more videos of the event here, including Shami Chakrabarti from Liberty, WEST MIDS Police’s Sharon’ Rowe’s apology and Gareth Peirce.
The issue of course is the positioning of spy cameras in Birmingham deliberately focusing on those parts of the city with a higher proportion of Muslim residents; and implicit acknowledgement of police prejudice.
REMEMBER. Respect can win in Birmingham Hall Green. And that’s all more likely with your support. That is why we are putting out a national call for all supporters and sympathizers to come to Birmingham this weekend.
Meet at 95 Walford Road, Sparkbrook, B11 1NP. For more info ring 078 121 72885
Come and support Salma Yaqoob this weekend. Vote RESPECT
REMEMBER. Respect can win in Birmingham Hall Green. And that’s all more likely with your support. That is why we are putting out a national call for all supporters and sympathizers to come to Birmingham this weekend.
Meet at 95 Walford Road, Sparkbrook, B11 1NP. For more info ring 078 121 72885Come and support Salma Yaqoob this weekend. Vote RESPECT
by Madeleine Bunting from the Guardian
Drums, loudhailers, chanting slogans. It is a very old-fashioned kind of politics that can be heard on the high street in Kings Heath, Birmingham.
But Salma Yaqoob, the prospective parliament candidate at the centre of the hubbub, represents a quiet revolution. “Bankers bailed out, people sold out,” she shouts into the loudhailer outside the banks. The passing cars sound their horns in support.
She is the most prominent Muslim woman in British public life. She wears a headscarf, a powerful symbol of a faith she has accommodated with her passionate leftwing politics. She is standing as a candidate for the tiny and fractured Respect party.
In some streets around the new constituency of Hall Green, her poster is on every window. Since her narrow defeat for Westminster in 2005, she has built up support through her work as a local councillor, as well as building a national profile through her appearances on BBC’s Question Time.
She might just topple Labour from a seat in an area which, in 1997, it counted as one of its safest. Boundary changes have brought much of the old Sparkbrook and Small Heath constituency (Labour majority: 19,526) into the new Hall Green.
Yaqoob is one of a small group who has a good chance of making history as one of the first British Muslim women MPs. Her result is looking close, while across Birmingham, Shabana Mahmood is fighting Clare Short’s old seat, Ladywood. In Bolton South, Yasmin Qureshi inherits a big Labour majority, and Rushanara Ali could well take the Bethnal Green seat back for Labour. Yaqoob’s headscarf at Westminster may prompt a few headlines – both here and abroad – but few will fully grasp the small revolution these women are spearheading in these communities, and how they are introducing to British electoral politics a constituency of Muslim women, many of whom don’t speak English and were in previous elections confined to the backroom, the private family areas of the house, whenever canvassers or candidates came to the doorstep.
Back on the high street in Kings Heath, the noisy protesters crowding around the diminutive figure of Yaqoob are furious. Gurt Singh has been running a steel and timber yard all his life, but he has had to put his 10 staff on a three-day week to avoid redundancies. “I reckon I have only a few months left. I can’t get credit from the bank.”
Essa Altaf is equally outraged. A property developer, he has had to lay off eight men. “I don’t want to lay off any more, I have morals. I know redundancy affects a whole family and then the whole community. Why do I have morals, and the banks don’t?”
By now I am surrounded by men who all run small businesses in the building industry all telling a bitter story of the recession. The boom in this area of Birmingham has always been fragile and the recession hit quickly and hard. Jobs are the biggest subject on the doorstep, says Yaqoob. She knows well that the issues, even at national elections, are local: jobs, schools, antisocial behaviour, police, housing. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars rarely come up, she says – the surge in anti-war sentiment, which helped her in 2005, is unlikely to feature this time round. Constituents’ economic security is far more pressing.
What will help Yaqoob is that her Labour opponent, Roger Godsiff, who has held the seat since 1992, has been badly damaged by the expenses scandal. His second-home claims were among the highest in England, and despite charging £163,885 to the taxpayer in 2007-08, last year he spoke in only five debates and voted in 56% of divisions.
Yaqoob was wooed by Labour after 2005.She acknowledges that “My values are traditional Labour, but New Labour has gone to the right”. She was even courted by the Liberal Democrats and the Tories, a tribute to her rare capacity for fair-minded plain speaking, most evident in her Question Time appearance earlier this year, at Wootton Bassett, when she earned respect for her handling of questions about British soldiers killed in Afghanistan, a war she opposes.
But she has stuck with Respect, despite its internal disputes, since 2005, and is probably now better known than her party. She is accused by prominent Labour and Liberal Democrat Muslims of “leading the community into a “cul-de-sac” but defends her politics vigorously.
“I couldn’t speak like I do if I was in Labour. I’m not here as a career politician, but because I want to offer an alternative to the neo-liberal model, which is patently failing. I now punch above my weight, working with other parties and influencing them. I want to try and open the space for discussion and debate, which is crucial right now, and nudge Labour into a more principled position.”
