London election is not just about race
The recent issue of Red Pepper contains an editorial, written by Oscar Reyes, about the upcoming mayoral elections in London. Reyes notes that Boris Johnson, the Tory challenger for the position against Labour’s Ken Livingstone, has hired the Australian strategist Lynton Crosby, who is known for running divisive [“dog whistle”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics) campaigns for the “Liberals” in his home country, winning them several elections, and trying the same for the Tories in the UK in 2005, when they lost handily. Johnson has also been much assisted by the London Evening Standard, which has run one front-page after another about what they presume readers will think his nasty friends, which last week were the Muslim Brotherhood and today the Sikh Federation UK.
In recent weeks we have seen Boris Johnson try to wriggle out of answering for his flirtations with racism and bigotry. He easily disposed of the complaints about his references to “piccaninnies” (black children) by saying he was taken out of context, but his record as editor of the Spectator is much less easy to bat aside, since his displays of prejudice appeared at least twice and was displayed in his own writing and in his choice of material, in response to the July 2005 bombings and the autumn 2005 riots in Europe. His recent attempts to curry favour with our community by putting on a robe and visiting a mosque, by boasting about his Turkish ancestry and by telling the world that Islam is a religion of peace (like George W Bush before him) should fool nobody. When he was tested, he proved to be a bigot. Now that he is tested again, he proves to be a dishonest bigot at that.
The message has gone out wide and clear that even if you don’t vote for Livingstone as a first place, you should put him second. Oscar Reyes suggests voting Green first, and for Livingstone second; a number of Muslim sites just say “vote for Ken to keep out Boris” (see Ummah Pulse ([1], [2]) for example). MPACUK put a video up on their website of some of their activists being hassled by Bareilawis while handing out pro-Livingstone flyers during a Mawlid march. They claimed the march was non-political, but in fact George Galloway was among the speakers at the end of the march. While I support their right to hand out flyers during a march (it is not like they were doing it in the middle of the Friday prayer and the march was only as non-political as the speakers), I disagree with their “vote Ken because of Boris” stance. Livingstone is not the only candidate who can keep Boris Johnson out of the mayoral office.
There are good reasons why people are dissatisfied with Livingstone, and there is another candidate – Brian Paddick – who opposes his most offensive policies, such as the western extension to the Congestion Charge, the proposal to levy huge tolls on people driving big cars into the central zone, and the Low Emission Zone. There is someone to vote for who opposes Livingstone’s confiscatory tax raising schemes and is not a bigot. Paddick also opposed the official stance of the police killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, in which Livingstone supported the police (who got away with yet another killing of an innocent person, which they have a history of doing and getting away with it), and left his job because of this.
As Muslims we may not like Paddick’s lifestyle or his drugs policy (which established a tolerance zone for drugs in Brixton, of all places), but the fact remains that a discourse has gone out that we should put aside whatever reservations we have about Livingstone just to keep out Boris Johnson – and nobody takes account of what those reservations are, and how justified they might be. This election is not just about race, or about what’s good for the Muslims or any other group. Remember when the Muslims in the USA supported Bush in 2000, because they thought he would deliver Palestine for them (and considered the Democrats to be the Jews’ and Blacks’ party)? This election is about what’s good for everybody, and for people to go out of business because they cannot afford to replace their old vehicles to accommodate the Low Emission Zone cannot be good for anyone. As I have said before, transport seems to make up a huge chunk of the mayor’s responsibilities, and we cannot discuss who to vote for based on personalities without mentioning this critical factor and without entertaining the very real complaints about the incumbent’s record on that issue.
