By Ray Goodspeed (Leyton and Wanstead Labour Party member)
It was with shock and anger that local Labour members discovered last week that Labour had dumped Faiza Shaheen at the last minute as the candidate in Chingford and Woodford Green. It means that the Labour vote will be split between Faiza, standing as an independent, and the ‘official’ Labour candidate who was parachuted in to replace her. It could also lead to this seat, which was easily winnable, being held by Ian Duncan Smith for the Tories.
Duncan Smith, we should recall, is a former Tory leader and was the architect of Universal Credit. He single-handedly did more to bring trauma to already economically-stressed households than any other single Tory minister, and he has probably dragged more children into poverty than anyone else.
Over the last week, Labour members in Chingford and Woodford Green, in Waltham Forest, and in East London more widely, have been reeling from the sudden blocking of Faiza as the Labour candidate. This was late on May 29, just days before nominations close. She found out by texts from the press before she was even informed by email, while she was out canvassing with her very young baby, alongside a crowd of enthusiastic supporters . With only a couple of hours’ notice, she was summoned to appear, via Zoom, before a panel of three members of Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) as they went through over a dozen likes, tweets and social media posts, some dating back more than ten years.
Audio footage from this interview was subsequently acquired by Channel 4 news (see here). It features Faiza struggling to concentrate, while her baby was crying in her lap as her husband was still at work and she could not arrange child care. One of the three NEC members did not even have the courtesy to turn on his camera, as he was “out and about”. Maybe the third panel member was so busy because two of the three who interviewed Faiza were rewarded with nice safe seats, imposed on local members elsewhere in the country.
The response to all this has been real shock and hurt among many of her supporters in the community. At only a few hours’ notice, local mothers, meeting at school gates, organised a demonstration in support of her which attracted at least 600 people, passionately calling out for Faiza to represent them. However, the following Tuesday, the NEC rubber-stamped the parachuted-in candidate, alongside many others around the country.
Factional obsession
Faiza’s decision to stand as an independent, in a what was knife-edge marginal, clearly carries the risk that the Tories could retain the seat, but should that happen, the fault would lie clearly with the Labour leadership, who through their factional obsession have turned an almost certain Labour gain, with an excellent candidate, into a three-way fight.
Shaheen was first selected in 2018 and fought an inspirational campaign, week in, week out, culminating in the General Election in 2019 involving hundreds of volunteers. Against the national trend, her campaign achieved a swing to Labour, and halved Duncan Smith’s majority to 1,262 votes. Keir Starmer visited Chingford more than once to work in the election and was full of praise for the “fantastic” candidate.
Faiza was selected by party members again in 2022 and has been door-knocking and working with the community every week since then. Long before the election was announced, her face was to be seen on posters in many windows in the seat. Labour party members from all around volunteered to work for her, energised by her lively campaign, and her charming and charismatic style. She is a well-known, hard-working local figure and was widely assumed to have a nailed-on chance of becoming the next MP.
Yet none of that mattered to the Labour leadership and the petty bureaucrats they employ. For them, her selection was a ‘mistake’. She was widely spoken about as one of the few “left” candidates that had somehow beaten the system, and they never forgave themselves for letting her slip through the net. They tried several times before to pin something on her, in what amounted to serial harassment, but had failed.
The irony was that Faiza is certainly not some far-left, socialist revolutionary. Her campaign material, especially since 2022, focused heavily on her local community links in the constituency, where she was born and educated and where she lives. She also highlighted her poor, working-class, Asian background and her academic achievements. She is a professor at the London School of Economics (LSE), and a specialist in the study of inequality.
Not disloyal
She did not make controversial or rebellious statements and was not disloyal to the Starmer leadership, though she has spoken out on Gaza. She stressed unity and an anti-Tory message and did not push independent left-wing socialist policies. None of this saved her from the factional spite of the leadership clique, for whom the mere suspicion of being a future troublemaker is damning enough.
