With Gaza genocide as the galvanising issue, in seats where Muslims are over 30% of the electorate, Labour’s vote share plunged from 65% in 2019 to 36% at the 2024 general election.
In Blackburn, where I stood, Labour’s vote share dived incredibly, from 65% to 27%. This in a general election where Labour won a huge majority.
The strategy to stand anti-Gaza genocide candidates and show Starmer that Labour cannot, as in the past, take the support of Muslim voters for granted, was therefore a success. Four anti-genocide Independent MPs were elected, taking seats from Labour.
However, if you look beneath this headline, the situation is less celebratory for a Left/Muslim anti-war alliance than it may appear on the surface.
To look into this requires a granular look at my own experience in Blackburn that I hope you will find interesting.
In the early 2000s, the Stop the War movement was a highly successful example of a broadly Left/Muslim alliance in which I was deeply involved. It went on to oppose not only the war in Iraq and Afghanistan but also the wave of officially inspired Islamophobia and the attacks on civil liberty in the “War on Terror”.
This video is of me addressing a Stop the War conference on Islamophobia in 2007.
Stop the War’s work goes on and is closely linked with the pro-Palestinian movement, of which I have been a member since the 1970s and which has also been broadly a successful Left/Muslim alliance.
So what is the problem?
Well one pointer is that, of the scores of specifically anti-Gaza genocide candidates, over 20 of whom were standing in constituencies with more than 30% Muslim voters, the only 4 elected were themselves Muslim.
None of the anti-genocide non-Muslim Left candidates, myself included, were able to be elected on the basis of Muslim support.
This is not a fluke statistic, as I hope to explain.
Firstly, there is a problem for many Left candidates in fitting in with the social conservatism of Muslim communities. In Blackburn I found previous writings of mine, for example on abortion, gay rights and on legalisation of cannabis, being widely circulated and used against me.
Muslim supporters urged me to say my views had changed, but naturally I could not lie in this way.
I was also contacted by panicked supporters the day before the election over a quote from the Koran being widely circulated against me, which states:
“O believers! Do not take disbelievers as allies instead of the believers. Would you like to give Allah solid proof against yourselves?”
Sometimes this kind of attack was quite crude. I was more than once called a “Kaffir”. This example is from comments on the Facebook page of popular Muslim media 5Pillars.
Maria Hussain, who joins in, is the sister of the successful candidate, now Independent MP, Adnan Hussain, and co-ordinated his extremely effective social media campaign.
My second point is that there is a real problem with sectarianism in the UK’s Islamic communities. What I came across in Blackburn – and I believe to be a general problem promoted by British security services – is a specifically Sunni extremist sectarianism. This was used to portray me as an “Assadist”.
By focusing on anti-Assad rebels and the Syrian civil war, this Sunni sectarianism explicitly supports the US/NATO/Saudi position. It was ruthlessly used within British Muslim communities against Workers Party candidates all over the UK, on the alleged basis that the Workers Party is pro-Assad. That assertion is itself based on some alleged comments praising Assad by George Galloway, which I have never seen adequately sourced.
This position was well expressed by Dilly Hussain of 5pillars in a dialogue with Sheikh Asrar Rashid held in Blackburn during the election campaign. This link takes you to a key moment.
The entire dialogue is well worth viewing as a fascinating discussion in which Dilly Hussain puts the prevalent view of the British Sunni community, and Sheikh Rashid responds with thoughtful points with which I very largely agree.
As brief background the Syrian rebel forces – DAESH, ISIS, Al-Nusra and to a large extent the Free Syrian Army – are mostly specifically Sunni, while the Assad regime has been broadly protective of Syria’s substantial Shia, Alaouite, Christian, Jewish and other minorities.
That is extreme shorthand: many Syrian Sunnis support Assad and the original Syrian democracy movement had broad cross-communal support.
