Sunday Times – Focus: Could the election be won by fraud? (by Robert Winnett and Abul Taher): This week Craig Murray, a former diplomat hoping to become the local MP, will be writing to the Electoral Commission to raise his fears of vote-rigging in the constituency. The soaring numbers of people voting by post, he said, are leaving the election wide open to fraud. “I’ve been approached by several people in the Asian community who are under huge pressure from Labour activists to apply for a postal vote rather than a ballot vote and then hand their postal vote over to the Labour party. That is happening now in Blackburn on a wide scale. In my career as a diplomat I’ve been used to precisely this situation abroad but wasn’t expecting to face it in the UK.” In Blackburn the contest is particularly tense. The sitting MP is Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, and the local Muslim community is threatening to vote him out in protest over the Iraq war. In its efforts to hang on to every vote it can, Labour is urging people to register for postal votes; already 50% more people than in 2001 will be using the system in Blackburn this time. Many of them, claimed Murray, are facing pressure or even threats of “repercussions” intended to influence who they support.

For the record, I think I should state that we don’t think these repercussions include being boiled alive.

The Guardian – Our man in Blackburn

Our campaign is pretty well on the move now, except for continuing telecom problems. It is 10 days since I applied to BT for landlines for our campaign HQ. They called yesterday to tell me an engineer will be available on April 7. I spent much of the day fuming hopelessly at various BT officials, but still no line.

I buy, at great expense, an Orange mobile office card to try to solve my internet problem in the meantime. Rather than wait for pages to download, it would be quicker to travel to the addresses of the websites and ask for a paper copy. I make more irate calls. Orange blames overload on the network, as opposed to its network being no good. It would function perfectly if nobody used it.

We had a minor drama on Maundy Thursday. Our campaign HQ used to be the borough council’s information office. They moved out in November, leaving their sign above the premises. It had grown very mucky, but was still legible. The windows are now full of anti-war and anti-Straw posters. The council woke up to this matter the day before the Easter break.

Two officials stood outside looking important and making calls on their mobile phones. Then they asked me to take the sign down, to which I replied: “It’s your sign.”

An Ealing comedy ensued with lots of people arriving, looking at the sign, and speaking to me. A man from Capita told me that the council had instructed them that the sign must be down that day, before the Easter holiday. After the flood of officials, two painters arrived, having been pulled off work on housing. They proceeded to take down the sign, and I made them a cup of tea. They promised to vote for me.

Capita is an interesting privatised body. It seems to do public works less efficiently than the government used to, and with the senior management getting paid huge amounts of cash – so much that Capita’s chief executive is sponsoring a city academy for Blackburn.

This is the government’s wonderful new scheme. If you put in less than 10% of the capital cost of the new school, you can have it named after you, and you get a big say in choosing the staff and the curriculum. In the north-east these schools are actually teaching creationism – which, of course, pleases the spooky-eyed religious types on the Blair/Bush axis. Goodness knows what the one in Blackburn will teach. That the Iraq war was legal?

Blackburn is getting a new hospital under the private finance initiative. It seems to me incredible that it can be argued that providing a cash return on capital to the private sector works out cheaper than not doing so. In practice, the result in Blackburn as elsewhere is that the levels of service and facility provision continually dwindle as the project progresses. Can anyone explain to me why we could find ?4bn at the drop of a hat for the war in Iraq, but not public money for a hospital in Blackburn?

The campaign slog continues. On Monday my girlfriend and I leafletted 1,300 houses between us. My pedometer registered 27 miles, much of it up and down steps. Not wanting to ruin good shoes, I bought a pair in Vienna last month for ?20. They are made of good leather, but have a most unfortunate two-tone effect. A family member told me they make me look like a Russian pimp. I had seen that danger, but rather hoped the effect might be confined to my feet. I can imagine Silvio Berlusconi saying that at a cabinet meeting: “Bring me the feet of that Russian pimp.”

There is a real flaw in our democracy, with the odds heavily stacked against independent candidates. On the ballot paper, thanks to a wonderful bit of New Labour Orwellianism, you can no longer choose how to describe yourself. A description such as “Save Kidderminster Hospital” or “No to George Bush” would remind voters of what you stand for. But now you are allowed only to enter the name of a registered political party or the word “Independent”.

