Rabnawaz Akbar on last night’s results

My local Labour candidate Rabnawaz emailed round this morning with this moving personal response to last night’s results, and was kind enough to let me re-post it here.

At about 2.00am in the morning (we were there since 7.00pm) once word was out that the BNP had won a seat in this region, I was like everybody in the Labour Party gutted. I have never had such a feeling before in my life and I hope I never have to go through it again. I think it was Jim who said it was like watching a horror movie at 2.00am in the morning. I saw some of the younger members of our party go away and shed a few tears. Jim asked us to put a brave face in front of the photographers and roving cameras but honestly, it was just impossible. What made it worse was that a bunch of thugs were arrogantly roaming around the Town Hall; and I am not kidding, they were thugs dressed up in suits and ties!

The fact that Manchester Labour came first and the BNP came 6th in our city with only 6,796 votes was no consolation. On the way home I could not believe that I was now being represented by a man in the largest democratic parliament in Europe who hates me for being the son of immigrants from Pakistan; for being brown and for being Muslim. The fact that I was born here, have lived all my life here, love this country to bits, want to do my bit to improve this country for all and want to grow old and die in this country means absolutely nothing to Nick Griffin.

On getting home, I went into my youngest daughter’s bedroom and after seeing her soundly sleep, I kissed her on the forehead and promised to re-double my efforts to fight for all the values the Labour Party stands for; social justice, equality for all, tolerance, repect for all and no discrimination on any grounds. I owe it to my daughter. Over the coming 5 years the BNP will undoubtedly now fight more council and parliamentary elections in our region and we cannot allow them to strengthen their position.

Although low turn-out, flaws in the voting system, protest vote, global recession and MP’s expenses contributed to the BNP’s success, the BNP does not hide its racist and divisive policies and a small minority of people clearly sympathise with their views. This is very similar to a minority of extremists who have hijacked the religion of Islam and justify carrying out acts of violence in the name of that religion. We have to stand up to all types of extremism; it is not going to be easy but we have to do it together.

Hear hear, Rabnawaz – count me in!

Dark times

So gutted about the BNP MEP elected in Yorkshire. Richard Corbett was a wonderful MEP and he has been replaced by the former leader of the National Front – I am distraught.

Hope Not Hate are running a petition, to be presented to the European Parliament on the day Andrew Brons takes up his seat – sign here, especially if you live in Yorkshire and the Humber, to show the BNP don’t represent you.

And please, please cross your fingers that this result isn’t repeated in the North West.

…well.

What to say. I think I’m gonna do a bit more of a Reshuffle Rundown at the weekend. In the meantime: for everyone who delivers Labour’s leaflets, ‘phones Labour’s voters, stays up late at counts, blogs for Labour, Tweets for Labour, defends the Labour Party against all comers, generally works as hard as they physically can for the Party that they believe in, and may feel, in weeks like this, that it’s not worth it…watch this, made by our friends at Blackburn Labour. It’s homemade and cheesy but I love it nonetheless.

What Grace and friends have been up to lately (every blog post could be titled this, really, couldn’t it?)

A good friend of mine has spent part of this week arguing, over the internet, with some of the more opinionated and right-wing students at his university, which is full of opinionated and/or right wing students. (Yeah, that one.) I’m not going to go into the details of the argument because it makes me upset and angry. It also made my friend upset and angry, and he spent a lot of time and energy being upset and angry. I spent a lot of time last night trying to instil a sense of perspective, and suggested this new rule: ‘every time you’re about to get into anything*, think about how many votes it will generate, either for Labour or against the BNP. If the answer is ‘none’, go and do some leafleting, or take a nap.’

I maintain it’s a good rule, but I’m breaking it right now. I doubt I’ve ever converted anyone to Labour with this blog, because the only people who read it are already Labour sympathisers or Tories dropping by to see what I’m up to.

Which is why I’ve been paying a bit more attention to my new project in the last weekandabit – I’ve set myself a challenge of single-handedly winning one vote back to Labour in time for next year’s general election, and getting into some good debate along the way on how to win back the rest.