The key point however is that the positions put forward by Dilly Hussain – supporting the overthrow of Gaddafi by NATO and supporting the alliance by Syrian rebel groups with the USA against Assad – are identical to those which were being advanced against me in Blackburn by the Adnan Hussain camp, where I was consistently and quite wrongly described as pro-Assad.
The first time I ever met Adnan Hussain, at a pro-Gaza demonstration in Blackburn in April, he included in his speech support for British policy in the Ukraine against Russia. I was bewildered by this. It was only during the election campaign that I understood where it came from.
This pro-NATO aspect of Sunni sectarianism, on the basis of the Syrian civil war, is hard for a liberal mind intellectually to reconcile with what is the genuine and heartfelt opposition of these same Sunni sectarians to Western policy in Palestine. It was a real problem for the Left/Muslim alliance in this general election.
Thirdly, the place of religion in politics is itself a problem for a Left/Muslim alliance.
In Blackburn, campaigning through the religious Establishment was the central plank of Adnan Hussain’s campaign, planned and organised from the outset.
Ulama means scholars of the Islamic religion, a specific and highly trained group. Imams are clerics. The Ulama and Imams together may be taken as forming the religious establishment.
Adnan Hussain very frequently claimed that he had the endorsement of the Scholars and Imams of Blackburn, and indeed that this was the very basis on which he was standing for election. He reinforced this by social media output, often filmed or photographed within mosques or madrassas, continually reinforcing the notion his campaign had the backing of the religious Establishment. Even at his few “political” meetings he always took care to have Imams and scholars behind him.
In this meeting publicised by his campaign and within a religious building, Adnan Hussain states:
With the duas [prayers] of (name of senior cleric present), with the duas of the scholars, I am taking this stance Inshallah [Allah willing], with your support I hope that we are successful Inshallah.
I am showing you here a small fraction of this kind of social media output by the Adnan Hussain campaign, featuring religious establishment endorsement:
There is much more of this. I confess I am uncomfortable with this religious basis of campaigning. On top of which it is very definitely illegal.
Using spiritual influence in an election campaign is against the law and grounds for disqualification. It was used against Luftur Rahman in his disqualification as Mayor of Tower Hamlets in 2015.
It is however a law which is extremely difficult to enforce. Neither the Returning Officer nor the Electoral Commission have any power to intervene against the use of spiritual influence. And while it is an offence, the Electoral Commission advise the police can only act where undue spiritual pressure is brought to bear on a named individual.
The wider electoral law against spiritual influence can, the Electoral Commission say, only be activated by an electoral petition brought against the result by a defeated candidate, to be heard by an electoral court.
For the avoidance of doubt, I am not going to do this.
For one thing there is a £5,000 fee to bring the petition, plus you need to have lawyers to take it through the process who are likely to cost many times that.
But rather more importantly, I am not sure it would be right to bring a petition. The voters of Blackburn decided they prefer Adnan Hussain to me. Who am I to query their motives?
While I stated that I am not comfortable with the use of religion as a campaign platform, that is not to say that I agree that it should be illegal to do so. I am in two minds on the subject. I have always felt the disqualification of Rahman was unfair.
The law against spiritual influence in elections was introduced in the 19th century specifically to stop the Catholic church hierarchy in Ireland from instructing people to vote for Irish nationalists.
While I do favour the separation of the state from religion, and worry about the ability of religious hierarchies to exercise control over their followers which in some instances may be unhealthy, I am not certain that I agree the state should be able to dictate to people the criteria by which they should vote.
In short, if Muslims wish to vote for somebody because they are Muslim, or even because their religious hierarchy tells them to do so, is it not their right to vote as they wish?
There is however one aspect of this whole experience which does concern me. Blackburn remains an extremely segregated town, to a degree it is hard to believe if you have not experienced it. There are whole wards which are well over 95% Muslim or over 95% non-Muslim. There are state schools which are 98% Muslim or 98% non-Muslim.
I held 5 public meetings during my election campaign, and attendance at every one was roughly 50% Muslim and non-Muslim.
