| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Just what are the Tories and Junior Tories doing to our borough? | |
| Posted by: | Phil Andrews | |
| Date/Time: | 02/06/09 12:06:00 |
| If it does I've no doubt you will report me. In the meantime I shall see if I still have the telephone numbers of the people who were involved with the HRG and, if so, I will give them a call to inform them that their organisation still exists. You are correct to point out that I frequently refer to the events of 1986 onwards, but only as supporting information for up-to-date events. You mention Alan Minehan - who has also renounced his formerly held views, I should add, although in his defence he was never remotely as committed to NF ideology as I once was in the first place - and his expulsion from the old Ivybridge TA. You fail to mention the many other people, of no particular political persuasion, who were purged with him. In any event you will doubtless be as pleased as I am that this matter has now been rectified and that due to the resolute efforts of the new administration at Hounslow the estate has a new association which all residents have an equal right to be a part of irrespective of whom they happen to vote for, and which is going very well. Strictly for the record, my take today on the events of 1986/87 surrounding Alan Minehan is that he and I were trying to do the wrong thing for the right reasons, whilst the Labour Party and its then council officers were trying to do the right thing for the wrong reasons - if that makes any sense! The ICG did indeed ally itself with the newly-founded HRG - a fellow independent group operating in the borough - in 1996, as you mention. It then unallied itself with the same organisation in - I think - 1998, because we were uncomfortable with what we considered to be its emphasis on minority grants and other similar issues, where some of its concerns were, we believed, ill-informed. Which you don't mention, of course. That is not to say that I do not respect the sincerity of the "main protagonists", and loosely speaking consider them to be friends, just as I have friends in the Labour Party. It is a shame that the party zealot in you seems not to understand that it is possible to combine honest disagreement with basic human respect. Amusingly, what fatally undermines your line of argument is that the member now responsible for issuing community grants is none other than the Community Group's own Councillor Paul Fisher. Paul continues to issue hundreds of thousands of pounds to groups working to improve community cohesion in the borough, such as the excellent Somali-led Refugee Education and Training Initiative (RETI). The facts are there for anybody to see for themselves, and as such it is rather dumb of you to try to imply otherwise. As for the lack of co-operation I have historically received from Labour on community cohesion and tackling racism, this is a generalisation. I have in fact received some valuable help and support from certain members of your party in Hounslow without which our work as an authority would not have been as effective, for which I am truly grateful and which I have publicly acknowledged. On the basis of historical trend however it is likely that when the local elections come around these same people, or at least those who are close to them, will revert to accusing me of being a closet fascist who wants to throw them out of the country. Under the circumstances can you not understand why the "doubt" expressed by such people cuts no ice with me, given the demonstrable lack of sincerity attached to it? |