Over Twenty Years of Service Silenced: This Is Not Democracy, This Is Dictatorship

By Sunahwar Ali

Let me speak plainly. What took place in that council chamber was not a procedural disagreement.
It was a disgrace. And it was a shameful act by Speaker Suluk Ahmed—an act that will forever stain his tenure and makes him a dangerous role model for the next generation of young people in Tower Hamlets and across the United Kingdom.

Councillor Ohid Ahmed has served the people of Tower Hamlets for over twenty years. Two decades.
He has been a leading councillor, a Deputy Mayor, and one of the most dedicated public servants this borough has ever seen.
He has delivered services, fought for communities, and stood on the front lines of local government through good times and bad. Whatever political differences may exist today, that record of service commands respect.
This was his final council meeting. After over twenty years of sacrifice, he sought only to deliver a farewell address—a tradition as old as democracy itself.
It is a moment when even political opponents set aside their differences to acknowledge a colleague’s service.
It is a moment of grace, of closure, of basic human dignity.
Instead, Speaker Suluk Ahmed denied him that right.
He used his position not to uphold democracy, but to destroy a moment that should have been one of respect and recognition.
And then, rather than face the consequences of such an undemocratic act, the Speaker walked out—abandoning his post, abandoning his duty, and abandoning any pretence of fairness.

A Lesson in Dignity
But in the midst of this shameful spectacle, something remarkable happened. Something that deserves to be highlighted and celebrated.
Councillor Ohid Ahmed kept himself calm.
He did not shout. He did not cause a scene.
He did not give the Speaker the satisfaction of a reaction.
In a situation where any other politician—and
I have seen many in my decades of public service—would have erupted, would have demanded answers, would have made their anger known in the most vocal terms possible, Councillor Ohid Ahmed remained composed.
He conducted himself with a dignity that stood in stark contrast to the behaviour of the Speaker who silenced him.

And for that,
I deeply respect him.
This is what twenty years of public service teaches you.
This is what true leadership looks like.
Not the loudest voice in the chamber, not the one who wields power over others, but the one who can be wronged and still walk away with his head held high.
Councillor Ohid Ahmed showed us all what it means to be a public servant—not just in the work he did for two decades, but in the grace with which he accepted his final humiliation.

Many others would have exploded. They would have made a scene. They would have given the Speaker and his party exactly what they wanted:
chaos to justify their actions.
But Councillor Ohid Ahmed denied them that. He chose the path of dignity. He chose the path of principle.
He showed that even when democracy is denied, one can still behave with the integrity that democracy demands.

This is the example we should be setting for our young people. Not the example of the Speaker who silenced and fled, but the example of the man who was silenced and still stood tall. That is a role model. That is leadership.
That is what over twenty years of service to Tower Hamlets looks like.

A Question for the Party
This brings me to a question that must be asked—and answered.
Speaker Suluk Ahmed does not act in a vacuum. He is a representative of a political party. He was placed in the Speaker’s chair by his party colleagues.
His actions reflect not only on himself but on the organisation that put him there and continues to stand by him.

Is this the policy and ideology of his political party in Tower Hamlets?
Is it now official party doctrine that a twenty-year councillor and former Deputy Mayor should be denied a farewell speech on his final day?
Is it party policy that the Speaker should abandon his post rather than uphold fairness?
Is this what the party teaches its members—that loyalty is rewarded, but service is forgotten?
That power can be used to silence, humiliate, and erase those who are no longer considered useful?

If the answer is no—if this behaviour is not party policy—then the party leadership must speak out.
They must condemn what happened.
They must make it clear that this was the act of an individual, not the ideology of an organisation. Silence from the party is acceptance.
And acceptance makes this shameful act party policy by default.

If the answer is yes—if silencing departing colleagues and abandoning democratic principles is the policy and ideology of this party—then the people of Tower Hamlets have a right to know. They have a right to know exactly what kind of politics they are being asked to support.
They have a right to know whether the party they vote for believes in democracy or dictatorship.

