The Muslim News - Former Labour Councillor wins race discrimination case

Issue 224, Friday 21 December 2007 - 11 Dhu al-Hijjah 1428

Former Labour Councillor wins race discrimination case

By Elham Asaad Buaras and Ahmed J Versi

A former Muslim Labour councillor has won a decade long legal battle on November 21, to prove he was racially discriminated against when the Labour Party refused to re-adopt him as a candidate in Birmingham. “I am delighted that after 10 years of struggle, the truth has come out and I have been vindicated,” the delighted Raghib Ahsan, told The Muslim News.
Law Lords allowed an appeal by Ahsan, a councillor for the Sparkhill Ward between 1991 and 1998, against a court ruling which rejected his claim that he was discriminated against by a selection panel in the run-up to the 1998 local government elections. Almost 3000 local voters signed a petition demanding that he be allowed to stand. Over two-thirds of the membership of Sparkhill Labour Party also demanded the right to select him as their candidate. Many others who have written letters of protest to the Labour Party, including Lynne Jones MP, Roy Hattersley, six local head teachers, Sparkhill Youth Association, Community Education Association, school governing bodies, local Labour Party and trade union branches.
Ahsan had been named in newspaper allegations that councillors were helping Pakistanis jump the queue for housing grants.
The newspapers also implied that he was recruiting Pakistanis to join the Labour Party and support his ultimate ambition to be adopted as a Parliamentary candidate for Birmingham Sparkbrook.
A Labour inquiry found no evidence at all of impropriety by Ahsan or other Pakistani councillors. Yet the selection panel, in December 1997, turned him down in favour of a white candidate, Ian Jamieson.
Lord Hoffmann of the Law Lords commenting on the Court of Appeal ruling in overturning a tribunal finding in Ahsan’s favour, said the Court seemed to be saying that it would be acceptable to discriminate against a Pakistani candidate if the panel held no racist views but thought it was better not to have such a candidate because of the public’s perception of a problem within that ethnic community.
This was unacceptable, said Lord Hoffmann. “It is nothing more than the old plea that you have nothing against employing a black person but the customers would not like it,” he argued.
The Lords restored the decision of the employment tribunal, which had also upheld further complaints by Ahsan of discrimination and victimisation in the short-listing of candidates for the council in 2000.
The Labour Party Spokesperson told The Muslim News that they were “disappointed” with the Law Lords ruling and that this was “a very complex legal decision.”
The Spokesperson emphasised that the Birmingham Labour Group “reflects the diversity and vitality of Birmingham and any inference that the Labour Party is discriminatory is not borne out by the facts.”
The Party has already amended procedures for the selection of candidates in Birmingham “to make them even more transparent and will look in detail at this judgement to determine further action to be taken.”

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