Muhammad Haque first comment on "East London Advertiser" online piece about George Lansbury and the Poplar Councillors' stand

I quote you [Mike Brooke, East London Advertiser online, dated 04 May 2011] :

[“] Angela Lansbury unveils a commemorative plaque on Saturday to honour her grandfather’s life and the legacy he left behind—an East End that fights for social justice against the odds. [”]


So how are the current “elected Councillors” on Tower Hamlets Council keeping up the tradition of the Poplar Councillors and of George Lansbury?

On 8 March 2011, I had arrived at the “Mulberry Place” “Town Hall” intending to observe the “Budget setting” session of the “Full Council”. I was surprised to find that iron barriers had been placed all over the entrance to the building with a number of uniformed Metropolitan Police officers present. There was hardly anybody else around on the outside of the building Then I spotted about five persons standing on a side. When I asked them why they were there instead of being inside the Council chamber, they said they had been refused entry.

I saw a semi-uniformed, security-guard-type person who told me that the “chief executive” [“Dr” Kevan Collins] had “advised” that just under 50 person would be allowed to enter the “public gallery”. No reason was available. I also saw the clearly displayed notice to the effect that person wanting to get into the meeting would have to submit to searches and if they rescued they would not be allowed into the building.
Did your paper report any of this?

And did you come across any precedent for the Stockade-style barriers that the current clique on Tower Hamlets Council has taken to putting up in order to suppress the people of the Borough from even being able to observe what little the “elected” councillors actually show of their true roles when attending the cuts-making procedures that are reducing the East End’s ‘democratically elected local Council” to an ever authoritarian entity colluding with the agenda ofd making the population here even more deprived than it is already?


0100 Hrs Thusrday 05 May 2011