When The Muslims Move In

The Takeover Nobody Dares Explain

Across England there are towns and cities that no longer resemble what they were a generation ago. Most people assume this is what happens when communities grow and change. They are wrong.

The betrayal came first.

In a growing number of towns and cities across England, almost all Labour Party controlled, the biraderi has taken political control before the demographic balance had fully changed.

This is more than a story about the demographic evolution of neighbourhoods or White Flight. It is a story about power. How it is taken, how it is held, and how the process begins long before anyone sounds the alarm. The demographics transformed as a consequence of the politics. What looks like the natural result of population change was, in large part, its cause.

Once the politics were secured, everything else followed. Housing allocations. Planning decisions. Political protection. All of it conducted in the name of community relations.

This journey to surrender starts in a single ward, with a single deal, before most people have any reason to notice. By the time it is visible it is already advanced. By the time it is complete it cannot be undone.

Tower Hamlets, Bradford, and Birmingham are what the end looks like. This piece is about what comes before it. And what happens when the Muslims move in.

TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER

It starts with a deal. A small number of Muslim newcomers in a ward. The numbers are not yet there to demand anything. But the bloc vote is already organised, already deliverable, and Labour wants it. This deal had already been done in neighbouring Muslim areas. As the community expanded into new territory, the deal comes with it, ready to be made again. The demographics that followed are not coincidence. They were consequence.

The deal runs in three stages.

1. Deliver votes for Labour's existing candidate.
2. Demand your own candidate on the ballot.
3. Once the foothold is secured, expand and ensure all the candidates are yours.

The vehicle for the deal was the biraderi network. Biraderi is a kinship structure, clan and family obligation organised into political loyalty, operating across Britain's Pakistani communities. There is a comparable structure amongst the Bangladeshis too. It runs on obligation. Religious belief is incidental. It operates politically in ways that fragmented electorates cannot match.

Once the council seats and candidate selections are taken, the demographic transformation of a neighbourhood follows. The White community that had built these places did not leave because they wanted to. Researchers call it White Flight. What it means on the ground is simpler than that.

The school your children go to stops being the school you knew. English becomes a second language in the classroom. The housing turns over. The shops change. The pub closes. The church empties. Sometimes, it even becomes a mosque.

A 2005 government report found communities living parallel lives, no meaningful contact between them. In Oldham, the academic record shows White residents moving out neighbourhood by neighbourhood. They left because what they had built no longer existed. The process had a name and a mechanism. It started with a deal between the Labour Party and the Biraderi leaders.

The Labour Party is not alone in this deal. The other parties noticed and decided to get in on the action. Having watched Labour harvest the bloc vote for a generation, rival networks began approaching the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and now Greens willing to take the arrangement.

The result is visible in wards across England with rival biraderi clans running candidates under different party colours, the contest between them having nothing to do with the political beliefs of the parties. Until the emergence of Reform, the White community did not appear on that ballot. They were the residue.

That is what the end looks like. Council chambers full of men who answer to the Biraderi. Ballot papers with no name on them that belongs to the people who built the place. A community that existed for generations, gone. Displaced by a deal that was struck before most people understood there was anything to negotiate.

THE MATHS THAT MAKES IT WORK

Organisation beats numbers.

A ward of 8,000 registered voters returning 35% turnout produces roughly 2,800 votes cast. An organised bloc operating at 70-80% turnout across 1,200 registered voters in targeted streets produces 900 votes moving as a unit. Against a fragmented opposition splitting the remaining 1,900 between three or four candidates, that bloc does not need to be a majority of the electorate. It only needs to be the largest organised block in the room.

The postal vote multiplies this. The Electoral Commission's 2014 report identified 16 local authority areas at elevated risk of electoral fraud: every one of them with a significant Pakistani or Bangladeshi population. Sir Eric Pickles' 2016 review documented pressure on women and young people to vote according to the will of male elders. The Commission's own research concluded that mainstream political parties were only too happy to accept the middle-man role of kinship networks. The Denton and Gorton by-election stands as a documented example. The process is difficult to challenge and slow to prosecute.

HOW IT HAPPENS: THE SEQUENCE

• A ward is identified. A Labour councillor is holding the seat but needs votes. The biraderi has them. The deal is made.
• The bloc vote is delivered. Labour's man wins. The price of that delivery becomes the next demand. Community grants. Candidate placements. Postal vote operations run to secure what the deal promised.
• The deal advances. Labour's man becomes their man. A candidate from within the network appears on the ballot. Sitting White councillor are deselected or moved elsewhere. No explanation is given publicly. The local press does not ask for one.
• The postal vote operation scales up. The Electoral Commission's 2014 report identified 16 local authority areas at elevated risk of electoral fraud: every one of them with a significant Pakistani or Bangladeshi population. Sir Eric Pickles' 2016 review documented pressure on community members to vote according to the will of male elders. Applications cluster in specific streets. Votes are gathered before they reach the returning officer. Organised participation against an unorganised opposition. Nothing more than that.
• Political control is established. Housing allocations follow. Planning decisions follow. Public funds are distributed along ethnic lines. The area begins to change around the people who have lived there for generations.
• Other parties notice. Rather than challenge the network they find their own man through a rival clan. The Conservatives. The Lib Dems and now the Greens. Anyone willing to take the arrangement. The ballot begins to fill with names from competing biraderi factions.
• The odd White candidate still appears. They get a handful of votes. They are not a threat and everyone knows it.
• The original community is no longer a political force in their own ward. The area completes its transformation. By the time anyone sounds the alarm, it is already done.

