Cllr. ‘Two Votes’ Rana Plays The Race Card Again!

by Les May

A FEW days after the original piece appeared on Northern Voices I received an e-mail which read:  'Enjoyed reading the article :   "Two Votes Rana Plays the Race Card’, which nicely highlights what I would call the ‘acceptable face of racism’ ie no one would ever get away with calling for more whites or ethnic majority councillors / MPs or blaming ethnic minority councillors / MPs for bad decisions affecting ‘whites’.'

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2020/07/two-votes-rana-plays-race-card.html

As I think that words like ‘racism’, ‘fascism’, ‘nazi’ are overused to the point of being debased and losing contact with their original meaning, I had mentally filed Faisal Rana’s original complaint under ‘whingeing’ not ‘racism’. Nonetheless I find it difficult to disagree with the e-mail writer. If one of the ‘non-BAME’ Labour councillors had written in this spirit s/he would have found themselves suspended from the party and subject to a disciplinary inquiry.

After a writer on NV pointed out that there is a balance amongst our councillors ‘Two Votes’ has amended his blog part of which now reads; ‘But overcoming all the barriers to fair representation in my authority has not come about by accident. It has taken a lot of hard work and it has been left almost entirely to BAME themselves.’

This is more nonsense which again lays him open to a charge of racism if anyone wants to make it. The Labour party has people of all skin colours/race/ethnicity, call it what you will, amongst its members and supporters, so don’t disparage their efforts. One of the reasons my ward has an ‘Asian’ councillor is that I, and people like me, voted for him.

It’s not the BNP, EDL or some other unsavoury group who are trying to inject a racial theme into Rochdale politics, it’s Faisal Rana, and it appears to me that he is doing it to advance his political career. We may all come to regret it if he succeeds.