TMP Online

Research has found that, rather than taking much-needed housing from local residents, new immigrants tend to fill voids in the housing stock left behind or rejected by other households. This is according to a report published this week by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which examined the housing experiences of 39 new immigrants in Sheffield.

Researchers found that concentrations of new immigrants in particular areas were more often the result of migrants moving into neighbourhoods that other households were leaving or avoiding, rather than any self-segregating tendency. Problems, including harassment and abuse, were more extreme in neighbourhoods with little previous history of accommodating diversity and difference.

New immigrants were also found to have endured poor conditions in temporary accommodation upon first arriving in the UK, sometimes for many months. There were further problems with more permanent accommodation where basic material needs were often not met and people sometimes struggled to maintain, and in some cases lost, their housing and became homeless.

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Long hours working is on the increase in the UK, reversing the slow but steady ten-year decline in people working more than 48 hours a week - according to a new TUC analysis published today.

More than one in eight of the workforce now work more than 48 hours each week, with as many as one in six in London putting in 48 hours plus a week.

While the law protects people against an average working week of more than 48 hours unless they opt out of working time rules, the TUC says that a lack of enforcement means that bad employers know that this is one employment right that they can breach with little or no risk of any consequences.

Good employers have responded to concerns about the need for a greater work-life balance, but these figures show that a hard core of bad employers are taking no notice of either the law or calls from government, progressive employers and unions, says the TUC.

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TMP columnist Tim Caswell contemplates BNP leader, Nick Griffin, and Holocaust denier, David Irving’s controversial appearance at the Oxford Union tonight.

“I am well aware that the orthodox opinion is that six million Jews were gassed and cremated and turned into lampshades. Orthodox opinion also once held that the world is flat … I have reached the conclusion that the “extermination” tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie and latter witch-hysteria.”

By these words, spoken from the dock, in his own defence in 1998, British National Party leader Nick Griffin will be eternally damned in the court of decent public opinion everywhere.

Should your area ever have the misfortune to be afflicted by the cancer inside the body politic that is the BNP, his words are reproduced by anti fascist magazine, “Searchlight” in an affordable postcard format to distribute to anyone gullible enough to mistake Holocaust denying scum for acceptable members of the human race.

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Yesterday Black Socialist Society members voted overwhelmingly to change the name of the organisation to BAME Labour with immediate effect, at a special conference at the Manchester Arts and Technology College.

There was a divergence of views as to whether the name should be changed and to what. Members were given a choice of names to choose from, with other options being: the Black Socialist Society; the Black and Asian Society; the Black and Asian Socialist Society; the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Society, and the BAME Labour Society.  BAME is commonly used to refer to black, Asian and minority ethnic peoples.

Addressing the conference, Keith Vaz MP, the organisation’s representative on the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee and Chair of the party’s Ethnic Minority Task Force said the name change was designed to help the organisation appeal to more members of Britain’s various ethnic minority communities.

Several hundred of the organisation’s 4500 strong membership attended the conference to hear Ahmad Shahzad, Chair of BAME Labour, Vaz, Neena Gill MEP and Treasury Minister, Angela Eagle MP speak. The heads of Tamils for Labour, Africans for Labour (its Chair, Julius Nkafu is pictured left) and Arabs for Labour also spoke, amongst others, with a special video message from the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, being shown to delegates.

Chuka Umunna, editor of TMP and a member of BAME Labour’s executive committee will shortly be sending out his report of the event to all those who have signed up to his BSS reports on this site. To sign up, please use the box on the right.

Barack Obama has let slip that the revered US talk show host, Oprah Winfrey (pictured with Obama and his wife Michelle), will be hitting the campaign trail for him in Iowa and New Hampshire ahead of the Democratic caucus and primary in each state respectively on 3 and 8 January 2008.

The Chicago Sun-Times cites Obama as saying, “first she’s coming to Iowa” and “we’ll get her up here”, in response to a question in New Hampshire last Tuesday on the involvement of Oprah with his campaign.

