At 3.30am on the morning of Friday 8 June it really dawned on me just what it means for Gloucester to have a Labour MP. I thought I knew. But walking through the doors of the Irish club put a whole new perspective on things. We were engulfed by the greatest feeling of elation I’ve ever seen. Around 200 people sang, held each other tight and cheered – many through dewy eyes. For the first time ever, and in the seat Labour needed to win in 1997 for an overall majority of one, we had helped secure a second full term.
But there was much more to it than that. As one of Gloucester’s longest serving activists said to me through his tears: ‘Tonight, we’ve not just beaten the Tories, we’ve beaten racism too.’ Ever since my selection in Gloucester, we had the shadow of a newspaper article written by a local columnist hanging over us. He had said the people of Gloucester didn’t have the ‘advanced state of consciousness to accept a “foreigner” as their MP’. He said Gloucester in 2001 would be to Labour what Cheltenham was to the Tories in 1992 when black barrister John Taylor was defeated. He also called on me to resign as the Labour candidate to give the party a fighting chance of holding the seat. We won with a 46 percent share of the vote.
The campaign in Gloucester wasn’t about the colour of my skin. It was about the future of our public services, Labour’s plans for a new £30 million hospital, the reduction of local unemployment by a third and the fulfilment of our pledge to cut class sizes. But that’s exactly the point: it was the same campaign as in every other constituency in the land. I hope other constituency parties will follow Gloucester’s example. Let’s make parliament look like the society we represent.