Tuesday 20th July

The Coalition government is considering whether to charge students more for higher education through a graduate tax.

Student Respect believes that any system that sees higher charges should be opposed.

Shamefully the National Union of Students has 'welcomed' Vince Cable's calls for a graduate tax that would see students paying more.

In contrast, the UCU's response was excellent. They labelled Cable's moves to support a graduate tax as an "exercise in rebanding" and rejected any plans that would see students pay more for their education.

The Free Education Campaign has issued a very good response to the Vince Cable's announcement which can be read here: http://bit.ly/9W2YxQ

Salma Yaqoob's response: 'Education is a right, not a privelege'

I received a free university education, as did most of the politicians now pulling up the drawbridge behind them as they look for more ways to turn education into a privilege and not a right. For myself, and millions of others, a university education was made possible by a society that valued higher and continuing education, and was willing to invest in it.

Increasingly education is treated as little more than a commodity; to be snapped up by those most able to pay. Bit by bit, the principle of free education has been replaced by the notion that students are ‘consumers’ who should pay for the benefit they get from studying.

The new ConDem government is now considering plans for a graduate tax. It is being sold on the basis that the graduate nurse or care worker should not be expected to pay the same as a graduate city banker. But that is something that could, and should, be achieved through the tax system generally. The better off should pay proportionally more of their income in tax, and those tax receipts should be used to finance a world-class system of higher education.

Instead, the new government is effectively scrapping the target that 50% of 18-30 year olds should be educated to degree level, and seeking to shift the financial burden more and more towards individual students. It is a lowering of ambition that will not even pay its way economically.

Before tuition fees were introduced in 1998 the UK was among OECD countries for the level participation in higher education. It has now dropped to 15th. This is not the way to develop an economy based on high-technology sectors; one that demands a high education and skills base.

Increasing investment in free higher education would be good for students, the economy, and for society as a whole. Shifting the financial burden to individual students will reduce participation in education, widen the gap between rich and poor, and do nothing to rebuild our economy.

For a long period now, higher education policy has just had the result of steadily increasing the cost of going to university. It is time to put that process into reverse and make a university education affordable for all.

BY Salma Yaqoob, Monday 19th July

Immigration Minister Damien Green is to be congratulated for dismissing calls for a ban on the niqab. In response, Philipe Hollobone, the attention seeking MP behind the bill calling for a ban, has said he will not meet any constituent who wears a face veil. In acting in such an intolerant manner Hollobone undermines one of the fundamental principles of the 'British way of life' he claims he wants to protect: the right of every citizen to expect equal representation from their MP. Having crossed swords with Hollobone a lot over the last week in the media I can safely predict that the irony of his stance will be lost on him.

Like many Muslims I find this all depressing. But it also provokes feelings of bemusement. One European government after another apparently feels compelled to proscribe the clothing choice of a tiny percentage of their population. It would be funny if it was not so sinister. In Belgium, it is said that only 30 women in the entire country wear the niqab. In France, it is less than 2,000 out of a population of 64 million. With Europe in the middle of its greatest economic crisis in over half a century you might be forgiven for thinking there are more serious issues to address.

I am against the imposition of dress codes on women, whether they live in Saudi Arabia or Southampton. It is a woman’s right to choose how to dress and nobody else’s. It certainly is not the right of any religious authority, father, husband, brother or politician to impose a dress code. Everybody should have the right to freedom of expression as long as in so doing they do not infringe on the rights of others. It is a simple principle that does not mean we have to agree with each other. Incidentally, that is a principle that some Muslims should think about more deeply. We rightly demand that our rights to practice our faith are upheld. We rightly insist that we are treated equally and with the same respect as all other citizens. It seems to me that it is hypocritical to demand these rights for ourselves, but to object when gay people, for example, demand the same equality as citizens. It is a basic principle of pluralism and civility that we don't only defend the freedoms of people whose choices we happen to like. Indeed the real test of tolerance and freedom is defending the rights of people whose choices we may actually dislike or disagree with - as long of course they do not harm or infringe the rights of others.

Those who support calls for a ban claim we need one on the interests of security. But there are already powers which allow authorities to request women show their face on entering buses, banks, airports etc. The wearing of the niqab is not a threat of security. Nor is it a threat to community cohesion. There is nothing which prohibits anyone from approaching and speaking to niqab wearing woman. And in my experience the women themselves adopt a practical approach by removing the niqab if it is required or if they feel it necessary. The biggest threat to community cohesion we face is not a piece of cloth the covers the faces of a minority within a minority, it is the climate of intolerance and racism this debate invariably brings with it.