I have spent my life fighting against racism, injustice, and corruption in Tower Hamlets.
I have seen political parties come and go.
I have seen leaders rise and fall. But I have never seen a party that claims to represent the Bangladeshi British community allow one of its own—a Speaker, no less—to so openly and shamelessly trample on the values that community holds dear.

We came to this country seeking fairness, justice, and democracy. We built institutions, we raised families, we taught our children that in Britain, every voice matters and every person deserves respect. If a political party in Tower Hamlets now believes that silencing a twenty-year veteran on his final day is acceptable, then that party has lost its way.
It has abandoned the values of our community.
It has become something we fought against.

Speaker Suluk Ahmed, your party must answer. Was this your policy, or was this your personal failure? Either way, the people of Tower Hamlets deserve to know.

What Did He Learn from This Nation?
But there is something even more troubling here—something that cuts to the very core of who we are as a community in Britain.

Speaker Suluk Ahmed grew up as a child in one of the most civilised nations in the world.
He was raised in the United Kingdom—a country built on the principles of fairness, free speech, parliamentary democracy, and the right to be heard.
He benefited from an education system that teaches the values of Magna Carta, the Glorious Revolution, the Reform Acts, and centuries of struggle to ensure that every voice matters.
He inherited a political tradition where even the fiercest opponents respect the dignity of a departing colleague.

So what did he learn from this nation?
Did he learn that democracy means silencing those who have given over twenty years of service?
Did he learn that the Speaker’s chair is a throne from which to punish former allies?
Did he learn that when you have power, you can deny a farewell speech and then simply walk away without consequence?

If this is what he learned, then he learned nothing. He has betrayed the very values of the country that raised him. He has taken the lessons of British democracy—lessons of fairness, of respect, of the right to speak—and thrown them aside for the sake of petty political vengeance.

This is particularly painful for those of us in the Bangladeshi British community.
Our parents and grandparents came to this country seeking opportunity, justice, and a democratic society where everyone would be treated fairly. We have fought for decades against racism, against injustice, against corruption—not just in Tower Hamlets, but across the United Kingdom. We have demanded that our voices be heard, that our councillors represent us with integrity, and that our democratic institutions remain true to their purpose.

And now we watch as a British-born Bangladeshi Speaker—someone who should understand these values better than anyone—violates them so openly, so shamelessly, on the last day of a twenty-year councillor.
What message does this send to every Bangladeshi family who sacrificed everything to come to this country?
That their children will grow up to abandon the very principles of fairness and democracy that made Britain a beacon of hope for their parents?

The 2010 Rupture:
Where This Political Culture Was Born
To understand how we arrived at this moment—how a Speaker could silence a twenty-year veteran on his final day—we must go back fifteen years.
The political culture we now witness in Tower Hamlets was forged in the fire of the 2010 Labour Party civil war between Lutfur Rahman and Helal Abbas.

In 2001, Helal Abbas had recruited Lutfur Rahman.
Abbas was the mentor; Rahman was the protégé. Together, they represented a new generation of Bangladeshi political ambition within the Labour Party—the institution that had long been the natural home for Bengali political activism in the East End.

By 2009, the relationship had soured.
Abbas mounted an unsuccessful leadership campaign against Rahman. Then came the 2010 mayoral selection process—and the document that changed everything.

When Helal Abbas submitted his dossier to Labour’s National Executive Committee in September 2010, it contained allegations about Lutfur Rahman’s conduct, his links to the Islamic Forum of Europe, and irregularities in the selection process.
The NEC acted swiftly—too swiftly.
Without conducting a proper investigation that would have allowed Rahman to respond, they removed him as the Labour candidate.

The NEC then installed Helal Abbas as the replacement candidate—a deeply controversial decision, not least because Abbas had finished third, not second, in the original selection contest. Christine Shawcross, a member of Labour’s NEC, later suggested the party chose Abbas “so as not to leave themselves open to the charge of deselecting a Bangladeshi and replacing him with a white man.”

The damage was not just political. It was communal.
The Bangladeshi community, which makes up a third of the borough’s population, was angered by what they saw as the NEC’s manipulation. Many viewed the deselection as an attempt to remove a popular Bangladeshi candidate and replace him with someone the party could control.
Trust that had taken decades to build was shattered.

