The General Election in Britain

Who is going to pull the British Asian vote?

Britain could be having a General Election at anytime within the next eight months. The election campaign machinery of all political parties are being oiled and greased, sometimes very quietly as if the competition may  not find out! It is a matter of time when Gordon Brown will announce the election but hwen he does, will the British Asians be ready?

This commentary is not so much about what the state of the parties is in a wider national political discussion. It is more about the positions that the British Asians may be adopting and how they are going to be making their choices. What are the reasons for supporting any of the three political parties assuming that the Asians are not going to vote for smaller parties?

This is not going to be easy because the drivers for the Asian vote have been changing and the factors which will determine their ultimate choice are well worth exploring. The rationale for voting according to the values of the old socio-economic groupings may not be totally relevant today. It is likely that structural foundations of the British Asian societies may have shifted somewhat and the power of the ‘old order’ which was driven by socio-economic factors may have been disintegrating. It is not often realised that many early voting decisions were perhaps even motivated by what the British Asian groups had been doing in their home countries and the agendas that they had imported had virtually very little to do with British politics. A political-historical analysis of British Asian voting patterns should find some interesting outcomes.

There may be other ‘pulls’ which may be described in relation to what might be called the ‘Hornby factor’, the miniature railway infrastructure which covers the floors in many homes even today with different engines pulling trains into various directions and sometimes, an occasional train also falls off the table. The railway operators in the Hornby political power play are fragmented, often differentiated by narrow divisions and mostly independent drivers who do what they consider to be the best. However, the main parties also have powerful bases and the British Asian political choices are determined by where they live and how a very active underclass of politicians may have established very firm roots. The term ‘underclass’ is at best risky and at worst may be misleading but the political power that many British Asian groups enjoy is sometimes determined by jobs and housing; who they work for and where they live. These influences may be tampered by the power of the unions in the workplace or by success of the British Asian classes in the professions and business. One of the interesting outcomes relates to British Asian success in business; in the early days of migration, many family votes were tied to the values of the Labour party and these families probably gave a whole generation of support to Labour. However, as these groups have prospered and their children have acquired more influence over their parents, they may not be safe Labour voters any longer. The success of the retail trading alone has also meant that many British Asians are moving out of the inner city and finding homes in the prosperous suburbs of towns and cities such a Slough, Coventry, Birmingham and the boroughs of London. The Hornby train effect is still relevant to some voters. They have moved into prosperous areas but their values are still open to influence, almost as if any Hornby train engine will have sufficient power to pull them into different political journeys. However, the more informed British Asian who is now concerned with tax, inheritance and property valuations may see the Conservatives as the party of business people. Many notable people have changed their allegiances to party politics. Of course, there are many other factors which will impact on voting patterns.

The aftermath of the banning of ‘Behzti’, the Punjabi play in Birmingham in December 2004 was a serious issue for politics as it was so close to the last General Election. Writing on BBC Online, Dominic Casiani said “If you had to write a theatrical pitch for what Birmingham has just witnessed over the play Behzti, you could do it in seven words: Play offends community, community protests, play cancelled. But that simple three act performance conceals a far more complex drama about how we all share the same space in a pluralistic society. Can we really say what we want? Should we say what we want?”[1] It was felt at the time that the impact of Sikh vote could have influenced the outcomes in at least seven parliamentary seats. However there is no evidence in the public domain to sustain or refute this assertion. The impact of the Iraq War and the continuation of the war in Afghanistan may affect the vote again but there is very little informed analysis of what the political parties may be doing to retain Muslim confidence if the two wars are still a cause for major concern.

It must be remembered that with a few exceptions, general elections in East Africa did not create much excitement amongst the Asians, the large majority of which were not entitled to vote as they were not African citizens. It is hoped that that strong and powerful ‘Hornby train engines’ will emerge at the right time to make sure that British Asians use their vote, whatever their political choices …..

 

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[1] BBC News at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4113287.stm