Local housing association suspends ex-Labour minister over Hamas ‘murderers’ comment

[dutchman]

Minister demands urgent explanation after ‘anti-racist’ Lord Austin’s removal from Midland Heart board



Michael Gove has criticised a housing association for removing Lord Austin, a former Labour minister, as its chairman after the peer tweeted derogatory remarks about Hamas.

On Friday, Midland Heart said it had suspended Lord Austin and arranged a meeting “to discuss his removal from the board” after the peer, a former adviser to Gordon Brown, ridiculed a UN body’s claim to have been unaware that Hamas was operating underneath its Gaza headquarters.

The housing association’s decision followed a campaign against Lord Austin by Mend, a campaign group described in an official review of the Government’s counter-extremism programme as having “a well-established track record of working alongside extremists” and of “seeking to undermine the state’s considerable efforts to tackle all hate crime”.

Mr Gove, the Housing Secretary, said he was seeking an “urgent meeting and explanation” from Midland Heart, which provides affordable homes across the Midlands and receives millions of pounds in public funding.

Mend claimed that Lord Austin, one of Parliament’s most vociferous campaigners against anti-Semitism, had demonstrated “Islamophobia” when he ridiculed the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s claim that it had no knowledge of Hamas’s presence underneath its offices in Gaza, saying: “Everyone, better safe than sorry: before you go to bed, nip down and check you haven’t inadvertently got a death cult of Islamist murderers and rapists running their operations downstairs. It’s easily done.”

The Mend criticism appeared to centre on Lord Austin’s description of Hamas as “Islamist murderers”.

Lord Austin has been on the receiving end of dozens of abusive and in some cases threatening messages from individuals on X, formerly Twitter, since the Mend campaign began.

Mr Gove said: “I am deeply concerned by Midland Heart’s actions in seeking to remove Lord Austin from their board. I will be writing to the board to demand an urgent meeting and explanation.

“Not only is Ian a champion for affordable housing, he has spent his career fighting racism. Islam is a religion of peace, but Islamists – including the proscribed terrorist organisation Hamas – are extremists characterised by violence and oppression who seek to undermine our democratic values. They must be challenged wherever we encounter them.”

Lord Austin, 58, is a former housing minister who worked for a housing association in his twenties and was appointed to chair Midland Heart’s board last year. He quit Labour in 2019 over its “culture of anti-Semitism” under Jeremy Corbyn and now sits as a non-affiliated peer.