Shooting for a Third Term?

The composition of the council has changed and there are concerns being expressed that this reflects a particular direction in which the mayor will seek to take the borough; specifically with regard to securing her third term in office.

At 32% Muslim councillors make up close to the proportion of the council as Muslims make up of the population in the borough. In terms of ethnicity and sex, the numbers are heavily slanted towards men (2:1) from the sub-continent.

The mayor, cabinet and deputies have six Muslims, (out of 14 almost half the total).

Why is this important?

Time was that the differences in the local Labour Party were differences of ideology. Now the differences are of identity.

The rumblings from within Newham Labour suggest that Mayor Fiaz has determined that if she is to secure the nomination for a third term, she will need the help of a solid and reliable vote. That, it is said, will come from Muslims in the Labour Party.

She has done this before, see Roxi and the Tablighis, where the role of the Facebook group, Newham People’s Alliance was crucial in securing a victory in the selection ballot for Fiaz.

Having fallen out with the largely East Ham based Pakistani members who ran Grassroots Momentum during her last term, it seems that she has begun to cultivate particular support from within the Bangladeshi membership. 

We have noted how one of her acolytes has a strange history of standing against Labour, (pro-George Galloway, pro-Lutfer Rahman) and then within 48 hours of election to the council found that she had been promoted to a deputy cabinet role.

That same councillor had previously endorsed the pro-Palestinian protests on council property which had either the acquiescence or covert support of the mayor. 

In her social media posts, Kamali has expressed her support for one of the key NPA figures, who is now a leading light in the Newham Muslim Forum, the mayor’s chosen conduit for relations with the Muslim community in Newham.

We recall how George Galloway seemed unable to make a speech without decrying the position of both Palestinians and Kashmiris. We anticipate hearing more about both shortly from the mayor.

We understand that Cllr Salim Patel has now thrown in his lot with Fiaz and is actively campaigning for Muslim MPs in East and West Ham in addition to the mayor. His elevation to the role of Deputy Chair of Council may presage greater things in time. His ward colleague, Miriam Dawood appears to have thrown her support behind the mayor and has been suitably rewarded with a deputy-cabinet role.

It may be that this is some sort of Machiavellian master stroke; bringing the opposition inside the proverbial tent in order to avoid a repetition of Labour’s disaster in Tower Hamlets, where they lost both the mayoralty and the council. But if so, what is the Labour Party for? What does it stand for? If it doesn’t matter what you believe, the party simply becomes a vehicle for the promotion of ego and personal ambition.

Of course, if the experience of the two CLPs is anything to go by, it may provide a vehicle for the promotion of a single community at the expense of the others.

In the earlier reports we noted the division which appeared in both East and West Ham CLPs between Asian members and Black members; a division in which the Asian members came off significantly better, in both constituencies.

In this context, the expulsion of Councillors Paul and Beckles might be seen in a somewhat different light. Is there a power grab in process, favouring South Asian Muslims at the expense of Black councillors?

The affection Ms Fiaz is currently displaying towards the Muslim members of the Labour Party is in contrast to how she was viewed some years ago. Fiaz was rewarded with an OBE by the Blair government for her work in promoting positive community relations.

This was understood to be a pay-off for her help in promoting the government position on the Iraq War to the Muslim community in Britain. Her recent favouring of Muslims with a more conservative outlook (she got rid of several liberally minded Muslims); the privileged position she gives to the Newham Muslim Forum and the younger Tablighis from the NPA who led it; the promotion of Muslims in and around the cabinet suggest that she is giving out a strong message to the Muslim community. If this interpretation is correct it would suggest that Newham is heading in the same direction as Tower Hamlets.

If true, its all about numbers. The mayor does not appear to have suddenly adopted religious conservatism. But within the local Labour Party, there are larger numbers of South Asian Muslims than there are Africans and Caribbeans. The borough demographics suggest 37% South Asian compared to 17% Black, so roughly 2:1. Moreover, there are still influential brokers who can both enrol new members en masse and get them to vote as directed. You have only to look at Tower Hamlets in May 2022 to see this. Those inside the party report on branches which were mixed or mainly white now being totally dominated by Bangladeshi members out of all proportion to their numbers in the ward.

From a numbers point of view, it’s a no-brainer.

(For those who are wont to cry Islamophobia at the mere suggestion, we would refer you to a couple of academic papers, and there are many more. Understanding Electoral Fraud Vulnerability in Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin Communities. M. Sobelowska et al and a case study of the Respect Party by Timothy Peace.)