ACTION SEMINAR calls on Tower Hamlets Council to start action to defend the Community against Big Business takeover and displacement programme

1440 Hrs GMT London Monday 08 July 2013 What did the ACTION SEMINAR, held in the East End of London, not far from the RBS Building on Bishopsgate near Liverpool Street Station, on Saturday 06 July 2013 hear? That Tower Hamlets Borough Council [=LBTH] the local Council, was letting the City of London, Big Business interest take over the area. So has Lutfur Rahman, the present executive Mayor of LBTH, been aware of the Action Seminar? Answer: he indeed has been. He was sent information about the Seminar but he must have had some prior other engagement. However, he can have no problem in learning about the ACTION SEMINAR. The Organisers of the ACTION SEMINAR have just in the past few minutes sent Lutfur Rahman an email [mayor@towerhamlets.gov.uk ] the first communication specifying some of the most urgent steps that Tower Hamlets Council must take to protect and to defend the Community in the Brick Lane London E1 Area. The key substance of that email to Lutfur is quoted in full below: Race Equality in Tower Hamlets রেইস ইকুয়ালিটি ইন টাওয়ার হ্যামলেটস FAO Lutfur Rahman The Executive Mayor LBTH Key decisions made at the end of the Action Seminar on Saturday 6 July 2013: 1. That the takeover of the western areas of the LBTH by Big Developers and associated incursions and invasions were taking place with the participation of the Tower Hamlets Council which was LEAVING the community out of the contacts, communications, negotiations that have been taking place and are taking place between the LBTH COuncil and those parties and their agents and agencies. THIS was having a manifest and demonstrable adverse effects on the Community from the standpoint of the anti-discrimination legislation that has been in the UK statute Books for decades. One of the most directly adversely affected groups in the population has been and is the Bangladeshi community in the area. Others with similar ethnic, racial, cultural and related faith orientations and interests and affiliations have also been adversely affected. This process of planned displacements has been taking place with no evidence that Tower Hamlets Council is active over this as the electorally representative body that should be supporting the people, the electorate and the key community housing the electorate, over the huge range of planned attacks that have been going on in the programme that could only have been conceived by the combined inputs from Big Business, City of London and those parts of “Business” that remain still dedicated to a pro-racist, racist and apartheid programme for Britain. The beneficiaries of the LBTH Council’s abdication of its democratic and representative duties and of the Council’s abandonment of its option for interventions to defend the community have been the property speculators, land-grabbers and Big Business that have been making strategic sorties for decades to take over the area. The Crossrail hole plot and the ploy to get rid of the word “Banglatown” are two of the most recent examples of that Agenda being active against the parts of Tower Hamlets covered in these analyses and URGENT ACTION CALLS. 2. That the elected councillors for the Spitalfields and Banglatown Ward and those for the adjoining Wards of Weavers and Whitechapel were not engaged as elected representatives of the Community on the key decisions being made in this context. 3. That Tower Hamlets Council has no programme to protect the Community in the areas covered and that it must have a programme as based on the evidence and most importantly as based on the long-standing views of those who have been defending the community on every key economic, planning, environmental, social, demographic, democracy crisis and critical point stretching back decades. 5. That the Executive Mayor be given the opportunity to urgently meet with the Race Equality in Tower Hamlets organisation and to take steps for the LBTH Council to [a] address the LBTH Council’s duties and role in the context of the Race Relations, the Human Rights and the Equalities Acts in this context and [b] help start the very urgent process of reversing the takeover of the Community that has been ongoing and to create the series of activities that can at once defend the community and create the necessary gains in social, economic, demographic and electoral terms for the whole of the Community in the parts of the LBTH.