UK Respect party leader raises issue of ethnic minority representation

Last Tuesday, Respect councillor and opposition leader Abjol Miah dropped a bombshell on what would otherwise have been the coronation of the new Tower Hamlets chief executive Martin Smith. Councillor Miah used the full council meeting which was called to confirm Smith’s appointment to argue that senior management salaries were far too high and, more than that, that it was a shame that the members of other parties on the council had passed up the opportunity to appoint a member of the British Minority Ethnic community to the chief executive’s post. He went on to say that he looked forward nonetheless to working with Martin Smith to combat the acute poverty which scars Tower Hamlets and to increase BME representation at all levels in the council.

The full text of his speech in the council meeting follows:

"I look forward to working with the new Chief Executive Martin Smith to make this borough a better place for its citizens and particularly those who are less well off. This is a borough with huge problems. Almost half our children are officially living in poverty according to Save the Children, 12,000 families are overcrowded according to Shelter and average income in the borough is just £15,000. And all this in the shadow of Canary Wharf and the City of London.

"It's in this context that we in the Respect Party have criticised the very high levels of remuneration received by senior council officers and by the chief executive in particular. Not only does this cost the council taxpayer a very large annual sum of money that could be used to boost services, it makes it much harder to develop the spirit of collective endeavour in the council workforce and the trust the council needs from the community beyond.

"More than that, I must express my acute disappointment that my fellow councillors on the selection panel from the Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative parties rejected the opportunity to appoint someone from the British Minority Ethnic community as chief executive in this borough which has such a high proportion of BME people resident within its borders.

"It is a very well known fact that there is acute under-representation of the BME community in the senior echelons of the council. There is no argument that we could not have appointed a BME candidate because there was no-one suitably qualified. We had on the final selection list highly qualified and dynamic BME candidates who could have acted as a breath of fresh air on the culture that has grown up inside this council at senior levels. The BME candidates were there but my fellow councillors on the selection panel chose to stick with what they knew and were familiar with.

"I hope that Martin Smith will pursue a strategy of ensuring that BME representation, based on merit of course, does increase at senior management level in this council because the current under-representation cannot be allowed to continue."