OLDHAM AS A CASE STUDY

Clint Phythian stood in Oldham's council chamber and argued that a statutory inquiry into the cover-up of the gang rape of children would be a waste of money. Royton's voters removed him. Labour brought him back. The party looked at what Phythian said and decided he was the right man in Royton North. That is a statement of intent. Treat it as one.

Marie Bashforth was the sitting councillor in Royton South. She would not entertain accommodation with the Muslim bloc vote operation. She would not stay silent. She was deselected, removed before voters could pass any judgment, and replaced with Kathryn England.

Within days of her selection, England met with leaders of Royton's Muslim community. She had not stood at a single doorstep as Labour's candidate. The meetings came first. Whether England understands the full nature of what she has walked into is a question worth asking. That she walked into it this quickly is not in dispute.

Royton's Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities are growing. Ward boundaries have been redrawn, incorporating areas not historically part of the Royton wards. Social housing is in prospect for those same areas. The timing is not coincidental. In every borough where this sequence has already run its course, the housing pipeline and the boundary changes came after the political foothold was secured. Royton is earlier in that sequence. The foothold is what May is for.

The field has been cleared. The Royton Independents have not fielded a candidate. Internal squabbling finished them before the campaign started. The Conservatives in Oldham are not challenging Arooj Shah's administration. It is seeking accommodation with it and has failed to even put up candidates in the biraderi controlled wards.

The people of Royton North and Royton South are being asked to choose between a party that made the deal and a political landscape that has decided not to contest it. This is not an accident. This is the sequence working exactly as it is supposed to.

It is the same in other wards. In Waterhead, the existing White Labour councillor has been removed and replaced with a Muslim. Labour is contesting with the Pakistani sectarian and Islamist supporting Oldham Group. The key election battleground is a Muslim cemetery.

Clash between Oldham politicians over Muslim cemetery dispute

A dispute between the Oldham Council leader and the leader The Oldham Group has broken out online ahead of the local elections in May

The Oldham TimesKent Lawlor

It is the same in Hollinwood, where two biraderi factions are fighting it out with each other. In Werneth, Alexandra, Coldhurst, St Mary's, Chadderton Central and Medlock Vale, the contest is also between biraderi factions. Of the 20 wards in Oldham, the biraderi control at least six and are looking to take control of five more. Should they succeed, the town is lost.

THE BLOC VOTE IS NOT A METAPHOR

The biraderi network operates on loyalty and obligation. A community leader who delivers votes receives access. The candidate is the vehicle, chosen for compliance and placed for access. Behind them sits the network, the biraderi structure that organised the votes, brokered the deal, and now expects its return. The ward is the territory. It is logged, managed, and defended. Planning decisions favour the right applicants. Housing allocations go to the right families. Contracts and appointments follow. Gangsters are protected, sometimes even elected. The candidate's name is on the ballot. The biraderi is what gets elected.

ONCE YOU GO BIRADERI, YOU NEVER GO BACK

What follows is not representation. The White working-class residents who built these towns, raised families in them, buried their parents from them, become a shrinking electorate that no candidate is organised to reach. They are not a vote anyone is chasing. They are an inconvenience our multicultural journey has learned to wait out.

In every town where this sequence has run its course, the moment of contest passed quietly, before most people understood it was happening. By the time they did, the ward was gone, the candidate was in place, and the network had moved to the next street.

The people who lived through it in areas like Werneth, Coldhurst and St Mary’s did not get a second chance. Their wards were gone before they understood what they had lost. In the areas where the biraderi wants to expand, there is still a chance to stop them. That chance does not come twice.

Now you understand their game plan and you know why they have tried so hard to silence me from sharing this. There is no excuse. You know what is at stake. What you do next will shape the future of the entire nation.

Politicians protected the rape gangs. They sold children for votes and sacrificed little White girls on the altar of multiculturalism. Networks of politically protected Pakistani men gang-raped girls and trafficked them across the country on an industrial scale.

Reads like a far-right conspiracy? There is now a National Inquiry underway to investigate this very scandal.

My name is Raja Miah. In a previous life, I helped safeguard children and keep this country safe from violent extremists. For the last eight years, some of the most powerful politicians in the country have tried and failed to silence me. Because I exposed what really happened and helped force the national inquiry.

With the help of ordinary people like you, we have forced this into the open.
What happens next is not controlled by the government. It will be determined by our resolve.

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