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The News Pakistan – May 8, 2005
UK elections 2005: The Muslim experience
By Shahed Sadullah
The representation of British Muslims in the House of Commons doubled overnight. Although that may sound a pretty dramatic statement to make, it really isn’t.
This is a community that should be having more than 20 members in the Commons on the basis of its 1.8 million strength in the population of the UK, but has only managed to raise its strength from two to four.
Mohammad Sarwar and Khalid Mahmood, despite the heavy battering that Labour received all night, managed to hold on to their Glasgow Govan and Birmingham Perry Barr constituencies respectively, while they were joined in the Commons by Sadiq Khan, who won Tooting, and Shahid Malik, who fought off a feisty challenge from Sayeeda Warsi of the Conservative Party to win Dewsbury.
The only other piece of good news for the Muslims was from Bethnal Green and Bow as victory of George Galloway, whose remarkable feat of overturning a huge Labour majority of over 10,000 votes lost nothing following his interview which showed just how far some sections of the British media have come from the days of journalistic impartiality.
Galloway, far from being congratulated on his remarkable win, was asked how he felt about de-seating the only Black female MP. That sort of utter rubbish implies that it is somehow an act of singular immorality to contest a seat in which a female member of the ethnic minority community may be the sitting MP, and that is just the type of colonial patronisation all members of the ethnic communities can easily do without.
After all, no one would ever dream of asking a white Labour or Tory or LibDem candidate who might defeat any of the handful of Asian members in the Commons; indeed, it would make terrific viewing to see the LibDems’ Sarah Teather being asked how she felt about depriving Yasmin Qureshi, the first Muslim woman ever, of a parliamentary seat!
It is the sort of remark insults Blacks and women, but worst of all it shows no respect — and the use of that word implies no pun — for the views of the Muslim community of Bethnal Green and Bow.
The Bangladeshis of that constituency have shown what unity can achieve even in the face of uncompromising media hostility and the full weight of the government being put on the other side, and therein must be a big lesson for the Pakistani and Kashmiri community. If the community can cast aside its petty differences of caste and ‘bradari’ (clan) and sect, this is what a democracy gives them the opportunity to achieve.
The victory of the four Labour candidates did not come as a surprise, though given the heavy swing against Labour, anything could have happened. Mohammad Sarwar was the only one who managed to increase his majority by around 2,000 votes, while all the others saw a fall in the Labour vote compared to 2001, Khalid Mahmood by around 800, Shahid Malik by 2,800 and Sadiq Khan by 5,000 votes.
Yet, their election is to be welcomed by all sections of opinion within the British Muslim community; they deserve our most sincere congratulations along with the hope that they will keep a special eye out for issues that affect the community which include the identity card scheme, the terrorism laws, the issue of incitement to religious hatred and all matters that have to do with equality of treatment and representation.
Much has been made of the point that after all, it is only Labour that has given eminently winnable seats to British Muslims, and there is no doubt about the veracity of this statement. However, it has also to be acknowledged that Labour has more winnable seats to give than any other party, and if, after more than four decades of almost unqualified and unstinting support for this party, British Muslims have been allowed four winnable seats, it may not have been too extravagant a price to pay.
The one dark cloud to bear down on an otherwise positive evening was the defeat of Yasmin Qureshi in Brent East at the hands of the LibDem sitting MP Sarah Teather, which was not entirely unexpected.
Ms Teather had overturned a huge Labour majority in excess of 13,000 in a bye-election to get the seat, and although many thought that bye-elections have a completely different setting than a general election, this did not help Ms. Qureshi at all. Brent has four per cent Muslims and over 18 per cent Indians, mostly Hindus, and one can only wonder how the latter saw the idea of another Muslim in Parliament who could be guaranteed to bring up issues like Kashmir, which not all members of the Indian community find entirely amusing.
Perhaps, the limits of India-Pakistan bonhomie were stretched a bit too far on Thursday night at Brent. Ms. Qureshi would have made history by being the first Muslim woman ever to become a member of the House of Commons but that great feat must wait for another election, another day, though hopefully, not another candidate. Yasmin Qureshi has worked hard for this honour and she will deserve this fully when it comes her way, as one day it surely will.
Although it seems that a great deal of Muslim support went to the Liberal Democrats, Britain’s first past the post system unfortunately meant that this surge of Muslim support for the LibDems could not be translated into actual seats.
Yet, although it may be argued that this let in some Tories by the back door, the net effect of it all has not been very different from what the Muslims may have wanted — a dilution of Labour power, a reminder that Labour cannot take the Muslim vote for granted, and a position in which the Labour leadership will have to pay much greater attention to the left of centre block in Parliament which includes a fair number of its own backbenchers, no less than 55 by one count. To that extent, the one outright and unequivocal winner of the British elections 2005 was democracy.
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