Assalamu Alaikum and Good evening, Chair, respected delegates and guests.
I really feel honoured for being asked by Bradford TUC to give my opinion on "why is the Labour vote dropping in Bradford?"
I am not a political analyst nor an "election pundit", nor a party boss who has all the figures in his/her finger tips. So the feedback you will get today is purely my personal views as a local party activist. I hope you will receive this in that spirit.
Things have not been quiet since the disastrous results on 6th May. The chattering classes have become very busy. Everybody has their own explanation of why this disaster happened. I suppose to some extent that is expected.
But in all this, what has upset me the most is the "simple solutionists". People who only look for simple answers to very complex questions.
You ask them a complex question like "What is the meaning of life". Their answer will be "Well, it is very simple, just give me a small aubergine and so and so forth." The sheer arrogance of such simple definitive explanations horrifies me.
I hope you are not looking for a simple answer to the complex question you have asked me.
I will not be quoting voting figures, local or national. I think the usefulness of such figures has always been over-rated.
Sometimes I angrily say that playing with figures give perfect excuse to party bosses to be busy with their computers rather than go out and speak to ordinary people in our communities.
The plain truth is that we did very badly in Bradford. In the whole of the country, Sheffield did the worst. We lost 11 seats there and in Bradford we lost 10 seats net. But if we discount Toller and Tong as gains (technically they were), then we have lost 12 seats and had the worst result in the country. But of greater significance is the loss of two inner-city seats and a significant rise in Tory votes in all inner-city seats in Bradford and Keighley.
I put the reasons under three categories:
Firstly,
Contrary to popular definition, I do not accept that you can ONLY have a clan based on family ties. Clan is a grouping based on a common tie. Human nature is to belong to a group. I submit that Labour Party has enjoyed a "clan type" support from the black and Asian communities for last 50/60 years. The origin of this clanship can be traced back to Labour's anti-racist stands, working class nature of the immigrant communities, its role in dismantling post-war colonialism etc etc. The minority communities were happy to belong to this Labour clan.
But the party instead of using that good start to convert this blind support into politicised support, we have kept milking it and abusing it, until we have almost lost our credibility in the eyes of the minority communities.
Recently, this has become more serious. The party nationally and locally have been suffering from a vacuum of political ideas relevant to the expectations and needs of the minority communities. We have failed to develop political proposals that will catch the imagination of the minority communities and will keep them rallying round us.
In last few years our only tools for retaining the Labour support among the minority communities have been:
Both these sets of party operators have in the past used family loyalty, brothery or caste loyalty/ communal loyalty/ nationalistic loyalty to recruit members and deliver support for the party during elections.
As a Party we have allowed that to happen as it suited us. We have failed to develop shared political ideas with the minority communities which would have given us irrevocable political loyalty directly between our grass-root supporters and us.
We took the easy option. We encouraged the development of a "colonial model" for servicing the black/Asian communities.
We promoted the "gate-keepers", gave them special treatment, ignored their misdemeanours. Even where they have broken the party rules we have ignored it because they were our "gate keepers".
In the eyes of the ordinary members of the community, the "gate-keepers" were getting a much favourable treatment from the Party in exchange for the support the ordinary community members were giving to the Party. The sparks of resentment were born and in time started to grow.
These disillusioned supporters then started to desert the Labour Clan as they saw no point in continuing their support. Their support was only helping a few "gate keepers" to acquire influence for themselves and there was no fundamental change in the political fortunes of the ordinary people as a result of their political actions.
This disintegration of Labour clanship manifested itself as a "anti-Labour' campaign who chose Conservatives as a vehicle for their expression of "Labour rejection" by default than by design. The Tories were in the right place at the right time to pick up the votes.
It is most important to note that there was nothing on offer from the Tories to woo the Asian votes. They were more bankrupt of ideas on issues such as equality, the betterment of black/Asian communities etc than the Labour Party.
So they did not even try to sell themselves on political ideas or on servicing the ward needs but relied on the age old systems of "brotherism" and "communalism". And it worked. They have beaten us in our own game.
