With Brian Paddick along Brick Lane

The London Mayoral campaign came to my backyard today, as Brian Paddick (accompanied by his predecessor and current party president, Simon Hughes, MP), the LibDem GLA candidate for City and London East, Rajonuddin Jalal, and I ‘did’ Brick Lane. After a walkabout with photo-opportunities, and a swift but delicious curry-house lunch, we were greeted at the Brick Lane Mosque, which has made a point of getting the local Bangladeshi and wider Islamic community involved in public life, welcoming political parties of all hues. In Jalal we have a candidate who is a former Deputy Leader of Tower Hamlets Council and a mainstay of the Bengali community in East London.

Later we walked to the nearby Altab Ali park, where Brian laid flowers at the monument to the martyrs of the Bengali-language campaigners who died in 1952 during the struggle for their language rights in what was then East Pakistan — the precursor of Bangladesh. As I said in my short speech at the monument (broadcast by Bengali-language TV), language is an essential part of both individual and community identity. I was proud to be able to pay my respects to those who perished in defending their rights, and I celebrate the fact that Bengali is now one of the community languages in my home borough. But in some parts of the world, linguistic communities are still suffering oppression, and not all those who dream of political self-determination (for example, in Kashmir) have yet seen their goal achieved.

Link: www.brianpaddick.org