Contrast that to attendance at Adnan Hussain’s meetings. He held two public meetings I know of, and this the second is identical in composition to the first, i.e. frighteningly ethnically homogeneous.
It is of course natural that a campaign which is heavily based on religion will not attract those not of that religion. Hussain’s campaign tried to state that they had significant support in non-Muslim areas, highlighting in particular his personal friendship with a popular mixed martial arts fighter, but I can tell you for certain this is empty.
At the count you can see the ballot boxes from different polling stations counted, and I have no doubt whatsoever that Hussain’s total of 10,518 votes contained an absolute maximum of 500 non-Muslim votes, and probably a great deal less than that.
In a community as tragically divided as Blackburn, the effects of an MP being elected by only one section, across a divide that to some individuals is sadly bitter, can only be unhelpful.
I realise this is probably more information than you wanted to know about Blackburn and its politics. But I believe that those insights can be more widely applied to the electoral fate of the Left/Muslim alliance on Gaza.
I also think an account of what happened was owing to the readers of this blog, who after all financed my campaign through crowdfunding. For which I am, as ever, extremely grateful.
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Fully agree with your conclusion – ‘In a community as tragically divided as Blackburn, the effects of an MP being elected by only one section, across a divide that to some individuals is sadly bitter, can only be unhelpful.’ As you imply the piece was not just about Blackburn, the division of communities anywhere is something to be opposed and failure to do so leads to conflict, tragedy and waste of human endeavour.
“The voters of Blackburn decided they prefer Adnan Hussain to me. Who am I to query their motives?”
I think the bigger question is why the gentlemen in those videos, their leaders, preferred Mr Hussain. In what world was he going to be a more influential voice on the Gaza genocide? Did their scholarly thought extend beyond he is not a kafir?
I think religion was used as a political tool to expedite someone’s political career.
It also shows that the person doesn’t know the islamic meaning of the term ‘Kafir’ and that’s why you see it being used in such a context to undermine a political competitor.
It will be interesting to see what happens in the future. What sort of MP will AH be to non-Muslims? In 2029, will the Workers Party put up another candidate? Will the Greens have made further inroads into UK politics? Will Israeli apartheid have given way to democracy between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, making further Palestine protest candidates unnecessary?
I’m concerned about the other side of the pond because of the impending threat of fascism in the shape of “Project 2025”. If the majority of American voters choose Trump, it may truly be said that people get the governments they deserve. If Biden stands down, he might be replaced by someone who might be more sympathetic to Palestinians, and also stave off the threat of fascism in the USA.
I am sure politics teachers will use this great article, based as it is on first hand experience as a candidate, deep reflection and analysis to discuss current political culture and voting behaviour. There were no such dimensions to the election where I live, which has the reputation of voting Tory if the candidate was a donkey with a blue rosette pinned to its tail. There was hardly any campaigning, just a few leaflets and I certainly did not see any Tory poster in any window or garden. Yet come polling day, out people duly came from their closets and returned the Tory with still a healthy if reduced majority; there was a 70+% turnout. Is the social psychology behind this voting pattern much different from that described here in Blackburn? Different ideologies but the same class (or herd) instincts driving people’s voting behaviour.
It seems herd instinct also reigns in the EU Parliament, which just voted to give Ursula von der Leyen a second term. Seems everything Clare Daly pointed out to them about Frau Genocide went in one ear out the other. Or more likely was music to their ears.
Seems to be a quiet day on here, so let’s see if we can liven things up a bit:
Re: ‘The first time I ever met Adnan Hussain, at a pro-Gaza demonstration in Blackburn in April, he included in his speech support for British policy in the [sic] Ukraine against Russia. I was bewildered by this.’
Maybe AH is supportive of British policy against Russia because he is not in favour of sovereign countries being invaded by other countries – and large amounts of high explosive being launched at their civilian populations – whether those countries are Iraq, Palestine, Ukraine, or anywhere else. What do people think?
