On the West Ham Campaign Trail '05

It's not often that I post twice in one day but there are two reasons why I am: my weekend is already chockfull _my first meeting tomorrow is at 8.30 and my last at 9pm, and so it goes on all weekend, with no bank holiday for us _and I've had a very good day.

My highlight was a visit to the civics class of year 9 at Stratford School. Labour didn't turn up, nor the Liberals, so it was me, the Tory and the Green, just as it was at last night's hustings. We had questions asked by named school students to all three of us which were as usual with young people some of the most intelligent that I have been asked.

The first question was, what is the first thing you would do for us if you got elected. I said I would give Tony Blair a big headache and they all cheered. The teachers said they didn't want them to clap but they still did from time to time. I would say most were Respect. When we canvassed in Forest Gate later that day several households had school students who had been in the class and were supporting Respect.

At the end they brought up Respect broadsheets and asked me to sign them. They were lovely.

It is a problem for Labour that it has little support among young people.

Afterwards we went to a school in a part of West Ham which I would say is not our natural territory and which we have leafletted but not canvassed. Several people said they were voting for us, one had my poster on his car. No hostility and lots of maybes.

Everyone in our campaign feels that the evidence of legal advice has hit Blair and Labour hard. Our tube leafletters report many people calling him a liar. Our street canvassing has been great and our car cavalcade made a big stir. We've got six days to pin this on Blair and on Lyn Brown and Stephen Timms here in Newham.

By the way, the Green candidate told nme she was berated at a hustings by a woman who said why haven't you got a campaign. She protested that she had, and eventually it became clear that the questioner thought she was Labour!

All those people who said we shouldn't call Tony Blair 'Bliar' must be pretty shamefaced today. The leaked legal advice from the attorney general shows that he did not believe the war was legal.

Labour candidates around the country must really wish Blair would just disappear. He is a complete liability to his party, is slated in most of today's press _and his agenda has been totally pushed off course by this news. Everyone is now talking about the war. A young black woman who works in a care home but lives in west London, and who intends to vote Labour, feels they need to be taught a lesson. She is totally scornful of Blair's claim on television that he told the truth.

Where does this put the election campaign? It must be good for us and the other anti war parties _ and it must utterly demoralise Labour people, who felt they could put this behind them. We said from day one the war would be an issue. We said Blair was a liar. George Galloway was expelled from Labour for saying troops should not obey illegal orders.

How right he was. I see Rose Gentle has, like Respect, called for Blair's resignation. These courageous parents of soldiers who died in Iraq _she and Reg Keys are both standing in this election_have behaved with nothing but integrity and honesty throughout. It's a pity the same can't be said of our government.

The government has been greatly helped by the attitude of the other parties (the LibDems support the occupation and the Tories supported the war outright) and of the BBC. Craig Murray, who is standing against Jack Straw in Blackburn, spells out in the Guardian today how the BBC has ignored his campaign. In Respect we know how he feels. He seems to be doing alright though. I hope he does.

Here in West Ham we've had an interesting few days. I addressed a lovely meeting of Gujerati women who were very anti war, a meeting of Afghan men in a restaurant who all supported Respect. There have been two hustings. The Liberals have turned up to neither. Lyn Brown, my Labour opponent, didn't turn up to the second. She seems worried about going out without Stephen Timms, the former East Ham MP.

I really feel that Labour, having held this seat for so long, should at least send a representative to these meetings. It sums up this election. Labour is frightened to debate for fear of reminding people how unpopular they are. Tories and LibDems know they can't win and have other priorities. The other smaller parties don't have the people on the ground.

On the other hand we have loads of people out working for us all the time. We know that we are winning people over and that we have a lot of support. We have no 'no go areas' and we are aiming to do the whole constituency. We are planning an eve of poll rally in Forest Gate and we will be almost certainly the only party to hold a public meeting.

We're now in the last week of the campaign and it's getting very exciting. We're meeting new people all the time. Campaigning is very tiring but very rewarding because you talk to people about all sorts of things you would never talk to them about normally.

