by LIBBY BROOKS
Labour faces tough task to regain seat lost to George Galloway’s Respect party
At a meeting of the Columbia Road tenants’ association, the talk is of littered flowerbeds and rickety scaffolding. The security light at number 74 is still broken. Amid the razzle of manifesto launches and TV debates it is the ultra-local as much as the national that defines communities’ experience of the political process. Never more so than here in Bethnal Green and Bow, where Abjol Miah, the Respect candidate anointed by the sitting MP George Galloway, is squaring up to the first-time Labour candidate Rushanara Ali.
For these mainly older, white working-class tenants, the early throes of the parliamentary election campaign have been underwhelming. “We’ve had a lot of junk through the letter box but you never see them,” says Joyce. “I feel terribly let down by George Galloway,” adds Margaret. “He was never at his surgery and he never spoke in the house. He had a totally different agenda, and he was courting the Bangladeshi vote.”
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(Submitted by reader)