fraud in the Spitalfields by-election.  The letter complaints about postal votes being sent to people who no longer live at the address the vote has been sent to and alleges that there have been some instances of postal votes being collected from voters.    

The Labour Councillors who signed the letter to the Electoral Commission are: 
Helal Abbas
Khales Uddin Ahmed
Bill (“dossier”) Turner
Rachael Saunders
Zenith Rahman
Anwar Khan.
It is unusual for a complaint of this nature to be made by a breakaway group of Labour Councillors: if the allegations are serious, it would be usual for the Leader of the Group to make an official complaint.  There are rumours circulating that Labour Group is divided over Cllr Joshua Peck’s leadership, with many finding it ineffectual because of its concentration on a petty war of attrition against the Mayor.  There have been suggestions that Cllr Saunders is planning to lead a coup against Cllr Peck at the Labour Group AGM in May.  Whether taking the initiative in complaining to the Electoral Commission is the opening salvo in a leadership war is not clear.

Next passenger on the bandwagon is Andrew Gilligan – back for a second go at Mayor Rahman and Ken Livingstone.  He claims to have found a postal vote being cast by someone who died after postal votes were sent out and before polling day.  He also quotes a resident of Brune House alleging that supporters of Gulam Robbani collected a postal vote from the family.  Gilligan doesn’t say if this is the same resident he quoted in his first article or a new one: so that may be three allegations or four. 

Gilligan goes on to state that in the two weeks before the deadline for applying for postal votes, the number of postal voters in Brune House increased from 34 to 71, with 55 votes being cast in the election.  How many votes are cast in an election can only be determined by consulting the marked register.  Gilligan should make it clear if he consulted the marked register as a member of the public or if he received assistance from a political party which made a copy of the marked register available to him. 

Why this data should, by itself, be sinister is a mystery.  Of course postal vote applications go up before a by-election: there’s lots of publicity on how to do it and when the election is.  With the turnover of sub-tenants (most of whom are on short tenancies) in flats owned by absentee leaseholders, it takes a by-election to prompt a resident who sees themselves as temporary to register.  The number of postal votes increased dramatically on the Isle of Dogs in 2006: partly because newly built property was being inhabited for the first time and also because the local Conservative Party delivered a postal vote application form to most owner-occupiers (which may have been a selfish move, but was absolutely not a fraudulent activity).  In May 1994, several blocks on the Isle of Dogs registered a 100% turnout in the election in which BNP Councillor Derek Beackon was defeated.  This was not fraud: it was because people felt the election was important and went out to vote.

Gilligan goes on to say that the alleged irregularities in Brune House may have been repeated elsewhere in Spitalfields.  It may snow at Christmas, and I may be crowned Queen of the May.  He compares the turnout in the recent Spitalfields by-election with the turnout in December 2010 (31% and 17% respectively) without pointing out that the December by-election took place during the big freeze when it was treacherous to go out. 

Doubtless we’ll hear much more about gross inaccuracies in the voting in Spitalfields and the extreme right will seize the stories and tell each other that this confirms their worst fears about Bangladeshis in particular and Muslims in general.  In this context, we invite the breakaway group of Labour Councillors to distance themselves and their complaints from Gilligan’s accusations.  And when they’ve done that, perhaps they will take time to look at the fault lines in their internal election procedures.