#tower hamlets

Photo credit: Eleanor Chua.

Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn.bsky.social :

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Congratulations to Lutfur Rahman — re-elected Mayor of Tower Hamlets. 

By: Potkin Azarmehr

Published: Oct 27, 2025

Left-wing elites in Britain today are too weak to confront the forces that seek to overthrow their own values

For some time now, I have watched with growing unease an echo of history repeating itself. Though British political life is still far from the violent upheavals of Tehran in 1979, then, as now, the Left believed it could ride the beast of political Islam and steer it toward their cause.

During the Iranian Revolution, the Western-educated secular Left joined forces with violent Islamist revolutionaries to overthrow the Shah, only to be annihilated by the very movement they helped bring to power. They believed the mullahs’ rule would be merely a transitional phase – a provisional government of sorts, like Kerensky’s in Russia – one they could later sweep aside, just as the Bolsheviks had done in 1917.

Things did not unfold as they had imagined. They failed to grasp the true nature of political Islam; the Ayatollahs swiftly devoured them as soon as they were no longer needed and Iran was thrust into decades of tyranny, repression and backwardness.

On Saturday in Whitechapel, that parallel came back to life. The Metropolitan Police had banned a Ukip demonstration in the area, which is home to a large number of Muslims, on “public safety” grounds. The right to protest – supposedly sacrosanct in a free society – was denied not because of violence from Ukip, but seemingly because of the threat of violence from the locals, according to the party.

As Commander Nick John said: “Tower Hamlets has the largest percentage of Muslim residents anywhere in the UK and the prospect of this protest taking place in the heart of the borough has been the cause of significant concern locally.

“It is our assessment that there is a realistic prospect of serious disorder if it was to go ahead in the proposed location.”

Instead of the Ukip demonstration, large masked groups of young men took to the streets chanting “Allahu Akbar” as they vowed to “defend our community”.

Among the protestors were pockets of Left-wing activists, one of whom, witnessing the tension, attempted to appeal to some sense of shared solidarity.

“There’s no need for that, bruv,” he was filmed pleading with his megaphone. “We’re on the same side”. The reply from a balaclava-wearing demonstrator was swift and unambiguous: “No, we’re not.”

That short exchange captured the heart of the problem. The Left in Britain believes it has found allies in political Islam – fellow “oppressed” fighting a common enemy in the so-called “far-Right”. But many Muslims, including those increasingly taking an active role in politics, do not see it that way. Their vision for society is diametrically opposed to the progressive ideals the Left claims to champion: free speech, gender equality, secularism, and LGBT rights.

What we are witnessing is the same fatal miscalculation that took place in Iran.

And another reverberation from 1979 is the weakness – and incompetence – of the political establishment. In the final year of the Shah’s rule, the regime tried desperately to appease its enemies. It jailed its own supporters and released violent radical prisoners in a futile attempt to calm the streets. In its fear of seeming repressive and its eagerness to appease the radical Islamists, it caused its own downfall.

Does that all sound familiar? Today in Britain, our own leaders are doing something similar.

The police, terrified of being accused of “Islamophobia”, have become hesitant to enforce the law evenly. Peaceful demonstrators carrying “Hamas are terrorists” signs are arrested, a Star of David is treated as a provocation, while those who issue threats and incite violence are indulged and appeased. The Government, concerned about losing votes from its Muslim constituents, neglects the threat of extremist networks openly recruiting in mosques, prisons, schools and online. It does this while lecturing ordinary law-abiding Britons about “extremism” and labelling them “far-Right”.

Just like Tehran in 1979, Left-wing elites are too weak to confront the forces that seek to overthrow their own values, and too naïve to recognise that those forces are not partners in progress but architects of regression.

The Left in Iran learned the hard way that when you go to bed with Islam, you do not wake up in a democracy. You wake up in a theocracy. Britain’s Left should take heed.

Potkin Azarmehr is an Iranian activist who fled to Britain following the 1979 revolution

[ Via: https://archive.today/OyGi3 ]

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Day 2579, 16 July 2025