Bloodshed to bloodfest: rise and fall of an activist
Shahid Malik's career never lacked drama, says Andy McSmith
Latest in UK Politics
Related articles
On Facebook
From the blogs
Disclosure: We’d never even been to a club when we made our first single
For most of us, reaching eighteen years of age opens up a new world for exploration, spontaneity and...
Top of the posts: Drunken rants, the Western Fail and misogyny pushers
The most read blogs this week, as determined by stats.
Sepp Blatter: Penalty shoot-outs must remain, they’re football’s great leveller
As England supporters, we should scorn at any such deciding factor within football. On so many occas...
Why do some men consider the street as a female meat market?
Pronouncements on sexual inequality in the UK are normally met with an eye roll by my generation. As...
For years, Shahid Malik has had a reputation as a man in a hurry, determined to get to the top, who came out fighting when the going was tough. It was driving ambition that brought him on to television screens yesterday, adamantly proclaiming that he had done nothing wrong and forecasting his quick return to office.
Whenever Mr Malik has found himself in the centre of the storm, for instance after young Asians rioted in his native town of Burnley, or when one of his constituents from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, was identified as the leader of the bombers behind the attacks on London on 7 July 2005, he has always fought back.
Mr Malik, 41, shot to fame one day in June 2001, when the police mistook him for a ringleader of the Burnley riots. In reality, he was a commissioner with the Commission for Racial Equality, and so was on the streets trying to spread calm. The police assaulted, arrested and handcuffed him. The incident was caught on national television when, with a theatrical touch, Mr Malik refused to wash the blood off his face.
He was more conciliatory when he emerged after seven hours in hospital with five stitches above one eye, and he realised that if he lambasted the police it could trigger more trouble on the streets. Instead, he declared: "No recriminations. This incident should not stereotype all police officers." His behaviour earned him praise and an apology from the Lancashire constabulary.
By then it was already obvious that Mr Malik had bigger ambitions than a career in a quango. He was, some people thought, too obviously political and too deeply plugged into the Labour Party to be a good race commissioner, which is probably why his appointment was not renewed in 2002. His aim was to become the Labour MP for Burnley, where he was born in 1967, and where his father, Rafiq, was the deputy mayor, but he was prevented by his party's decision that Burnley should have an all-women shortlist.
After that setback, Mr Malik seemed ready to go anywhere that a Labour Party seat was up for grabs. He entered what turned into a bad-tempered contest for the Labour nomination for Brent East in London, but was perhaps lucky to lose because the seat was then seized from Labour by the Liberal Democrats at the next election.
Mr Malik had, meanwhile, found himself a berth in the safe Labour seat of Dewsbury. He arrived in Parliament in 2005 with a track record of opposing the Government on issues that most directly interested British Muslims, notably the Iraq war, which he opposed from the outset.
But in the Commons, he managed to avoid any position that would have destroyed his chances of promotion. Two months after the London bombings, when Arab television showed a video of the ringleader, Mohammad Sidique Khan, from Dewsbury, boasting about the vengeance he was going to enact for the suffering that British foreign policy had caused Muslims, Mr Malik condemned his words as "sickening". He rubbished the idea that terrorism was caused by British foreign policy, blaming it instead on a "sick" interpretation of Islam.
A year later, when Jack Straw, the current Justice Secretary, caused a storm by suggesting Muslim women should not wear veils, Mr Malik's reaction was noticeably diplomatic. "We shouldn't shoot somebody for being honest," he said. At the time, a teaching assistant from Dewsbury, Aishah Azmi, had been suspended for insisting on wearing a full face veil. After she lost her (highly publicised) case at an employment tribunal, Mr Malik said: "I would appeal to Mrs Azmi now just to let this thing go. There is no real support for it."
When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister in 2007, he made Mr Malik a junior minister at the Department for International Development; he was the first Muslim to hold a ministerial job in the UK. A year later, Mr Malik was transferred to the Ministry of Justice and in March his job was expanded to include part of the Home Office.
When he was elected MP for Dewsbury, his constituents naturally expected him to live there, so he found a flat at what appears to have been a subsidised rent. The House of Commons rules say that when an MP becomes a minister he should inform his civil servants of any benefits he is receiving. Mr Malik allegedly failed to do that, which is why he became an ex-minister yesterday.
He clearly that believes he has done no wrong, but his fierce determination to fight his corner may have done him more harm than if he had quietly slipped out of sight. As one older, more experienced minister, who heard Mr Malik's performance in front of the media, remarked yesterday: "He seems to have forgotten the old rule – if you're in a hole, don't keep digging."
- 1 Mark Zuckerberg saved $111m by selling Facebook shares before stock slumped
- 2 Osborne adviser leaked budget information to Murdoch's man
- 3 Brazil rocked by abortion for 9-year-old rape victim
- 4 Schoolboy spiked brownies with cannabis in cookery class
- 5 News in pictures
- 6 Britain's waste: Now it's coming back to haunt us
- 7 Lawyers told Hunt to stay out of Sky deal
- 8 In pictures: The bewildering face of China
- 9 UK plans for euro-immigrants surge
- 10 Is Ridley Scott the most macho man in movies?
- 1 Mark Zuckerberg saved $111m by selling Facebook shares before stock slumped
- 2 Osborne adviser leaked budget information to Murdoch's man
- 3 Brazil rocked by abortion for 9-year-old rape victim
- 4 Society: The only way is Finland
- 5 Schoolboy spiked brownies with cannabis in cookery class
- 6 Fat? Really? Olympic hope laughs off official’s jibe – but others aren’t amused
- 7 'Hello mum, this is going to be hard for you to read ...'
- 8 African monkey meat that could be behind the next HIV
- 9 Coke reveals its secret: It may need to carry a cancer warning
- 10 French in uproar over oral sex anti-smoking posters
Experience the Heineken Hub
Get free wi-fi and exclusive i content while you enjoy a tasty pint of Heineken at participating pubs.
Can you imagine a career in teaching?
Be inspired to teach - let real teachers show you how rewarding the job can be.
Playing a game-changing role during the Games
Cisco is providing the solutions for London 2012's complex IT needs.
Enter the latest Independent competitions
Win anything from gadgets to five-star holidays on our competitions and offers page.
Business videos from commercial thought leaders
Watch the best in the business world give their insights into the world of business.
Career Services
Day In a Page
Ridley Scott: The most macho man in movies?
Gallic gourmets put France back on culinary map
The outsider: Margaret Howell
For men only: A pilgrimage to Mount Athos
Feeding a hungry world – or meddling with laws of nature?



Comments