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Guardian 10am: Piara Khabra, Ealing Southall Dies
Father of Oldest MP in the house, since Ted Heath's retirement, Piara Khabra MP has died. A rather thin Wiki entry is here and this is an April 2005 interview hung on the question of all women short lists.
The Croydon Guardian previewed the decision on AWS in March with a profile of the front runner Sonika Nirwar. From this distance I'm not that impressed with her. Talk of her "growing up" in the last six months isn't that encouraging.
So I hope that the constituency choose Dr Rupa Huq who has already fought one Euro and one Westminister Election, is bright as a proverbial button, and actually lives in the area.
11 comments:
He's wasn't Father of the House Chris, just the oldest MP - you'd have picked up on Iain Dale making such an error!
Father of the House after Heath was Tam Dalyell (2001-2005), and currently it's Alan Williams.
Yep, Alan Williams, not Khabra.
Williams elected in 1964 - Khabra was only elected in 1992.
Ooops. Silly me, believing Iain Dale!
Why Rupa? It's my understanding that Sonika is sikh, as is most of the ethnic population of Southall. Sonika is fantastic and this (white old) man really hopes she cleans up and wins.
It is perhaps a bit early to be going into this in any detail. Apologies if I respond to David.
Rupa lives in the constituency, is very sparky, and is an experienced candidate. The implication of the "recently grown up" comment from the Croydon Guardian is that Sonika has been seen as rather immature until very recently.
But anyway, I don't like communalism one little bit. "Vote Sikh" is a terrible message (cf BNP) and not good politics is it? And though you are on the right lines it is NOT EVEN TRUE that most of the ethnic population of Ealing Southall are Sikh.
A little under HALF of the Asian fragment (which=48% of whole) is Sikh. 23%. This is the largest group. But only about 1/3 of the BME people.
25% other asian, 9% other black, 3% mixed, 3% other and 37.6% white.
2001 demography from: UK Polling Report. More detailed Neighbourhood statistics are not avaialable just now. Temporary outtage I think.
My own experience of Southall, albeit arms length, is that picking the very best candidate on every single other criterion that race, ethnicity or religion ought to be the priority. The culture is pretty melted together.
Outside of WOMAD events at the Festival Hall the greatest UK audiences for the late great Nusrat Ali Fateh Khan was in Southall and though he was a muslim sufi qawali (praise) singer his appeal crossed into all the other communities. I was involved in promoting his last (I think) UK Tour.
Let's not get too rigid about this.
Sad to hear about Khabra's death.
Considering it's a byelection I think it won't be an AWS. IIRC they are not used in byelections. So male contenders can join in
Why aren't all women shortlists used for by-elections?
What a cop out?
Don't ask me Miles. In Manchester Labour we haven't reverted to open shortlists just because it is a by-election.
But by-elections are different and it may well pay to show some flexibility rather than being doctrinaire about it.
Better question for me is why there is no talk of an AWS when it comes to Blair and Prescott constituencies should these fall vacant?
"But by-elections are different and it may well pay to show some flexibility rather than being doctrinaire about it."
I'm not 100% sure but I seem to recall that there are 2 occasions when AWS can't be forced: when there's a byelection and when a sitting MP lose the trigger ballot.
However I can be wrong....anyone who does 100% know?
"Better question for me is why there is no talk of an AWS when it comes to Blair and Prescott constituencies should these fall vacant? "
Especially as North East (in Sedgefield case) don't have many female MPs and next door Easington is going to be an open shortlist. So there would be quite a lot of reasons to suggest an AWS in Sedgefield
As each hour that passes more and more people are saying as this is a by election the Labour HQ will not impose an all women short list. A decision could come as early as this weekend (Sunday).
Some of the facts set out in the briefing prepared by the Sikh Federation (UK) that was sent to Labour’s NEC early this year included:
There is a target for women representation of 40% of all Labour MPs there is no target for ethnic minority representation despite the extremely low numbers in the House of Commons.
Is the absence of a target for ethnic minority representation by the Labour Party defensible?
The NEC was advised the greater priority was to address the large shortfall of ethnic minority MPs and pointed out the London Region of Labour had already achieved women representation of 37.6%.
It was also pointed out the NEC no longer had any ethnic minority representatives and most if not all MPs that have come from all-women short-lists for the last ten years, since the 1997 election have been white.
Given these facts the Labour Party and the NEC could be accused of failing ethnic minorities if they choose to give preference to an all-women short-list rather than an open short-list in constituencies like Ealing Southall.
The decision by the NEC in Ealing Southall could have far-reaching consequences in other constituencies with large numbers of ethnic minorities. Younger people are increasingly questioning the policies and practices of the main parties and they are well placed to influence the traditional Labour vote.
It is our strongly held view that Labour should select an ethnic minority candidate in the Ealing Southall constituency where the ethnic minority population is 64.7%.
We have argued and the past and present Labour Party Chairs have agreed that the likes of the electorate of Ealing Southall would like to see 'people like them' as their elected representatives.
The Sikh Federation (UK) is on record to say we would like to see a well educated and British born practising Sikh in the Commons, which would be a first.
One excellent candidate would be:
Dr Harkirtan Singh-Raud OBE
He is a senior Lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University and has been Head of Combined Science, taught Chemistry, Biochemistry and science in schools. His research field covers the area of race, gender and diversity. He is nationally recognised in his field and was awarded the OBE for service to Education and to Diversity.
He is a very active Labour Party member who has been recognised as an excellent candidate to become an MP. The only difficulty is he lives in Manchester where he hopes to become an MP. Would he be prepared to move South and would Labour be prepared to impose someone from outside? They have done this in the past and seeing the local Labour Party is divided an outside candidate like Harkirtan Singh, who is also Chair of the Oxbridge Sikh Alumni, may be the ideal compromise.
Sikh Federation (UK)
info@sikhfederation.com
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