Liberal Democrat Muslim Forum Meeting

Chairman’s Report To AGM

The Forum is one year old. The many Muslims entering Lib Dem Party over the last four years prompted its start as there was a need for a Forum to represent their very special interest within the Party in this time of great upheaval for the Muslims. The Muslims have fast become the largest minority group within Liberal Democrats. Over half (21) ethnic minority candidates were Muslims in May and were successful in achieving good swings from Labour. We have many countless Muslim Councillors all over the country.

My initial ring around the Country showed enough interest to start the Forum and some keen members agreed to go on to the initial Executive Committee. We launched the Forum during the Leicester South By-election in Leicester. We than organised our proper Launch to Autumn Conference 2004 with a Launch Fringe meeting. This was a successful meeting with guest speakers, Baroness Kishwer Falkner, Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP, Saj Karim MEP, Saghir Hussain of MPACK and Hasan Abdullah of ISCN. We held a second Fringe meeting on “why Muslims are leaving labour” with guest speakers, Simon Hughes MP, Farooq Qureshi and Issan Ghazni.

We organised another Fringe Meeting in Spring conference in Harrogate. With Guest Speakers, Sir Ming Campbell and Dan Sbreeny --- a high ranking USA official from American Embassy, who answered questions on USA policy in the Middle east. This was one the most talked about meeting of the conference. Having set such a standard on Fringe meetings, we are now expected to top these for next time. We will be present at Blackpool in September but unsure on the theme of the meeting as yet.

A number of Executive members were not able to do any work for the committee once on the committee and were asked to be honest about taking on responsibilities and if unable to deliver than do not to block the positions and let someone else get on with the work of the Forum. Thus some opted out and others were co-opted who carried forward the work. We now have 10 executive members and I shall be asking some of these to decide if they wish to continue on the basis that they will allocate the regular required time to deliver the important objectives and work of the Forum.

We have allot to do and we must not settle for a culture of wanting positions and not delivering to the objectives effectively. I hope everyone can appreciate the hard work of the current executive team who have delivered excellent results during this first year, it was no small achievement. Organising our first Lib Dem conference when most of them have not organised these before, I hope you would agree they have a done a great job.

Last but not least, it would be impossible to achieve the objectives of the Forum unless we have a large membership to support the Forum, or without an effective and large team of workers on the committees. So I urge you to complete the membership forms, take these with you and get others to join. Offer your self to work with the executive committee. And allocate some time to work for the forum on a regular basis.

My thanks to everyone who have supported the Forum in its first year, especially the executive committee, initial members for their funding and Baroness Falkner and Saj Karim for their important support to the Forum.