Oprah has already endorsed Obama but news of her more active intervention in the race to win the Democratic nomination for the 2008 US presidential election comes as many claim that the Democratic contest, in which Hilary Clinton was once viewed almost as a shoe in, is still wide open.

Though Oprah’s support does not appear to have produced an “Oprah bounce” for Obama yet, she has proved useful in raising money with the Washington Post citing a recent fundraiser she held for him at her California home which raised $3million.

Update: This week’s latest poll for the Democratic Presidential nomination race in Iowa, commissioned by ABC News and the Washington Post, puts Barack Obama on 30%, Hilary Clinton on 26% and John Edwards on 22%, giving Obama (pictured here with US rapper, Ludacris) a 4% lead .

Though the polls have vascillated in Iowa, this latest poll appears to suggest that Obama has drawn support away from Edwards, whose rating has dropped 3 points amongst Iowa Democrats since July, whilst Clinton and Bill Richardson have both flat-lined.

Another interesting statistic to come out of this poll is that just 50% of those polled believe Clinton is willing to speak her mind and say what she thinks, whilst 76% think the same of Obama.

Communities Secretary Hazel Blears chaired the first meeting of a new Muslim Women’s advisory group yesterday. The group has been bought together to advise Government on the role that they can play in winning hearts and minds and tackling extremism.

The National Muslim Women’s Advisory Group (NMWAG) is led by 19 Muslim women representing a wide spectrum of communities, professions and traditions. They will discuss issues and concerns that are affecting Muslim women, for example access for women to mosques and their management committees and cultural barriers including honour crimes and forced marriages.

Hazel Blears believes that women have always had an invaluable role at the heart of their families, their communities and wider society; this is especially true for Muslim women. As mothers, daughters, sisters, wives they bind their families together. As local leaders, they make their communities stronger.

The Communities Secretary said,
“All too often the voices of Muslim women go unheard. Some don’t have the confidence or skills to speak up while others face practical barriers, such as balancing family life with other roles. Wider public debate often reverts to stereotypes and preconceptions and I believe we pay too much attention to Muslim women’s appearance - with perennial debate about headscarves and veils - and too little to what they say and do.”
“This must change. We have to get better at listening to Muslim women, valuing their contribution to this country’s economic, cultural and civic life, and opening the door for more to get involved.”

There are at least 800,000 Muslim women living in Britain today. Muslim women often have a unique moral authority at the heart of families to influence and challenge the false and perverted ideology spread by extremists and give our young people the skills and knowledge to turn their backs on hate.

The security and intelligence agencies have made clear that young men, predominately between the ages of 16-34, are most vulnerable to being drawn into violent extremism.

The Government wants to raise to a new level its work to support communities in isolating and defeating those who seek to divide. To achieve this it is vital that the silent majority have all the skills and support they need so they can have a bigger voice.

TMP editor, Chuka Umunna, looks at Labour’s relationship with the black community. 

At the 1992 general election, the Conservatives suffered a shock defeat in Cheltenham, a place once considered to be “true blue” territory dating back to the 1950s. Their candidate, John Taylor, a black man (and, as such, a rarity) had been subject to racist abuse by members of his own local association, with some of the Cheltenham blue-rinse brigade reportedly urging local people not to vote for him.

Fast forward 15 years and Lord Taylor of Warwick is a Conservative peer, Adam Afriyie (the party’s only black MP) is a shadow minister, and six ethnic minority prospective parliamentary candidates, selected in safe seats, are waiting in the wings. And now the latest issue of the New Statesman, no less, wonders aloud on its cover whether the Tories and black Britain have become “new best friends”. A Tory moderniser’s dream morphs into reality.