Tonight there is a Stop the War protest because Blair, Bush and Kennedy are on Question Time from Stratford. Bliar Bliar.

You know how you feel when it's Monday morning, you're back to work and the rain is bucketing down? Well imagine if you were going on an open top bus in the bucketing rain with low visibility and no heating.

That was my start to the week. The idea was brilliant but the execution didn't take into account the British weather_and these weren't just April showers. We were going to do a tour of historic east London and its radical tradition from the match girls' strike to Cable Street. We invited the press and got the east London candidates on the bus.

But we got no further than a photocall with London Tonight on top of the bus before we repaired to a cafe for a cup of coffee and a dry out.

We've had a marvellous weekend across east London and today we had a lot of people out. Went to a school in an area which isn't our best and found a very high recognition factor. People voting for us and more considering it.

I see that it has been decreed that the war is an issue in this campaign! Tories and Libdems are obviously finding it a huge issue on the doorsteps. We know now that the attorney general thought it should go back to the UN and Britain and the US couldn't just start a war.

Kennedy is trying to make it an issue but he is too timid to really take advantage of Blair's dilemma. Apparently he was asked would he have preferred Saddam in power and din't have an answer. My answer is, was overthrowing Saddam worth more than 100,000 Iraqi dead? Or let's put it another way, what about all the other Middle East dictators supported by the west? Such as the Saudi and Jordanian royal families or Egypt's Hosni Mubarak.

The switch to the Iraq war will help Respect. I'm looking forward to the next week.

There seemed to be about 100 people out here today campaigning and we really pressed all the buttons. Had stalls out in Stratford and East Ham _ only people I saw out were Labour. LibDems are obviously not putting much effort in. Labour don't look very happy or very confident.

I'm not surprised. They didn't seem to get a very good response and a lot of their leaflets were just dropped a few yards away. Recognition of Respect was very high, and lots of people said they were voting for me. There was much more interest. There was a very nice continental market outside Stratford station where I managed to buy some French cheese in between campaigning.

People are really fed up with Blair as usual and are desperate for someone else to vote for. They want to know can we win? Will it make a difference if we do? And what will we do for them? Very few support the war, including even some Labour leafletters, according to my reports.

We are reaching parts of the electorate that we never met last June and we are scoring successes across the different communities.

I talk to a couple of white women who say the same thing: they're not racist (and they have mixed race kids) but they feel that poor whites are treated worse than anyone else. This is an interesting argument and is obviously widespread in some parts. People feel desperate and they see life for their kids getting worse and they feel that the ethnic minorities have a better time.

Statistically that isn't true but it's no good just talking about statistics to people. If your house is overcrowded, your parents are living in poverty, your kids can't get a good education, it doesn't help when you're told that other people are worse off. And when you look at the smaller picture you can always find someone who seems a little bit better off.

Respect has to win some of these people over and that takes argument, but also showing people that there is an alternative and that if we remain divided we will always be weak.

Everyone has had a brilliant day. We had lots of the students out. We really laughed at some of them because they're pretty vague and keep losing the maps. Or maybe I'm just showing my age .

Incidentally, we must be the most internationalist campaign anywhere: today our campaigner included Italians, Iranians, Scots, Irish, Australians, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Egyptians, Tunisians and Iraqis. Hope I haven't forgotten anyone.

Definitely it feels like we're making big advances here in West Ham. The momentum of Monday night's meeting has given us a boost, with volunteers dropping into the office all day who were inspired by it to come and help.

We send out people to leaflet the tubes, parts of Plaistow that we haven't yet done, canvass in East Ham and go out leafletting in Beckton. We are so keen that we send two people to leaflet some of the same streets. Luckily the second leafletter spots our broadsheet sticking out of letterboxes before long and stops.

Our meetings in the past two days consist of: hustings at the 6th form college with around 80 students and some staff with me, the Tory and Lyn Brown, the Labour candidate; a Defend Council Housing hustings in Stratford; a meeting of Bangladeshi women in a community centre; plus every day we go to a different school to meet the parents and explain about Respect. Abdul Khaliq, the East Ham Respect candidate, does the same in his area.

