I took part in a fringe meeting at Liberal Democrat federal conference this afternoon alongside the Communities minister Stephen Williams MP and Nick Tyrone from the Electoral Reform Society (ERS), and the event was very ably chaired by Teena Lashmore of Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats. The fringe was jointly organised by EMLD and the ERS to explore the issue of changing the voting system to make it fairer, and what the implications are for minority communities.
My message was that the struggle to improve participation in the electoral system for all communities cannot wait for electoral reform. Black, Asian and other minority communities will participate in whatever electoral system we have. Or not, as the case may be. And the work of organisations like Operation Black Vote - whom I used to work for - is not on hold until we have another Fair Votes referendum, whenever that may be.
It was interesting that Stephen Williams said that the issue of fair votes may be back on the agenda sooner than many assume, as this may be a key demand of Liberal Democrats before joining any future coalition government. I'm not so sure, but he may have greater insight into this than I. I've always felt we may wait a long time for another opportunity for such a referendum, but we cannot wait for this to address disparities in voting between different communities.
What we are dealing with here are two separate universes. In one universe we have a debate about how to make votes more accurately reflected in the politicians who are elected; and how making the system fairer will make politicians more responsive to a wider spectrum of the electorate. And in the other universe, we have BME communities who have seen precious little change in disproportionate rates of employment, health and housing, educational outcomes and criminalisation whichever party is in power.
The fact that there is only a 3% difference in electoral registration rates between white and south Asian communities; a 6% gap with Caribbean communities; and a 16% gap with African communities is a testament to their faith in mainstream parties to deliver the mainstream policies they want rather than any faith in parties to tackle institutional racism - even though it affects their life-chances in a big way.
An Electoral Commission survey found that 37% of BME voters said policies to tackle racial disadvantage mattered a great deal. I don't know how the Electoral Commission carried out its' survey because one by Operation Black Vote found that over 80% of Black Britons said it mattered to them. But let's take the 37% figure. 37%, yet the registration gap is mostly in single figures. What that shows is that many BME voters put aside their lack of faith in mainstream politics to deliver a more racially equal society and instead vote on everyday issues that we call care about like the jobs and economy, the NHS, education, childcare and so on. Given how little impact mainstream politics has had on systemic racial unfairness over decades, it is amazing the registration gap is so small.
If BME people cared only about addressing race discrimination a much larger proportion wouldn't vote at all. And there is a powerful argument I have often heard at grassroots level in African and Caribbean communities that we shouldn't vote unless and until parties raise their game significantly on tackling racism. I argue the opposite - that the less we vote the more likely we are to be ignored. But it is a weak argument when set against the relatively high voting participation and the lack of results. I understand, and sympathise with, the argument that BME communities should just opt out of the electoral process altogether. I just think that would be counter-productive, but not significantly more counter-productive than the current situation where we do participate and get nothing in return. It would make a bad situation worse.
I have foun a real appetite for a change in the electoral system. They understand that a fairer voting system will increase their bargaining power to make demands. They're just not interested in the people making the argument, people like the Electoral Reform Society, and the Liberal Democrats. We're not getting through. And we just have to look at ourselves to see why. We saw how undiverse the 'Yes' to fair votes campaign was. Most BME 'Yes' activists were already active in mainstream politics or mainstream charities. But the campaign singularly failed to reach out beyond this, to the wider constituency of BME citizens - even though I believe you would have found a large audience willing to listen. There was little interest from non-activists on my social media.
Many people I spoke to were planning to vote 'Yes' but weren't inspired by the campaign to tell anyone else or take a more active role. And it's no wonder why. Look at us - the Lib Dems, the most enthusiastic about electoral reform, and the least diverse. I don't think too many in BME communities are assuming that changing the electoral system will automatically make politics more inclusive.
Of course proportional representation - at least in its' truest form - would reorientate British politics so that the voice of the forgotten majority would be heard. And that would mean that constituent parts of the electorate - the working class and BME communities among them - would be listened to in a way they have not been before. But I do not have faith that this, in itself, would put race back on the political agenda. If the Westminster atmosphere remains hostile to this no amount of changes to the electoral system will change that. It has to come from political will, first and foremost.
In terms of where we are now, last year I wrote a report called The Power of the Black Vote, for Operation Black Vote. What it showed is that in 167 marginal seats, the collective BME vote is larger than the majority of the sitting MP. This means that the 'Black Vote' has potential power under the current unfair electoral system to influence the result of the next general election. That we don't necessarily need electoral reform to make a big impact. Electoral reform would help, but its' not a necessity. Of course BME communities do not vote as a bloc. Not entirely anyway.The Runnymede Trust found that in 2010, 68% of BME communities voted Labour. Far below the 90% they pulled in, in the 1970s, but still double the proportion of the general population who voted for Gordon Brown. The BME 'bloc vote' has been disintegrating gradually with every passing election, but this coming election I believe we'll see a reversal in that trend. Mainly due to the failure of the Lib Dems to hold its' support in multicultural areas. If we don't increase our support, visible representation and policies to tackle racial disadvantage, the BME vote may gravitate away from us for a generation.
Returning to the subject of this blog, there is no reason why BME communities should wait for electoral reform to make demands for change. Those demands will keep growing. Over the last couple of months we have seen thousands of black African and Caribbean people on the streets demanding reparations for enslavement and protests against an art exhibition deemed to be deeply racially-offensive. I sense we are moving into a period of protest again. In some ways this is a symptom of many people feeling disenfranchised from the political system, of frustrations beginning to bubble over. Whether this grows during the general election campaign we have yet to see but I suspect it will.
With BME youth suffering levels of unemployment similar to Greece and Spain, we were on the edge of witnessing unrest this summer. After the Mark Duggan inquest verdict I saw, on the streets of Tottenham, a poor and disenfranchised community on the very edge of rebelling, at the very end of their teather. In this environment, politics - and electoral reform - comes second to demanding change and the voice of so-called community leaders - who call for engagement with politics - becomes drowned out on the streets.
So how can we reconnect disenfranchised citizens to politics again? The first thing must be to break out of our complacency. We need a new community politics, one that has door-to-door voter registration, by and for BME communities. We need genuine grassroots attempts to hold politicians to account. But most importantly, we need more grassroots non-partisan community mobilisation. It is only by restoring faith in politics that we will see more interest in changing it for the better.
Until that time, parties like ours will continue to delude ourselves that all is well because BME voters come out on Election Day and vote on issues that concern us all. That there is no need to heed the demands of activists to 'put race back on the agenda' because those calls are not coming from ordinary BME voters. But they are. Operation Black Vote see it wherever they go around Britain. On this issue activists *are* speaking for the majority of BME communities. And they are saying: "Even with this current outmoded political system, BME communities have the power to force change."
