LONDON LETTER:The Respect party leader's win in last week's byelection has rattled the Labour Party
FEW, except those who bet on George Galloway to win at 50/1, predicted the outcome of last week’s Bradford West byelection. Even fewer now know what it means for British politics, particularly in northern England.
Galloway is a one-off, a defender once of Saddam Hussein. Now representing his third constituency in the House of Commons, he is a superb self- promoter, ever quick with a quotable quote.
Today, he leads Respect, the party he founded in 2004 to offer, he says, “a left-wing alternative to the three established parties – New Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats”.
He argues that none of them “represents the interests of ordinary working class people”.
Labour had expected to hold Bradford West easily, diverting few resources into the campaign, only to find that its candidate, a councillor in the Yorkshire city, came in 10,000 votes behind Galloway. He dubbed his win “the Bradford spring”.
Bradford West, however, is not a typical northern England poor constituency that can be assumed to vote Labour by reflex.
In 2008, the Conservatives won four of the constituency’s six council wards, for example, although the last time it sent a Conservative to the Commons occurred in 1970.
Meanwhile, the city of Bradford, a place that brought communities secretary of state Eric Pickles to prominence during his time as a cost-cutting councillor, is represented by two Conservative MPs, one Liberal Democrat and now one each for Labour and Respect.
While Labour is nursing its wounds, the Conservatives have cause for worry too, since the party has taken between 31 per cent and 39 per cent of the vote in every election in Bradford West since 1974, even if they did not win the seat. Last week, the Conservative candidate, Jackie Whiteley, won just 8 per cent.
Galloway won his seat largely by appealing to the city’s Pakistani population. Today, even before the full results of the 2011 census are published, the city is known to have the highest concentration of this ethnic group of any British constituency.
It also has the highest number of Muslims of all backgrounds, nearly four in every 10 of the constituency’s population. That is beaten only by Galloway’s former Bethnal Green and Bow constituency in London, which backed him because of his opposition to the 2003 Iraq war.
During his time in Bethnal Green, he was criticised for appearing on Big Brother, particularly for an impression of a cat, and also for his poor attendance record in parliament, a habit that began during his time representing a Glasgow constituency.
Flushed with victory, Galloway is now organising a ticket of candidates to run for Respect in next month’s local elections in Bradford. A repeat of the byelection result would cause trepidation amongst the larger parties, especially Labour.
Like other northern cities, Bradford is cursed with high unemployment, low education standards, ethnic tensions, along with an aching hole in its town centre after a redevelopment plan stalled, even during the boom years.
The rise in youth unemployment, according to the British Trades Union Congress, in Bradford West has been the largest anywhere in Britain. Nearly 1,400 18- to 24- year-olds have been added to the list, bringing the number to over 6,000.
Some of those unemployed voted for Galloway, although it is not yet clear how many, but it leaves open the question of how many more in other constituencies could be enticed to follow Bradford West’s example.
There will be many opportunities to do so later this year after mayoral elections take place in a host of English cities, when a number of Labour MPs are expected to vacate their Commons seats to take the top spots in city halls.
Traditionally, Labour has dealt with community leaders from ethnic populations, although there is mounting evidence that the generation coming behind them is increasingly disaffected and at times increasingly radical.
Equally, there is mounting evidence that postal ballot rules in Britain reinforce the male hierarchy existing in Muslim communities, where the man of the house fills in the ballot papers – although few politicians want to say this publicly.
This week Labour MPs were clearly worried about the prospects that city hall victories could be followed with byelection defeats, particularly in Birmingham Hodge Hill, if Liam Byrne is chosen to represent Labour in Birmingham.
He came to the Commons in 2004 after a bitter, often nasty byelection, when he won a traditionally safe Labour seat by just 460 votes in the face of a strong challenge from the Liberal Democrats.
Respect then won 1,000 votes.
Today, a Liberal Democrat campaign of that scale can be safely excluded, given the predictable difficulties that it is having in government alongside the Conservatives in a time of austerity that is hurting places like Hodge Hill.
The question is whether there is another Galloway.
