Posted on 05/07/2005 12:41:28 PM PDT by Pikamax
Muslims say they helped dent Blair majority Fri May 6, 2005 2:42 PM BST Printer Friendly | Email Article | RSS
By Tim Castle
LONDON (Reuters) - Tactical voting by Muslim voters angry over the war in Iraq played a role in denting Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour majority in parliament, the Muslim Association of Britain said on Friday.
"The results of the general election have clearly reflected the depth of frustration and anger throughout the country as to the government's position on Iraq," said the MAB, an umbrella group of about 400 Muslim organisations in Britain.
Anti-Iraq war campaigner George Galloway's seizure of the once safe Labour seat of Bethnal Green in east London was the most visible evidence of the power of the Muslim vote in Thursday's election.
Labour lost seats or saw its majority severely cut in a number of other constituencies with large Muslim populations where the strongly anti-Iraq war MAB had been mobilising their vote.
It was not immediately clear which party got the bulk of the Muslim votes, but MAB said it had capitalised on the anger felt by many Muslims about Britain's involvement in the Iraq war and the subsequent deaths of thousands of Muslim civilians.
The poll setback demonstrated that Labour can no longer rely on its traditional backing from the estimated 1.2 million Muslim voters, a thriving community concentrated in and around big cities like London, Birmingham and Leeds.
"The Muslim community has become extremely astute and very mature in terms of approaching elections," said MAB national spokesman Anas Altikriti.
"It is time now for each party to take the Muslim vote extremely seriously," he added.
That view was reflected on the ground in Bethnal Green on Friday morning, where Galloway wiped out a previous Labour majority of over 10,000, and where the Muslim electorate is around 45 percent.
"We were lectured to by Labour that an anti-war protest vote would bring in the Tories but I'm a grown man, I know how to vote so it is heard," said Amir Khan, a 37-year-old shopkeeper.
Also propelling the anti-Labour vote was anger over anti-terrorism legislation regarded as unfairly targeting Muslims, as well as worries over racist attacks and concern about Muslim schooling, Altikriti said.
Hopefully the Tories, if they ever get in power by these fools, will block imigration. One can dream and hope they'd throw them back into the islamic hellholes they came from.
This may sound really ignorant, but I'll ask it anyway. Every article I have seen has portrayed Tony Blair as having been veritably crushed due to his support of the WOT and due to anger from British Muslims. But if the Tories now have more power in Parliament, wouldn't that work against the anti-war and fundamentalist Muslim crowd? I was under the impression that it was the Labour party that was anti-war. So I don't see how the results of this election could help the Muslims that are so angry at Blair.
Many thanks to anyone who can elucidate this for me.
If I recall correctly, the Tories were totally against the Iraq invasion.
When it rains, muslims will claim they were responsible.... Yada yada yada.....
The only success they can clearly point too is Galloway, but they won't since the amount of jew hating, race baiting he pulled would be pointed out. The success has more to do with the anti war people in general going with lib dems in the urban areas, which was to be expected.
I think the idea was to teach Blair a lesson, without actually giving power to the Tories.
Galloway's victory should be a cause for great concern in Britain. It confirms the worst fears about having a Fifth Column in the muslim community.
Britain is a parliamentary system. Blair basically needs to be able to pass bills solely from the support of his own party. If he lacks that support, he is fairly well neutered.
Your recall is totally incorrect.
...It confirms the worst fears about having a Fifth Column in the muslim community...
------
The world just keeps "letting them in" -- and the world will have to deal with them, their Islamo-fascism, and their Koran.
"This may sound really ignorant, but I'll ask it anyway. Every article I have seen has portrayed Tony Blair as having been veritably crushed due to his support of the WOT and due to anger from British Muslims. But if the Tories now have more power in Parliament, wouldn't that work against the anti-war and fundamentalist Muslim crowd? I was under the impression that it was the Labour party that was anti-war. So I don't see how the results of this election could help the Muslims that are so angry at Blair."
The main answer is that Iraq was not a huge issue for the vast majority of people. Lots of people had lots of different reasons to vote the way they did. There were undoubtedly some localised areas where this did play, in those areas Labour generally lost support to the Lib Dems. The main swing in terms of votes was from Labour to the Lib Dems, in terms of votes the Conservatives made only a small gain.
Having said that it would be oversimplified to see the 'Muslim vote' as a homogenous block. Not all Muslims were anti-war and certainly not all are 'fundamentalist'.
It'll be interesting to see how the new Parliament plays out. Arguably the people who have more power after this result are those left-wing Labour backbenchers who seem to think that they are the opposition to the Government.
"I think the idea was to teach Blair a lesson, without actually giving power to the Tories."
I would agree. My read of the situation was that if there had been an option on the ballot paper for a hung parliament with Labour as the largest party and the Lib Dems holding the balance, that option would have won convincingly.
YOU WILL THEN BE FED TO THE JACKELS.
Wasn't sure myself, so I checked. You've got it right.
"Liberal Democrats — the only major party to oppose the war in Iraq." Source
Sorry my reply was a little curt there. It's just that that seems to be a widely held misconception on this board and it was about the 5th time that I'd replied to it!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.