BHANGEELAAR! " 'NO" to an elected mayor in Tower Hamlets' says: do we want an elected Isabella Freeman in control!?

1525 Hrs GMT

London

Friday

24 September 2010

Editor © Muhammad Haque

BHANGEELAAR! Updating the question about Isabella Freeman: who EXACTLY gave her the licence to abuse the community in Tower Hamlets?

This question has been put before. But not in the way it has to be put today.

It is updated today – just over two years and a bit since her ‘instructed’ ‘line-managed’ ‘colleague’ [!!!], John S Williams, became the subject of a series of public defences VOLUNTARILY made of his [IN EFFECT, not in those words] ‘integrity and goodness’ by none other than the campaign organiser of BHANGEELAAR!

Muhammad Haque intervened in September 2008 when the Times newspaper published a very condemnatory piece by-lined to Stephen Pollard [who has since become ‘Editor’ of the Jewish Chronicle].

Pollard also published his article on the Spectator web site.

Muhammad Haque read BOTH and posted two defences of John S Williams: one each in response to the insertions of Pollard’s pieces on the Times web site and the Spectator magazine’s web site.

In effect Muhammad Haque said that he had known the Tower Hamlets Council employee in question and that contrary to Stephen Pollard’s depiction of the man, he was [in effect] a decent individual [etc].

Muhammad Haque described Pollard's writing on that occasion as being irresponsible and based on Pollard's ignorance of Tower Hamlets.

It l was soon established that John S Williams had not been defended by anyone else.

Neither a sitting [or then prospective] councillor nor any ‘officer’ [=employee of the Tower Hamlets Council] did anything to defend John S Williams in public and beyond the walls of their bureaucratic career-holes in the Mulberry Place.

Nor indeed did John S Williams himself.

A while AFTER defending John S Williams to the Times and the Spectator, Muhammad Haque asked John S Williams if he had been aware of the particular criticisms of him in the UK ‘mainstream’ media.

John S Williams eventually admitted to having come across them. But not all.

He then admitted to having seen Muhammad Haque’s defence of him on the Times online.

He said he had not seen the pieces on the Spectator site.

Muhammad Haque then sent to John S Williams the internet links to the relevant pieces and explained to him the main reason for defending him to the viewers and the readers of those two ‘mainstream’ media outlets.

That main reason was Muhammad Haque’s conscience. He had felt that a person from outside the Borough who had not known the person he was attacking was unfairly condemning an employee of the Tower Hamlets Council.

Muhammad Haque was not in any way linked with the bureaucracy of Tower Hamlets Council nor was planning to be a candidate for any position in the Council.

In fact he was doing what he had been doing for a very long time: intervening in what he found was the need for defending those who could not do so for themselves.

Here was a man, an employee in Tower Hamlets Council, who could not speak up for himself. Not in the ‘national’ media. Not especially in the curious, almost tense atmosphere that had been stirred up through the very emotionally fuelled row about alleged ban by the Muslims [more on THAT in a later part of this report] on non-Muslims’ eating on Council premises…

There was no hint that anyone ‘leading’ the Tower Hamlets Council would defend anyone at all in the media.

And they did not!

And they have not done so even two years since the events concerned occurred.

Muhammad Haque did not owe an obligation to anyone least of all to any council employee or councillor to speak up for any of him or her.

Yet he did do so and in express terms defended the main employee who was named in the series of very clearly orchestrated publications aimed at the collective image and the claim to legitimacy of so many people.

The facts uncovered by Muhammad Haque at the time showed that someone else was putting John S Williams forward on the records as a tool.

That someone else had to be the individual who was responsible for the so-called legal ‘opinion’.

But that someone would not go on the record as being the source of the bureaucratic ‘advice’ that a number of councillors reportedly received about the eating options alleged in the adverse reports carried by ‘the media’.

When Muhammad Haque contacted the office of the town clerk [Oops! ‘Chief executive’! my my!] THEY would not say one way or the other who had been the real offender that had given the alleged ammunition to parties who were maligning the image of people who had done absolutely nothing wrong. The people and the community in Tower Hamlets.

It was quickly established that Isabella Freeman warranted to be interrogated.

It is always someone else who answers all calls EVER made to Isabella Freeman’s published office contact telephone number.

That has been the consistent experience.

And so it turned out on the occasion that Muhammad Haque made these calls about the questions raised by the particular ‘ramadaan eating ban’ stories in the UK ‘media’.

Muhammad Haque left detailed questions for Isabella Freeman to answer.

Also left with Isabella Freeman’s office were the relevant reply email address or addresses.

Did Isabella Freeman answer the questions?

Did she elaborate on the strange and stupid ‘advice’ that the ‘media’ had been referring to and linking it to Isabella Freeman’s line-managed co-employee John S Williams?

Isabella Freeman did not answer the questions.

Yet questions arise about the role she plays within the Council.

On the evidence of a reasonably large number of observers, from across a diversity of disciplines and backgrounds. It is our finding that Isabella Freeman has been exercising what can accurately be called a licence.

It is a licence that ought not to be there. As it is a licence to sabotage democracy.

We assert that it amounts to a sabotage when the [officilaly] duly elected members of a local Council are routinely unheard or unable to be heard about how if at all they are implementing the democratic mandate that the local electorate gave them at the last relevant poll.

It is the elected council members that constitute the entity of the Council. No employee, no matter how much dosh they manage to extract for their ‘professionalism’, can claim to be the Council.

‘

Yet it is Isabella Freeman who appears to be operating a licence to subvert the local peoples’ democratic rights.

She is in effect the executive mayor!

As she has been ever since she managed to consolidate her terms.

The question now is: does Tower Hamlets need another Isabella Freeman in ‘control’ and with the ADDITIONAL ‘backing’ of being ‘the elected’?

There was no BHANGEELAAR! Campaign in existence when Isabella Freeman was failing to own up to the mess that had been caused at the expense of the community in Tower Hamlets two years ago.

A mess that was conveniently placed at the door of John S Williams.

At that time there was nothing whatever to do with any change to the system of the administrative make up of the Council.

There was no known petition in Tower Hamlets for a referendum on anything in September 2008.

So there was no contact with John S Williams about anything to do with the constitution of the Council in the context of a referendum.

The only ongoing questions that Muhammad Haque would want John S Williams to answer would relate to the obstructions that Isabella Freeman was putting – or getting a number of her fellow employees in the Tower Hamlets Council to put in the way.

Isabella Freeman was being mentioned by a cross section of employees in the Council as being the source of the majority of the obstructions.

[To be continued]