It got off to a good start but is running into teething troubles – partly this is because I like writing 1500-word-long rants, and my Grandad doesn’t, I’m working on a format that will work better – but partly I think I need to take a different tack. Core voters like my Grandad aren’t going to be won over by endless agonising about open verses closed primaries and how this system of voting compares to that. They’re disgusted by greedy bastards but they’re motivated by policy – and though David Cameron seems to have been implying this week that voters disapprove of all public spending, he’s wrong. Public spending good. Greedy bastards bad. More of that to follow on the other blog.

But just in case you think I’ve abandoned the real world in favour of campaigning exclusively on t’internet, and abandoned all voters I’m not immediately related to – don’t worry, I’m still Labour irl.

I have, admittedly, not been as active as Rusholme’s Labour candidate Rabnawaz Akbar – in our branch meeting last week he updated us on his latest activities, and his feet rarely seem to have been touching the ground. Find him on Facebook if you haven’t already, he’s been faithfully updating it on his travels around Rusholme and Manchester. He also reminded me that I’d nicked my current Facebook profile photo from one of his photos of the Go Fourth rally, so here it is in its original glory:

That’s Rabnawaz on my left, and on my right is Rick, another Rusholme member who gave some good commentary on the Go Fourth event over on his blog. And while I’m adding links, I’d also like you to introduce you to [the blogs of] Wes Streeting, Kirsty Connell, Tom Miller and Kezia Dugdale. Enjoy.

On Thursday last week I took part in the Phone Bank for the European elections with Manchester Young Labour. Last week we made over 400 contacts in 2 hours, which is pretty impressive going – and yes, out of the 50 people I spoke to, I’d say about 47 wanted to talk about expenses. Lots of familiar disappointment.

At the weekend I’m afraid I took a break instead of taking part in Hope Not Hate campaigning…yeah, boo, I know, Kev Peel never takes a break. I’m a Labour lightweight. Instead I was entertaining two former Chairs of the University of York Labour Club, including Carl from Blackburn Labour. And speaking of Blackburn Labour, have you seen what Laurence Durnan has been up to in his obvious excess of spare time? The sad thing is I sort of wish I’d thought of it first…

And then last night it was the Phone Bank again: this week we were getting out the postal votes and the expenses issue hardly came up at all. I don’t think that means voters have forgotten about it, but I do think it means that, like a lot of the audience members on last night’s Question Time, they’re getting sick of talking about duck islands. Policy to the people! …please. More on that later on one blog or another. Now I must sleep.

*By ‘anything’ I mean political debate, obviously, not having sex or buying cropped trousers or making soup…

Donate Not Hate

Got the following email from Hope Not Hate today:

——————————————————

Thanks to the expense scandals we’re in a tough spot.

Voters are turning away from the traditional political parties – and the BNP are cranking up their propaganda machine to try to take advantage.

Politicians have let every person in Britain down. Lots of people could be considering staying home and abstaining to show their anger. People are right to be angry, but if the mainstream majority of voters stay home on Election Day, the BNP will be let in through the back door.

But you can stop them. Donate £10, or whatever you can afford, to our campaign now.

https://donate.hopenothate.org.uk/page/contribute/donormatch

Our campaign is gearing up to stop the BNP. We’re making a big impact – in the past few weeks alone, you and other supporters gave out over 2 million leaflets. It’s been amazing. But the success of the campaign has us in a bit of a spot. We’ve put out so many materials, we need to do another print run.

We need to raise £8,000 by Thursday to get the next 500,000 glossy leaflets published in time for our next Days of Action over the Bank Holiday weekend.

So I’m asking you to do something special – something we’ve never tried before.

Yesterday I wrote to the people who have donated to our campaign previously – asking them to match the donations of people who have yet to donate. We had a staggering response – which means that every penny you donate will be effectively doubled.

So by donating £10 now our campaign will receive £20. And by donating £20 we’ll receive £40.

Will you donate £10 to our campaign?

https://donate.hopenothate.org.uk/page/contribute/donormatch

From the start I knew that we could only win this fight with a genuine grassroots campaign – you’ve risen to the challenge time and time again. So thank you.

While our message of hope shines through, the BNP’s racist attacks and lies seem to grow by the day. We are running out of time to fight them.