If he supports British policy then he supports American crypto-aggressions, even if he is opposed to supposedly overt aggressions. Personally I think that spending large amounts of cash in order to provoke a coup d’état, as happened in 2014 is just as bad. Why can’t we be left alone by the Americans, who determined to provoke war everywhere?
Laguerre
Do you not think that then President Viktor Yanukovych’s “sudden decision not to sign the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement, instead choosing closer ties to Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union” (quoted from Wiki) was the result of Russian coercion or bribery?
Crypto-aggressions in other words?
Not sure about “crypto – aggressions” (whatever they are). My understanding is that Yanukovych was between a rock and a hard place. With Russia the rock, he was being given economic advantages but would be disadvantaged if he refused with Russia being able to threaten the supply of cheap energy etc. With EU and USA the hard place, he received a worse economic deal and refusal would incur the wrath of the EU and the USA with the threat of sanctions etc. Half the population was for one solution, half the other. The ouster was the result of the EU / USA joining forces with the Ukraine Far Right to effect the Maidan which proved more powerful because they invested a lot more in it than did Russia, which then took rear guard action over Crimea and the anti-Maidan Donbass. The rest follows.
The bulk of the population wanted the EU deal. After decades of oppression under the Soviet Union there was little appetite for any further deals with Russia. The EU deal had been approved by the Ukrainian parliament but Yanukovych unilaterally ditched it in favour of a deal with Russia that had not even been discussed in parliament. He later blamed “pressure and blackmail” from Russia for this volte-face.
After his hurried departure it discovered that he’d syphoned off billions from the state and ‘acquired’ a large luxury mansion with private zoo and golf course.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezhyhirya_Residence
He was having a second home built in Crimea at the time.
“The bulk of the population wanted the EU deal.”
How do you know that, did you ask them?
“After his hurried departure it discovered that he’d syphoned off billions from the state and ‘acquired’ a large luxury mansion with private zoo and golf course.”
So unlike the current president and his Bugatti-buying wife
” The number of supporters of EU integration (in Ukraine) increased from 47 per cent in December 2013 to 57 per cent in December 2014, while the share of proponents of integration into the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan dropped from 26 per cent to 16 per cent in the same period. ”
Incidentally there was very little support for joining NATO at the time. This and support for joining the EU has increased dramatically since.
Thanks for your reply Laguerre. Can I ask if you have any evidence that the US spent large amounts of cash in order to provoke a coup d’etat in Ukraine in 2014?
Try for starters, Victoria Nuland’s admission that USA spent 5 billion dollars on Ukraine pre – Maidan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y0y-JUsPTU&t=446s, George Soros’s foundation’s 181 billion on Ukraine from 1990 – 2015, and at least 40 NGOs operating in Ukraine funded by the NED (read CIA). And these are only a few twigs of the American magic money tree.
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/04/16/u-s-nato-involvement-in-the-2014-ukraine-coup-and-maidan-massacre-the-soft-power-ecosystem-and-beyond/
Thanks for your reply Crispa. The US government spent around $5 billion over nearly 25 years largely to ensure that Ukraine’s elections were reasonably free and fair, though of course much of it disappeared due to graft. I doubt that Soros’s Open Society Foundation (which is not a part of the US government) ever had over $180 billion to spend, let alone on just one country.
The fact is that most of the young Euromaidan protesters saw the EU trade deal as an important step on the ladder to full EU membership, which is what they wanted as it would have enabled them to get entry-level jobs in Western Europe paying 5-10 times what they could have earned in Ukraine (plus plenty of agricultural subsidies for some of those that didn’t want to move). You don’t need shadowy NGOs to sell things like that to people. That’s why Yanukovych was overthrown.
” The US government spent around $5 billion over nearly 25 years largely to ensure that Ukraine’s elections were reasonably free and fair, ”
Quite possibly, but only because, to the US, a “free and fair election” is one where the candidate or party they support wins.