Even the least favourable schools provide a good experience: most parents are very friendly, a few are too dispirited to even want to discuss politics but even those are rarely hostile. What they feel is that no one cares about them and that all politicians are the same and will do nothing for them. What an indictment of this Labour government which was elected on such high hopes but is now regarded as the equal of the Tories in cynicism and spin. You can see the hurt in the eyes of people like the young man who told me that he was 23 and that the government had never done anything for him.

You can see the hurt too in the eyes of the Bangladeshi women when you talk about the attacks on the civil liberties of young Muslims. These are their children, and they had hoped they would not suffer the same racism that earlier generations had experienced when they came here. Some hope, with Labour ministers sounding off about Muslims speaking English at home or saying that they should expect to be stopped and searched more than any other section of the community.

At this meeting there was a quiet determination to vote Respect _ at the student meeting the determination was more strongly put. I reckon we could count on 80 -90 % of the room _ some not old enough to vote (although they should be because they can get married and join the army) but all with friends and family who are. Lyn Brown could not defend the government on these racist remarks but she and the Tory closed ranks in saying that their parties were a broad church.

Well Respect is a coalition of people with different views _ that doesn't mean we are unprincipled. No one in Respect is a racist, or supported the war, or wants privatisation.

At the DCH hustings Labour and Tories didn't even send a representative _that says it all. After that I went down to Tower Hamlets to see George Galloway after his meeting was attacked by a Muslim group which is against voting at all _ a wonderful recipe for not registering your opinions and being counted as apathetic.

These groups see Respect as a threat because we are bringing everyone together and they want to maintain the divisions. They have little support and after this attack, plus the one on the Muslim Council of Britain, will be even more marginalised.

The attack sounded really bad, and George's daughter Lucy plus her two little children were there. These things shake people up.

Got home about midnight having got a black cab from Whitechapel to Hackney (no more than 2 miles) which cost £13.

On the subject of transport, Ken Livingstone promised much in his election last year and I was happy to transfer to him but has let people down on this question. Bus fares in outer London zones have leapt from 70p to £1.20, tube fares are up, taxi fares are up, and he is raising the congestion charge. That's really fighting the power isn't it?

Livingstone is pictured today on the front of the Guardian with Oona King in Brick Lane. He should be ashamed to promote a warmonger against George. It's okay for him to stand against Labour but not anyone else, it seems. Livingstone will, I predict, lose friends over this and I don't see it doing King any good with the anti war voters.

On a lighter note, my campaign manager Ghada and I are planning a post election enterprise _ the e plan diet. There's nothing like an election for losing the pounds and we are both losing weight through endless walking, carrying, climbing stairs and few opportunities to eat (see earlier blogs). And thanks to Judith for the Carluccio's bag.

So if you want to lose weight, just come to Newham.

Apologies for not posting for two days but life is moving so fast that it's hard to keep up. Monday was a great day. Held our rally in Newham Town Hall, 350 people turned up, the speakers were just great, culminating in the electrifying George Galloway. I spent a very busy day beforehand, meeting people, going to our press conference, doing an interview with The World at One, and meeting a wonderful group of Afro Caribbeans who are voting Respect, having earlier taken a decision (as long term Labour voters) that they will never vote Labour again.

The next morning amazing news. The LibDem candidate, Ajmal Masroor, has withdrawn and a last minute substitute has been put in the day nominations close. The reason? He was connected with MPAC, a Muslim pressure group that claims its tactical voting advice is the key to advance of the Muslim community.

Unfortunately, MPAC was found to have put out a leaflet which was said to be anti semitic against the Labour candidate in Rochdale. Obviously the LibDems, having distanced themselves from MPAC in Rochdale, then found that Masroor was being supported by them in West Ham. The upshot was, he was gone by the evening.

