Advertisement
Subscribe
X

Connect with us

Labour Belaboured

A TV documentary accuses Labour MP Keith Vaz of racist remarks and coercion, embarrassing his party high command

Outlook News Desk

Updated on:

LEICESTER has a distinct Indian flavour about it. The British Rail’s signboards in Gujarati as you step off the train, the women in saris, the smell of Indian pickles and spices in the open air marts and Lata-Rafi songs over local radio—all testify to this. No surprise then that it was Leicester which elected the first British Asian to the House of Commons. But now, as Leicester East’s Labour MP and front bencher Keith Vaz finds himself fighting a rear-guard battle for his political survival, yet another dimension of Leicester has come to the fore—its politics. 

Is the local Leicester politics, dominated by British Asians, throwing the perceived norms of propriety in British politics to the wind? Or is it, as a Channel Four television documentary contends, a mere test case in which the opposition Labour Party’s claims to evolve new, cleaner politics come out hollow?

The television programme accused Vaz of:

  •  Trying to coerce a Labour councillor into supporting his mother’s candidature for local elections with the threat that if such support was not forthcoming, he would "make sure" that the councillor never again got a position in the Labour Party or the City Council.
  •  Preventing local housing authorities from evacuating a family for non-payment of rent by offering a "personal assurance" that the rent would be paid on time. Vaz, as the allegation goes, contended that if Cabinet members could accept his personal assurances, why shouldn’t a housing officer? The housing officer gave in to Vaz’s request. Neither the tenant, nor Vaz, paid up the rent.
  •  Writing to an official of the City Council questioning his decision to enquire into the finances of the Council-funded Belgrave Residents Association and trying to scuttle another enquiry in which the East Leicester Labour Party unit’s chief was being investigated.
  •  Saying (in a secretly recorded conversation) that he had a "long-term plan" to turn a new housing estate into an Asian colony and that a candidate for deputy leadership of the Council should be opposed for, among other things, his being white. Vaz is quoted as saying: "We didn’t get a choice as to who the hell is going to take over. Why should we have a white person?"
  •  Organising an important Labour meeting on a Friday in the month of Ramzan so that a section of the Labour Party could not turn up for the meeting.

    In the programme itself, Vaz is defended by a local Labour leader. But the MP and other senior Labour leaders declined interviews for the programme. Even after the telecast, Vaz was not available for comment. However, Leicester region’s Labour spokesman Philip Dilks told Outlook that Vaz had filed a writ against The Guardian and The Sun for having reported the Channel Four allegations. But then, why has Vaz not slapped a case against Channel Four, which purveyed the allegations in the first instance? Dilks has no answer to this, though sources in Channel Four suggest that were the programme to be made a subject of litigation, they could come out with still more damaging allegations. But, as for the programme, Dilks says: "It promised quite a lot but didn’t reveal anything that the Labour Party did not know about."

    • Advertisement

    But why of all the people did Channel Four chose a British Asian MP’s conduct for its investigative weekly pro-gramme and, after a lot advance publicity, deliver a programme that failed to directly link Vaz with financial irregularities? The programme, a Channel Four spokesperson told Outlook, sought to examine not the conduct of an MP per se but Labour leader Tony Blair’s claims to lead a "new Labour", a "Labour responsive to the local community". Since Vaz happens to be an important member of Blair’s team and a key spokesperson on local government affairs, they decided to zero in on Leicester.

    Though the programme seems to have built up a substantial case suggesting political impropriety in the functioning of the Labour Party in Leicester, it is hardly the subject of spirited discussion. Vaz has been called upon to answer to the charge that he opposed a candidate on the grounds of his being white. Tory Party chairman Brian Mawhinney has written to Blair, urging him to sack Vaz if it is proved he had made the "openly racist" remarks. Perhaps, therein lies the catch. Racism at the public level is taboo, though both the Tories and Labour all too often take oblique digs at each other on this issue. Vaz will have quite a lot to explain, both to his party leadership and his constituents on this count.

    Advertisement

    Published At:

    Tags

    US