Combating extreme views in Rochdale

Posted By: William Hobhouse
Date Posted: 29/01/2009

Since living in Rochdale, I have believed that the town’s Asian community is generally moderate, well integrated into the town, and provides no comfort to extreme opinions. Now I cannot say this with any certainty following the Ramadhan Foundation’s Gaza Conference at the Castlemere Community Centre.
Most moderate European and international opinion supports both the state of Israel and a viable Palestinian state. The European Union has poured vast amounts of money into creating a sustainable Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel, a project that will sadly take a long long time to achieve. Extreme opinion - on both sides - promote a one state solution and the destruction of the other.
What happened at the Castlemere Community Centre while I was there was a conference organised to promote a one (Palestinian) state solution, hiding behind the smokescreen of the humanitarian crisis. It was a clear political agenda, roughly to the same agenda as Hamas.
Everyone understands that the whole spectrum of political opinion exists in Britain. In Rochdale there will be all sorts of extreme opinions – the two most common probably being BNP support, and support for Islamic extremism.
What was unacceptable about the Gaza Conference was it didn’t try to seek a balanced view about the current political situation. The exclusion of Paul Rowen’s agent, contrasted to the platform given to George Galloway MP, demonstrated the way moderate pro-Palestinian opinion was denied a hearing.
Imagine the outcry from the whole political establishment if the BNP was legitimised in a similar way.
Rochdale will suffer terribly if we tolerate the rise of extreme views in our town.