Why we must implement Lord Alderdice report

by Tahir Maher on 7 March, 2018

Before I discuss this report I want to put it into perspective:

-An article in the Guardian, some time ago now, stated that there were 159 seats where the winning margin in 2015 general election was lower than the number of Muslims in the constituency;
-Of Sikhs and Muslims, over 70% of them vote Labour;
-Newspapers reported in the elections following the Iraq war over 20% of the voters originally from Pakistan and Bangladesh voted for the Liberal Democrats and in 2010 and 2015 general elections Runnymede points to this same voting group going down to 2%;
-In the 1960s 13% of the Asian community voted and by 1997 that had gone up to 48%;
-In the 2015 elections BBC Asian Network/ICM pool showed that 24% of Asians were undecided; and
-The 2011 census shows that about 8 million people in the UK are classified as ethnic minority (out of 63 million).

With the Liberal Democrats “flat lining” at 8%, with about 2% of the ethnic minority support, the statistics above highlight the growing importance of ethnic minorities in the electoral contest.

The Lord Alderdice report is good and his knowledge of sectarian conflict cin Northern Ireland certainly gave him an insight into the issues faced by ethnic minorities in the party. I give credit to the party for asking Lord Alderdice to investigate the process and culture, looking specifically at race and ethnicity in the party. Some of the findings however I found to be startling:

Everyone agreed that the party is not representative of ethnic or racial diversity of the country;

– The recommendations of the report initiated by Lord Dholakia in 2001, which reported in 2004, and the report done by Assan Ghazni (when he was the National Diversity Officer) in 2008 were never fully implemented. Lord Alderdice proposes that the recommendations of those reports be fully implemented;
– The report also notes members have experienced negative attitudes because of their ethnicity (page 4 of the report).

I could go on quoting from the report. But I think the point is: do we view this report negatively or positively? I applaud the initiative to start a social media campaign to improve diversity. I particularly like the idea of parity by prioritising focus on ethnicity for members and representation as the party has done for women and LGBT, as well as establishing a structure to address the BAME underrepresentation. I would not be surprised if the party appointed a Vice-President for BAME communities who was an ethnic member. I do urge members to read the full report.

My one concern is that the party already has diversity officers at Branch, constituency, regional, and state levels, and in Head Office, and yet we still have all these issues. Why have these issues not been addressed before? One reason could be that as a party, we are a medium sized organisation with more issues to deal with, compared to the resources we have. Consequently, the one who shouts loudest gets heard, and that’s understandable. The party is at last (or once again) listening and is willing to do something about ethnicity. My fear is Tory failure on Brexit negotiations is a few months away and the party attention and resources, rightly, will change focus. This may affect the implementation plan for the changes recommended in the reports. I would therefore like to see someone independent of the party hired to specifically implement these changes regardless of any shift in party priorities or hindrance by individuals.

We have to get this right so that the Liberal Democrats are, and are seen to be, an open party that progresses everyone on capability, as this will allow us to target the growing number of ethnic minority voters (the 24% who were undecided in 2015 for example and more) who should look seriously at us as a credible political partner. We really can’t afford to miss the opportunity to reach out, recruit and offer a political platform to young Asians (who culturally are British) and risk losing this young voting generation to other parties.

I close by restating the remark made by Lord Alderdice in his report;

“liberalism is diversity “

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