Before each general election in the late 1990s and early 2000s, campaign group Operation Black Vote used to publish a list of the most ethnically diverse constituencies in the UK. These were the areas in which the size of the non-white population exceeded the size of the incumbent party’s majority. The idea was to persuade political parties to campaign in these places and to think about what they were offering to ethnic minority voters.
Operation Black Vote, which was founded in 1996 to empower voters from ethnic minority backgrounds, had good reason to worry. Both anecdotal and academic research shows that ethnic minority voters had been largely taken for granted by the Labour party.
As an example, the prominent Labour politician Roy Hattersley wrote candidly about the minority vote contributing to his 1974 re-election as an MP for Birmingham Sparkbrook: “I won with an increased majority, the well-organised and invariably loyal Kashmiris had cast their disciplined vote early in the day.”
