Learning from Labour's mistake - thoughts on anti-Muslim sentiment and an enquiry for the Conservative Party

First, if you want to get an understanding of antisemitism in the Labour Party read this long piece from Sara Gibbs, a Jewish socialist:

One of the most devastating aspects of Labour’s antisemitism crisis has been seeing the sheer volume of people I like, respect, even consider friends, denying or minimising this issue which has caused me so much personal devastation. Tweet after tweet from moderates and pals, suggestions that people who don’t hold their nose and vote for Labour are “idiots” or “as bad as Tories” or “responsible for homelessness”. I will speak more about this at the end of the article, if you get that far. Knowing what I know about Labour and antisemitism and seeing it so callously disregarded by people I hugely respect has been one of the most tiring and demoralising things I’ve ever been through.

One caveat is that I don't recognise Sara's description of the Conservative Party (much of it is a crude caricature) however, when Sara talks about not wanting to throw her Muslim friends under the bus, us Conservatives should pay heed. Just because nine out of ten Muslims aren't going to vote Conservative doesn't mean we can indulge those too frequent tropes about Muslims all being terrorists or invaders and how they are going to breed white people into minority status if not actual extinction.

I do not consider that the Conservative Party is institutionally anti-Muslim but I can see how we could become so given the persistence of support for the lines peddled by people like Katie Hopkins and David Vance among a minority of our members. After all, Corbyn had been a backbench MP for 30 years before, in an act of derangement, the Labour Party elected him leader. It is entirely possible that a similar disaster could befall the Conservative Party if we don't maintain a robust attitude to racism (and especially anti-Muslim racism).

I live in a city with one of Britain's biggest Muslim communities - over 100,000 live in Bradford these days. And this community isn't even a community but rather a pot-pourri of different communities. We have Muslims who adhere to an austere version of Islam with strict dress codes and veiled women and Muslim women who wear western clothes and don't cover their hair. There are shia and ahmadi mixed in with the myriad versions of sunni Islam. If you take a brief peek into Muslim twitter or facebook you'll see robust arguments about attitudes to women, Saudi-promoted salafism and a host of other debates filled with words us non-Muslims can only guess at. Plus cricket, football and cars, of course.

I can tell you of my good (or maybe not so good) Muslim friend whose description of veiled women makes Boris Johnson's letterbox seem mild. And how I find myself gently and kindly pointing out casual antisemitism - from the political activist and armed forces veteran who told me the jews control the media to a businessman I know and love who described how the seller in a property deal "jewed" him.

Then there's the racism towards Muslims - "Asians". Always described as 'them' and where every bad thing in the city - the declining city centre, flat house prices, crime, bad driving, bins not being emptied, litter - is laid at the "Asians" doorstep. It's not that some within these communities aren't a problem but rather that, in the manner of all racism, the faults of a few are extended to the whole community. The hard-working young solicitor who has a nice BMW is seen as a problem because other young Asians (and non-Asians if we're honest) with similar cars drive like idiots round our streets. And the Asian businessman building a big new house in Heaton is, of course, a drug dealer rather than someone running a chain of takeaway pizza shops.

Then there's the terrorism thing. I remember holding a big rally with Keighley's Muslim community when I stood for Parliament in 2001. These rallies are quite difficult to control (especially when someone else is organising it for you and you don't speak Urdu let alone Mirpuri dialect Punjabi) and at mine a young man was called up by the master of ceremonies, only to be rapidly shut down and bundled away from the microphone as my host muttered about 'mujahadeen' and 'nutters'. I gathered later that he was launching into an impassioned speech backing a Kashmiri terrorist group banned in the UK. It's not that there's widespread support for terrorism within Muslim communities but rather that there's sympathy for the causes (Palestine, Kashmir, Afghanistan) that those terrorists exploit.

In addition many Muslims - with a modicum of justification - consider that their belief is unjustly singled out for criticism and this leads to a very defensive response to problems such as street grooming or a growing drugs culture. I'm pretty sure these things are haram but too often representatives of Muslim communities react prickily with comments such as "they're not all Muslims" or "most rapists (or drug dealers) are white, y'know". Very few Muslims are rapists, drug dealers or terrorists but, too often, concerns about county lines, street grooming of young girls or Islamist extremism get a response designed to deflect and an assumption that the concerns are directed at the whole community.

None of this, however, excuses the 'othering' of Muslims or the sort of "all Muslims are liars" or "London has fallen" tropes that are popular with racists like Tommy Robinson. Nor should we tolerate those who claim that street grooming, crime and terrorism are in some way required of believing Muslims. It is in this context that the Conservative Party needs to frame its promised enquiry into racism and prejudice - it's less that there's a need to seek out bad apples but rather that we need some clarity as to what will not be tolerated and how the Party will respond to breaches of this guidance. I hope this is what we will get and that it will strengthen our resolve to be a One Nation political party. I remember when John Taylor was selected as Conservative candidate in Cheltenham - he lost (to a decidedly racist Lib Dem campaign) but worse he faced horrendous racism from within the party. That we now have a front bench including people from Muslim, Hindu and African heritage shows how far the Conservative Party has come - we still have a long way to go and any enquiry must be honest enough to take us further on that journey.

More than anything, though, we should learn from what we've seen in the Labour Party and resolve not to try and obfuscate, deflect, ignore and cover up racism without our ranks. If we do it won't end well.


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