As a resident of Hanwell Broadway, Eric Leach attended the hustings on 23 June 2024 for his constituency of Ealing Southall to try and find out more about the candidates standing.
“Sri Guru Singh Sabha Southall (SGSSS) organised a General Election hustings at Norwood Hall on 23 June 2024. Over 100 electors attended. Six of the 12 Parliamentary candidates for MP attended. But Deirdre Costigan, Ealing Labour’s candidate, declined to attend.
“Since Ealing Southall’s creation in 1983 Labour has always held this seat. Even its predecessor seat was Labour since its inception in 1945. Was this no-show just laziness or perhaps arrogance on the part of Ealing Labour? After all at the last General Election its candidate polled almost three times the number of votes as the Conservatives. (It’s true also that Ealing Conservative’s candidate Georgie Callé was also a no-show).
“The organisation of the meeting was somewhat chaotic. Online booking company Eventbrite were employed by SGSSS. Some electors did not turn up as Eventbrite informed them that all the seats were taken. In the event no checks were made on the door and there were empty seats!
“Six of the 12 candidates did turn up. No written information or candidate id or political party signage was employed and with an inadequate public address system I found it hard to identify the candidates. Only four candidates made any impression on me:
- Neil Reynolds, Green Party came across as knowledgeable and articulate
- Tariq Mahmood, LibDem, was impressive on NHS issues. Understandable as he’s an NHS consultant
- Jaginder Singh, Independent, a Southall entrepreneur appeared passionate about helping Southall residents
- Peter Ward, Rejoin EU, was good on his feet. As he’s a barrister this was no surprise. He has a long local political history. This includes being a member of Ealing Labour when he was involved (he told us) in the ousting of the controversial 85 year old Ealing Southall MP Piara Khabra in 2006.
“There was one female candidate who distracted me somewhat by standing up and speaking with one hand in her trouser pocket.
“There’s clearly a demographic deficit in Ealing Southall. Admittedly the hustings was held in Southall but none of the candidates made any reference to any of the specific local issues in Northfield, Hanwell Broadway or Walpole Wards. That’s 27,000 of the 75,000 electors ignored.
“One question just about floored all the candidates. It was ‘tell us about your involvement in local campaigns including Warren Farm, Save Ealing Hospital and Southall Post Office’. It was very telling that most of them had nothing to say on these issues. This strongly suggested no involvement is these huge campaigns running for many years.
“Impartiality only really surfaced once when an Indian Workers’ Association member was allowed to speak from within the audience. He lectured the meeting for over five minutes on Labour’s poor performance in Southall without the chair intervening. Apart from that, the chair did a decent job.
“SGSSS must be congratulated for putting on this Hustings. It seems it will be the only one being held in Ealing Southall.
“I am not a member of any political party and I live in Hanwell Broadway Ward.”