I propose that ‘parachuting’ candidates into a constituency be outlawed. All candidates must have lived in a constituency for at least ten years prior to an election and it must have been their main residence.
There you go. Let’s close down this stupid thread and move on. Kids are still being murdered in Gaza you know ?
I’m not sure I agree on a residency requirement. It would eliminate carpetbaggers but promote perpetual incumbency. This is a problem in the US, where the residency requirement is typically only a primary residence in the district for a short time.
Well well well.
When will the penny drop.
You can look for nuance all you like, your ‘fears’ are the likely destiny for that area and many others.
Don’t go crying to those who told you it would be so.
Today so many people have a doctorate in hindsight, if only’s and why could/ couldn’t you do it this way.
Luckily we hadmuch more practical active support from local Blackburn people/voters who wanted to have fresh start in Blackburn than from the comfy brigade here onhis blog.
But thanks anyway for joining me in helping out with some contributions,, mypension came in handy.
RE genocide in Gaza, Declassified UK has a very interesting report on US-operated commando/cargo flights to Israel out of RAF Akrotiri (and another base in the East) since October 7th, which the RAF (and UK Government) must know about.
Well, from this, it is not at all clear to me that ‘Muslim’ is a useful category, since there seems to be such huge variation of political opinion within the ‘Muslim’ community. Over 10 000 Muslims voted for Adnan Hussain who, let’s be realistic, is sympathetic towards the evil UK/USA/Saudi Arabia/Israel alliance. At the same time many more that 10 000 Muslims voted for other candidates. So it’s probably wrong to consider ‘Muslim’ as a block when looking for allies for the campaign against the genocide in Gaza.
In fact, the picture painted here of Adnan Hussain and his supporters, particularly the religious / clerical aspect of it, makes me wonder if Adnan Hussain might not, in fact, be an admirer of Israel, in the sense that he likes the idea of government based on the sort of religious bigotry that characterises Israel (with the minor difference that he might want to substitute the Zionist religion for the extreme end of the Muslim religion).
Think of the Reverend Ian Paisley – and the number of votes that he always got (usually way more than 10 000) – and we see that support for religious bigots who bring the ‘spiritual’ element into the campaign isn’t exclusively a Muslim thing.
Well said. Although is there much evidence that Hussain would tend to the extreme end of Islam, just because he has clerical support? I’d have thought that being supported by Jack Straw was more an indicator of extremism…just not Islamic extremism.
John Stuart Mill (1806 – 1873): “I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally conservative.”
Making decisions based on any kind of prejudice or bigotry is contemptible.
Judeo-Christian-Muslim faiths all proclaim their adherents are the chosen of God and possessed of special favour and wisdom.
This is emblematic of all faiths.
It’s just nonsense.
Thomas Paine (1737 – 1809):
“All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish,
appear to me no other than human inventions,
set up to terrify and enslave mankind,
and monopolize power and profit.”
As a former ambassador (I think) put it:
Since human beings/hominids have been around for >100,000 years, did God really believe that all was sufficiently hunky dory for the first >98,000 and that only then did everyone’s souls suddenly need saving, requiring human sacrifice…?
Whilst a great analysis! CM does not explain how Gorgeous George went from Hero to zero within months with yet another spontaneously created ‘party’ – much like UKIP – appearing and disappearing over the years, as will the invisible Reform at any future elections … because they are tools of the Crown and deepstate agit-prop operators working the supposed Left and Right. GG has form – but I have written plenty about that on the relevant election threads here.
That aside let me explore the substance a bit more in Blackburn. Again, I have stated it previously, but let’s do a bit more detail: it helps explain Rochdale and every such multi-generational unassimilated ‘Muslim community’ in Britain – the diaspora that was transported as ‘slave’ workers for the mills and industrial towns of the U.K. last century. With its usual suspect Owners.
