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Sunday, 21 January 2007
A World Civilisation or a Clash of Civilisations? QEII Westminster.
 I attended the Mayor of London’s conference yesterday at the QEII conference centre in Westminster. The main debate was A World Civilisation or a Clash of Civilisations.
The Speakers were Ken Livingstone the Mayor of London (not to be confused with the Lord Mayor, or his predecessor Dick Whittington, which is a City of London office, this is the Mayor for the rest of London, the Greater London Authority which stretches into Essex, Kent and Middlesex) who was seconded by Salma Yaqoob a councillor for the Respect party. The other Speaker was Daniel Pipes, who needs no introduction and Douglas Murray a writer from the Social Affairs Unit. The chair was Gavin Esler of BBC Newsnight, who described himself as “one of those Londoners who comes from somewhere else, in my case Glasgow”
An immediate transcript was running on a screen next to the signing interpreter and I am hopeful that that transcript will be made available in due course. As and when it does, hopefully there will be an on-line format, I will link it here. So I didn’t attempt to get all the arguments down longhand but concentrated on following the debate. These are just some personal observations about the morning. There was a very good turn out, maybe 3000+. The main hall was full to standing room only, overflow rooms had been arranged with CCTV screen viewing. There was talk that the Methodist Central Hall opposite could be used if necessary. This meant that the debate started 30 minutes late. The audience was varied, but mostly middle aged or elderly.
Ken Livingstone spoke first about today’s wonderful London, where 300+ languages are spoken, and 60% of those living there were not born there. He does not look to be a well man these days, his face is very puffy, his skin is not clear and his eyes don’t seem to focus quite right. His big worry seemed to be the crude islamophobia that could be seen on certain websites.
Daniel Pipes spoke calmly and with dignity. He sees the issue as a clash between Civilisation and barbarism. He feared that the threat cannot be contained, but must be fought and be defeated.
Salma Yaqoob turns out to be associated with the Sparkbrook and other Mosques of Birmingham. According to her the west has interfered in other countries affairs and we must not be surprised when retaliation happens. That didn’t go down well. She kept criticising Daniel Pipes for speaking of fighting and defeating that which threatens us, which she seemed to equate with warmongering. She ranted and gesticulated. I was not impressed with her.
Douglas Murray was a revelation. He is young, vigorous, energetic and spoke well with passion and flair.
Question time.
The first question was critical of the timing of the conference. To hold the main event on a Saturday morning meant that Orthodox Jews would be unable to attend. The answer was that the conference had to be held sometime over the weekend and it has been extended until after sunset tonight, with the closing plenary Multicultural London – Does it Work? from 6 to 8pm for that reason.
I will recount just one incident because the transcript, if and when, as and when it is published will not catch the expressions.
At one point, in response to a question Salma Yaqoob replied that she wants to live in a multi-cultural society alongside, Christians, other Muslims, and Hindus. A cry came up from the ranks, “You have forgotten the Jews. Come on, include the Jews” She didn’t like it.
Shortly after a lady with an African accent ended her rather rambling and obscure question with a prayer of blessing, including “God Bless Britain and God Bless America”. Ms Yaqoob responded saying, “Yes, God bless America, God bless Iraq, God bless Britain God bless Palestine, etc”
“Come on” came the cry from the hall again. “What about God bless Israel. Say it, God bless Israel. Come on, why can’t you say the “I” word?”
Her face was a picture. Her features worked, her mouth opened and closed, but she could not say it. She eventually managed “God bless people who are Jewish.” I think the nuns by the middle aisle could have repeated the c word with greater ease.
Most illuminating.
I went for lunch which was provided via packed lunch bags handed out in the assembly areas outside the conference rooms. They seemed to have over catered for vegan attendees; by the time I got there my soul was crying out for a pint of hot sweet tea and a bacon roll and what I got was a vegetable sandwich, some delicious mango juice and a lovely fresh orange. So I didn’t do so bad.
I did start off with one of the 5 simultaneous seminars – Is Britain Becoming More Segregated? Professor Danny Dorling a specialist in human geography began. He admitted that he had been expecting to give a talk to 30 people and had handouts for that number. He did his best with an overhead projector on a topic I expected to find interesting. But it wasn’t. The crux of his argument was that in the UK we had more families in the band of modest prosperity and less below the poverty line in 1968 than we do now, that only a minority of people then went on to further education than do now, although these qualifications are not making us any richer, but that we must not return to the way of the 60s and 70s because of the nasty racist attitudes of that time. Hum!
The next speaker was even less inspiring so I decided to see what was happening elsewhere.
I called into Seminar B – Can there be Progressive Colonialism? David Aaronovitch of The Times can write lively articles, however there had been an announcement that the other speaker, Tariq Ali (who I recall from my own school days, being one of those few who did stay on past the age of 15 in those prosperous but undesirable 60s) would not be attending today. I could hear very little from my seat by the door but I feared that whoever was speaking was never going to set the Thames alight. As we say in London. Not that there were too many born and bred Londoners present to be familiar with the phrase. I would have liked to have asked a question somewhere just so that a native London accent was heard – perhaps to ask why it was such a good thing that so few native born Londoners now live in the city of their forefathers, but instead live on estates in places like Harlow and Basildon. But the arguments didn’t take that particular turn, or at least not while I was there.
I didn’t have the energy to stay until 6 pm when the final plenary started so this roving reporter left in a second quest for a pot of tea. Posted on 01/21/2007 6:08 AM by Esmerelda Weatherwax
Comments
21 Jan 2007
David Stollar Yes, I too attended the conference and can bear out Esmerelda's comments, particularly as regards Miss Yaqoob who, it was later revealed, is a leading light in Georgeous George's Respect party. I thought the day well organised and the debate good. What worried me, however, was the in-your-face way the whole thing was packed with Ken's fellow travellers. In the selection of speakers, for instance, at the numerous seminars, there was hardly anyone representative of the average middle of the road Englishman, let alone people like us. At one seminar I attended, Oliver Kamm was the farthest to the right on the panel and even he, a self-professed left-winger, was given a hard time. The spectrum moved rapidly leftward from Oliver (who is such a beautiful speaker, by the way) with one of Ken's closest buddies, then Inayat Bunglawala and then a lady (?) representing some lesbian minority lobby group or other (it was not made very clear). In fact, she was a good speaker, passionate and effective, and not all that unreasonable at times, but that's not the point. There was of course a form to fill in and hand in whereon I said more or less what I have said here, but I could not help visualising the hoots of derisive laughter in the Mayor's catacombs as they read it and consigned it to the bin. 29 Jan 2007
Vicktorya Video available now; and transcripts underway. One of the biggest stories here is (also) how that big of an event got completely panned by the media; no big surprise -- but how about some Brits call their 'news services' on that fact? We could apologize for the quality of the video and audio, but we did the best we could. (Sorry for the delay? -- we worked as fast as we could.) We're just amateurs here. Pipes is featured in clips #3 and #4, and judging by crowd reaction, Murray in clip #6 made his points eloquently. Now that, to me, is debating. Here are the links: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Willyatyouutube transcripts coming onto the 910 group blog, as we get them done. (If you can help, join us.) http://www.910group.com/blog Vicktorya |