Labour hopeful Amina Lone: ‘I hated being on benefits’
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Version 0 of 1. If Amina Lone manages to wrestle marginal Morecambe and Lunesdale from the Conservatives in the general election, she will not be the first Muslim woman to enter parliament. Nor will she be the first single mother, however rare both breeds may still be in Westminster’s male and pale ranks. But she will almost certainly be the first MP with an anarchy tattoo inked on her right arm. The circle-A is covered in multiple layers the day I join her for a sodden doorstep session in her coastal Lancastrian constituency, but I know it’s there after Andy Burnham referred to it – teasingly, but with no little admiration – in a speech at a Labour fundraising dinner last year. She groans theatrically when I ask for the story, then lets out one of the infectious laughs that punctuate most of her conversations. “Misspent youth,” she says. Now 43, Lone certainly spent her youth differently from most other prospective MPs. One of six children and born in Birmingham to Pakistani parents who emigrated from Kashmir in the 1960s, she left school after her GCSEs and moved to London when she was just 17. While her peers were at university, she was on benefits bringing up her first child at 19, followed by another at 20. It was not a happy time. “I hated it. No one in their right mind would want to go on benefits. It’s demoralising and horrible,” she says, screwing her youthful face up at the memory. “Being a single parent is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. You get up, you smile and you put your face on. But I’ve gone to bed crying into my pillow and then cried when I woke up. You feel that there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.” She had two more children, who are now 16 and 17, with a different partner and has spent the last 20 years doing youth and community work. Since 2010, Lone has worked as a councillor for Hulme in inner-city Manchester, where she lives with her family. When speaking at events, she often uses the same line: “I’m a single mother of four. Under the Conservatives, I am part of Broken Britain. Under Labour, I’m a parliamentary candidate.” Though she only joined the Labour party in 2007, she insists she was never an anarchist but simply liked the symmetry of her initial enclosed in a circle: “The tattooist didn’t tell me; he probably just thought I was young and stupid,” she laughs, insisting she can live with it after finding a definition that said anarchism was “to be against oppressive forms of government”. Morecambe and Lunesdale is a bellwether seat currently held by a Tory former hairdresser called David Morris – who, curiously, used to be a member of Rick Astley’s backing band – on an 866 majority and, like all down-at-heel seaside towns, is of interest to Ukip. A poll this month by Lord Ashcroft has Lone just ahead on six points. But Lone says her biggest competition is neither the Conservatives nor Ukip, but disaffection: “For me it’s really stark across all of the social spectrum. People who are not working and maybe on benefits, because they are caring for children or are disabled or are going through a transition in their lives, and who need help and typically don’t vote, right through to people who are really educated public servants and work in the public sector and are articulate – from that whole spectrum I get people who say, ‘I don’t think I am listened to. I don’t think my voice is heard.’ I feel that disaffection.” Last year, Lone co-wrote a fascinating report on disaffection among the white working class for Open Society Foundations and yet it still seemed surprising when she decided to contest a 98% “white seat” rather than one closer to home in multicultural Manchester. I grew up in Lone’s constituency and went to the big high school where I could count the number of ethnic-minority children on one hand (two were brothers whose dad ran the Chinese takeaway). So, w hy Morecambe? “I would ask the question: ‘Why not?’,” she says. “Do we want to racially profile people so that they only go for seats that are of their ethnicity? There are some people who do that. Or certainly think that. But I think it’s a dangerous road to start going down. You start ghettoising people. At what point do we start saying only gay people can stand in places with a large gay population? I think it’s dangerous politics.” In some parts of the British Asian community, traditional gender roles still rule supreme, says Lone, who has never married. “I’m a single parent and that is frowned upon. I think it’s horrific in this day and age that you’ve still got that sort of crap to contend with as a woman, when we already know there is enough gender inequality.” She adds: “It is horrible, but I just think that by standing as a parliamentary candidate, you are winning. You are saying: ‘Your stupid small-minded caveman politics are irrelevant.’” A non-practicing Muslim, she insists her ethnicity is not an issue on the doorstep. “Sometimes people say: ‘You’re not from here, are you, love?’ But they mean I’m not from Morecambe. I’m not naive enough to think that it won’t matter. For some people, it will. It’s something that I think about. Mostly they think, you’re ‘exotic’. But I’m an English girl through and through. When people have asked me I told them my parents are Kashmiri, and I was born in Birmingham. I would pass the Norman Tebbit test. And then I move on.” She is under no illusions that balancing parenting with the demands of parliament will be a challenge. Her children, though apparently supportive of her political ambitions, will not move to Morecambe. If she wins, the plan is for the older ones to look after the younger ones in Manchester while their mother divides her time between Westminster and the constituency. She admits to being nervous about making it work: “I’m terrified. Personally, I’m terrified; professionally, I’m terrified; politically, I’m terrified. But that doesn’t stop me keeping on and doing what I need to do. I don’t want to sacrifice my family, but I don’t feel that I am. Right now I’m doing a daily commute of three hours [between Manchester and Morecambe] because I want to see my children and hear their nonsense in the morning and the cacophony of noise when I come in, about school dinner, about why I haven’t sewn someone’s trousers.” Campaigning full time became significantly easier recently when she was one of a small number of Labour candidates to receive £10,000 from the former Lib Dem peer Lord Oakeshott – money she could spend on petrol and childcare. She also accepted £1,000 from Tony Blair, but had yet to cash the cheque when I interviewed her. Back in Morecambe on a doorstep in the Ryelands estate, one of the poorest parts of Lone’s constituency, one girl, still dressed in her pyjamas in the afternoon, describes how her sister recently lost her baby after breaking her back. At 17, the girl is too young to vote, but Lone chats easily with her about the hardships of life – the teenager has just packed in her job after realising she was spending all of her wages on bus fares to and from work. Lone suggests she join Labour’s youth group. The following day, Lone forwards me an email from the girl asking for information about the youth club. “This email made my day and is exactly why I do what I do,” she wrote. “We can make a difference and I am going to die trying to.” |