By Ann Czernik
Jeremy Corbyn’s vintage Labour values kept him in Westminster for 35 years as the maverick MP for Islington North and out of Tony Blair’s cabinet. A few months ago, Jeremy Corbyn was the class of 2015’s least likely to become prime minister but now the tables have turned. Corbyn is now odds on favourite to win on an anti-austerity ticket. The most recent poll by Survation found that Jeremy Corbyn is more popular than any other Labour leadership candidate with the wider electorate and more likely to persuade them to vote Labour in a general election.
The results trounced arguments from senior Labour figures that Corbyn would keep Labour out of office. The other candidates – Liz Kendall, Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham have urged supporters to back anyone but Corbyn. Blair advised the party not to walk off the cliff edge and there are fears that the party will split if Corbyn is successful.
Labour is facing what some say is the worst crisis for a century, and others call a redefining moment.
Imran Hussain is the rookie MP who has been credited as the driving force behind Jeremy Corbyn’s bid for the top job in the Labour party. After the defeat on May 7, Corbyn, Hussain and others called for fundamental change to the party’s economic policy. Corbyn said “It was the lack of an economic alternative that didn’t excite people who should be natural supporters of the Labour party. We said that there had to be a debate. That was not to be and instead we have a leadership contest. Imran sat in a committee room in Westminster opposite me pointing an accusing finger and said “Jeremy, you have got to do it”
So who is Imran Hussain? And just how did a newly arrived MP in Westminster find himself at the centre of a campaign that has rocked the Labour establishment to its core?
Asian Sunday investigates.
Imran Hussain has been a member of the Labour party since he was “about thirteen” Hussain said “When I started supporting Jeremy, it wasn’t because I thought Jeremy has the best chance of winning. At that stage, nobody thought he had a chance of being nominated. I’ve had conversations with Andy Burnham’s team, with Yvette Cooper and they are credible candidates. I had to decide which one seems closest to my politics and in the end it was Jeremy Corbyn.”
Hussain is one of a new breed of Labour MP’s who swept into Westminster in May with a large majority from mainly Asian voters and a clear commitment to anti austerity policies.
It was never his dream to be an MP. Hussain was the first of his family to go to a university, and later trained as a barrister. Hussain has risen through the political ranks over the past 23 years. First, as a Labour councillor in Toller then deputy leader of Bradford council. He is regarded a shrewd operator who is not without influence. He’s a vice chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Kashmir and is closely linked to UNITE, Britain’s largest trade union.
70 or 80 people regularly turn up for Hussain’s surgeries and he says they don’t come for a chit-chat. In Bradford East, he says “People have issues. If someone turns up – as long as I’m not doing anything else – I’ll see them. People quite rightly expect to be able to go to someone, as their leader or representative to help them. People only come when they are in need. We try to operate an appointment system but it is Bradford. Nobody ever gets turned away at any point from my office.” As if to prove the point, a group of anxious young men who arrive looking for the MP on the off-chance are ushered straight through.
Hussain said “Bradford has given me everything but I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I started sweeping floors in Morrison’s to help make ends meet when I was fifteen. My father was a mill worker like everybody that lived on our street and the street next door. It was too aspirational for someone like me to become a lawyer. I was happy where I was, there was great community spirit and a loving and caring family but I did have to fight for things”
As a boy, Hussain played cricket all summer long. He said “I always had a commitment to fight against injustice whether that was as a 14 /15 year old for better play facilities” His first campaign was for a cricket field just like the one he’s stood in now listening to Corbyn address a rally. He said “We used to play near the road and every year someone got knocked down. It just started from those days. I got more and more interested in politics.”
He still has a boyish street swagger to him. The quick witted banter is combined with a seriousness and confidence that has only recently been acquired. He said “If someone had said to me you’ll complete your GCSE’s, A-levels, you are going to go to university, you are going to be a barrister I probably wouldn’t have slept for three days. I thought can I actually do this? I had supportive parents who kept working with us getting us to believe in ourselves.”
Despite being widely tipped to succeed Marsha Singh when the MP for Bradford West stood down in 2012 – Hussain had been his case worker and chaired the Bradford West branch for over a decade – he suffered a very public and crushing defeat to George Galloway. His friends and even Hussain admits it was the making of him. The lessons learned were hard but the experience taught him (and his team) how to run a campaign. But more than that, it taught him what was important.
Leading charities and independent experts have warned that as the impact of the welfare bill, and austerity measures are felt, Britain is creating a country where poverty is so stark that children grow up in parallel worlds.
Bradford East (and West) has one of the highest levels of child poverty in the UK. Bradford’s schools are bottom of the league tables nationally. Nearly a quarter of the population in Bradford is under 18 years of age, making Bradford one of the youngest cities in Europe.