In each constituency there are strict limits on what you can spend, but no limit on what the parties can spend nationally. So Blackburn hoardings are all plastered with Labour party advertising, which doesn’t count against Jack Straw’s limit, but any I put up will count against mine. On top of which, flyposting has been made a specific offence. Well, I think civil disobedience in the name of democracy is called for here. I am off to flypost Blackburn’s many boarded-up buildings.

www.craigmurray.co.uk

The second entry from Craig Murray’s campaign diary is published in today’s Guardian.

The sun is shining in Blackburn and spirits are light. Well, mine are. I am sitting in my new campaign headquarters. My assistants are Peter Newton and Eddie Duxbury, two pensioners. Pete is cleaning the windows and Eddie is setting up the computers and telephones. I managed to rent a shop in a perfect town-centre position, just down from the railway centre.

Campaigning is going well. I am enjoying my encounters with the voters, who are given to speaking their minds. I have met with no hostility. I have been invited for cups of tea by total strangers. One thing that has surprised me when I have gone leafletting is that it is not unusual for people to leave their front doors ajar. On some streets, children run about and play football in the road as I did as a child. These are things London has lost.

(more…)

The first entry from Craig Murray’s campaign diary is published in today’s Guardian. Here is the full unedited text:

Campaign Diary

Part I – No room at the Inn – or the Brewery

The idea of my standing against Jack Straw in Blackburn at the general election had been born in conversation with Andrew Gilligan, when he was interviewing me for the Channel 4 Documentary Torture – the Dirty Business shown last Tuesday.

I had been talking about Jack Straw’s role in approving the use by MI6 of information obtained under torture by the Uzbek security services. Gilligan’s film had shown that the same was happening in Egypt, Syria and elsewhere, and that the CIA were kidnapping terrorist suspects around the globe and shipping them to places where they could be tortured.

I have the advantage of having seen some of the so-called intelligence this process produces, and know it to be nonsense aimed at exaggerating the role, strength and links of Al-Qaida and Bin Laden. Yet the government wishes to be able, on the meagre strength of such intelligence, to keep people detained or under house arrest indefinitely, without access to fair trial.

Both Clark and Blair smugly cite “intelligence” as though it were some infallible source of information to which only the trustworthy few – ie them – have access.

In fact this intelligence is dead dodgy, about as reliable as a racing tip from a bent jockey. If you don’t want to take my word for it, consider the dossier of lies on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Anyway, Gilligan and I were discussing how to hold Straw accountable for his decision on torture material, for the WMD dossier (he is, after all, in charge of MI6, a fact Hutton almost failed to notice), and for the illegal war on Iraq. This is meant to be a democracy, I mused. Why not challenge him at the polls, in his own backyard?

I boldly declared I would go ahead and challenge Straw. News of it spread, and I found I had somehow passed a point of no return. It had to be done.

I hope to give Straw a run for his money in Blackburn. But still more, I hope that I will be able to keep the media focus on the torture, human rights and illegal war. This is of course precisely what Blair doesn’t want. “Let’s move on from that” is his mantra.

Am I the only one to find this insulting? I think I’ll rob a bank to fund my election campaign. When the police come to arrest me, I shall say: “Hey, let’s move on from that. OK I robbed a bank, but that was last week. You should see my great plans for the future. I realise that robbing the bank may have raised some trust issues, but I think if you will really listen to me we can establish a dialogue and overcome those.”

Anyway it was now time to translate my resolve into action on the ground. After a day of London media interviews, at seven o clock in the evening I set out from Shepherd’s Bush in a freezing, driving rain for a preparatory visit to my prospective constituents.

The first part of the trip was in a Virgin Pendalino train. I can’t say I noticed it tilting, but it got me to Manchester fast, comfortably and efficiently. Two more changes of train saw me arriving in Blackburn just on midnight on a local service. It was a bitterly cold night with sharp specks of snow. The local train had no heating system and reminded me of a Polish tram of the communist era.

I had not booked a hotel, figuring that Blackburn was the sort of place that would be bound to have a big old Victorian station hotel. I had visions of a large bed, velvet curtains and piping hot cast iron radiators. Well it did, but it shut. There were several vans of very cold looking policemen at the railway station, for no apparent reason. I asked one where I might find a hotel, and he replied, cryptically: “You’ll be lucky.”

