We have a real problem with ethnic minority representation.
Anwar Khan is a Labour councillor in Tower Hamlets
The debate spawned by Sunny Hundal’s article on LabourList today is long overdue. Labour’s efforts on ethnic minority representation have been well-meaning and far more successful than those of the other major parties.
But as one of the younger generation of ethnic minority politicians, I have found the party’s approach to be at best, outdated and at worst, deeply patronising.
In 2004, Mumtaz Samad told Helene Mulholland in the Guardian that she was quiting the Labour Party and stepping down as a councillor after being ‘bullied and harassed’.
Among her complaints were that Tower Hamlets council’s Labour group was segregated by skin colour and when she was first elected, she was told to sit with fellow Bengali councillors.
“I did not expect it towards someone like me – a graduate and professional, and pretty clued-up,” she said.
“They didn’t expect to encounter someone who can understand the issues and argue back…if I were a ‘yes’ person and wore a sari, it would have been different,” she added.
Ten years on, I’ve just been deselected from the same council. I’d been the Labour group’s chief whip for three years, and have campaigned almost every weekend for the party since 2002.
But the local hierarchy grew tired of me. I’m young and articulate, I work as an accountant in the city and I’m outspoken. None of this went down well – the selection panels seem to prefer Bengali candidates who are unemployed and struggle with English, because they don’t want to include us in leadership in any meaningful way.
Lutfur Rahman, the party’s original candidate for the newly created executive mayoralty – and now the independent mayor of Tower Hamlets – suffered the same fate in 2010. Despite winning a ballot of members by a landslide, he was deselected behind closed doors after a dossier of allegations was presented to the NEC by a beaten selection rival.
He had no opportunity to dispute the allegations, which have yet to be investigated. Of the 19 Labour councillors in the borough deselected or expelled since 2010, only one has been white.
And it’s not just in Tower Hamlets. Eight black and Asian councillors quit Labour in Harrow last year alleging racial discrimination in the group. Barnet councillor Ansuya Sodha left the Labour group last week saying that ours was “no longer the party for equality and justice, especially where the Indian community are concerned”.
Lambeth Labour group suspended popular black councillor Kingsley Abrahams in 2012 after he spoke out against cuts. The party had to pay Birmingham’s Councillor Raghib Ahsan £120,000 in compensation after his deselection was found to be discriminatory by the House of Lords.
Purely tokenistic engagement with ethnic minority communities in Bradford also saw the city return the odious George Galloway, who I campaigned hard to defeat when he stood in the East End, to Parliament. Diane Abbott has recently spoken out about the paucity of black Labour MPs.
It pains me to say it, because I love the Labour Party – I’m a huge supporter of Ed Miliband and I want to see a Labour government elected in 2015. But we have a real problem with ethnic minority representation.
Labour have more ethnic minority councillors than any other party, and we should be proud of that. But it can’t just be lip service.
We should be harnessing the talent of our ethnic minority grassroots activists and letting them share in the direction of our party – but instead the majority of the new ethnic minority candidates in my borough have come from George Galloway’s Respect, chosen not for their commitment to Labour but because party chiefs think these ‘community leaders’ can deliver the ‘block vote’.
Some have not been party members for the requisite three months, some stood against Labour at the last election and one even remains a member of Respect.
We cannot afford to ignore this any longer. It means insulted communities, alienated voters and once safe Labour seats thrown into the balance unnecessarily. Above all, it’s against everything that Labour should stand for.
Only when we come to terms with this can we build the One Nation party that Ed Miliband sees as the future for Labour representation in Britain.
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17 Responses to “We need to end this patronising approach to ethnic minority representation”
JamesGGrace
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JamesGGrace
Anwar was jumping for joy when Lutfur was de-selected, and now he is crying crocodile tears about it all. Pretending he really cared. Wasn’t the dossier and beaten selection rival the exact same person he supported last year to be the Labour Candidate for Mayor? He didn’t seem to care so much then. Tells you what you need to know about him. And what about his time as whip? Anwar was disgraceful to other bengalis who he looked down on (he looks down on everyone), as whip he spent his time harassing and intimidating them, taking out his personal vendetta against some of them, until some were finally kicked out. Articulate and out spoken? Rubbish. He was a poodle for that dictator Peck and never had an original thought of his own. Now he’s the victim. Don’t make me laugh. His chickens have come home to roost.
Tom Miller
Harrow ILG. A group of people who, apart from their leader, refused to do any campaigning, and left complaining of racism just after he lost the group leadership by a small amount of votes – when his vote must necessarilly have had an ethnically mixed profile in order to get that amount.
No allegations of racism or discrimination were ever made before he lost the vote, and when challenged to make specific private allegations or publicly detail their nature afterwards, none of those who left to form an independent party would do so – despite repeatedly demanding a high-profile investigation of a party they had already left. And if the group was racist, how did he get elected in the first place?
This is political opportunism. The refusal to make formal or specific complaints shows it up.
Crucially, he and his followers left rather than having faced expulsion, which was not considered before they left. The people who had voted against him after his time as leader had previously felt completely comfortable voting for him.
People should feel confortable making allegations of racism.
But they also need to be aware that this allegation is very serious and shouldn’t be used simply for the purpose of political advantage – which in this case, it was.
What I do know was that there was great difficulty in getting these Councillors to campaign, to respond to resident contact, or generally to fulfil their candidate contracts. I can’t speak for other boroughs, but perhaps searching so desperately to find people to represent minority communities (token representation) is part of the problem, as we simply get bad candidates.
What seems to be needed is more genuine engagement with grassroots community groups and more political education that is accessible to people who have immigrated here and perhaps speak English as a second language.
I hope this doesn’t come accross as patronising, but in any event I hope it’s less patronising than thinking it’s OK to get people selected simply because they come from a BAME background, and then call that a diversity strategy.
I’m saying this from the point of view of a white bloke obviously, but in Harrow the issues were about political leadership and a refusal to accept the democratic decisions of the group by a minority of BAME Councillors. If someone refuses to level any specific allegations (as you have here), but makes generalist complaints after losing a leadership vote, their motives should be subjected to more suspicion than otherwise. When they then vote to create a large allowance for the third party leader in the face of huge cuts, even more so.
A larger and even more diverse BAME contingent stayed in Labour even though a number of them had voted for the ex-leader who left with the rebels.
Self indulgent shameful
Racism is a problem in this country. However the fact that the Knife wielding councillor from Tower Hamlets uses his race to hide behind is appalling. Just as the loser ex Labour ex Leader of Harrow is hardly Rosa Parks. Lutfa Rahman who ran against his own party – wow you do choose your people to support.
By shouting racism just because you have not been given preferential treatment, or when you have lost out because you are incompetent or useless at your job undermines people who really do suffer racism.
This oozes contemptable self indulgence. Go away work hard for your community, and come back when you don’t see the colour of your skin as a free ride. That you seek to undermine the party which gave you such an opportunity, shows you need to grow up.
Dave Roberts
Cate can you give us details of your case because, as far as am concerned, it doesn’t ring true? It seems that you were selected for a political party as their candidate, were elected and then suffered a campaign of bullying and intimidation.