I profoundly disagree with MPAC's strategy, which was certainly hostile to me. If you ask me, its advice of backing different parties in different areas has not exactly been a success and really doesn't involve much political principle. But the LibDems have also ditched a Muslim candidate as soon as any controversy arises. A bit like when they sacked Jenny Tonge for saying she could understand why people became suicide bombers.

Most people feel this will help me. We are gaining very wide support in both Newham constituencies, as well as in Tower Hamlets. More on that tomorrow. It really is a two horse race here.

No time at all to write over the weekend because there is activity from morning to night. Again we had over a hundred people out in Newham over the weekend. Saturday there was big match between Millwall and West Ham so we avoided much of Green Street until the afternoon. Even then, when we took the bus out there were a few sad looking individuals hanging round outside pubs who didn't look too happy to see us.

Most places, though, the opposite is true. In Stratford, where Labour and LibDems are also out, our stall goes great. We get names of loads of people who want to help, several people who say they're voting for me and I have a good chat with Dean who runs the flower stall. Market stalls are under threat here because of guess what regeneration.

Sunday we leaflet churches _ a number of people say they're voting for me at one _ go canvassing, set up stalls for a huge Sikh procession in Green Street and go walkabout. Green Street is at the centre of Respect support and as ever we meet loads of people who say they are voting for us. Our stall is buzzing while next to it the Labour people look fed up and attract little interest. No sign of Tories or LibDems.

The national press on Sunday is disgusting about Respect: AA Gill's interview with George Galloway in the Sunday Times even criticises his height! Something none of us can do anything about _as I know being all of 5ft. It's pretty bad when you can't reach the top shelf in the supermarket.

I think that apart from anything else these people are snobs. Gill and Christina Odone both express distaste for the East End which they obviously regard as a bit of an eyesore they have to encounter en route to Canary Wharf. Nick Cohen surpassed himself with bile about me, George Galloway, the SWP and Respect in the Observer. I fear for his health if any of us get elected. Perhaps as an investigative journalist he could let us know what he thinks about the postal voting scandal.

They must be all very worried to devote so much space to us but we can expect more of the same.

Sunday afternoon Abdul Khaliq and Shiraz said would I like to go to a cricket awards ceremony, to which I agreed. The Gujarati Metropolitan Cricket League's AGM was a great affair. There were hundreds of shields and cups to be presented to teams and individuals. I presented some which was good fun. I only wish my old friend Paul Foot who loved cricket could have seen me. He would have had such a laugh.

The only other white person apart from me and John was a man from Essex County Cricket who said that while there was no shortage of potential players there weren't enough pitches especially in Newham. The same old story.

We also felt that probably a quarter of the kids in this room would be likely to be stopped and searched in the not too distant future. No wonder people are angry.

News overshadowed by the closure of Longbridge, the Birmingham car plant. When I watched it on the news last night I felt like crying to see the workers leaving the plant after in one case 35 years with their belongings gathered in plastic bags, like people being evicted. One man even had a dartboard on his back.

They have been evicted of course _ their work built the factory and allowed the former managers who bought the company to become millionaires after paying £10 to buy it from BMW. That was five years ago and I remember going to Birmingham to march against closure then. It was a huge march _ representing the people of Birmingham, the trade union movement_but its outcome was this buyout by Towers and his mates.

Welcomed at the time as the saving of the plant, some of us warned that it would be an asset stripping operation. Unfortunately we were right.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown rushed to Birmingham and Blair whined that there was nothing he could do to save the plant. What's the point of being a prime minister if you can't stop the closure of a plant everyone wants to keep open? If they nationalised it then people would be employed, goods would be produced and Birmingham would be a much happier place.

This slavish devotion to the market is one thing people hate about Blair and his policies as I find every day in West Ham. People can't understand why a Labour government can't help the people who supported it.

Handed in our nominations for the election to the returning officer at East Ham town hall. This is a stunning building built in 1901 in ornate Edwardian style. Our papers were all accepted and in order which is a great relief. The postal voting scandal continues, and it is clear that the returing officers are unhappy about what all three parties are doing.

