A longer version of this article is published in Voice of the Turtle
A spectre haunts the British general election on 5 May 2005 the spectre of the Muslim vote. From election pundits and politicians to mosque regulars, there is widespread consensus that Tony Blairs New Labour will face a backlash on election day from its traditionally most loyal constituency.
The notion that a Muslim vote exists is itself controversial voting behaviour is based on an array of factors, and Britains 1.1 million Muslim voters will support many different parties on a variety of issues. But a media hungry for electoral shock and awe, and the posturing of Muslim interest groups themselves, add to concern from the major political parties Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat that the (real or imagined) Muslim vote could make or break their electoral fortunes.
Both history and geography suggest that they could be right. Throughout the post-1945 era, Britains Muslims have voted unwaveringly for Labour; as many as 86% in 1997. But the heavy concentration of Muslim communities in Englands south-east (mainly greater London) and a handful of deprived areas in its north and midlands has also meant that in many constituencies, Muslims have been decisive in sending a number of Labour members of parliament (MPs) to Westminster.
Muslims comprise more than 10% of the local population in approximately forty constituencies, and are more than 20% in nine of these. In three key seats, the figures are spectacular: Bradford West (38%), Birmingham Sparkbrook and Small Heath (40%), and Bethnal Green & Bow (39%).
The Iraq war, Guantánamo and the new anti-terror laws, however, have changed their outlook. For the first time large numbers of Muslims have become radicalised through their active involvement in the anti-war movement.
If enough Muslim voters break with Labour on polling day, Labour safe seats will become marginals, and marginals will almost certainly yield a cluster of Portillo moments across the country. Sensing electoral blood, the Liberal Democrats (as well as Respect, a new anti-war political party led by George Galloway and largely staffed by newly-politicised young Muslims) are targeting the disaffected Muslim vote.
The war for Muslim minds
Such appeals to Muslim voters are only the latest phase of a two-year campaign of political enticement by the three main parties to retain or capture Muslim votes.
Operation Muslim Vote has been a three-stage effort. The first was a classic co-optation manoeuvre involving the creation of Muslim forums within each party. In July 2003, Stephen Timms, Labour MP for East Ham 30% of whose residents are Muslim inaugurated the independent Muslims for Labour group (now Muslim Friends of Labour). In 2004, the Conservatives followed with a Muslim forum within their ethnic minority sub-group, which Dominic Grieve called a way to permit the Muslim community to voice its propositions to the party.
By January 2005, the Lib Dems had caught the bug with a Muslim forum within the Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats (EMLD) group. To his credit, EMLDs chair Fiyaz Mughal was sceptical:
Muslims do not want to be isolated or separated... it is a mistake to start labelling and creating tokenistic little groups and it creates disharmony. Other communities would have to have one as well. The fundamental issue that all minority communities have in common before all others is that of equality.
The second stage has been to create a strong but largely symbolic Muslim face for each party. The 2005 election will see a record number of Muslim candidates being paraded by the three main parties. The Lib Dems top the field with twenty-two candidates, compared to ten in 2001; Labour has selected eight Muslim candidates alongside incumbents Mohammed Sarwar and Khalid Mahmood; the Conservatives are fielding fifteen candidates, three times the number in 2001.
But this will not guarantee many more Muslim faces in the House of Commons. The parties admit that very few of these candidates stand any chance of becoming MPs. Only Labour, moreover, has actually selected candidates for seats it already holds. Hanif Adeel, joint national coordinator of Muslim Friends of Labour, sees this as the Labour Partys commitment to representing Muslims at the heart of government and placing them within the political decision-making policy.
Dominic Grieve, meanwhile, declares that the Tories are definitely not engaging in tokenism:
It is not in the tradition of our party to be elected in a seat we hold without having proved ones strength, and as most candidates present themselves for the first time it would have been surprising that they were chosen for seats that we were sure to win.
The perspective of Salma Yaqoob, prominent anti-war activist and Respects co-founding member and candidate in Birmingham Sparkbrook, is very different:
The accusations of identity politics and political opportunism thrown at Respect by our political opponents are hypocritical. We may be a new party but we are old enough to see through their own cynical games of targeting Muslim voters with phoney achievements and false promises.
The third and most controversial stage of Operation Muslim Vote is the development of a very deliberate community-oriented rhetoric designed to identify so-called Muslim values with each partys programme for power. Almost every day, the party machines place media stories associating the Lib Dems with opposition to war, Labour with faith schools and the Tories with traditional family values. Then theres the specially designed election literature for Muslim letter-boxes, laden with positive references to Iraq, Palestine, or Bangladesh.
The gruesome logic of this communal politics is seen in the bitter electoral confrontation between Blair loyalist Oona King and Respects anti-war champion, George Galloway, in Bethnal Green & Bow, east London. The constituency, where 39% of voters are Muslim, has twice elected King as its Labour MP; she had a 10,000 majority in 2001. The contest has been marked by accusations of racism and anti-semitism (Oona King is of mixed black-Jewish parentage), and the fallout has inflamed community relations.
Muslims look forward
The key failure of Operation Muslim Vote is that it views Muslims as a homogenous bloc, concerned only with the middle east and religious issues. Muslims themselves are aware of how simplistic this is. But the experience of the 2005 election campaign suggests that they are in for the long haul; they will need to draw on the history of other processes of minority empowerment in France and the United States as well as Britain to avoid the many traps and divisive manoeuvres they will face in the coming period.
Whatever the result on 5 May 2005, one thing is certain: many Muslims in Britain are no longer a captive audience willing merely to put a cross next to the Labour candidate once every five years.