Kept – as they have largely been – in their ignorant parochial ‘village back home’-connected existences, with their madras indoctrination from childhood, I have seen many a young Muslim child go from an ordinary kid to stern, repressed, not-even-teenager within months as they start attending the madras.
Don’t forget that’s how the Taliban were created in Pakistan for deployment to Afghanistan! Child soldiers – aided, trained, and funded for the purpose of Western Imperialism. Yeah, that’s us: we did that using Islam! WE are the real BAD guys.
We are the fascists and Nazis, our masters’ strings stretching through DC.
Where Starmer went as his first international visit – to pledge allegiance and kiss the Fascist overlords’ arse.
It is obvious – for anyone who can listen to that conversation CM linked to on the 5pillars site – that it is a set of arguments worked up at the FO and the academic institutions of Imperial Britain. Just because it is coming out of the mouths of brown peoples does not stop it being a racist supremacist ideology to keep the exploited, colonised, transported, slave workers in the U.K. ghettoised and their tribal village connections in the subcontinent alive with the Never Ending Great Gamers.
Witness the huge numbers of Mosques built and supported via the Saudis across the world – the great one at Crickets HQ, Lords! How many Muslims are there in St John’s Wood? Not many Pakistani diaspora at all. There’s probably a lot more Talmudic migrants though, in that part of London, with its Tavistock palace-of-the-neohumanity laboratory.
In Blackburn, in Rochdale, Glasgow, Midlands, and certain parts of London where it has been way too long tolerated – these communities have always been kept controllable. Their value lies in their tribal landscape ‘back home’ – an example being the regular child brides that are arranged into marriages by the village chiefs conveying the edicts to the relatives of villagers here in Britain!
Such influence doesn’t stop with that vile abuse of a British-born child; it extends to clear directives of who to vote for. The tribal chiefs get their cash, and they provide fodder and cover for the imperialism that didn’t end with 1947.
So when it comes to the world’s Islamic populations – having it simplistically divided into supposedly two clear-cut sects – Sunni/Shia is a concoction.
There are many sects.
It was part of the plan at its fake ‘Independence’ in creating such a split in the subcontinent; it was the poisoned chalice.
There should not have been a single India, and there certainly should not have been an India/Pakistan. That subcontinent was always made up of distinct regions/states with their own history and LANGUAGES!
The idea of India only existed as a fevered imagination of ‘The British Empire’ – much as the surname ‘Patel’ didn’t exist before the influx of the EIC … it was aided and abetted by the highly indoctrinated and Western-educated leaderships of both ‘nations’, which led to millions of deaths and partition.
Back to Islam: it was the Yankee Seven Sisters Black Gold Oligarchs and the post-WW1 Sykes–Picot world that led to the post-WW2 establishment of the desert slave traders – the Saudis getting elevated. That alone with a fundamentalist faction of Sunnis, the Wahhabists, that never had any influence previously, has always been the new hammer to control Islam across the whole world. Using the massive amount of Oil $s. To perpetuate the Collective Western dream and never-ending effort to Own the Whole World.
Some of the emirates are Shia: they align with the Saudi Sunnis and their Black Gold Ming-the-Mercilesses of the Ziofascist FUKUS/Nato/EU against their own regional peoples of the MENA, against their Shia Persian greater neighbours, and living with ziofascists in the Levant as the controlling lynchpin between EurAsia, Africa and Europe – collaborating with that White Imperial Apartheid Entity Colony (also created less than a century ago)!
While the Muslims of many such vassal states are easily controlled as their playboy oil-families are, some are not so easily deceived any more. Malaysia being the best example.
As soon as the ‘believers’ stop believing and repeating the lies of their particular religion faction, they align with the multipolar, and stop being a slave of the unipolar.
That is what is needed for the British Muslim to break free too.
Israel is very involved in Nato; vide https://consortiumnews.com/2024/07/20/natos-obscured-relationship-with-israel/. It may be worthwhile pointing this out to supporters of Palestine who also support Nato interventions.