Wales’ first ethnic minority AM

Wales will finally have an ethnic minority Assembly Member after Plaid Cymru’s Mohammad Ashgar was elected in South Wales East.

Mr Ashgar, 61, was the beneficiary of an extra Plaid seat on the regional list, at the expense of Conservative Laura Anne Jones. Mr Ashgar said that “harmony, peace and loving” and helping different sections of society understand each other were among his priorities, and admitted he was still “lost for words” after realising at 6am that he would be going to Cardiff Bay.

Campaigners hailed a breakthrough after attempts to get ethnic minority candidates in 1999 and 2003 foundered.

Simon Woolley, director of Operation Black Vote, said, “This is an historic and exciting day for Welsh politics. Multiculturalism has been celebrated by the election of Mohammad Ashgar as the first black Assembly member. Equally important was the Welsh electorate’s wholesale rejection of the racist BNP.”

Mr Ashgar was born in Peshawar and is councillor in Newport. He is also a member of Plaid Cymru’s national executive, and has contested seats in previous election campaigns.

“I’m very pleased to be the first AM from an ethnic minority, and I would like to see more getting elected to the Assembly,” he said. “I think we need to see a bigger Assembly, more than 60 people, to get proper representation.”

Mr Ashgar arrived at the Senedd in Cardiff Bay yesterday for a photocall with Plaid leader Ieuan Wyn Jones, and for his first meeting with fellow Plaid AMs. He will take up his seat, alongside 14 other Plaid members, when the Assembly holds its first meeting of the of the new session on Wednesday. Plaid were always confident that he would be elected, having come close to capturing the extra list seat in South East Wales on a disappointing election night in 2003. Having failed to deliver a single leaflet in parts of the region four years ago, a co-ordinated campaign was launched to make the seat safe.

Mr Ashgar said, “I am very pleased and I’m sure people are voting for me because they like Plaid Cymru. Plaid had the best manifesto of all the parties. We’re in South-East Wales, we’re not the Far East, it’s part of Wales like any other part of the country.”

The South-East Wales region contained some of the most deprived areas of Britain, he said, and said he wanted to see tackling poverty and deprivation as his main aim in office.

“We’re close to England, but we’re very far away from some of the developments we’ve seen in places like Bristol,” he said.

Mr Ashgar thanked fellow Plaid AM Jocelyn Davies for encouraging him to stand and helping him with his campaign.

“I will be serving with my heart and soul for ethnic minorities which are a definite part of the United Kingdom now, and Wales. I’m lost for words. I’m very excited and I don’t know what to say.”

Plaid leader Ieuan Wyn Jones said he was delighted with the result.

“I have come to know him over the years, and I know about his commitment to the party,” he said. He will not only be representing ethnic minorities but be a good, hard working AM and a good constituency representative.”

Elaine Clayton, Deputy Director of Valleys Race Equality Council, said, “For more than 150 years black communities have been fundamental to the fabric of Welsh society, in the docks, in the mines and today in every walk of life. Our communities, by voting, continue our positive contribution to this great nation.”

icWales

Many minorities 'live in poverty'

Some 40% of people from ethnic minority backgrounds are living in poverty, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has said. The figure is twice as high as it is for white people, and rises to 65% for those of Bangladeshi origin, it says. The charity's research also suggests minorities are still overlooked in the workplace compared with others, despite often having better qualifications.

It says government policy needs an "urgent rethink" but ministers insist new measures are being considered. The foundation classifies individuals and families with incomes 60% of the national average as living in poverty, a measure also used by the government.

Equal opportunity

The foundation said more thought needed to be given to how assistance was targeted to minority groups to ensure equal opportunity in the workplace.

Publishing a series of reports examining the link between poverty and ethnicity, the foundation said 40% of people from minority backgrounds were currently living in poverty. This figure rose as high as 55% for those from Pakistani backgrounds and 45% for black Africans. Almost one in three of those from Indian and black Caribbean backgrounds are below the poverty line.

