The candidate isn’t just here for their vote. “Hello, I’m Chris Stephens and I’m standing for the SNP at the General Election. Are there any issues where I may be of help,” he asks each householder who answers the door. We’re on a street just off Albert Drive in the Glasgow South West constituency which Mr Stephens has held across three UK elections since 2015.
Albert Drive rises amidst the tenement neighbourhoods which house a large cohort of the city’s multi-generational community Asian communities. It’s an epic and theatrical quarter in which the tides and excursions of Glasgow’s post-war cultural and industrial development are evident at every junction.
Just beyond here as you look west is Kenmure Street, site of the famous stand-off in May, 2021 between thousands of residents and activists and a British Home Office Deportation Unit who were seeking to detain two Sikh men.
After an eight-hour protest during which the Home Office van was surrounded by a citizen army, the forces of the crown were driven back. This was greeted with euphoria across much of Glasgow, and not merely because of a rare 1-0 victory against Conservative overlords.
A lot of us retain a deep affection for these streets. This was an affirmation that the Asian community belongs to the city as much as any other ethnic or cultural grouping. It sent a message to Brexit Britain that migrants built modern Glasgow and that this city will always welcome those fleeing famine, war and persecution.
The so-called Battle of Kenmure Street (Image: free)
The Battle of Kenmure Street features prominently in Mr Stephens’ election literature along with the war in Gaza. There’s a pledge to fight against Islamaphobia. He’s keen to stress that this is more than electioneering in a constituency where the Muslim community is prominent.
“Look, these streets and neighbourhoods are home to people who have contributed greatly to the cultural and economic wealth of Glasgow and Scotland,” he says. “Certainly, this constituency comprises many ethnic groups confronted by the same challenges: cost of living, housing and stagnating wages. There’s still a tendency though, to marginalise our Asian and Muslim communities as other. This has been at the core of my trade union and workplace activism well before I was elected to Parliament.”
Tonight, he and his 12-strong team of canvassers are being rewarded with a remarkable show of support. Of the 14 doors opened to Mr Stephens and me, 12 are firm, no-messing-about SNP supporters. The other two are Don’t Knows, but ‘persuadable’.
The Gaza conflict arises on some doorsteps, though not in a muscular sense. There’s merely an acknowledgment of the SNP’s support for a ceasefire and their solidarity with the innocents who are bearing its brunt. Only one Palestinian flag hangs from a window.
Humza, a young activist in Mr Stephens’ campaign team, comes back bearing good news: “We’ve met two Labour voters who intend to vote for you because of Gaza,” he says. “This is ‘wee Humza’,” says the candidate, “as opposed to Big Humza Yousaf.” In truth though, ‘wee Humza’ looks as though he can handle himself in boisterous circ*mstances.
“Gaza is an important issue,” says Humza, “but it’s been an important issue for many years before the current conflict and Chris has been with us every step of the way.” At no point is there any hint of hostility towards the state of Israel or the Jewish people, only a desire for an end to the suffering.
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The main threat to Chris Stephens’ dominion in these parts will come from Dr Zubir Ahmed, a prominent NHS transplant and vascular specialist who was born and raised in neighbouring Govanhill where his dad was a taxi driver. He rejects the criticism levelled at Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party that they haven’t been sufficiently strong on demanding a ceasefire in Gaza and is dismissive at what he regards as condescending attitudes to the Muslim community from some on the left.
“I think we need to stop treating Muslim people as a hom*ogenous block,” he says. “Just because you may be Muslim or Pakistani doesn’t mean you have a different perspective to anyone else. As someone who’s part of that community, I find this deeply condescending, offensive even.
“There’s a diversity of socio-economic and cultural views within our community, just as in other ethnic or faith groupings. I’m passionate about ending the suffering in Gaza and, along with my wife, have been involved in providing online teaching programmes for medical students in the West Bank and Gaza who have been unable recently to attend classes.
“To suggest that this is the only issue occupying the minds of Asian voters, does them a dis-service. There are varying perspectives on Gaza. We’ve been able to inform the wider debate inside the Labour Party.
“There are other major issues, such as the rocketing prices of flats in Pollokshields which are putting them beyond the reach of working families in the area. Many Asian families are being forced to move out as a result. We can effect real change on Westminster’s front benches, rather than just shouting about it.”
On Nithsdale Avenue, beside Pollokshields East railway station, where every carriage bearing southbound passengers must pass, I meet Irene who has lived on this street most of her adult life. Like many others here, her politics straddleboth SNP and Labour. “I’m an independence-supporting Labour voter,” she says. “Perhaps the SNP needs to be taught a few lessons. A period in opposition in Scotland might ultimately be good for them.”
Govanhill is a diverse area (Image: free)
She points to the top windows in the handsome sandstone tenements across the road. “In the three elections since the independence referendum, many of these windows would have had SNP posters plastered all over them. There was even a cardboard cut-out of Nicola Sturgeon which hung from that window up there on Kenmure Street.”
Recent local polling suggests that Dr Ahmed has a slim lead at this stage in the contest, but Mr Stephens’ reputation as a seasoned and fierce electoral gladiator is well-earned. The great 1950s American civil rights leaderVernon Johns told his supporters: “If you see a good fight, get in it.”
Mr Stephens is of a similar temper. “I welcome the fight,” he says. “Seven years ago, my majority was only 60. I like close contests; it keeps everyone on their toes.”
The momentum and exultation that ensued from the 2014 referendum brought a remarkable windfall of Westminster seats for the SNP. In its wake though, came droves of opportunists eyeing the chance to access a lifestyle well beyond that which their modest talents could have commanded in real life.
Mr Stephens, though, has had to graft for every political reward that has come his way. Being authentically working-class and not belonging to the Matalan Army of aides and hustlers who have attached themselves like barnacles to the 21st century SNP, he was often overlooked for selection before unexpectedly taking this seat from Labour in 2015. His canvassing returns make him a permanent fixture in the SNP’s top ten most assiduous grafters.
I form the impression that he knows every crack in every pavement on every street in these neighbourhoods and regards all the families who live on them as his personal responsibility. Here he is again the following morning, at Govan Cross beside the statue of Mary Barbour and her ‘Army’. These women had organised rent strikes and resisted eviction by landlords seeking to profiteer from the war effort.
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A group of Waspi (Women Against State Pension Inequality) campaigners - the present-day Mary Barbour’s Army - are fighting back against the UK Government’s decision to increase the pension age for women from 60 to 65, with little or no warning. Millions of women born in the 1950s were thus deprived of pensions they’d worked lifetimes towards, often in unequally low-paid jobs. Many had juggled the unpaid responsibilities of carers to elderly and infirm relatives. As ever, the poorest among them have taken the biggest hit.
Chris Stephens knows every one of those gathered around Mary Barbour’s statue and they each greet him with a hug. They note that he’s “had a herrcut”. Soon, John Swinney will arrive to tell them that he’ll anoint their campaign with a prominent place in the SNP’s election manifesto.
Once, this would have been a sacred cause for the Labour Party, but they’re not represented here. As Keir Starmer has inched closer to Downing Street the Waspi cause, like so many others once considered sovereign to Labour, has been quietly jettisoned.
On July 4, the votes of these women may yet prove to be crucial in the battle for Glasgow South West.
