The Chief Executive Wolverhampton City Council. --------------------------------------
Dear Derrick Anderson
I write in reply to your letter of 27 June answering some of the questions I raised in my letter of 23 June about what you now tell me is called the Community Cohesion Forum.
The Forum you say has been going for three years and is an informal gathering of 'faith and community leaders, representatives of secondary schools, the University, the College, the press, the media and WREC.' You say the Forum has been meeting every 5 or 6 weeks in order to preserve peace and harmony in the City and that in this regard has been very successful.
If this were all, I'm sure most people would wish more strength to your elbow. But you go on to say that the proceedings of these meetings are not for publication but for people to air their views and raise concerns felt by the communities as a result of global events beyond their control. So neither the 'extreme elements' (presumably the BNP and other racist organisations), nor those of us who are outside the Forum are to learn of its activities. This we believe is almost to set up a secret organisation controlled and perpetuated by an oligarchy. This it seems is unacceptable within a democratic society.
Nor does the Forum reach out to other people and organisations with the same aim. I enclose a number of documents. The first is a copy of an email by me attacking the war on Iraq and suggesting that the decision to wage illegal and racist war was taken long before alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction became an issue. The real reason was the logistics of having to move weapons from early spring if a war were to be fought before the summer made it impossible. This is in the form of a dialogue with a war supporter, David Aaronovitch, a Guardian newspaper reporter with whose family and the circle at the London School of Economics I have a personal knowledge and ties. My criticism of the war will continue.
The second document I enclose is a copy of an email to David Bell, chief inspector of schools and head of OFSTED whose inspection of Wolverhampton City College we claim was institutionally racist and that all institutions set up to create a multicultural Britain were being subverted to supporting the aims of the institutionally racist state of Blair's Britain including the Commission for Racial Equality.
Fortunately, and in the nick of time, comes the CRE report on institutional racism in central government which has enabled the FRIENDS to ask if Trevor Phillips can give us an ethnic breakdown of the Department for Education and Skills together with the ethnic breakdown of all the organisations they control including the monstrous quango the Learning and Skills Council. We suggest that if he behaves honourably in defending a multicultural society he will, like Greg Dyke (another New Labour supporter) be set on by another of Blair's Bulldogs even more ferocious than Alastair Campbell. This is the third document we enclose.
We are sure that other organisations would also have documents and analyses equally interesting to the Community Cohesion Forum.
Also the FRIENDS have an interesting programme which might be called Chickens Coming Home to Roost. Contrary to the position in July 1999 when the FRIENDS OF BILSTON COMMUNITY COLLEGE (BCC) published their first Bulletin showing that the three main charges of it being the worst FE College in Britain, with debts of £lOmillion or more, and guilty of fraudulent activity were either false or manipulated, the majority of people in possession of the facts now understand that BCC should never have been closed and therefore Wolverhampton City College was improperly opened. This changed consciousness enables us to pursue further matters which have so far not been pressed.
For instance who was the person who reported BCC to the West Midlands Police Fraud Squad? We believe it was John Mellor an ex-member of the police and at the time right-wing Conservative councillor. Mellor by the definition of an unrepentant supporter of the opinions of Enoch Powell was and is a racist. Mellor claimed to have large numbers of letters of criticism of BCC and played a leading role in the closure of the College. Now we are not asking for the names of the critics to be disclosed, because they were acting as Whistleblowers with a protected status. But we are asking that the nature of their complaints should be revealed for we believe that largely they were from individuals who complained that they had not been promoted or other comparatively trivial matters which every college authority faces.
Then there is the question of the threat to the Whistleblower of BCC by the Vice-chancellor. We wrote to the governors of Wolverhampton University asking whether the threat was made with the approval of that authority or whether the letter had been diverted by the Clerk to the Vice-Chancellor who issued his threat without consulting the governors. In view of the present importance of the university it is obviously important to get this matter resolved.
Next is the question of all those others, who nationally or locally were active in the closure of Bilston Community College. These range from David Blunkett and all subsequent education ministers through to those still active in the management of both Wolverhampton University and the usurping City College. It also includes the secretary of the teachers' union NATFHE who has denied the columns of the Lecturer, the union journal, to the FRIENDS as has the GUARDIAN newspaper refused to put the case of BCC in Guardian Education. Then there are those who for good or bad reasons have received our Bulletins but failed to respond. All will be asked whether they supported the closure of BCC and if so to state or restate their reasons for doing so.
Finally (for the time being) there is the attitude of the important regional newspaper the Express & Star which was always critical of Bilston Community College and has now, we understand, taken a decision both to refuse to print anything from the FRIENDS OF BILSTON COMMUNITY COLLEGE, and also anything, on any subject, by George Barnsby. If this is proved to be true we shall certainly refer the matter to the Press Complaints Commission and all bodies interested in free speech.
We feel that on most of the matters discussed above we should be supported by the Community Cohesion Forum if it is to have a viable existence.
We also reiterate our main theme that Wolverhampton which raised itself from the Racist Capital of Britain in the days of Enoch Powell to important university city proud of its multicultural present and well able to rebuff any racist attacks. But we are currently fearful of the state of Blair's institutionally racist Britain. It will require the united will of all Wolverhampton and British progressive people to achieve a multicultural Britain.