Pro-Gaza local election candidate refused to denounce Hamas

Telegraph

28-04-2025

A pro-Gaza candidate standing at this week's local elections once refused to denounce Hamas.
Michael Lavalette, running as part of a Preston Independents group in the Lancashire city, declined to condemn the terror group when asked about the Oct 7 attacks.
It comes amid growing fears that sectarian voting patterns seen at last year's general election will be repeated at the county council level.
Mr Lavalette, an academic and member of the Socialist Workers Party, is on the ballot in Preston Central East and ran to become the MP for Preston in last year's general election.
At a hustings event in June last year, the 62-year-old was asked whether he would 'denounce Hamas as a terrorist organisation regardless of your views' on the war in Gaza.
Mr Lavalette replied: 'No… I think when your land is occupied, and when it has been for 76 years, people have the right to resist.
'They had the right to resist in the Second World War, the French resistance, the Yugoslavian resistance, the Italian resistance, the Greek resistance. And the Palestinians have the right to fight against their own disposition.'
The Gaza conflict began on Oct 7 2023 when Hamas carried out a massacre in southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking another 251 into Gaza as hostages.
At the same event, Mr Lavalette insisted that the conflict 'didn't start on Oct 7' and called for a Palestinian state to extend 'from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean'.
In a social media post at the start of the local election campaign, he said: 'Palestine remains a central issue in British politics... so on May 1 in the local county elections we've decided that we are going to stand to raise the voice of Palestine once more at the elections.'
Mr Lavalette has also been pictured on a pro-Palestinian march in front of a banner with the slogan 'from the sea to the river' – a variant of the phrase 'from the river, to the sea'.
The slogan has been condemned as anti-Semitic by campaigners because it implies the destruction of Israel. It has been adopted by Hamas and is used in its official charter.
Candidates running on a pro-Gaza platform elsewhere include Ahsan Jamil, standing in Doncaster for George Galloway's Workers Party of Britain. Mr Jamil's slogan is 'For Doncaster, For Gaza'.
Khalil Ahmed, an independent candidate in High Wycombe, is a supporter of Gaza and Kashmir. He has been photographed on a pro-Kashmir march.
Three Green Party candidates in North Hertfordshire and Stevenage have listed 'Israel genocide in Palestine' as a key campaign issue in their candidate profiles on the Green's website.
Activists in Wycombe are telling Muslim voters who to back in next month's local elections, with a campaign video declaring that 'Allah sees everything' circulating in faith communities in Buckinghamshire.
Pro-Palestinian MPs effectively became the sixth largest party in the Commons last year after five independent candidates unseated Labour rivals.
Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, narrowly held on to her seat to shouts and boos from onlookers at her election count, including chants of 'shame on you' and 'free Palestine'.