Step forward our old friends in the Jewish Labour Movement, which, despite its name, is a society dedicated to promoting the centrality of the Israeli state to Jewish life, thus excluding Jews who do not share that view. They put in a well-timed complaint regarding Faiza liking a tweet which included a comedy sketch from a Jewish US comedian, John Stewart, satirising the ferocious response from pro-Israeli lobby organisations to anybody daring to criticise Israel. This alleged “antisemitic trope” is, of course an irrefutable political fact!
Then the Labour Party scurried round, looking for 10-year-old examples of stuff from her social media, including tweets supporting a friend in the Green Party from before she joined the Labour Party. Scandalously, the offending items also included examples of Faiza complaining about Islamophobia inside the Labour Party!
The double standards when compared to the furore around antisemitism that went on for years is just breathtaking. So Labour MPs can spend their lives in TV studios attacking their own party and participate in an anti-Labour demonstration in Parliament square regarding antisemitism, but Faiza was not allowed to discuss problems of Islamophobia that she has personally experienced!
Faced with the tweet about the Israel lobby, Faiza apologised when she had, in fact, done nothing wrong! But it did her no good. She has admitted feeling foolish, as all her efforts to be loyal to the party have been thrown back in her face. Many of these social media posts pre-date her selection – twice – as candidate, but have been stored up to be used at the eleventh hour to allow a favoured replacement, Shama Tatler, to be slotted in by the NEC. She is a councillor in Brent, on the other side of London.
Left of centre policies
Even now, when she is free of the Labour machine, Faiza’s policies, as put forward in her declaration of her candidature, could fit neatly into any left-of-centre party. She says the area needs:
“An MP that understands people’s struggles to make ends meet amid the rising cost of living. An MP that fights for our underfunded local services, for investment in the NHS, supports our local businesses, and is a champion of our town centres.
“An MP that speaks out against permitting overdevelopment without the infrastructure to support it. That cares for our environment, campaigns for clean air, and against sewage dumps in our rivers…
“I want to use what I have learned, my economic knowledge and my work to eradicate inequality, to argue for a better deal for local people who have suffered so much during years of austerity.”
You have to wonder what kind of Labour Party cannot even tolerate a candidate with such a programme to represent it in Parliament, but that is where we appear to be!
Such is her support that the local Labour movement in this part of East London is facing a serious crisis, as many activists, including respected leading figures, have either resigned to support Faiza or intend to campaign for her and, by so doing, risk expulsion. It is thought many others may follow. Some members for several decades, by no means all Corbynistas, have resigned from their positions in the party in disgust at the way she has been treated. Many more will sit at home in silent protest and do no campaigning at all.
Disgraceful circumstances
Left Horizons has always been clear. We support the election of a Labour government with a huge majority, and call for a Labour vote. But we fully understand, in disgraceful circumstances such as these, why many Labour voters, members and activists will see Faiza Shaheen as the legitimate Labour candidate and campaign and vote for her.
Throughout the country, in the general election as a whole, it is still likely that working people will vote Labour in their millions and that the party will win a large majority. It is possible that the Tory Party, the historic and traditional party of the ruling class may receive its lowest percentage vote since the 19th century.
The next Labour government, in spite of all its obsession with promising next to nothing, will be greeted by most working people with enormous expectations, not necessarily for this or that specific policy, but for a general improvement in their living standards, their working conditions, housing and in the quality of public services and infrastructure. People will continue to press for urgent action to counter climate change and keep up the pressure to end the suffering of the Palestinians.
The Starmer clique and the right wing seem to be in complete control, in their pomp and arrogance and their contempt for the rights of their members. But these administrative fixes are a sign of their ideological weakness. Support for them is very weak and based mainly on a passionate desire, among party members and in the wider electorate, to get rid of one of the most vicious, corrupt and incompetent governments ever at all costs.
The Starmer government will quickly be found wanting, with barely a honeymoon period, if it fails to deliver. It will become the focus for popular protest, and especially trade union action as working people are forced into defending their living conditions and demanding an end to so many long years of austerity, inequality and injustice.
[Feature photo: Ray Goodspeed]
