Tower Hamlets Labour Party can be proud of its record on diversity

This article is a response to a piece by Anwar Khan which appeared on Left Foot Forward on February 12.

Chris Weavers is chair of Tower Hamlets Labour Party

This article is a response to a piece by Anwar Khan which appeared on Left Foot Forward on February 12.

Tower Hamlets is an amazing place. A place where, over centuries, people have come from all over the UK and all over the world, seeking a better future for themselves and their families.

Today the growing membership of the Labour Party in the East End reflects the community we seek to serve with members originating from dozens of different countries around the world.

From elderly Jewish members who fled persecution in 1930s Central and Eastern Europe to newer arrivals from Bangladesh, Somalia, Nigeria and across the EU, all these members make our party stronger and better.

This diversity is reflected at every level of our local Party including in the candidates we have selected to contest the local elections this May. Of our 45 council candidates 27 are from BME communities.

These candidates were selected on merit and each is an excellent advocate for the Labour Party and for the ward they seek to represent. Collectively they represent the strongest group of candidates the Labour Party can offer the people of Tower Hamlets.

To serve as a Labour councillor or candidate is a great privilege and we have the very highest expectations of both in terms of the way in which they carry out their duties and in working as part of a local Labour team. Where councillors or candidates campaign or act against the Labour Party or the policy we collectively agree, we have taken prompt action, including rescinding Labour Party membership where necessary.

This action is always taken irrespective of ethnicity or any other similar factor and this will not change.

Suggestions such as those made recently on this site that those BME candidates selected are in any way less able because they don’t work in the City of London is not only grossly inaccurate it is deeply insulating to a group of people who are talented, effective and assertive. Each of these candidates has shown substantial commitment to the Labour Party and to our community, in some cases for decades.

We are standing more female BME candidates than ever before and a more diverse team than ever before and more than any other party.

Yet we must not be complacent, more remains to be done to engage those who have for too long been excluded from the local political sphere including women, particularly Muslim women and the Somali, Chinese and Vietnamese communities.

We constantly monitor and review our efforts to build a local party’s that is attractive to all regardless of race, gender, sexuality, age or faith and we welcome any individual or organisation who wants to constructively work with us to help us further improve and to build a better future.

14 Responses to “Tower Hamlets Labour Party can be proud of its record on diversity”

  1. Two Bob

    The immigrant and benefits party. Nothing more nothing less.

  2. Democratisetheuklabourparty

    This is to “congratulate” you for publishing such a predictably empty brag by none other than Mr Chris Weavers!

    He is the head of the colony now.

    Even though he is not the “branch” boss, he effusively rules the show at branch level as well.

    What a lucky time we must be having in England these days.

    “Tower Hamlets is an amazing place”.

    So total is the colonialist’s belief in his fantasy zine that

    he has not come across racism and therefore is not bothered about racists

    in the patch where he is so fortunate to rule.

    Thanks to him, Tower Hamlets Labour Party is going down.

    It is not a coincidence that “outspoken” ones like Anwar Khan had been procured by

    Chris Weavers and his inner circle to do down the Labour Party’s

    community base.

    For totally non-democratic factors they have now fallen out.

    And what they have shown so far is only a tip of the iceberg.

    The disaster in Tower Hamlets is not whether candidate X or candidate Y gets in.

    It is that democracy has been scrapped by the elected ones during the past decades.

    Mr Weavers will leave the stage sooner or later but the damage that he has helped to cause to the Borough of Tower Hamlets will be with the little people for years or decades to come.

  3. Dave Roberts

    This is a much more balanced approach than the one in the article by Anwar Khan. All that has happened is that because people are deselected from a party because they are inefficient, just do enough to claim their allowance and aren’t promoted because of lack of ability they of course scream racism.

    Tower Hamlets as the writer of this article points out has probably the highest percentage of ethnic minority candidates in the country. The Bangladeshi population percentage wise is actually dropping yet they are over represented in terms of numbers in the council chamber. If representation was on ethnic grounds the council would have to nearly be seventy per cent white because that is the demographic make up of Tower Hamlets.

    It is also a mistake to use the phrase BME as no such community exists and the whole thing was an invention by the late and extremely unlamented Commission for Racial Equality. Self appointed “community” leaders like the equally unlamented Lee Jasper lived for years off the lie that there was a BME community and that they spoke for it.

    I understand Anwar Khan was deselected because of his overbearing and bullying attitude and notoriously short temper and that two of his relations have in fact been selected so how this is all racism I don’t know.

  4. Gul Dill

    I think being Tower Hamlets Labour Party member is total waste of money, because there is no value of members.
    Tower Hamlets Labour Party is just like former Ugandan AllinOne President Eddi Amin Chris Weaver

Comments are closed.