As this government unleashes an austerity package much more extreme than anything Margaret Thatcher attempted, which could well result in riots on our streets, this focus on the extremely marginal actions of a handful of people is a divisive distraction. While Phillip Hollobone claims to be inspired by wanting to defend women’s rights, even invoking Emily Pankhurst in the process, he is noticeably quiet on government plans to slash benefits which will impact heaviest on women and single parent families.

There is an ugly tide of Islamophobia spreading across Europe and it is lapping on our shores. Almost every day there is some negative story about Muslims in the media. Almost every weekend gangs of racist thugs in the English Defence League target Muslim communities seeking to provoke street violence. Just yesterday they were down the road engaging in violence on the streets of Dudley. Whether those who call for a ban on the niqab are aware of it or not, this demand is stoking the fires of intolerance prejudice and racism. Muslim communities today across Europe are being subject to a kind of demonisation that has ugly echoes with the hysteria Jewish communities endured about their culture, lifestyle, and the politics of fringe elements among their ranks, during the 1920’s and 30’s. The political beneficiaries of this climate of hysteria in this country will be the fascist thugs marauding our streets in the English Defence League, and the ones wearing the suits in the BNP.

p>BY Madeleine Bunting
(First appeared in the Guardian on Saturday 24th April)

Drums, loudhailers, chanting slogans. It is a very old-fashioned kind of politics that can be heard on the high street in Kings Heath, Birmingham.

But Salma Yaqoob, the prospective parliament candidate at the centre of the hubbub, represents a quiet revolution. "Bankers bailed out, people sold out," she shouts into the loudhailer outside the banks. The passing cars sound their horns in support.

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She is the most prominent Muslim woman in British public life. She wears a headscarf, a powerful symbol of a faith she has accommodated with her passionate leftwing politics. She is standing as a candidate for the tiny and fractured Respect party.

In some streets around the new constituency of Hall Green, her poster is on every window. Since her narrow defeat for Westminster in 2005, she has built up support through her work as a local councillor, as well as building a national profile through her appearances on BBC's Question Time.

She might just topple Labour from a seat in an area which, in 1997, it counted as one of its safest. Boundary changes have brought much of the old Sparkbrook and Small Heath constituency (Labour majority: 19,526) into the new Hall Green.

Yaqoob is one of a small group who has a good chance of making history as one of the first British Muslim women MPs. Her result is looking close, while across Birmingham, Shabana Mahmood is fighting Clare Short's old seat, Ladywood. In Bolton South, Yasmin Qureshi inherits a big Labour majority, and Rushanara Ali could well take the Bethnal Green seat back for Labour. Yaqoob's headscarf at Westminster may prompt a few headlines – both here and abroad – but few will fully grasp the small revolution these women are spearheading in these communities, and how they are introducing to British electoral politics a constituency of Muslim women, many of whom don't speak English and were in previous elections confined to the backroom, the private family areas of the house, whenever canvassers or candidates came to the doorstep.

Back on the high street in Kings Heath, the noisy protesters crowding around the diminutive figure of Yaqoob are furious. Gurt Singh has been running a steel and timber yard all his life, but he has had to put his 10 staff on a three-day week to avoid redundancies. "I reckon I have only a few months left. I can't get credit from the bank."

Essa Altaf is equally outraged. A property developer, he has had to lay off eight men. "I don't want to lay off any more, I have morals. I know redundancy affects a whole family and then the whole community. Why do I have morals, and the banks don't?"

By now I am surrounded by men who all run small businesses in the building industry all telling a bitter story of the recession. The boom in this area of Birmingham has always been fragile and the recession hit quickly and hard. Jobs are the biggest subject on the doorstep, says Yaqoob. She knows well that the issues, even at national elections, are local: jobs, schools, antisocial behaviour, police, housing. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars rarely come up, she says – the surge in anti-war sentiment, which helped her in 2005, is unlikely to feature this time round. Constituents' economic security is far more pressing.

What will help Yaqoob is that her Labour opponent, Roger Godsiff, who has held the seat since 1992, has been badly damaged by the expenses scandal. His second-home claims were among the highest in England, and despite charging £163,885 to the taxpayer in 2007-08, last year he spoke in only five debates and voted in 56% of divisions.

Yaqoob was wooed by Labour after 2005.She acknowledges that "My values are traditional Labour, but New Labour has gone to the right". She was even courted by the Liberal Democrats and the Tories, a tribute to her rare capacity for fair-minded plain speaking, most evident in her Question Time appearance earlier this year, at Wootton Bassett, when she earned respect for her handling of questions about British soldiers killed in Afghanistan, a war she opposes.

But she has stuck with Respect, despite its internal disputes, since 2005, and is probably now better known than her party. She is accused by prominent Labour and Liberal Democrat Muslims of "leading the community into a "cul-de-sac" but defends her politics vigorously.

