The Jewish Chronical calls it a pro-Hamas Rally. The Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) calls it a conference on the 16th of December 2009 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency UNRWA.
Neil Gerrard MP, who was due to attend the event at the Friends Meeting House, 173 Euston Road, London NW1 2BJ didn't seem phased by this acrimony when he was first invited to speak, but has now pulled out in a row over the other people he would be sharing a platform with.
Mr Gerrard has told the anti-fascist group Nothing British About the BNP that he would not attend the event because of “substantial evidence” s that far-right Hungarian MP Kristina Morvai would be attending. Morvai does not feature on the lists so far in the public domain of confirmed speakers that I have found on the internet. Baroness Tonge, who will be attending, says Kristina Morvai is not on the list of speakers but that does not mean she is not intending to attend.
Morvai's party, for those of us in Walthamstow who have no idea who they are, is in the Alliance of European National Movements, an alliance of neo-fascist political parties which I understand is being launched in the European parliament today. The alliance is headed by Nick Griffin’s BNP, Morvai’s Jobbik and Le Pen’s Front National. Pleasant company.
I have some sympathy with Mr Gerrard. It must be frustrating to have to pull out. He is a man who has a long-standing and genuine interest in the rights of refugees as well as the plight of the Palestinian people. Indeed, only last Saturday I heard him give a well-informed talk on the history of UK immigration controls at the STAR Conference in Bethnal Green. As a genuine expert in the field he gave a very balanced, non-polemical and reasoned discourse on the portrayal of refugee issues in the media and how that has informed political debate in the UK. I don't entirely agree with him, but believe him to be a knowledgeable and sincerely principled man on these issues, someone whose views are worth a public hearing.
He has however been presented with difficulties previously by 'over-enthusiastic' organisers of conferences to discuss Palestinian issues, for instance when some idiot from Waltham Forest Palestinian Solidarity Campaign booked Harmony Hall with Daud Abdullah and Neil Gerrard advertised to speak on the same platform. Interestingly, Dr Daud Abdullah was also on the bill for the conference in December.