After a frozen plod through the snow, I came to a mini-cab firm, and a very chirpy driver called Ajit bundled me into his people carrier. He explained that the Blackburn Rovers vs Burnley FA Cup 5th Round replay had just finished. The two being neighbours and bitter rivals, the game was the biggest event in Blackburn for a long time. The hotels would be full with supporters, he opined.

I had known the game was on, but told Ajit that Burnley being just down the road, I had not expected the hotels would be affected. He said that the hotels were full not of Burnley but of Blackburn supporters; they came from all over for matches. I presume this is a Blackburn diaspora; in England it is only at Old Trafford that the majority of so-called fans have no connection to the local population.

Anyway, Ajit was sure that the Travel Inn would have rooms. It didn’t, but then he was sure that the Travel Lodge would have rooms. After that we tried the Fernhurst, the Bear, the Woodlands, the Hilltop and a couple of others. Not the Chimneys though – Ajit warned me they were rum folk at the Chimneys.

Ajit remained continually cheerful and optimistic, and I am quite sure he didn’t deliberately keep ferrying across town in a series of five mile swings, but soon it was 1.30am there was ?40 on the clock and still nowhere to sleep. Ajit had suggested trying outside Blackburn, but I was loathe to go scuttling ignominiously away at the start of my first visit. Finally, however, I had to admit defeat and we took a brief trip down the motorway to the Preston Novotel. It was an inauspicious start to my Balckburn campaign; there was no room at the inn.

The next morning I took a taxi into town and stood outside Blackburn Cathedral clutching my bag, my hands turning blue with cold. I headed into the visitor centre to get a coffee, and bumped into a documentary crew making a film about MPAC, the Muslim Public Affairs Committee. They had filmed me last week meeting MPAC to discuss the Blackburn campaign, so we greeted each other. I sat down to drink my coffee, and they filmed me doing it.

Revived, I went out to scout around for a vacant shop I could rent as an HQ for three months. There were several suitable looking empty shops available. I also called on letting agents to find somewhere to live for three months, but they all said the minimum let was six months.

All the shops to let seemed to use the same agent, Trevor Dawson. I telephoned this company and explained what I wanted and why. They replied rather cryptically that commercial property owners in Blackburn would not want to be associated with any campaign against Jack Straw. Nonetheless I asked them to check the availability of two shops which particularly interested me.

I bought a local newspaper; I saw a Blackburn labour councillor had just been convicted of vote rigging, and been told by the judge to expect a custodial sentence. The rigging had been using postal ballots among the Muslim community.

Blackburn’s Muslim community is primarily Gujerati, and has traditionally been a bulwark of Straw’s support. By chance, Jack Straw went on an official visit to Gujerat only last week, where he made much of Home Office proposals to make it easier to get visas to visit relatives (I’ll believe that when I see it). The Mail on Sunday was distasteful enough to suggest that this pre-election visit was electioneering at public expense.

The host authorities have said that the initiative to visit Gujerat specifically came from the Biritish side. I have put in a request to the FCO under the Freedom of Information Act for papers relating to the genesis of this visit; doubtless these will clear Jack’s name of any electioneering purpose.

Straw is a master of Labour machine politics and of the use of patronage; he has made two patriarchs of his constituency Gujerati community members of the House of Lords. One of Lord Patel’s daughters has a well paid job on the board of the local NHS Trust; the rumour in the pubs of Blackburn is that she has only turned up twice.

There is much speculation that the War on Terror will turn the Muslim vote against Straw, but the ennobled leadership remains firmly behind him. There is a thought that disillusioned young Muslims might split from the leadership, but this is where the postal ballot comes in.

The great disadvantage of the secret ballot is that, whatever social pressure you may have exerted, you have no idea what the individual does in the ballot box. This is where Labour’s innovation of widespread postal voting is so helpful to them. Community patriarchs can insist on inspecting the ballots before voting, something they couldn’t do in the polling station. Or they can even collect up all the postal ballots and fill them in themselves, which is precisely what the Blackburn Labour councillor was convicted of.

