An East London MP claimed the Labour Party has been the target of a Trojan Horse plot to infiltrate it with Islamic extremists, according to the Evening Standard. He says his party has rejected “several hundred” membership applications from people the party believed were extremists, and expelled others.
Jim Fitzpatrick said that the re-election of Lutfur Rahman as Mayor of Tower Hamlets was evidence the borough was being taken over by “race politics”. Rahman is often accused of favouring Muslims over anyone else, and has been the subject of significant criticism.
Poplar and Limehouse MP Mr Fitzpatrick claimed that Mr Rahman’s newly established Tower Hamlet’s First Party is “mono-cultural” as it has 18 councillors, all of whom are Bengali and 17 of whom are men.
“We think our act is pretty clean now, but that doesn’t stop people trying because that’s what was influencing our politics in the past and that’s certainly a way of working,” he told the Standard.
“Much as the entryism, the Trojan Horse allegations [were] in education in Birmingham, the Trojan Horse in east London was a political one rather than an educational one.
“We’ve been trying to build an inclusive, tolerant, cohesive community in east London and there are some people who want to take us backwards into race politics, and certainly monochrome politics, and that’s just not the future.
The borough itself is remarkably divided already, and used to be one of the poorest parts of Britain. However, in the 1980s the Conservative government embarked on a vast regeneration project centred on the abandoned Canary Wharf dock on the Isle of Dogs.
Today the area is home to some of the world’s most significant corporations like HSBC but in surrounding areas the poorer immigrant communities remain. The borough itself is 32 percent Bengali Muslim.
Allegations of wrongdoing are not new in Tower Hamlets, with Breitbart London exposing a large number electoral practices at last month’s elections that could be illegal.
If Mr Fitzpatrick is right in saying that the Labour Party is a target for infiltration, national security questions would be raised, especially as it comes amidst concerns that the party is likely to run Sadiq Khan MP as their London Mayoral candidate. Mr Khan admitted to being a friend and supporter of Babar Ahmad, a self-confessed terrorist.
Whilst Mr Ahmed was fighting extradition to the US to face allegations of being an Al-Qaeda fundraiser Mr Khan supported the campaign to release him and visited him in prison. Once Ahmad was extradited to America he pleaded guilty to terrorist offences.