Southall’s new Labour candidate must be from the community
(THE ASIAN INDEPENDENT)- The Indian Workers Association G.B. (IWA) notes that Ealing Southall MP Virendra Sharma has announced his decision not to stand at the General Election on 4 July after serving almost two decades in office. Sharma, aged 77, has been the local MP since 2007, replacing Piara Singh Khabra, the former IWA President, who died while serving as MP.
Sital Singh Gill, an IWA (G.B) leader, said: “We urge the Labour leader Keir Starmer to use his considerable influence to ensure Virendra Sharma’s replacement as the party’s prospective parliamentary candidate is a progressive South Asian or other progressive person of colour.”
He added: “Southall is one of more than 60 seats in England where Labour’s huge and loyal Asian and African Caribbean electorate is crucial to the party winning elections and, in less than six weeks, winning the General Election that millions of people in Britain, including the IWA, hope gets rid of Rishi Sunak’s awful Conservative government. The Tories have been responsible for 14 years of misrule, including them shamefully scapegoating migrants, asylum seekers, refugees, and working people for the economic woes they have inflicted on Britain.”
The IWA nationally has been acclaimed for its campaigns to protect the rights of the early South Asian migrants who came to Britain as much-need workers in the 1950s and ’60s.
It has tirelessly fought against racial discrimination and for workers and migrants rights and acted as a vital training ground for a generation of Asian and African community leaders, inspiring many of them to enter mainstream local and national politics.
The IWA has in the past been praised for running a self-financed national welfare and advice service supporting many thousands of people annually. In the 1960s an IWA member became the first elected Asian councillor in Ealing, West London, and by 1994 its President Piara Singh Khabra had become the first Asian MP for the Ealing Southall constituency, propelling a new generation of Asians into mainstream institutions and politics.
Sital Singh Gill
National Spokes Person,
Indian Workers Association (G.B) & General Secretary, IWA(G.B) Leicestershire
Tel: 0777 9664845 Email: iwagb@hotmail.com