Our first thousand donors gave this campaign the strength it needed to become a movement – now I need your help to propel our campaign forward. The value of your donation will be doubled by one of our current donors – will you contribute to the £8,000 cost of 500,000 more campaign leaflets? This email is being sent to tens of thousands of people – and if we all chip in a little, we will beat this target and more.

https://donate.hopenothate.org.uk/page/contribute/donormatch

Politics might be the last thing you want to think about right now – but no matter what you feel about the politicians in Westminster, we can’t let the BNP win as a result.

Thank you,

Nick Lowles

——————————————————

Obviously it’s a worthy cause, and I’ll be having a look at my budget to see if I can spare a tenner (yeah, yeah, I have a budget. On a spreadsheet. I’m cool)…but if it’s thanks to the expenses scandal that we’re in a tight spot, then couldn’t we wheedle a little cash out of the MPs that got us into it? Ask every MP who broke the letter or spirit of the rules to add a zero onto the end of every donation made by Hope Not Hate activists, perhaps?

Enough is enough

On Friday night I was at the launch of Manchester Young Labour at the Town Hall. The turnout was encouraging – even a few young members who’d joined up in the last fortnight – but the talk inevitably focused on MPs’ expenses, with an on-form Andy Burnham getting questions on little else.

One member said she’d had to have long and agonising heart-to-hearts with her dad, a lifelong Labour supporter who was so disgusted by the expenses revelations that he wasn’t sure he would ever vote again at all.

“Really?” I thought. “I know the media are obsessed with who spent what and on what, but is it really going to damage our core vote? After they’ve come through so much with us – when they’re the ones who must truly know, now, if anyone does, the damage that would be done if the Tories got their way and started trying to cut their way out of the recession – surely it would take more than this to lose them?

I was so wrong. I was completely wrong. I’m bowled over by my own wrongness. I’ve heard it from everyone who’s been doorstepping in the last fortnight but I didn’t realise just how bad it was until 10 o’ clock this morning yesterday morning when I got a text from my mom saying ‘Grandad isn’t voting Labour anymore’.

Anyone who’s read this blog more than twice, or been in my presence after a few drinks, will have been treated to the stories about my Labour Grandad. About how my earliest political memories are of him telling me about what Mrs. Thatcher was doing to the country. About how I joined the Labour Party while he was away on holiday with my Nan and proudly bounded up to show him my membership card as soon as he got back. About how he came campaigning for me when I was a local candidate in York (yeah, I know, his time would have been better spent in his greenhouse, but we enjoyed ourselves).

It’s stories like this that leave me open to accusation of unquestioning support for Labour, and I’ve been accused of that once already this week. It’s not true – anyone who’s read this blog more than twice, or been in my presence after a few drinks, knows this issues on which I disagree with the Labour government and how strongly I do so. It’s just that in recent weeks I’ve been convinced that presenting a united front would be more appealing to voters than the kind of Lord of the Flies scene we saw yesterday in the Commons.

Well, fuck that. I was wronger than wrong. My Grandad feels disgusted and betrayed that the MP he’s been putting his faith in since 2001 seems to have been ’sitting up all night with a calculator to work out how much of our money he can squeeze’ – and I’m sure there are many more like him, in my Grandad’s constituency and many others.

I’ve had that awful ‘phone call with my Grandad and he’s read me the letter he’s sending to his MP in which he tells him that enough is enough, that he’s never going to vote again. I’ve talked him down from that extreme and he’s promised to vote Labour in the European elections – the BNP are targeting the West Midlands as well as the Northwest. That gives me a year – or less, as it may be – to convince him to vote Labour again in the next General Election.

I hate to say it, but a few judicious deselections would probably do it; and like those Party members who wrote to the NEC in the last few days, I’m not sure the action that the Party and the Prime Minister plan to take is going to cut it, when it comes to MPs who never broke the rules got away with the absolute bloody maximum they knew they could within them.

I’m signing the letter, for what it’s worth – its original signatories are encouraging more to join in; but it’s going to take a lot more than that.

