Just a quick update on Tower Hamlets’ Weavers ward by-election which will be held on May 3 and which comes following the resignation, for personal reasons, of Labour’s Anna Lynch.
The candidates so far are:
John Pierce – Labour
Caroline Kerswell – Conservative
Azizur Rahman Khan – Liberal Democrat
Everyone expects this to be a straight fight between Labour and Respect, but the Lib Dems could be the dark horses. Until 2010, it was a strong Lib Dem ward in which Abdul Matin (or Motin Miah, as he was also known) exercised some powerful Bangladeshi village voting networks. The party’s candidate this time around is Khan, who was formerly a councillor in Bethnal Green North. If Matin, who is currently in Bangladesh, can get his former supporters out then Khan may stand a chance of slipping through the middle.
Interestingly, Lutfur’s camp were keen for the Lib Dems not to stand: they argued that everyone wants Labour to lose. They also know that if John Pierce fails to win, then Labour will lose their overall majority in the council chamber and that will affect the make-up of various committees.
The turnout was 62 per cent in 2010 and the results from that election are below:
| Name of Candidate | Description (if any) | Votes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| AHMED, Akhtar Imran | The Conservative Party | 667 | |
| AHMED, Gias Uddin | The Conservative Party | 640 | |
| AHMED, Kabir | The Labour Party | 2,082 |  |
| BAKER, Philip | Liberal Democrat | 1,383 | |
| GUTTMANN, Catherine Elizabeth | Green Party | 628 | |
| HANCOCKS, Ben | Green Party | 496 | |
| HAQUE, Fazlul | Respect | 892 | |
| HASSAN, Abdi Omar | The Conservative Party | 477 | |
| HOVEMAN, Rob | Respect | 728 | |
| JACKSON, Daniel | Green Party | 516 | |
| KHAN, Yousuf | Respect | 1,009 | |
| LYNCH, Anna Siobhan | The Labour Party | 1,895 | |
| MIAH, Sajjad | Liberal Democrat | 1,179 | |
| MUKIT, Abdul Chunu | The Labour Party | 1,532 | |
| O`FLAHERTY, Tim | Liberal Democrat | 1,099 |
Just for completeness Green Party selected Alan Duffell to stand for them. Alan was our Mayor candidate in 2010.
Congratulations to John on the Labour candidacy. He’s a great campaigner, with successes like helping save the Rushmead One Stop Shop, and on the successful national campaign to stop energy companies ripping off people who use key meters.
As a Weavers resident I’d be proud to have him represent us and fight our corner.
We’ll all have our opinions about Abjol. Interestingly, the Tory seems to be a bit of a funny one too. Her profile Ted links to goes on about how she’s some kind of lawyer for banks, from what I can make out of the mysterious Three Letter Acronyms – nothing about Tower Hamlets, and she has some rather unsavoury followers: one woman has a Hitler smiley face icon, a blog about ‘slut single mums’ being ‘degenerate’ and seems to be a BNP member. Scary!
Really we need someone who can represent everyone in the ward, and John would be great at that.
I have never been called a funny one before. I did not authorise this link, or any links from others. I live in TH and have always been a compassionate conservative supporting local people.
Lol “compassionate conservative”
Pull the other one
I Would have far preferred George Morgan meh, John will be really good though. Oh and id stay away from the : ‘really we need someone who can represent everyone in the ward’ which is the politically correct way to say John is concerned with both White and Bengali residents and not simply the latter like Respect/Independents. I don’t think a Phil Woolas light type campaign will win it for Labour here. We ought to be telling people what we stand for rather than telling people who we aren’t. Additionally, for a party that’s meant to be trying to move away from Bengali village politics paying a visit to the Bengali ‘big men’ (funny how it’s always men isn’t it) ‘community leaders’ etc is kinda what we’ve been doing today. Meh. Good luck John, though in a cute poll I think Alan Duffel might give him a run for his money!
omg … where do I begin…
Well what a surprise. Not. Lutfur Rahman will not be fielding a candidate in weavers. Because well Abjol is his candidate. The deal was done, as I commented a while, when grant to the third sector organisation Abjol works was threatened to be withdrawn by Lutfur Rahman forcing Abjol not to stand in Spitafields. With the weavers seat becoming available – Lutfur must now absolutely be delighted that Abjol doesn’t have to wait too long.
So, dear readers of Ted’s blog, these guys are all in it together Lutfur, Abjol and the rest of these IFE -East London Mosque leeches.
Victory is assured for Labour if the silent majority in Weavers are made aware of what Abjol Miah actually stands for… So all that John needs to do to win is for Abjol to campaign or – better still – tell them were they can still watch “Britain’s Islamic Republic” which contains a most revealing interview with Abjol Miah that brilliantly exhibits his medieval opinions and ambitions.
Oh and this is quite good too…
“On the selection panel…we were continually being told that “strong” candidates were needed in the most winnable wards. This was a thinly veiled code for selecting Bengali men with a standing in the local area. Of course we recognised that after years of Labour clientalism it was important for the preponderance of candidates in these wards to be ethnic Bengalis. But we also argued that there needed to be a balance across the spread of candidates that reflected all the different elements in Respect’s coalition. In order to have a unanimous recommendation from the selection panel we in fact agreed to allow three male Bengali candidates in some wards (all wards had three seats), at the urging of people such as Azmal Hussain and Abjol Miah. Against considerable opposition we did, however, argue that a Bengali woman should stand in Whitechapel, one of our strongest wards, as should John Rees… Despite all of the compromises we made, when the agreed list was put to a members’ meeting Abjol strongly objected to John’s inclusion in Whitechapel, and although we won the vote we decided to make a tactical retreat from what had been a unanimously agreed position of the selection panel.”
Chris Harman, “The crisis in Respect”, International Socialism (Issue 117)