TMP Online

Congratulations to Diane Abbott and Keith Vaz, who this week celebrate 20 years in parliament!  The two were part of the gang of four ethnic minority MPs elected on 11 June 1987 which also included Paul Boateng and the late Bernie Grant.  At the time there were no ethnic minority MPs and they joined the Labour peer, Lord Pitt, the only other ethnic minority parliamentarian who was appointed to the House of Lords in 1975.  There is a useful biography of them all, here. Now, twenty years later in 2007, there are 15 ethnic minority MPs. How many will there be in 2027?

A recent opinion poll commissioned by The Voice newspaper shows that after a noticeable campaign to woo the Black vote, David Cameron’s Conservatives are still struggling to appeal.

51% said they had an unfavourable view of the Conservative leader in the Voice poll, despite the fact that the Conservative Party Chairman, Francis Maude MP, has a fortnightly column in the newspaper which has been well received.  When asked how they would vote at the next election, only 3% said they would vote Conservative. 

The Conservatives acknowledge they still have a lot of work to do but point to the fact they have now selected 8 ethnic minority parliamentary candidates in winnable seats as evidence that they are changing.

The poll also showed that Chancellor Gordon Brown MP, who takes over as Prime Minister later this month, has some ground to make up in terms of his appeal to Britain’s black population too.  The survey found that 40 per cent of Black British people remain to be convinced about the Chancellor. This compares with a 50 per cent favorable rating for the outgoing Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

However Labour sources have pointed to the fact that Brown has the strong support of two of Britain’s three African Caribbean MPs, the Culture Minister, David Lammy and Dawn Butler, the MP for Brent South. They also point to the fact that Brown received rapturous receptions at both the Black Socialist Society and the Labour Party’s Ethnic Minority Taskforce hustings over the last fortnight.

The poll shows that 68% of Black British are of the view that the Labour party takes their support for granted, though many have benefited from measures such as the National Minimum Wage and Sure Start centres (which perhaps explains why 57% are still favourable to Labour and 51% said they would still vote Labour at the next general election).

Following their failure to select a single ethnic minority candidate for their list of candidates for the London Assembly elections in 2008, the Liberal Democrats perform poorly in the poll.  40% have an unfavourable view of Liberal Democrat leader Menzies Campbell MP and only 3% would vote for them at the next general election.

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TMP was in Brixton on Saturday to see the Rev. Jesse Jackson speak.  Jackson, the well known African American civil rights activist and associate of the late Rev. Martin Luther King, was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988. He went on a walk about and then gave a speech at an Operation Black Vote event at Lambeth Town Hall yesterday.

He urged Black people on both sides of the Atlantic to come together to conquer the challenges they face. He noted that Black people had overcome slavery and won the right to vote, but said the next stage in emancipation was to increase access to economic capital. To this end he will be returning to the UK in August to promote a UK branch of his Rainbow Push Coalition and Equanomics UK, an initiative of the 1990 Trust which focuses on racial justice via economic equality.

Jackson is pictured above in Brixton (left to right) with Dawn Butler, MP for Brent South, Lambeth’s Cllr Lorna Campbell, Lee Jasper, the Mayor of London’s Equalities Advisor and Culture Minister David Lammy MP.

TMP editor, Chuka Umunna, looks at the accusation that certain of Labour’s deputy leadership contenders are “lurching to the left”. 

Many, myself included, feared the Labour deputy leadership election would be nothing more than a personality contest. Whatever Roy Hattersley and others may have said about the post, the contest to become deputy leader has been anything but a beauty parade. It has turned into a genuine policy and values debate about Labour’s future, as Polly Toynbee rightly points out.

Some of the contenders have shown they have the courage to say things many Labour people only dared whisper during the height of Blairism. Peter Hain, Harriet Harman and Jon Cruddas have all wondered aloud how we can make our society more equal than it has been over the last 10 years. They do not believe this is as good as it gets and they think Labour can do better.