She says she won’t “make a tactic into a principle”, clearly indicating that she would come back to Labour on the right terms. In the meantime, her gamble to be her own woman and to speak her mind without having to submit to party discipline is surviving against all the odds. A recent independent assessment argued that she is among Birmingham’s three most influential councillors.
Ironically, her toughest battles are probably within the Muslim community. Contrary to assumptions that this is where the core of her support lies, she has had to pick her way very carefully through the sensitivities of conservatives within her community. The old Sparkbrook and Small Heath had the highest number of Muslim votes of any constituency in the country, and many of them are now in Yaqoob’s patch.
“I’ve had death threats and criticism that I support gays – because I have a clear anti-discrimination position – and there have been claims that it is haram [forbidden in Islam] to vote for women. People say to me, ‘Have you no shame?’ and they accuse me of immodesty and ask my husband why he lets me speak in public. It’s still an uphill struggle.”
But she has been winning even her fiercest critics round. “Some people who made out fatwas against voting for a woman have now been saying that I’m the right candidate. I have been invited into mosques – some of which don’t even have facilities for women to pray – to give the Friday sermons.”
Yaqoob is well aware that she is a challenge to traditional Muslim political culture – not just because she is a woman, but because she is not afraid to speak her mind. She has openly criticised the way the postal vote has been misused in Birmingham to strengthen the traditional biraderi – clan affiliations. In practice, what this means is that a community fixer will offer a party hundreds of votes in return for favours.
She recognises that many non-Muslim voters can feel threatened by her as a Muslim. “I’m between a rock and a hard place,” she says. “I have to jump hurdles because of the way I look. Firstly, I have to make it clear that I don’t support terrorism, secondly, that I’m British, thirdly, that I don’t just lobby for Muslims and lastly, that I’m not a Trojan horse for sinister Islamist plots.
“People still question me about the hijab as a symbol of oppression. I try to stay patient and build a relationship of trust. For a real discussion, people have to be able to hear each other: someone has to pull the barriers down. People have a genuine fear, and you need to deal with it or you are dehumanising them – it won’t just go away.”
Her training as a psychotherapist clearly influences how she understands political conflict and how she is still able to deal patiently with questions faced since she first went to university more than 20 years ago. It makes her voice distinctive in public life – and it’s easy to see why she’s clocked up five appearances on Question Time, the showcase for aspiring politicians.
The key factor benefiting Yaqoob is the decline of the close bond between Muslims and Labour, which has defined the politics of the Muslim community for two generations. Disillusion with foreign policy, most notably in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as on domestic economic issues, is likely to slash the Muslim votes in Birmingham.
While Labour’s successes in Birmingham in the past 13 years are evident in the city centre – the newly redeveloped Bullring shopping centre with its iconic architecture, for example – it’s a model of urban regeneration, which hasn’t percolated through to the neighbouring Victorian terraced streets, where shops and businesses are closing down.
A younger generation of educated Muslims no longer demonstrates the expected deference to the “village elders”, who once directed the family and delivered a bloc vote for Labour. Some are impressed by the Conservatives’ emphasis on family values, hard work and responsibility – it is a message that has appealed to successful immigrant communities in the past. This election will almost certainly see the arrival of the first Conservative Muslim MPs: men have been selected for Bromsgrove and Stratford-upon-Avon, two safe Conservative seats in the West Midlands.
Even in Ladywood, the Conservatives smell the possibility of giving Labour a run for their money. David Cameron made an appearance in the constituency last weekend. The Conservative candidate, Nusrat Ghani, also a Muslim, and Mahmood both grew up in this area of Birmingham. Both can call on the family connections vital to winning votes. Mahmood’s father is the chair of the Birmingham Labour party.
Both are able to get beyond the “front room campaigning” of previous elections; candidates and canvassers sit in family sitting rooms and are served delicious tea spiced with green cardamom, while the conversations run on in Urdu or Mirpuri. The questions here are about family and which village the candidate is “from” back in Pakistan. There is no mistaking the pride and delight among these women to see a female candidate.
“My generation had a much more traditional life and you listened to your husband on who to vote for, but my daughters have a completely different outlook,” says Maqsood Bibi through a translator. “It’s a good thing for women to come forward so that it is not just men in politics. As a Muslim, I believe God gives you, as a woman, the same rights as he gives to the men. So why shouldn’t you become an MP?”
Along the street, Gulshan Begum was even more forthright. “My generation of women are often illiterate and we need women in power to support us.”
Their generation has waited a long time for the moment when this may finally come true.
On Sunday I was lucky enough to spend a few hours campaigning for Respect in Birmingham Hall Green, going out on the knocker in the Sparkbrook area. I have been active to some degree or another in every general election since October 1974, but I have never had an experience like this. There was a big crowd out canvassing, a very diverse group, of all ages, creeds and colours, women and men, and members of the Green Party as well as Respect supporters.