In this time of scapegoating immigrants and Muslims, let's remember it was the Kashmiri People's Justice Party that took Labour to court in Birmingham and exposed this fraud. Democracy was not safeguarded by the government _ in fact it ignored guidelines which would have avoided some of the fraud.

Ghada, my campaign manager, Abdul Khaliq, my fellow candidate in the other Newham constituency and I checked out the main hall in the town hall before we left because we have a big public meeting there on Monday. No other parties are holding public meetings, I notice.

The hall is an ornate high ceilinged room, set out now for a mayor's function that evening with round tables set for dinner. We have to envisage it with the diverse crowd we hope to attract on Monday, not as a banqueting hall. It's a leap of imagination we can all make and we discuss where to put the platform, how many mikes, where people can go to pray if they want to, and how to decorate the hall.

Then follows a round of mosque visit (it is Friday so large numbers come out of prayers and we have a great response), asking for posters to be put up in shops and cafes, visit parents outside a primary school, have a strategy meeting and plan the weekend's canvassing and events.

My food intake consists of half a smoked salmon sandwich made by Ghada, a bag of crisps, a lovely bowl of dessert made with rice flour and spices. All the food is bought or provided by someone else. The other day I had rabbit stew (cold) which Sinead brought in and a lentil and feta cheese salad made by Andy. It's rather an odd feeling to be fed like this. I keep promising myself that will buy some food and organise my sandwiches but I don't suppose anyone is relying on that.

Every day meet new supporters who will campaign for us. Today we visited a Bangladeshi woman who wants to help us. More food _ grapes and shortbread _ and a great discussion. Sinead is leaving us today to go back to university. We will all miss her but she's back on polling day.

The postal vote issue is not going away. We attended a candidates and agents meeting in Newham yesterday where it was clear there are a great deal of worries on this question. We also had a press conference to launch our campaign where we raised it again. My agent Abdurahman Jafar, who is a barrister, asked whether the votes could be counted separately and was told no which means that you can't see if one party has a very high number of postal votes.

I read Tom Woodcock's blog about the Campeace hustings, where he said that local MP Anne Campbell didn't turn up. What a nerve these supposed representatives have. Cambridge has a great record of anti war campaigning and I'm sure Tom will get a lot of support there. He says Campbell just wants to keep her head down _ that seems to be Labour's plan _they're in a war of position in military jargon.

I debated with Stephen Timms at the University of East London hustings and he essentially only debates with the Tory. That's triangulation for you.

UEL campus is a windswept part of docklands built opposite the London City airport runway. It must be very remote being a student there. There are business parks some of which appear to be empty, the Excel centre, hotels and expensive flats. When people say how do we deal with overcrowding there is plenty of room and luxury buildings which could easily be converted to housing.

The candidates were asked about the postal votes and they all said that problems which should be looked at after the elections. Hello! That means we're fighting this election on a system which is recognised as flawed _ what a travesty of democracy that would be.

Meanwhile I hear news from Stop the War that longstanding campaigner Lindis Percy (remember her scaling the gates of Buckingham Palace when Bush visited) is being threatened with an ASBO for her protests outside bases like Menwith Hill. You couldn't make it up. Nuclear weapons and military bases not anti social, peace campaigner is anti social.

George Orwell, where are you when we need you?

The judge in the Birmingham postal ballot fraud case said that the antics there were worthy of a banana republic. In Blair's banana republic it appears it is at present quite legal for political parties to send out forms for a postal vote to potential voters and ask them to be returned to the party headquarters.

Two questions immediately arise in my mind about this: why is this legal and why do the parties want to do it?

Even attributing the most altruistic motives to the political parties here (and three weeks before an election that's hard to do) why would they want to do a job in their busiest time which didn't benefit them? Think about it.

We raised this question at a press conference on Tuesday because we discovered Oona King (yes Oona again) had been sending out forms in Bethnal Green asking for these forms to be returned to her office. Following that story the Guardian lead the following day reported that the Electoral Commission was extremely worried about these and other practices to do with postal voting.