It is going to be very interesting to watch what happens with postal ballots in this election in Blackburn certainly, but elsewhere as well. I for one am deeply suspicious of Blair’s enthusiasm for them.

At lunchtime I am surprised by a phone call from a television crew from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. They are at Blackburn station. They are making a documentary about me, but I thought I had given them the slip. Evidently not, and for the rest of the day the citizens of Blackburn are mildly surprised by the sight of me wandering round in the snow being filmed by a bunch of Australians, who seem particularly keen on repeated shots of me walking purposefully and

gazing nobly into the distance.

Before going on to an interview with Radio Lancashire, I do one with the Australian correspondent, Evan Williams. We take off our coats and are seated on a bench outside the cathedral; small spears of ice are sweeping horizontally into my face. I struggle against the cold and wind to explain why I’m standing in Blackburn. Goodness knows what Australian audiences will think of this: “Here’s some pommie nutter sitting in a churchyard in a blizzard. Must be a reality TV endurance show.”

The Australians follow me in to Radio Lancashire, filming away. I am interviewed by Chris Ryder, who is relentlessly hostile. He starts off by saying “Are you standing against Jack Straw just because he sacked you”. Questions include “You do realise that Jack Straw’s an extremely popular constituency MP?”

I immediately concede I have no local background, and as yet very little knowledge of Blackburn, but he still ploughs through a dozen questions aimed at hammering this home. I make my points about torture, intelligence, house arrest, and illegal war. . He doesn’t respond to anything I say. He is reading from a list of questions and doesn’t deviate from them, whatever I am saying. I wonder where they were prepared. The interview is pre-recorded, although I had requested live. I wonder how many of my more telling points will actually get broadcast.

As we leave I give the Australians – who are still filming – a wry grin. “Jeez, what a wanker” says Evan. I hope they leave that bit in. Come to think of it, I hope the Guardian leave it in too.

In the evening I do a tour of the pubs. Blackburn is blessed with excellent beer from the big Thwaites brewery, still family owned. Thwaites cask beer is a real classic. Blackburn also has a micro brewery, 3Bs. This produces some really good beers, including a mild, Stoker’s Slake, full of burnt and caramelly flavours and a potent reminder of how much we are losing as this style of beer becomes increasingly rare.

I have managed to get a room at the Fernhurst Hotel – also owned by Thwaites – and finally get to sleep in my chosen constituency.

The next morning brings good news. The two shops I specified are both available. They both belong to Thwaites. I choose the one on Lower Church Street, behind the vast modern shopping centre. It has two pubs to its immediate right and one to its left. Only one of these three – the Sun – is working.

That is one of Blackburn’s most striking features. It has an astonishing number of ex-pubs. Some have been converted to other uses, but many more are derelict. Blackburn has closed more pubs than other cities had in the first place. I wonder why there were so many and what factors caused this cull. Something else I have yet to learn.

I meet an old acquaintance from University, Stuart, who is a former Blackburn Tory councillor and also a printer. We go to his offices in India Mill, a great cathedral to manufacturing vacated by Coates Viyella when the British textile industry collapsed in the eighties. It has a great chimney styled as a Venetian campanile – I remember watching Fred Dibnah climb it on TV. From Stuart’s windows you can look out on the great Crown wallpaper factory, closed three years ago. We design posters and leaflets.

I feel the campaign is really getting underway. I go to the local newspaper offices and give an interview to a thoughtful young reporter named Caroline. She looks to have forty years less experience of journalism than Chris Ryder; forty years less narrowing of the mind. Then it’s parading up and down outside the cathedral again, while the local paper take photographs.

I put in a classified ad for a house to rent. Then I go off to meet some Asian community leaders, who seem pretty enthused before boarding a train to Chesterfield. There I am a guest speaker at the Green Party conference. I am on good emotional form and get a very enthusiastic standing ovation when I finish. I feel things are going well.

Back in London I have messages waiting for me to call Martin Bell and Brian Eno. I do so, and both want to help my campaign. The warm glow of this is quickly dissipated by news from the Estate Agent. Thwaites Brewery have decided they will not let me rent any of their property in Blackburn. Their estates manager had been overruled by directors who felt it would not be in the company’s interests to allow their premises to be used to campaign against Jack Straw.