I lost count of the number of shops displaying Respect posters, and in every street there were posters in people’s windows. We went door to door, and while obviously some people were out, almost everyone who answered the door confirmed their definite intention to vote for Respect. I spoke to one guy intending to vote Labour who seemed genuinely swayed by the statement from Lynne Jones MP that she was backing Salma Yaqoob.
Overwhelmingly the response was positive. Admittedly, there were one or two difficult conversations about local issues, where the fact that Respect has sitting councillors in the area means that a small minority of voters think that means that Respect runs the council. However, this must be more of a problem for the Lib Dem candidate, Councillor Jerry Evans, as the Lib Dems really do run Birmingham City Council, in coalition with the Tories. So the weight of expectation is greater from voters upon the Lib Dems.
What was remarkable was the complete absence of Labour Posters in windows, in an area which until five years ago was absolutely solidly Labour. Reputedly, the morale in the Labour camp is rock bottom, and the recriminations and break down of personal relationships has already started. Labour only has one councillor in the whole constituency, and apparently relations between him and Roger Godsiff are now very strained. Godsiff has now had to withdraw a scandalous leaflet making outrageous innunedos about the Lib Dem candidate, a leaflet so inept that I am sure it will have cost Labour some votes.
So what of the Lib Dems? Frankly, Respect has a much better chance than the Lib Dems of getting enough votes to overturn Labour’s majority, and there is certainly a sense of belief among voters that Respect can win, and that voting for Salma is an effective vote for a potentially successful party. The Lib Dems are not an unknown quantity in the area, they work in close coalition with the Tories, and the shiny new Nick Clegg effect may be a little tarnished.
No election is won or lost until the votes have been cast and counted. But Respect have a real chance of making a spectacular breakthrough in this constituency, and electing this extraordinary woman into parliament. Their chance of doing so is all the greater if we all go and help.
Labour Candidate for Birmingham Hall Green, Roger Godsiff, is clearly scraping the bottom of the barrel. Having issued a leaflet falsely implying that Salma Yaqoob was NOT contesting the Birmingham Hall Green parliamentary seat, he is now falsely claiming that Salma has misled the Green Party. Roger Godsiff makes this claim through his hapless parliamentary researcher, Ian Hughes.
Fortunately the Green Party are on hand to put the record straight.
Frankly the Labour Party should be ashamed of having a candidate as worthless as Roger Godsiff, and Roger Godsiff should be ashamed of employing a parliamentary researcher as useless as Ian Hughes.
After 18 years as a Labour MP, you might think that Roger Godsiff might have something positive to say about his “achievements”. Sadly No, this ridiculous leaflet is the best he can come up with.
REMEMBER. Respect can win in Birmingham Hall Green. And that’s all more likely with your support. That is why we are putting out a national call for all supporters and sympathizers to come to Birmingham. Meet 12.30pm next Saturday 17th April and Sunday 18th April, at 95 Walford Road, Sparkbrook, B11 1NP. For more info ring 078 121 72885
Come and support Salma Yaqoob this weekend. Vote RESPECT.
Salma’s campaign for Respect in Birmingham Hall Green has got off to a fantastic start.
1,000 people attended her election rally, built largely by word of mouth, and Lynn Jones, the retiring Labour MP has attacked the Labour candidate while endorsing Salma! The Labour candidate, Roger Godsiff has gone to ground, refusing to publicly campaign, and as Yahoo news reports, following Godsiff’s no-show at a packed hustings:
One prominent Labour activist in the audience, who asked not to be named, expressed disappointment at Mr Godsiff’s decision not to attend and said there had been many defections of Labour activists to Respect.
Meanwhile, the Lib Dem’s are reduced to lying and saying that Respect came fourth in the area in the 2009 Euro elections, so cannot win (Respect didn’t even stand in that election, and the Lib Dems’ hapless, charisma-bypass candidate Jerry Evans is pretending in a typical bit of Lib Dem dishonest spin that the Green vote is the same as Respect’s)
Salma has campaigned in the interests of small business on Stratford Road, pointing out how the banks have failed them, despite the banks themselves being in receipt of public money.
Salma is going through the constituency like a force of nature, and speaking to large numbers of voters literally every few days. At Friday prayers last week she addressed about 500 people at mosques in the constituency on the theme of social justice. It is literally unheard of for a woman to do this. And her campaign is still only warming up.
A victory for Salma will put a marker down for those opposed to the cuts agenda and neo-liberal model, it will put a marker down for the anti-war movement, and it will put a marker down against Islamaphobia and racism..
She can win. And that’s all more likely with your support. That is why we are putting out a national call for all supporters and sympathizers to come to Birmingham. Meet 12.30pm next Saturday 17th April and Sunday 18th April, at 95 Walford Road, Sparkbrook, B11 1NP. For more info ring 078 121 72885
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