The Statesman’s cover article is written by David Matthews, the journalist who caused controversy with his documentary “The Trouble with Black Men” in 2004. He suggests Labour can no longer rely on the unconditional support of black Britain. He thinks that as the black middle class grows, so will Tory support among African and Caribbean people, many of who, he asserts, are disillusioned with Labour policies on many levels and naturally sympathetic to Conservative social values.

Touching on Nigel Hastilow’s recent resignation as a prospective Conservative parliamentary candidate, Matthews (right) is good enough to concede that race is still “an itch the Tories must scratch”. Yet, remarkably, he fails to mention the row that the Tories’ politico-celebrity London mayoral candidate, Boris Johnson, has caused. Only last month, a black Tory councillor in Croydon, Enley Taylor, became the latest to complain that his party was prepared “to overlook clearly racist statements by its mayoral candidate”. David Cameron has been strangely muted on this issue, but I digress. What of Matthews’ central charge? Are the days of kneejerk support for Labour in the black community over?

Speak to any Labour cabinet minister, councillor or activist who knows a thing or two about black Britain and they will tell you that the black vote cannot be taken for granted - gone are the days when it was necessary for Operation Black Vote to drill this into Labour’s psyche. It is not for nothing that, last year, the then leader of the House of Lords, Baroness Amos, started convening regular summits of government ministers and black church leaders, and Tony Blair spoke at Ruach Ministries, Britain’s second biggest black church. This was instigated long before Cameron’s PPS and eyes and ears in the Commons, Desmond Swayne, sent him emails urging him to do the same kind of thing.

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Lola Adesioye, one of our regular columnists, argues against increasing the current detention without charge of suspected terrorists to 56 days in the absence of concrete evidence justifying the move.

Anyone who has travelled through a British airport recently will tell you what a hassle it has become. Having to remove shoes, undo belts, take off jackets, take out (and often discard) liquids, creams and perfumes from hand luggage are just some of the irritations that we now have to endure… I often think to myself that the next counter-terrorism measure will be for all passengers to walk naked through security.

OK, I’m being somewhat flippant here. The point is, however, that we all put up with these nuisances because there is no doubt that terrorism is a serious threat and tough times call for tough measures. With the London bombings of 2005 still fresh in our memories, and in light of recent failed attacks this year in both London and Glasgow, it is essential for the public’s peace of mind as well as the country’s security that the government takes a strong stance on protecting the UK against what is, according to M15, a growing threat “which has yet to reach its peak”.

Gordon Brown is, of course, keen to show that he takes terrorism seriously. The government’s new security plans, unveiled this week, show that he is unwilling to be seen as being soft on the matter. Many of his proposals are sensible: better awareness training for staff who work in public places, increasing the size of the security service and clamping down on those who finance terrorism. These are important measures.

I am not particularly thrilled by the idea of having bags screened and being searched at major railway stations – after all, we are talking about a public transport system that is under enough pressure as it is. But I’m sure the public are willing to put up with some annoyances if it keeps us all safe.

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The latest polls in the race for the Democratic Party’s 2008 Presidential nomination make for interesting reading.  In Iowa, the first crucial test for the candidates on 3 January 2008, Strategic Vision (11 November 2007) have Sen. Hilary Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama and former Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards on 29%, 27% and 20% respectively, whilst a CBS News/New York Times poll (11 November 2007) puts the three leading candidates on 25%, 22% and 23%.

The latest CBS News/New York Times (11 November 2007) poll in New Hampshire, where the first primary is to take place in mid-January 2008 (the date is still to be announced), Clinton, Obama and Edwards are on 37%, 22% and 9%.

With ground to make up if he is to seriously challenge Clinton’s lead, Barack Obama unveiled his innovation agenda at a town hall meeting yesterday at Google headquarters, which his team claim will connect and empower Americans through technology.

The plan aims to: ensure the full and free exchange of information by protecting the openness of the internet and encouraging diversity in media ownership; create a transparent and connected democracy by opening up government to its citizens; modernize communications infrastructure, employ technology and information; take on the challenges facing America and to improve the U.S’s competitiveness.

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