So Hain has called for action to be taken in relation to City bonuses and this week suggested that those selling property should pay stamp duty to help first time buyers. Harman has called for a Royal commission on the distribution of income and wealth. Leading the charge is Cruddas, the backbencher who has come out of nowhere to become a front-runner. Having put housing issues firmly on the map, this week he said he was not hostile to a 50% top rate of tax for the very, very rich.

But this has sparked accusations of a “lurch to the left” and a drift back to the past by Labour’s very own “no turning back” brigade. John Hutton is just the latest member of this awkward squad, who has warned against getting sucked into an argument about regulating the incomes of wealthy people or tackling the gap between the very rich and the very poor, for fear loosing the better off’s votes (Tory George Osborne has made the same accusations for different reasons). But the “no lurcher” brigade’s claims simply do not add up.

In the 90s, Labour was obsessed with “Worcester woman”, “Sierra man” and all the “pebble dash” people. No one is suggesting Labour dumps the support of these people, many of whose votes the party won for the first time in 1997. Paradoxically, these new Labour voters have stayed loyal, so it is not their votes the “no lurchers” should be worrying about; it is the 5 million voters - public sector workers, manual workers, black and minority ethnic people and urban intellectuals - who have left in droves since 1997, that should concern them. Never mind the women’s vote Toynbee referred to, if these groups’ support (men and women) continues to wane, Labour will loose the next general election.

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TMP has stumbled upon an interesting window into Tory thoughts on immigration.

Conservativehome.com reports that only 34.4% of Conservative members they polled believed immigration had largely been good for Britain.

Commenting on the poll, the blog editor/manager said,
“The finding that surprised and disappointed me was that only 34.4% of members believed that immigration had largely been good for Britain……We agree with David Cameron that we wouldn’t be half the country we are without immigration.”
Indeed, in 2005, David Cameron said,
“we think immigration is very good for Britain; we think that there are clear benefits in a modern economy from having both emigration and immigration”.

But the blog manager/editor’s comments were swiftly dismissed out of hand by another Tory blogger:
“Why should that disappoint you? There may be some temporary economic benefits from immigration (rapidly turning to disadvantage as immigrants move into their dotage) but all this is substantially outweighed by the threat of ethnic strife and the ruination of our country by overpopulation.”

To read the Tory debate on Conservativehome.com, click here.

Earlier today comments were posted here which were wrongly attributed to James Cleverly in error.  We apologise to Mr Cleverly for any offence caused.

On the day the annual G8 summit begins, International development policy specialist, Chichi Umunna, looks at the challenges ahead.  

Today, the heads of state and government from each of the G8 countries, plus additional invitees from other states (the “emerging economy” countries of Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa), the president of the European Commission and other key international organisations, are meeting in Germany for the 33rd Summit of the G8.

While using it’s presidency to highlight the increasing importance of the emerging economies and global governance, Germany, under the leadership of its Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has declared the “Leitmotif” of the summit to be “Growth and Responsibility”.  The summit will focus on the following key global challenges: the world economy; newly industrialised economies; global governance; and, Africa’s economic, political, and social development.

In the beginning, G8 Summits were used to discuss economic issues only; it wasn’t until the ‘80s that foreign policy issues were added to the summit agenda and later, in the ‘90s, that environmental and development-policy matters became of such importance that they were considered an international collaborative issue.

Chancellor Merkel explained in a pre-summit speech that “we…must shape globalisation through political action, at [an] international level.” But is the emphasis on emerging economies, to the detriment of the developing countries? This is a question that will be hot on the lips of the critics, who have started measuring G8 progress by looking at the advances made towards the achievement of the commitments made at the pivotal 2005 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.

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On the day Gordon Brown addresses the GMB trade union’s annual conference, GMB and Labour Party activist, Yue Ting Cheng writes about the need to engage the young in the labour movement.

