'The Independent' journalist Jerome Taylor. |
Voting Fraud Investigative Reporter Beaten Up by Muslim Thugs.
Jerome Taylor was savagely beaten by Asian thugs while on the trail of
Bangladeshi voter fraud in East London.
ELECTION SPECIAL – The Cultural Enrichment™ keeps on coming.
UK Muslim Postal Vote fraud gets uglier – much uglier:
‘The first punch
came, landing on my nose, sending blood down my face,’ ‘Independent’ reporter Jerome Taylor relives his bloody
experience on the trail of voting fraud in east London
When I look back on it now what surprises me is how
disarmingly polite my attackers were.
“What are you doing?” asked one of the two, seemingly inquisitive, Asian teenagers
who approached me on a quiet cul-de-sac in Bow, east London, shortly after 1pm
yesterday. “There’s been a photographer
around here, do you know her?” he added.
I didn’t, but I explained I was a journalist for The
Independent looking to speak to a man at an address in the area, who was
standing as a candidate in the local elections, about allegations of postal
vote fraud.
“Can we see your note pad,” the boy asked.
I declined and then the first punch came – landing straight
on my nose, sending blood and tears streaming down my face. Then another. Then
another.
I tried to protect myself but a fresh crop of attackers – I
guess between four and six – joined in. As they knocked me to the ground one of
them brought a traffic cone repeatedly down on the back of my head.
Council Housings in East London. |
It seemed faintly absurd now. "That's easy for you to say," I thought. "How on earth are you meant to stay
up?"
I don't know how long it lasted – it was probably only a
minute – but it was a long minute. I don't remember them saying anything as
they did it. The first noise I was aware of was the beeping of a car horn and a
woman screaming.
The noise brought a man out of a nearby block of flats. With
little regard for his own safety he waded in and defended me until my attackers
ran away.
I shudder to think what would have happened if he hadn't been
brave enough to take action and I cannot thank him enough for what he did. He gave
me a bottle of water to wash the blood away and showed me a mobile phone that
one of the attackers had dropped which he later handed to the police. He also
maintained that he saw at least two of the attackers run into the candidate's
house.
What brought me to Bow yesterday were allegations of
widespread postal voting fraud. Both the local Conservative and Respect parties
in Tower Hamlets have been looking through the new electoral rolls for
properties that have an alarmingly high number of adults registered to one
address.
The area has a large
Bengali population and this type of fraud is unfortunately all too common. In
some instances there have been as many as 20 Bengali names supposedly living in
two or three-bedroom flats. When journalists have previously called, all too
often there are far fewer living there. In some instances, no Bengalis at all.
In such a heavily populated borough, a few fraudulent postal
votes might not sound like it matters but when you look at how slim the
majorities are here you know every vote counts. In Bethnal Green and Bow,
Respect has a tiny 1,300-vote lead.
In neighbouring Poplar and Limehouse, where George Galloway
is taking on Labour's Jim Fitzpatrick and Tory newcomer Tim Archer, the lead is
around 4,000. But boundary changes have brought thousands of affluent
Tory-leaning voters into the constituency, making it an equally tight race.
So far Scotland Yard is looking into 28 allegations of bogus
voter registration in London, although the Conservative and Respect parties
both say they have highlighted many more. Concerns have been amplified by a
flood of new voter registrations in the past few weeks in the run-up to the
nationwide deadline on 20 April.
Election officials in Tower Hamlets have removed 141 suspect
ballots from the register but overall 5,166 new names were received before the
deadline with little time to check their veracity.
Bengalis do tend to
have large families and this is the third most deprived borough in the country.
Overcrowding is a serious issue. But other Bengalis I know in the area had told
me that it was very unusual to have any more than five adults in one house. The
households are large, they said, because they have lots of children – not lots
of adults.
Thinking back on my experience perhaps I was naïve to venture
into the area on my own, although I do live in east London, know the estates
well and have rarely felt threatened. My Bengali neighbours, meanwhile, are
particularly kind and well-liked because they tend to keep a tighter leash on their
kids.
The paramedics who treated me told me that they rarely went
into the area without a police escort. "These
kids are trapped in an endless cycle of poverty," one of them said. "There's a lot of drugs and
gang-related violence but it is rare for a stranger like you to be
attacked."
The slight difference, of course, is that I'm not a stranger
in the normal sense. Whoever these kids were it was evident that they were no
strangers to the occasional journalist and photographer sniffing around.
Last night, I managed to speak to the man I wanted to
interview about the alleged fraud, and whose house I was outside when I was
attacked. He said: "I am not going
to talk to you about this. Why have you been knocking on my door. You don't
disturb me. If you knock on my door again I will take you to court."
Police probe voter
fraud
Tower Hamlets elected mayor Bangladeshi Lufta Rahman. |
Tower Hamlets Council confirmed it had asked the police to
investigate 10 cases of voter fraud in its area, but it revealed that 3,123
late applications have been received for postal votes and it has had too little
time to properly check whether they are all genuine before the register closed.
That could open the poll in the two constituencies in Tower
Hamlets – Bethnal Green and Bow and Poplar and Limehouse – to massive postal
voter fraud. Respect is in a bitter fight to retain the highly marginal Bethnal
Green seat – vacated by Respect MP George Galloway, who is standing in
neighbouring Poplar and Limehouse – and, in an unprecedented development in
British politics, all the candidates of the main parties are Bangladeshi
Muslims.
The council said it would support calls to change the rules
after Thursday's elections, to provide more time for checks to be carried out
on late postal vote applications. "That could mean closing applications
for postal votes at least four days before the normal voter registration
process closes."