Four years ago Toller fell, now University and Bradford Moor, next may be Little Horton, Undercliffe, Heaton or Keighley South - who knows.
We adopted a traditional regular army type of campaigning. Poorly distributed leaflets, few house meetings, a large flopped meeting in Grange Interlink, and hoped that the votes would materialise.
Not only that, we selected candidates by "self-destructive" internal fights. Then left it to the candidates to get elected. The Party leadership failed to unite the membership behind selected candidates or tackle complacency among its gate-keepers or even unite the Labour group.
Saddest of all was that we looked at national Labour party's popularity and developed an illusion that we are also popular in Bradford. We did not take local public opinion seriously as if we have a god given right to run Bradford. Any criticism made of the group were "poo pooed" and were not taken seriously. This arrogance has cost us dearly.
We also had a very bad press last year. There was no end to our mistakes and own goals.
£ 2000 for the Lord Mayor; finalising Council's political structure before the consultation was over; Craigland Hotel week-end; article in the Sunday Times on Pakistani communities involvement in drug dealing; sacking of the senior most black officer; withdrawal of funding from black voluntary groups, etc etc.
On the other hand the Tories adopted guerrilla tactics for campaigning. Their tactics basically were ambush, hit and run.
They did not see their candidates selected to fight the inner-city seats as champions of Tory Party but the one who can accumulate most of the anti-Labour votes. They by design chose locally well-known persons as candidates, exploited the family clanship and religious loyalty and capitalised on our mistakes on race issues.
The Tories used different issues in different wards to criticise the Labour run council. They fought with evangelical zeal that you have not seen in the Labour Party for many years. Our leadership was out-manoeuvred and out-classed. Out of desperation we claimed "foul" because the Tories were playing the brothery card and religious card.
The community did not respond because they know that we have played the same card when it suited us. So what was new.
So the final score was:
Regular army: 0
Guerrillas: 12
The biggest let down of all for me has been the breakdown of trust and working relationship between the Council leadership and the black/Asian community of Bradford.
The Leadership has depended heavily on its "gate-keepers" for the feedback of communities feelings on sensitive community issues. Unfortunately the "gate keepers" were not trusted by people and they did not confide in them truthfully. So the feedback these gate keepers provided was much more positive than what was the reality.
The issues such as SRB, voluntary sector grants, investigation into REC, victimisation of Mr Masood, school re-organisation and Muslim girls school, drug dealing by Pakistani community etc really caused a rift with the black/Asian community which the leadership did not try to repair.
Instead, as a defence mechanism they surrounded themselves by a small clique of cronies, boosting each other's egos by mutual admiration. They promoted the "yes persons" and punished the dissenters, basking in the glory of their illusive success.
It is also true that the Asian politicians inside the Labour Party has been a serious let down for the community. We have not treated our supporters with respect and dignity. I must be brave enough to share this failure with my other colleagues. This is a failure of immense significance.
It will take a lot of hard work now to get back the strong unequivocal support we used to get from our communities. Our ineffectiveness in the Council and our failure to bring about fundamental shift in the balance of power in favour of the weakest in our communities will not easily be forgotten.
The fact that in needs and numbers minority communities are growing but in actual political influence we are diminishing, how can we explain this to the community?
In conclusion Chair, I hope you will receive this presentation in the same spirit with which it is being offered. This is intended to provoke debate and discussion and is not intended to apportion blame or find scapegoats.
I hope someone will take some notice of what we are witnessing in the black/Asian communities. Please do not ignore this political development or take their votes for guaranteed. Our failure to understand the significance of this shift will cost Labour Party dearly in future but it will effect the weakest, the poorest, the most disadvantaged in black/Asian communities much more seriously than we are able to comprehend.
Shaukat Ahmed
Member Toller Branch.
(Note: Shaukat represented University ward for 8 years. He stood down before the May election because of dissatisfaction with the Labour group. University subsequently fell to the Tories).
How the T&A reported it - "Votes for favours" probe. Bradford TUC responds.