Coleman introduced me to two (unofficial) Labour activists: a retired engineer and his friend, an Ethiopian asylum seeker. They spoke of failing public services — the man claiming asylum says he was sexually assaulted by a male council-adjacent worker — and growing political violence. The older man was heckled by young Galloway supporters while posting flyers. “They said I had blood on my hands.” He complained to the council but received no reply.
The most visible candidates on the campaign trail were Galloway and Danczuk | Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
He embodied the problem that now dogs Labour leader Keir Starmer, who supports Israel and has vowed to vanquish antisemitism in his party. Having voted for the suspended candidate, Ali, the man says: “What he has done is just voice the opinion of a lot of South Asian people. We really want to give Starmer a bloody nose on this, show him that he’s let us down.” He goes on: “He’s eradicated so-called antisemitism in the Labour Party at the expense of antagonizing Muslims. A plague on all your houses,” he ends. “You caused strife.” In the end, Ali came fourth behind Galloway, local businessman David Tully, and the invisible Conservative.
Racism flies around Rochdale with the wind: I have never heard anything like it. I think everyone is frightened; they face a future they are not prepared for, and embrace the simplicity of a Middle Eastern conflict brought to them by Tiktok. Young Muslim men with no money dress as gangsters: do they even inhabit their own lives?
Older white men cursed them from the pubs. “Rapists, the lot of them,” said one; almost everything else he said is unprintable. I met a man who told me, “I respect them [Jews]. Although they are in very limited numbers quantity wise, they have control in all the powerful economies in the world. The thing which is very common with them [is] wherever they go they want [to be the] center of attention.”
I met an 18-year-old Galloway voter by the town hall. “Fuck Israel,” he said. “No Israel. Wipe them out.” I asked him: what should happen to Jews outside Israel? He thought, then said: “Wipe them out as well”. Why? “Because they support Israel.” He had no other political opinions. Perhaps he did not need them.
Tension comes to Rochdale
I met another local independent candidate, William Howarth, who was politicized by surviving sexual abuse. He runs a hub and shop for survivors in view of the former social services office where he was sexually assaulted as a child. “This is why I picked here,” he said. “So, I could look at it every day and say — ‘I won. You didn’t beat me. I beat you. I’m still here and most of you have gone.’”
Source: www.politico.eu
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