Tower Hamlets SWP councillor Ahmed Hussain has joined the Tories!

international | miscellaneous | other press Tuesday February 26, 2008 14:04 by John Cornford

Jim Moody interviews Ahmed Hussain who has defected from the SWP to the Conservative Party.

JM: Why have you left Respect (Independent) group on Tower Hamlets council?

AH: Initially the four of us left the party because of the leadership: it was not going anywhere. It was just out of order, because everyone was doing what they wanted to do. The reason I left the new group is because we were trying, but we were not going anywhere to help the community.

The other thing is, the party itself is just not going anywhere because the electoral commission has put an embargo on the name. You can’t really re-establish the party all over again. It was quite hard to do with Respect. People had elected me to the council to serve them, and that was not happening because I was concentrating more on party problems. That was why I thought I should move on to another party.

JM: But why the Conservatives, not Labour or the Liberal Democrats?

AH: I had been speaking to the Lib Dems and Labour. With Labour I felt that the way they were talking was ‘You’re another number’ and not ‘OK, you’ve got good ideas - come over, we can take things forward’. When I spoke to the Labour hierarchy, it was like ‘We’re only 26 or 27 and if you come around we’re going to be in a safe situation’. At the end of it the officers’ recommendations just go through - they can’t even accommodate their own members. My say is not going to go anywhere.

My politics are pretty much within Tower Hamlets: that’s why I thought that the Conservatives are taking on the issues ... even more than our group, when I was with Respect.