This causes me to re-assess soberly what I had achieved on my first showing in Blackburn. Not much. And while my emails are full of offers from talented people to write copy, handle media and design the website, I still have nothing solid in place locally.

Next week I will be conducting the Blackburn campaign from the Austrian Institute of International Affairs, who have asked me to lecture in Vienna. As the phoney general election breaks into real hostilities, this campaign diary will become increasingly frequent.

www.craigmurray.co.uk

The Guardian – Our man in Blackburn (by Craig Murray)

The idea of my standing against Jack Straw in Blackburn at the general election was born in conversation with Andrew Gilligan. Gilligan was making a documentary about torture and he and I were discussing Straw’s decision to approve the use by MI6 of information obtained under torture by the Uzbek security services. I was the British ambassador to Uzbekistan until October, when I was removed from my post after criticising this practice. How could one hold Straw accountable for his decision? Or, for that matter, for the WMD dossier (he is, after all, in charge of MI6), or for the illegal war on Iraq? I declared I would go ahead and challenge Straw in his own backyard.

Taking the train to Blackburn, I arrive at midnight. It is bitterly cold with sharp specks of snow in the air. I haven’t booked a hotel, figuring that Blackburn is the sort of place to have a big old Victorian station hotel. I have visions of a large bed, velvet curtains and piping-hot, cast-iron radiators. Instead, I am met at the station by several vans of very cold-looking policemen. I ask one where I might find a hotel.

“You’ll be lucky,” he replies.

After a frozen plod through the snow, I come to a mini-cab firm, and a very chirpy driver called Ajit. He explains that the Blackburn Rovers v Burnley FA Cup 5th round replay has just finished, the biggest event in Blackburn for a long time. The hotels will be full with supporters. He’s right; I end up sleeping in the Preston Novotel.

The next morning I take a taxi into town to find a vacant shop I can rent as my HQ. There are several suitable-looking sites available and they all seem to use the same agent. I telephone the company and explain what I want, and why. They reply that commercial property owners in Blackburn would not want to be associated with any campaign against Jack Straw. I ask them, all the same, to check the availability of two shops. Then I buy a local newspaper, where I read that a Blackburn Labour councillor has just been convicted of rigging postal ballots among the Muslim community, and told to expect a custodial sentence.

Blackburn’s Muslim community is primarily Gujarati, and has traditionally been a bulwark of Straw’s support. By chance, Straw went on an official visit to Gujarat only last month, where he made much of Home Office proposals to make it easier to get visas to visit relatives. I have put in a request to the FCO under the Freedom of Information Act for papers relating to the genesis of this visit; doubtless these will clear Straw’s name of any electioneering purpose.

There is much speculation that the war on terror will turn the Muslim vote against Straw, but the ennobled local leadership – he has made two patriarchs of his constituency’s Gujarati community members of the House of Lords – remains firmly behind him. There is a thought that disillusioned young Muslims might split from the leadership; this is where the postal ballot comes in.

The great disadvantage of a secret ballot is that, whatever social pressure you may have exerted, you have no idea what the individual does in the ballot box. With a postal ballot, community patriarchs can insist on inspecting the ballots before voting. Or they can even collect up all the postal ballots and fill them in themselves, which is precisely what the Blackburn Labour councillor was convicted of doing.

At lunchtime I am surprised by a phone call from a television crew from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. They are making a documentary about me, but I thought I had given them the slip. Evidently not; they are at Blackburn station. For the rest of the day, they follow me around.

The next morning brings good news. The two shops I specified are both available. They both belong to the local brewer, Thwaites. The one I choose has two pubs to its immediate right and one to its left. Only one of them is a going concern.

This is one of Blackburn’s most striking features. It has an astonishing number of ex-pubs. Some have been converted to other uses, but many more are derelict. I wonder why there were so many and what factors caused this cull. Something else I have yet to learn.

I return to London to find messages waiting from Martin Bell and Brian Eno; both want to help my campaign. Then I receive news from the estate agent. Thwaites has decided it will not let me rent any of its property in Blackburn. Its directorsfeel it would not be in the company’s interests to allow its premises to be used to campaign against Jack Straw.

www.craigmurray.co.uk

This column will appear in G2 every Thursday until the election.