That’s why I’m setting up Project Grandad. I’m going to find as many reasons as I can over the next year – or so – for my Grandad, and core voters like him, to vote Labour again at the next General Election instead of staying at home, and I’m going to try and address the concerns that might stop them. Makes me feel like I’m doing something anyway. I’ll let you all know when I need your help

All you fascists are bound to lose

Over 400 people have been involved in the HOPE not hate campaign across Greater Manchester in the past week alone. So far they’ve delivered 184,000 newspapers and leaflets, covering 15 of Manchester’s 31 wards, delivering over 25,000 newspapers across Oldham, and putting out 40,000 of the 50,000 leaflets allocated to Wigan & Leigh.

This weekend they’re out in Salford (my new home!…well, I’ve worked there for three weeks, but I feel like I haven’t seen my actual home much in that time) as well as Trafford and some of the bits of Manchester they haven’t reached so far. I’ll be there – join us, and you get to see Billy Bragg perform!!

Find out more and sign up at http://action.hopenothate.org.uk/billybragg. See you there?

On a related note, my belated congratulations to my good friend David Levene who has been rallying the cause of Hope Not Hate at the University of York.

Want further reading? Have a look at Cllr Tim Cheetham’s blog on why beating the BNP is important to him – as it should be to all genuine patriots.

I’m still here!

Sorry, loyal readership – this full-time-job lark doesn’t half take it out of my blogging time. Also I was in Edinburgh from Saturday to Monday (incidentally, Blackford Park/Blackford Hill is an AMAZING place to walk a dog. I don’t have a dog. But a lot of people there did and now I’m thinking of getting one and keeping it in Edinburgh).

So, what have I missed? The Equality Bill, of course. I was in a flat devoid of telly when that was being debating so mostly kept up with the debate on Twitter. Isn’t it sad that such a fantastic boost for equality – something that will improve the working lives, particularly, of so many people – is being knocked off the front pages by talk about Tory moats and Prezza’s toilet seats and such?

Of course, it’s not just the media interest – people are talking about MPs’ expenses on the doorstep, they’re talking about them in the CAB (sorry, those are the only two places I go), and the whole thing needs to be sorted, damn quickly, before the public loses its last wispy shreds of faith in politicians. So it’s good to see politicians falling over each other in self-flagellation and refunds. Cameron’s weird, school-assembly-style recounting of everything his shadow cabinet had done wrong seemed a bit of an odd decision, which must surely have just drawn attention to their typically Tory lifestyles. “Oliver Letwin will pay back the money you
gave him for his swimming-pool! Alan Duncan will pay back the money you gave him for his garden! George Osborne will pay back the money you gave him to buy a gold-plated, diamond-encrusted yacht!”*

I made a promise to my Twitter-followers last week that, in the spirit of ‘those who forget 1979 are condemned to repeat it’, I am not going to contribute to any in-fighting. At all. I’m being positive about everyone in the Labour Party, be they Derek Draper (does the right thing in the end), David Miliband (has apparently been compared to Barack Obama), or Phil Woolas (er…knows when to shut up). I’m not quite sure how me being nice about Phil Woolas is going to help us win in 2010, but it made sense when I thought of it, and it surely can’t hurt.

And so it is that I don’t even roll my eyes at Hazel Blears any more, particularly since she had the good sense to take the initiative and write a cheque to HMRC for what she was accused of owing them. (And even more since this act of quick thinking caused ITN to drop a feature in which Hazel was slammed by a local, sadly moatless Tory.)

Right, I’m off to bed. Tomorrow – new additions to the blogroll, and saving the minimum wage! (If I can stay awake long enough…)

* One of these is not a real expenses claim.

Topshop falsely imprisons P&P activists. Yes, really.

Remember I was blogging about People & Planet’s ‘Redress Fashion’ Day of Action aimed at Topshop? This is how it went down in Edinburgh. Absolutely outrageous.

Gordon’s triumphant return to YouTube

Even Prezza has been taking the piss out of the PM’s inability to pull a human-looking face; but that hasn’t stopped Gordon getting back on the internet broadcasting horse. Our election broadcast has been trailed on t’internet ahead of going out on TV tonight, and it’s actually rather good:

While we’re on the ‘grow not cut your way out’ theme – as you might know, David Cameron has refused to commit to maintaining child benefit and winter fuel allowances at the same level as the Labour Government. Why not sign this petition to ask him – ‘Austerity for who?’