Isn't it incredible that the official body monitoring elections doesn't feel happy with the present system but the parties go ahead anyway. Postal voting should be suspended for this election until these problems are ironed out _ and in my view should not be particularly encouraged as a substitute for going to a polling station and putting your ballot paper in the box.

Met my opponents in the West Ham election on Tuesday for the first time at a hustings organised by the Healthy Living Network. It was a large audience for mainly older people and we all had to do a presentation on our policies which would benefit them. Labour was represented by my opponent Lyn Brown, the Newham councillor standing in West Ham, and the East Ham MP Stephen Timms.

Labour's strategy seems to be to dig in, blind everyone with statistics about how wonderful their lives have become under Labour, pretend that the main debate in Newham is with the Tories, and to try to ignore Respect (although to be fair they were polite enough but did not engage with any of our points). Let's see how long they keep that up.

Wednesday morning off to meet some people at a Bangladeshi welfare association in Canning Town _actually in the Poplar and Canning Town constituency but close to the edge of West Ham_where I was warmly received although very late. Offers of help and support, photos taken, and orange juice and Bombay mix for refreshment. Very nice.

I couldn't help noticing that the parade of shops nearby consisted of a bookies, an off licence, a laundrette and not much else. Don't suppose the residents of the expensive flats near Canning Town tube will be shopping there then.

Rest of the day passed in a rush with a trade union hustings where no other candidates turned up (!) so we agreed to reschedule and had a Q&A, and a small party in one street to introduce me to supporters. Home late to watch the news and ok a press release.

Evening Standard carries news that Cherie Blair spoke at a Brick Lane fundraiser for Oona and became increasingly strident in her denunciations of George and Respect. Can anything help them now?

Called in at the Bishopsgate Institute, site of our mega rally last week, to book the boardroom for a press conference. What a find this place is _ I have been taking buses from outside Liverpool Street station back to Hackney for over 30 years and had never been inside it before.

It was set up in the 1890s as a philanthropic institution to provide education in an area which mark the boundary between the City of London and the East End. It still has a public reference library and teaches among other things languages.

A contrast to the prevalent ethos in the City where it really is every man for himself (and I mean man). The 1980s monument to private capital which is the Broadgate Centre opposite is full of shops selling clothes which cost more than a week's take home pay for many Londoners, restaurants where the 37p per child for school dinners wouldn't buy a glass of tap water. There are few black faces among the executives, brokers and managers, while there are few whites among the cleaners and service workers.

The Transport Workers union recently picketed the Old Vic theatre protesting at a play sponsored by the banker Morgan Stanley which refuses to pay its cleaners a living wage. That's philanthropy today _ a free advert for the millionaire philistines.

Walk five minutes in the other direction and you see some of the poorest parts of London who have lost out in Blair's Britain just as they always have. Take a tube ride to Upton Park, home of West Ham United and now the Respect Newham office, just 15 minutes away, and encounter another world of too much poor housing, overcrowded buses, underfunded schools _ and seething anger at the injustice of the world.

Today we look at our canvass returns which are tremendous and very encouraging. Then out to local primary schools to leaflet and gain support. Ghada and I have a good time with the kids who hate Bush and Blair and their parents who are fantastic. But for the under tens the main attraction is the ice cream van which has a regular stream of customers.

In the evening went to Oliur Rahman's opening of his office in Commercial Road in the Poplar and Canning Town constituency. We are mounting such a powerful campaign across the whole of East London it is causing shockwaves in the whole area. Morgan Stanley are based in Canary Wharf, where we nearly won a council seat last year. Maybe they should start paying a decent wage _ because the people they have taken for granted for so long are beginning to fight back.

Am writing this rather too early on Monday morning because the weekend has been so full that it is just impossible to stop. Friday night I was interviewed by Voice of Africa radio, based in a tiny building in Plaistow. Discussion ranges from Kwame Nkrumah to Bob Marley to what I would do for the people of Newham.

