Last week I spent a lunch hour with my friend and former Ealing Independent Network “running mate” Minni Dogra, as she canvassed a street near me in her effort to win enough votes to be elected as a councillor in Ealing Labour council leader Peter Mason’s own Southall Green ward.— — In 2022, I did the same canvassing and amassed a whole 223 votes — 2,633 fewer than Peter Mason. It is a mammoth task. But four years ago, Mason lost the largest share of votes of any Labour incumbent in Ealing. So there is always hope.— — I met Minni at the Brent Road end of Derley Road and we made our way down the odd numbers toward Caxton Road. Minni had her list of postal voters, a couple of clipboards, pens and stacks of brilliantly designed leaflets held together with elastic bands.## Councillor Jasbir AnandAs we set off — Minni doing all the work of knocking and talking, while I checked the postal voters register for each address — I noted Peter Mason’s fellow Southall Green ward councillor Jasbir Anand’s former home — and the site of the garage from which she ran an illegal food business for the better part of a decade. The story was broken by the Ealing Gazette’s Phil McCorkell way back in 1999.— — — The timeline, as reported by the Gazette, is precise. Anand had been preparing food — samosas and snacks supplied to local firms — from her dining room since at least 1991. She was given temporary planning permission in April 1993 to prepare cold food at her home. That was extended. In October 1996, she applied to use her garage permanently. Refused. She appealed. A government planning inspector rejected the appeal in September 1997. The council ordered her to stop and remove all equipment. She was still running the business more than a month later. A council disciplinary committee was convened but could not examine her conduct until it recruited outside members. Her comment to the Gazette: > *“I have bought a shop in Southall and will be moving out very shortly."*Fellow ward councillor Umesh Chander, who had just taken over as planning west chair, told the Gazette at the time: > *“Councillors should show other people how to behave. This is setting a bad example. It seems she just wanted to carry on until someone complained."*This was 1999. Anand had just been elected to Ealing Council with 2,018 votes — the highest of any candidate in Southall Green (or Glebe ward as it was then known) that year. in 2006, Anand was in the news again. Her new shop was around the corner on Scotts Road opposite the Scotsman pub. Cllr Anand got into a lengthy legal dispute with her new neighbour, which eventually cost her £35,000 in damages. She paid up only under threat of bankruptcy.A year later, Anand — allegedly — falsely accused the same neighbour’s daughter (who went on to be the world famous singer Tasha Tah) of assaulting her. Tah was arrested, but the case never went to court and she was cleared of any wrongdoing. Tah said she would sue Anand for “malicious prosecution”.Responding to fellow councillors' concerns about her behaviour, Cllr Anand said: > “I don’t care what people believe. I believe in my rights.“Never mind her personal affairs, some will say. So what about her time in office?In 2010, at a public meeting called by disabled adults protesting the closure of their day centre — a closure she was responsible for as cabinet lead for Adult Social Services — she told a room full of people in wheelchairs: > *“I own half of Southall. I’m very popular. I got voted in so at least a few people must like me."*Ironically enough, Anand is now the cabinet lead for crime and anti-social behaviour, and has been a councillor in Southall Green for 28 years. By my calculation she has received at least three quarters of a million pounds in councillor allowances during that time. Enough for ten children’s centres.Her food business, AN&, now operates an upmarket coffee cart at Berkeley’s toxic Green Quarter development at a prime location opposite Southall station — a commercial relationship that her colleague Jags Sanghera — simultaneously Berkeley’s community engagement manager, chair of Southall Community Alliance, and a Labour candidate in Norwood Green — has helped to promote. That is a story for another day.## Minni DograIt is not easy talking to people on the doorstep. Many are just coming home or about to go out. Most are deeply sceptical. They have been let down too many times by politicians making and breaking promises to care much about voting. Many feel disenfranchised, powerless, and resentful at the perceived — and often very real — unfairness of it all. What they hear in the media, mainstream and social, is that their problems are caused by immigration, by benefit claimants, by their neighbours converting four-bedroom houses into HMOs with fifteen tenants, and rubbish in the street. Nobody knows who to complain to, or gets any response if they do.Minni listens to all of it without judgment. She takes notes. She offers practical help and advice where she can. She is nothing if not completely grounded in the day-to-day reality of living in Southall. In recent years she has campaigned to save Southall’s Crown Post Office, campaigned against the closure of ten of Ealing’s children’s centres (including three of six in Southall, the most deprived town in the borough), and secured a public inquiry into the legality of the compulsory purchase orders on The Green — orders designed to buy out small local businesses to make way for yet more residential tower blocks. The inquiry found the CPOs were legal, but the developer subsequently pulled out. Minni Dogra is a councillor in all but name.While she is standing in Southall Green under the ECI umbrella alongside her friends and neighbours Joe Bhangu and Jatinder Rajput, Minni regards her independence as a major asset. She cannot be bought and she does not blindly follow any party line. This is one of the things I have noticed about ECI as an organisation: its leadership has managed to formulate policies that a broad coalition can support while still leaving room for genuine individual differences — and, occasionally, disagreements on priorities. That is a very different offer from Ealing Labour and the “controlling” Peter Mason who permits no dissent at all.Minni has a track record of campaigning on local issues that are important to people and small businesses in Southall and serving their interest, rather than her own. She has complete integrity and is committed to democratic decision-making in the council chamber, meetings and panels. On wider issues that also affect Ealing residents, she is committed to divesting Ealing’s pension funds from companies who provide weapons or otherwise support the senseless death and destruction in Gaza and elsewhere. These are all strong differentials between her and all the Ealing Community Independent candidates, and their incumbent Labour Party opponents. For all their repeated talk and “On Your Side” sloganeering, it’s clear after sixteen years in power whose interests they really serve.