In October 2010, Lutfur Rahman ran as an independent and won the mayoral election decisively—51.76% of the vote on first preferences, while Labour’s Helal Abbas finished a distant second with just 25%.

The Labour Party believed Helal Abbas without hesitation.
That was a mistake.
The political machine that rose from the wreckage—first Tower Hamlets First, then Aspire—has dominated the borough’s politics ever since.

The Wreckage:
A Generation of Leadership Destroyed
The 2010 dossier did more than remove one candidate.
It created a fracture line that ran through the entire Bangladeshi British political class.
Over the past fifteen years, a generation of potential leaders has been systematically damaged, sidelined, or destroyed.

Dr Anwara Ali—A respected GP and Cabinet Member for Health and Wellbeing.
She had won the Bow West seat in 2006, defeating the Liberal Democrat opposition leader in a seat they had held for 30 years, achieving the biggest swing to Labour in the whole of London. But in February 2010, citing Labour’s failure to reform the NHS, she defected to the Conservatives. She lost her seat in the May 2010 election and her political career effectively ended. She had been a rising star, a woman who could have been a future leader.
Instead, she became collateral damage.

Shahed Ali—Named in my statement as someone “used and abused” by Lutfur Rahman, initially an advisor, later a councillor.
Like others, he was drawn into the orbit, served, and was ultimately discarded when he was no longer useful.

Gulam Robbani—Another individual whose political trajectory was shaped by the machine, not by any independent political identity he might have developed.

Rubina Khan—A Labour councillor who later became associated with Rahman’s camp, only to be cycled out when loyalty was no longer enough.

Ohid Ahmed—The subject of this article. Present at the September 2010 council meeting alongside both Rahman and Abbas.
He served for over twenty years.
He was Deputy Mayor.
And on his final day, he was silenced.

Ex-Cllr Syed Mizan and Ex-Cllr Mohammed Ali—Damaged by the dossier process, their careers caught in the crossfire of a political war they did not create.

What these individuals share is not just association with Rahman—it is that their careers were shaped, and in many cases ended, by the political machine that emerged from the 2010 rupture. The system that was built in the aftermath of that Labour civil war has proven incapable of nurturing long-term leadership. Instead, it cycles through people, uses them, and disposes of them when they are no longer useful.

The tragedy is that there is no shortage of talent in the Bangladeshi British community. What is missing is a political environment that can nurture that talent rather than consume it.

A Failure of Leadership and a Warning to All
Let me be absolutely clear: this is not democracy.
This is dictatorship.

I served as Chief Whip of Tower Hamlets Council. I know the standing orders.
I know the rules of procedure. And I know that no rule,
no technicality, no political justification justifies silencing a twenty-year veteran on his last day. Procedure is meant to serve democracy, not to be weaponised to humiliate those who have given their lives to public service.

If this can happen to Councillor Ohid Ahmed—a former Deputy Mayor, a man who has poured over twenty years into this borough—then it can happen to anyone.
Today it was him.
Tomorrow it will be another councillor who falls out of favour.
The message sent by Speaker Suluk Ahmed and those who stood by is clear: loyalty is demanded, service is forgotten, and dissent will be crushed.

This is the very behaviour we have fought against for decades—whether in the council chambers of Tower Hamlets or in the corridors of power in Dhaka. Anti-racism, anti-injustice, anti-corruption: these principles are not abstract ideals.
They are tested in moments like this. They demand that we speak out when a public servant is humiliated, when a farewell is forbidden, when the democratic right to speak is extinguished—and when our young people are shown such a poor example by those who are supposed to lead them.

The True Cost: What Fifteen Years of This Political Culture Has Cost Tower Hamlets

When political energy is consumed by factional warfare and loyalty tests, services suffer and taxpayers pay the price. The fifteen years since the 2010 rupture have cost Tower Hamlets residents millions of pounds in wasted funds and deprived them of essential services.

