Labour councillor leads attack on Poplar AWS

A LABOUR COUNCILLOR has published a video on his Facebook page of a speech he has given criticising the Labour Party. He claims that the Party’s decision to run an All-Woman Shortlist (AWS) to select Jim Fitzpatrick MP’s successor in Poplar & Limehouse is a tactic to block local black men.

The Councillor alleging that his own Party is, in effect, racist is Cllr Puru Miah, who represents Mile End ward in Poplar & Limehouse. The video shows him speaking to a meeting of Poplar & Limehouse BAME Forum – and begins with pointing out that he is not actually a member of that Forum, as he lives in part of Whitechapel ward which is contained within the Bethnal Green & Bow constituency (which has its own BAME Forum).

The Labour Party adopted the tactic of declaring some seats open to women only some years ago, after realising that although women are no less able to be MPs than men are, an open selection process was just not leading to an equal number of women being selected as candidates. Most party members saw the sense in the tactic and were prepared to give it a try – but it was often opposed by male activists who had hoped to contest their own seat when the sitting MP retired.

Cllr Miah is a member of the national campaigning organisation Momentum, set up to further Jeremy Corbyn’s policies and approach to the Labour Party after Corbyn became Leader. He has retained an involvement in the national organisation. In March this year, when Momentum was found to have committed financial misdemeanours during the 2017 General Election campaign, he was cited publicly as Momentum’s treasurer.

Cllr Miah opens his speech to the Poplar & Limehouse BAME Forum by revealing that the Momentum National Steering Committee (NCG) discussed, on 20th July, the tactic of using an All-Woman Shortlist to block black men from standing for selection as parliamentary candidates by local Labour Party members.

The reason they did so, says Cllr Miah, is that “black men are the main organisers in many of the ethnic minority constituencies.” (That claim will probably come as a surprise to the many black sisters who thought that they were equally involved in constituency organisation and political life. At the very least, the sisters may have hoped – even if he honestly believed that they had a secondary role – that he would have expressed some regret that this was the case.)

Cllr Puru Miah (second from left) joins Momentum supporters,  in the local Labour Party in a protest about the closure of local nurseries – the “main organisers” of the campaign are local women party members.

Cllr Miah then alleges that some people in the Labour Party feel threatened by “genuine BAME representation” [our emphasis]. Party members in Tower Hamlets would probably agree with that statement on its own. Memories go quickly back to 2010, when local party members selected Lutfur Rahman as their candidate for Mayor in an election declared on the night by the Labour Party’s official representative as being safe and sound. Then Cllr Helal Abbas then sent the Labour Party a solicitor’s letter claiming that the election was not safe and sound because a TV documentary had alleged there were membership irregularities. The Westminster-based NEC then cast the members’ choice aside – in a move many locals saw as a fear of “genuine” (ie, member-led) representation.

Cllr Miah claims that this fear of “genuine BAME representation” leads to “them” using AWS as a tactic. It is a strange allegation. All-Women Shortlists acknowledge the fact that “women” are a diverse group, with many counting themselves as part of the BAME community. Perhaps from Cllr Miah’s perspective – that it is the men who are the prominent activists – it seems unlikely that a BAME woman will come through a selection procedure based on an All-Woman Shortlist. In alleging that AWS is a tactic to stop men, he actually sounds more like the dismal old male activists of yesteryear who did not see women as part of frontline politics – who felt threatened by confident women, even – than like a modern anti-racist activist.

He goes on to ask women present to speak up against the “white, middle class, champagne socialists who claim to speak for them” – but does not complete the circle by discussing whether the mostly male “leading constituency organisers” he referred to earlier also speak for BAME women, and whether BAME women are happy with that.

Cllr Miah goes on to announce that he and other senior BAME Momentum members who are councillors in Tower Hamlets intend to write to the Momentum to put forward their concerns. Cllr Miah does not clarify whether these are concerns about the Labour Party’s decision to run an AWS in Poplar & Limehouse, or the concerns about how AWS excludes BAME men (as well as non-BAME) men from selection contests where they are used.

Finally Cllr Miah reveals that he and some other councillors will be stepping down from the local Momentum Group and, presumably instead, joining the Poplar & Limehouse BAME Forum in its campaign “to show that we are one”. He says that this is not a left/right issue, or a black/white issue – but does not deny that the question of AWS is, seasoned women Labour Party activists would say, a men/women issue.

The Poplar & Limehouse BAME Forum has not made a public statement relating to the AWS in the seat, nor stated publicly what campaign it intends to run.

We have contacted Cllr Miah for further comment on this matter.

•To see Cllr Miah’s video in full, which is, at the time of writing, on his Facebook page, go to:
Facebook

•Read more about this story:
Helal Abbas: MP dreams crushed as PAL goes AWS

•Read more about it:
Labour vote sinks below Independent levels