Saturday we had three stalls out. LibDems, Tories and Labour are sighted but we have more people. Canvassing and delivering tabloid papers for myself and Abdul Khaliq Mian, the candidate in East Ham, is now seriously under way. People are so unhappy with Labour and the battle is on to convince them to vote for us rather than sit at home. I think we can do it.

Certainly the response we receive is tremendous. Supporters from Newham and across London turn up in such numbers that there are constant logjams in our tiny office with people grabbing balloons, canvass sheets, tabloids, public meeting leaflets _ and if they are lucky cups of tea and fresh cooked samosas made by one of our supporters.

It is a serious challenge to avoid eating a lot because the food is so delicious in this area. Green Street, just up the road, has loads of tempting shops and restaurants. Luckily we use up a lot of calories running around and don't have time to go to buy the food.

Many of these restaurants and shops have taken our window posters _ and that is true across the borough.

Sunday was another beautiful day. The sun is shining on us at the moment but it is April, in England. The papers have quite a lot about Respect, including predictions that George Galloway will beat Oona King.

We leafletted the big Cahtolic church near our office after Mass and were very well received. I met lots of people _ a couple of older Afro Caribbeans swore loyalty to Blair, but generally most were unhappy.

Then to a walkabout on Green Street which was a delight. We met loads of people, many supporters, and thanked the shopkeepers for putting up our posters. Finally a Muslim event in Waltham Forest, where Abdul Khaliq announced our public meeting. There must have been close to 1000 people there. We received a friendly reception especially from the young women organisers.

Home by 7.30 but politics wasn't over for the day. George Galloway was on Radio London
debating with the other Bethnal Green candidates. Anyone doubting whether to vote for him or Oona King should listen to these debates. She is deeply unimpressive - a mixture of patronising attitudes, spin and a sort of fake localism which makes it very clear that she feels her constituents should be grateful for any of the crumbs they receive from central government.

She denigrated George for talking about international issues _obviously not realising that many of her constituents are extremely well informed on these matters. The argument came up about voting for a black woman but surely we've moved on from that debate. We should know now that it's no good electing black or Asian MPs who don't represent their constituents interests, or indeed the interests of most black and Asian people around the world.

So it's the election at last. No surprise there then, despite the announcement being postponed for a day by the pope's death. May 5th 2005 has been in Tony Blair's diary for a very long time - all planned to go according to the wishes of the spin doctors, the campaign managers and the politicians themselves.

Funny then that things aren't quite going to plan. Firstly the war wasn't supposed to be an election issue. Except it is. Everywhere. Blair is hated because of the war, people are refusing to vote for him because of the war, and now a parliamentary committee has found that nearly all the intelligence on the war was wrong.

If you can believe Blair's henchman John Reid (sorry, Dr John Reid) then the government's strategy is to tut impatiently when this inconvenient question is raised, and just keep talking about the NHS and the economy in a very loud voice. Except in this booming economy people have record debt, can't afford the smallest house in London if they are first time buyers, work longer and longer hours, and are insecure about their future.

And today they announced MG Rover is going into receivership, with thousands of jobs at stake. Not good news weeks before an election and no doubt not in the new labour campaign schedule. But Blair would rather have this than buck his beloved market and bail out the company _ still less take back some of the millions made by the company's directors from what was once a publicly owned company.

I would say the voters of West Ham are pretty fed up with new Labour. In fact in this supposedly safe seat it is hard to find anyone who will speak up for Labour. Far more common when you try to give someone a newsletter or leaflet is the reply 'that's not supporting Tony Blair is it' and only when they are assured not is the material taken.

We are in with a fighting chance to win in both Newham seats, having come second to Labour last June and with the other parties a long way behind. Our launch rally for Respect in east London, headed up by George Galloway, attracted 700 people who filled two packed halls. The atmosphere was electric and we have hundreds of volunteers to help us.

Our appeal is about the content of our politics, but also our form: public meetings, mass organising of volunteers, an absence of glossy ads and spin doctors, enthusiasm, commitment and principles. We say what we mean and mean what we say. What a change that makes. And in the next month we can begin to change history.