Stand Up to Racism - But Not in Newham

During the Corbyn ascendancy, little could stop Mayor Fiaz appearing on a stage or attending a protest with Stand Up to Racism. Back then it was a sign of her attachment to the cause. It may have been simple virtue signalling, but she took advantage of every opportunity to emote against the dreadful racist society that had catapulted her to the top-job in Newham.

It sounds good. Our mayor is taking a visible stand against racism. The trouble is that this particular broad-based coalition is just another SWP front organisation. Weyman Bennett and Sabby Dhalu of the SWP are joint secretaries and Bennett is a member of the SWP central committee.

It is not just that Fiaz was willing to attend, she actively sought out opportunities to raise her profile alongside luminaries of the far-Left and Corbyn’s front bench. But this was when she was being touted as the ‘Corbynite’ mayor in London. 

In 2018 she was reported in the Socialist Worker as speaking at an SUtR event in Newham. Again, Socialist Worker records her support for the SWP/SUtR ‘fight against fascism’ in London.

Here she was speaking at SUtR in 2019; and here she is again, a week earlier with Lyn Brown MP.

As late as May 2021 she felt quite at liberty to add her name to the SUtR call for a public enquiry regarding Covid deaths.

And she didn’t like the BBC documentary on the ‘Last Whites in the East End’ so of course had to express her dissatisfaction through the medium of SUtR. 

Time was when she couldn’t wait to be a part of SUtR and was enthusiastic about securing a more prominent role for herself. She participated in the SUtR march to celebrate the UN Anti-Racism Day, where we understand that, using Jenny Fisher’s contacts in Socialist Appeal, she muscled her way onto the stage to ensure that she had a role as a speaker.

In 2020 she used the SUtR website to add her support for the SWP’s attempt to link George Floyd, Windrush and Covid together in some great conspiracy. At an SUtR event at St John’s in Stratford, she was again speaking on how the deaths of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer in the USA, and Edson da Costa by his own hand in Newham, were part of the same conspiracy. 

You get the idea. SUtR was a fashionable anti-racist cause. No-one was bothered that it was an SWP recruiting tool. During the Corbyn years it did her prospects no harm to be linked to an organisation that had the blessing of several members of the Labour front bench.

And then it all went sour and under Starmer, the winds of change began to blow in quite a different direction.

Not Any More!

Following the Party’s lead, it appears that the cabinet of Newham Council have decided that they will no longer have anything to do with this particular Trotskyist front organisation.

This means that the Mayor will no longer have anything to do with SUtR.

So far, so good.

Except that the Mayor, didn’t seem to want to fall out with her friends in the SWP and went to great pains to ensure that they were not told that she would no longer be gracing their events with her presence.

When recently invited to attend an SUtR event in East London, it seems that Mayor Fiaz didn’t want to be seen as opposing SUtR and instructed that they should be told that she was ‘unavailable’. 

Unfortunately, the reply was sent electronically along with a stream of correspondence to the local secretary of SUtR, and yes you have guessed it, he is also a member of the SWP. As he scrolled through the previous emails he apparently found a chain noting that Newham Council would no longer be supporting SUtR, but that SUtR should not be told this. Better to simply make an excuse.

Rob Fergusson, Convener of Newham Stand Up to Racism.

Oh dear.

Caught out again Mayor Fiaz. Her Trotskyist cheerleaders must be feeling a little less enthusiastic about her now, as the rest of us look on with disdain at the political weathercock who occupies the office and her lack of political courage or honesty.