The 2015 Election Court Judgment
The most significant single financial blow came from the 2015 Election Court ruling that found Lutfur Rahman guilty of corrupt and illegal practices. The court, presided over by High Court Judge Richard Mawrey, found systematic vote-rigging involving postal ballots, personation at polling stations, intimidation of voters, bribery through the distribution of gifts and cash, and false election expense returns. The judgment was devastating. The court found that Rahman had “personally sanctioned and approved the bribery of voters” and that the election was “vitiated by widespread corruption and illegality.”

Rahman was removed from office and barred from standing for election for five years.
A new election was ordered.

Cost to taxpayers:
The court case itself cost hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal fees.
The subsequent by-election cost an estimated £500,000 to £1 million. Years of legal battles and appeals added further costs.

The Best Value Inspection and Government Envoys
In January 2025, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government appointed three Ministerial Envoys—Kim Bromley-Derry (Lead Envoy), Pam Parkes, and Shokat Lal—to oversee Tower Hamlets Council following a damning Best Value Inspection report published in November 2024.

The inspection found that decision-making was “dominated by an inner circle” around Mayor Lutfur Rahman, with the executive remaining “unchallenged” and scrutiny weak.
Inspectors described a political environment disabled by “endemic lack of trust” and “suspicious and defensive” leadership. Member behaviour in public meetings was described as going “beyond the usual political theatre,” distracting from council business and limiting scrutiny.

The envoys’ mandate is to act as “advisors, mentors, monitors” working within the council to drive improvement. But the government has made clear that escalation to full commissioner control is possible if sufficient progress is not made. Commissioners would have the power to make decisions on behalf of the council, removing decision-making authority from the elected mayor and cabinet.

Cost to taxpayers:
In their first six months alone, the envoys cost taxpayers £116,496.95 in direct fees and expenses.
The indirect costs—staff time diverted to responding to envoys, legal fees, and the opportunity cost of delayed decisions—are significantly higher.
An external audit by EY in late 2025 gave Tower Hamlets a C3 grade—the second lowest of four possible marks—citing “significant turnover” of senior management, delays in appointing a permanent chief finance officer, and issues with contracts and internal investigations.

Essential Services:
What Was Lost
When political energy is consumed by factional warfare, services suffer:

·Housing:
Tower Hamlets has one of the worst housing crises in London. The council’s housing waiting list exceeds 20,000 families. Yet political infighting has repeatedly delayed housing strategy development.
· Children’s Services:
In 2017, Ofsted rated Tower Hamlets children’s services as “inadequate” after a series of serious case reviews revealed failures to protect vulnerable children.
·Waste and Environmental Services: Residents have repeatedly complained about missed bin collections, street cleaning failures, and environmental degradation.
·Public Health:
Dr Anwara Ali’s departure in 2010 represented a loss of public health expertise that the borough has never fully recovered.

The Structural Waste
Beyond specific scandals, there is the deeper cost of political instability:

·Staff turnover and loss of expertise:
The council has cycled through multiple chief executives and directors. Each departure represents recruitment costs of £50,000–£100,000 per senior post, loss of institutional knowledge, and service disruption.
· Legal costs:
The council has spent millions defending legal challenges arising from political disputes—judicial reviews, employment tribunals, electoral litigation, and transparency challenges.
·Central government intervention costs:
Following the 2015 Election Court judgment and the 2025 Best Value report, each government intervention costs taxpayers directly through commissioner or envoy fees and diverts council resources to managing oversight rather than delivering services.
·Economic development lost:
Tower Hamlets has some of London’s greatest economic assets—Canary Wharf, the City fringe, world-class transport links. But political instability has deterred investment, delayed planning decisions, and created reputational damage.

A Partial Accounting
Category Estimated Cost
2015 Election Court and subsequent by-election £1–2 million
Best Value Inspection and commissioners £500,000+ annually
Envoys (first six months) £116,497
Legal costs from political disputes Millions over 15 years
Staff turnover and lost expertise Immeasurable
Service failures (housing, waste, children’s services) Measured in resident impact, not pounds
Total direct costs Likely £10–20 million+

Sunahwar Ali
Former Chief Whip, Tower Hamlets Council
Anti-Racist, Anti-Injustice, and Anti-Corruption Campaigner
London – Dhaka