Success in raising educational standards among minorities had not been rewarded by commensurate progress in the workplace, the reports found. Pakistani and Bangladeshi men with degrees were less likely to be employed than their white counterparts while women from Asian backgrounds suffered high levels of unemployment.

These problems were not confined to first generation immigrants, it concluded, with British-born individuals from minority backgrounds less likely to be in work than their white equivalents.

Ministerial summit

"Although the past decade has seen some improvements, there are still some very serious problems which remain unsolved," said foundation director Julia Unwin. "This research shows how policies need to address the different situation of each group and be followed through on a practical level."

Employment and Welfare Reform Minister Jim Murphy said the lives of ethnic minority groups had improved over the last decade but acknowledged more needed to be done.

"The City Strategy programmes, a new partnership between government and providers, will help to tackle worklessness amongst ethnic minority communities," he said. "The Ethnic Minority Employment Task Force will be proposing new ways of tackling employer discrimination ahead of a ministerial summit early in the summer."

BBC

Tory candidate accused of echoing the BNP message

The future of a Conservative candidate was hanging in the balance last night after he became embroiled in a race row over his campaign literature, The Times can reveal.

Luke Mackenzie, a Tory candidate in a British National Party (BNP) target ward in Basildon, was accused of peddling scare stories by suggesting that people who wanted to stop asylum-seekers being given council houses should vote Conservative.

David Cameron faced calls to disown the candidate last night, but the Conservative Party avoided immediate action, saying that it would examine the election leaflet this week. This contrasted with the swift action last month to dismiss Patrick Mercer from the Tory front-bench after he referred to “black bastards” in the Army. A Tory spokesman said: “We encourage all councillors to confront the BNP and not to pander to them.”

Mr Mackenzie, who is standing against the local council’s only ethnic minority councillor, told The Times that he did not believe that his remarks would inflame racial tensions because “people were aware of this anyway”.

The leaflet, headed “Conservatives: We’re on your side”, refers to being on the “front line” in a “battle”, talking about local people “getting organised” and “fighting back”. It says: “I support Conservative policy of giving council housing to Basildon residents and not [of it] being used to house asylum seekers. There is a shortage of homes, but at the same time the Labour Government is encouraging record levels of immigration.”

Opposition politicians said that the remarks were highly inflammatory and echoed the message used by the BNP in other parts of the country.

Mr Mackenzie, a 21-year-old politics student at Westminster University, is standing in the local elections against Labour’s Swatantra Nandanwar in a ward where the BNP took 22.7 per cent of the vote in 2004. The party’s record for the area is 25.3 per cent in the Fryerns ward last year.

This year the BNP is contesting 11 of the 14 seats up for election in Basildon, part of a remarkable surge of activity across the country. It is to field 655 candidates, double the number who stood last time. It currently has 49 council seats.

Mr Mackenzie denied accusations he was stoking up racism. “At the end of the day it’s [the main parties] not saying things like this that is encouraging racism tension because the only place people can turn to is the British National Party.”

He said that there was strong feeling among residents that people from outside the area were causing a housing shortage. “They blame the influx of immigration [as one reason for this], because there isn’t enough housing in the UK and you’ve got thousands of people coming from abroad.”

Asked what he thought Basildon residents felt about immigration, he said: “They think it’s entirely out of control.” He said that it was a view that he shared, adding: “The cause of this is that there is no real control over who is here.” It is already virtually impossible for asylum seekers to get housing in Basildon after the council changed the system to give preference to people who have been in the area a long time.

Jon Cruddas, a Labour MP and deputy leadership contender who campaigns against the BNP, said: “This dangerous exploitation of people’s fears is a gift to extremist organisations such as the BNP. Peddling myths about immigrants pouring into a town or about asylum seekers supposedly being given council housing ahead of other residents is incredibly unhelpful. If David Cameron is serious about fighting racism he should disown this candidate straight away.”

Times Online