"I couldn't speak like I do if I was in Labour. I'm not here as a career politician, but because I want to offer an alternative to the neo-liberal model, which is patently failing. I now punch above my weight, working with other parties and influencing them. I want to try and open the space for discussion and debate, which is crucial right now, and nudge Labour into a more principled position."

She says she won't "make a tactic into a principle", clearly indicating that she would come back to Labour on the right terms. In the meantime, her gamble to be her own woman and to speak her mind without having to submit to party discipline is surviving against all the odds. A recent independent assessment argued that she is among Birmingham's three most influential councillors.

Ironically, her toughest battles are probably within the Muslim community. Contrary to assumptions that this is where the core of her support lies, she has had to pick her way very carefully through the sensitivities of conservatives within her community. The old Sparkbrook and Small Heath had the highest number of Muslim votes of any constituency in the country, and many of them are now in Yaqoob's patch.

"I've had death threats and criticism that I support gays – because I have a clear anti-discrimination position – and there have been claims that it is haram [forbidden in Islam] to vote for women. People say to me, 'Have you no shame?' and they accuse me of immodesty and ask my husband why he lets me speak in public. It's still an uphill struggle."

But she has been winning even her fiercest critics round. "Some people who made out fatwas against voting for a woman have now been saying that I'm the right candidate. I have been invited into mosques – some of which don't even have facilities for women to pray – to give the Friday sermons."

Yaqoob is well aware that she is a challenge to traditional Muslim political culture – not just because she is a woman, but because she is not afraid to speak her mind. She has openly criticised the way the postal vote has been misused in Birmingham to strengthen the traditional biraderi – clan affiliations. In practice, what this means is that a community fixer will offer a party hundreds of votes in return for favours.

She recognises that many non-Muslim voters can feel threatened by her as a Muslim. "I'm between a rock and a hard place," she says. "I have to jump hurdles because of the way I look. Firstly, I have to make it clear that I don't support terrorism, secondly, that I'm British, thirdly, that I don't just lobby for Muslims and lastly, that I'm not a Trojan horse for sinister Islamist plots.

"People still question me about the hijab as a symbol of oppression. I try to stay patient and build a relationship of trust. For a real discussion, people have to be able to hear each other: someone has to pull the barriers down. People have a genuine fear, and you need to deal with it or you are dehumanising them – it won't just go away."

Her training as a psychotherapist clearly influences how she understands political conflict and how she is still able to deal patiently with questions faced since she first went to university more than 20 years ago. It makes her voice distinctive in public life – and it's easy to see why she's clocked up five appearances on Question Time, the showcase for aspiring politicians.

The key factor benefiting Yaqoob is the decline of the close bond between Muslims and Labour, which has defined the politics of the Muslim community for two generations. Disillusion with foreign policy, most notably in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as on domestic economic issues, is likely to slash the Muslim votes in Birmingham.

While Labour's successes in Birmingham in the past 13 years are evident in the city centre – the newly redeveloped Bullring shopping centre with its iconic architecture, for example – it's a model of urban regeneration, which hasn't percolated through to the neighbouring Victorian terraced streets, where shops and businesses are closing down.

A younger generation of educated Muslims no longer demonstrates the expected deference to the "village elders", who once directed the family and delivered a bloc vote for Labour. Some are impressed by the Conservatives' emphasis on family values, hard work and responsibility – it is a message that has appealed to successful immigrant communities in the past. This election will almost certainly see the arrival of the first Conservative Muslim MPs: men have been selected for Bromsgrove and Stratford-upon-Avon, two safe Conservative seats in the West Midlands.

Even in Ladywood, the Conservatives smell the possibility of giving Labour a run for their money. David Cameron made an appearance in the constituency last weekend. The Conservative candidate, Nusrat Ghani, also a Muslim, and Mahmood both grew up in this area of Birmingham. Both can call on the family connections vital to winning votes. Mahmood's father is the chair of the Birmingham Labour party.

Both are able to get beyond the "front room campaigning" of previous elections; candidates and canvassers sit in family sitting rooms and are served delicious tea spiced with green cardamom, while the conversations run on in Urdu or Mirpuri. The questions here are about family and which village the candidate is "from" back in Pakistan. There is no mistaking the pride and delight among these women to see a female candidate.

"My generation had a much more traditional life and you listened to your husband on who to vote for, but my daughters have a completely different outlook," says Maqsood Bibi through a translator. "It's a good thing for women to come forward so that it is not just men in politics. As a Muslim, I believe God gives you, as a woman, the same rights as he gives to the men. So why shouldn't you become an MP?"

Along the street, Gulshan Begum was even more forthright. "My generation of women are often illiterate and we need women in power to support us."

Their generation has waited a long time for the moment when this may finally come true.