There has never been a greater opportunity than there is now, for the trade union movement to rebuild and grow beyond its traditional workplaces and boundaries, and to influence Labour party policy.

With membership in the UK around the 7 million mark at present, membership has stabilised after significant decline during the Thatcher years, when union membership was approximately 13 million (one in four workers).

The New Labour Government has all too often seen the trade unions as being “slightly embarrassing older relatives”, a view seemingly reinforced by the rhetoric of ultra Blairites like Hazel Blears MP, who constantly warns us not to “lurch back to the left”. The Government has rarely, if ever, overtly advertised the role of trade unions in society as a force for good, and encouraged more trade union activism and renewal.

But nearly all the candidates in the deputy leadership contest are either rooted in (or claim to be rooted in) the trade union movement and whoever wins must make it a priority that the movement is given a leading role in rebuilding society, and tackling inequality and unfairness at work.

However, the trade union movement itself must do more to reorganise internally, rebuild and develop activism, particularly amongst younger people. Recently I was involved in a project looking at the structures and mechanisms of the GMB trade union, how they relate to young people, and how a youth structure can be rebuilt.

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The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, spoke at a conference on, “Islam and Muslims in the World Today”, in London this morning.  Delegates from more than 30 countries, including Shaykh Ali Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, and Mufti Mustafa Ceric, the Grand Mufti of Bosnia, are attending the conference.

In his speech Blair paid tribute to British Muslim communities and the positive contribution they make to British society.  He said it is wrong to equate interest in Islam and Muslim communities with anxiety about extremism.  He said extremists who use violence and terror to try to achieve their ends today are no more representative of their faith than Christians or those of other religions centuries ago who used torture to force people to convert. He also urged politicians to listen harder to hear the calm voice of moderation and reason of most British Muslims and most Muslim communities around the world.

Speaking at Lancester House, Blair said, 
“Muslims overwhelmingly want to play a full part in the complex and diverse societies in which they find themselves - both contributing and shaping those societies.”
“Others in societies in which Muslims are co-citizens must also evolve and adapt in how they respond to the changing nature of their societies…greater mutual understanding should be the aim of all of us.”

To read the speech, click here.

Out of more than 600 MPs in the House of Commons, just 15 are from black and other minority ethnic groups. There is now a growing demand in the Labour Party to introduce all-black shortlists in selections for parliamentary candidates. Supporters of the idea say all-women Labour shortlists have been a huge success - so why not use the same method for increasing the number of minority ethnic MPs?

Last night, BBC Radio 4’s the Westminster Hour broadcasted a piece by their reporter, Mandy Baker, on the issue - she has been out and about testing opinion within Labour’s ranks. TMP’s editor, Chuka Umunna, Operation Black Vote’s director, Simon Wooley, and the Culture Minister, David Lammy MP feature in the report.  To read an overview of and listen to the report, click here.

The Commission for Racial Equality and the Foreign Policy Centre are organising morning and afternoon seminars respectively, at next week’s Compass Conference.  2000 delegates are expected at the event which takes place in Westminster Central Hall.

Each of the morning seminars will be looking at how globalisation is shaping our world and the opportunities and threats we face in that regard. With this in mind the CRE’s seminar will be looking at Britishness, citizenship and identity. TMP editor and Compass management committee member, Chuka Umunna, will be chairing a panel made up of Nick Johnson, the CRE’s Director of Policy and the Public Sector, David Goodhart, editor of Prospect magazine, Barbara Roche, former immigration minister, and Richard Howitt MEP (tbc).

The afternoon seminars will be looking at how we want to shape globalisation and how can we achieve this. The Foreign Policy Centre is organising one such seminar and will be looking at migrant remittances. The Independent’s Yasmin Alibhai-Brown will be chairing their panel made up of International Development minister, Gareth Thomas MP, Murad Qureshi AM from the London Assembly, and Gibril Faal, Chair of the African Foundation for Development.