Hussain said “When I go knocking on doors in my constituency in one of the most deprived areas of the whole country, austerity isn’t working for these people. I don’t see these massive job opportunities that Cameron and Osborne talk about. I don’t see that youth unemployment is going down. I don’t see those opportunities, these apprenticeships they talk about in Bradford East. I’ve asked the question. Can someone show me the road that leads to all those good things because people in Bradford East don’t have access to that? Austerity is hurting in Bradford East, and its hurting society. Jeremy Corbyn is the only person who is absolutely clear that we are anti-austerity.”
Bradford East is a diverse community ravaged by the impact of the illegal drugs industry. Hussain instinctively understands this community. As deputy leader of Bradford council, he supported community initiatives to divert young people from crime. He said that the community needs to buy into aspiration for young people and said “It’s about making them believe in themselves, showing them the dangers, showing that prison life and criminal life is often glamourised. You’re 13 or 14 and you see the guy driving past in the £50 000 vehicle – nobody knows the dangers.” The project was a success and many young people who would otherwise have graduated with honours from HMP went on to enter universities and colleges.
He’s irritated by the way that the media and the party have reacted to Corbyn’s campaign and said “When I joined the labour party I knew what that party was, what it stood for. For me that has never changed and it never will. Tens of thousands of my constituents want the Labour party in clear opposition, that’s what we should do and that is where I’m at.”
Hussain has been involved in the policy discussions within the Corbyn campaign and said “We are saying don’t create a welfare system like the current welfare bill where the most vulnerable, disabled in society suffer. If all these things are now called the far left and radical then we are in a world I’ve never seen. These are the things I’ve grown up with and I don’t think I’m a radical or a leftie. These are traditional Labour values. The media has made this debate, the media cannot set the labour party’s policies and agenda.”
But the knives are out and there are already rumblings of mutiny and rebellion if Corbyn is successful.
Corbyn told Asian Sunday that “We are putting forward a serious economic policy which is about re-balancing our economy. But it’s also about saying what is the function of government, what is the function of the economy? Is it not about making sure that everyone has a chance, that everyone has a job, that everyone has a house, a hospital, a school? I want a future Labour government to be measured on the reduction of poverty, the reduction of inequality, the growth of opportunity for everyone in our society. I want a community that is providing for the needs of all.”
Corbyn laughs when I ask him if this campaign is old Labour, retro style said ““The only thing retro about our campaign is my style of dress. What’s positive about our campaign is the way forward – look at those who support us, look at those who endorse us. This is a popular movement.”
35 MP’s eventually supported Jeremy Corbyn’s nomination for the Labour leadership. In each of their constituencies, the number of children growing up in poverty is significantly higher than the national average.
The next Labour leader could change the lives of a generation. The number of children living in poverty in the UK is expected to rise to five million by 2020. Across the UK, on average one in six children live in poverty. Within the Asian community, that figure is as high as one in two in areas like Bethnal Green. The question is not whether austerity budgets will increase racial inequality deliberately but whether or not austerity policies increase ethnic inequality in reality.
Nearly half of Britain’s Asian community live in the poorest wards in the country. Over 40 per cent of all Bangladeshi and Pakistani children are growing up in poverty and over 60 per cent of Bangladeshi and Pakistani heritage families exist on low incomes.
Corbyn told Asian Sunday that “We must recognise that opportunities for young Asians and black people in our society are not the same as for others. The opportunity for education, universities, the best standards of education, is not particularly fair so I want to ensure that there is proper investment in education in all parts of the country.”
Earlier this month, Jeremy Corbyn stood in the middle of a cricket field in Bradford. The Karmand Community Centre wasn’t big enough to contain Corbyn mania so enterprising Bradfordian’s had been busy all afternoon setting up a stage, and PA, whilst vats of chicken and rice were prepared in the community kitchen. Smart cars arrived from the leafy suburbs on the outskirts of this troubled city, and men in suits made their way down the winding lanes from the corridors of power.
And they came from far and near, hanging on every word. From the rows of neat terraced houses built to house the workers of the industrial revolution, glowing in the sunset next to the hallowed crease. Generations of boys who imagined that one day they would be the next Imran Khan have grown up and like Hussain, some of these young people might graduate from cricket to politics.
Corbyn said “The Labour party was founded by very brave people here in Bradford who wanted to bring about a fair and just world. It took courage determination to found it. We don’t lightly give it up and we don’t throw it away. The number of people who have come forward (during this campaign) show what thirst there is for a Labour party that speaks for them”
And sometimes dreams come true.
