I have had the pleasure of knowing Sagal for years – as a fellow member of the Labour Party in Camden – and more recently as the leader of Camden Council. She is the frontrunner to be Labour’s candidate in the forthcoming by-election to succeed our former MP and Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer.
She is one of the most delightful, warm and humorous people I have known. It is – as can be seen from her photographs over the years – almost impossible to capture without a broad grin.
Yet she has a steely determination. Her role in charge of housing in Camden – one of the most difficult of portfolios – meant she had to take some of the most difficult decisions about homes, one of the borough’s most precious resources. Since May she has led Camden Council.
The rise to the top
Sagal was chosen to lead Camden after her predecessor, Richard Olszewski, lost his seat. Her selection was a moment that said a lot about Sagal and about the community. She took it calmly, thanking her proposer, Izzy Lenga.
Sagal, a practicing Muslim, used her first speech to acknowledge and thank Izzy as a Jewish woman. “This is” as Sagal said, “what it means to live in Camden.”
“We are different people, we come from very different backgrounds, have different life stories,” while emphasizing that this was no object to living and working together.
Sagal sees herself as a woman brought up and made by her life in Camden. But she is proud of her Somali roots, as she recently explained to the local newspaper, the Camden New Journal.
She is aware that her life story is different from her predecessors in the leader’s office: the first black leader of the council, the first black woman, the first born in Somalia.
Her family arrived in London when she was seven, escaping the brutal civil war which ravaged the east African nation in the 1990s.
After a brief time in Walthamstow, they found themselves in Gospel Oak, where her parents became heavily involved in community work.
Her mother set up the British Somali Centre to help new bewildered residents with the education and health system, and providing their children with after school activities.
“We came to this country as refugees from Somalia – when I was a kid,” she said. “It was only when I was old enough to look back and think about it in a philosophical way: my mum was always looking after us and made our lives nice, serene… whether we were in a refugee camp or temporary housing.
“I’m happy to share my story because my story is why I’m here now.
“I know it means something being the first of something – but it’s more the number of people who have come up to me since – staff at the council, people in the community – and the emotional way they have responded to it.”
Some analysis of May’s council elections led to claims that Labour had lost long-standing support among the Muslim community, partly because of Gaza.
“You can’t be like all the Muslims – every Muslim – votes the same way. It’s just not true,” she said. “I know thousands of people who are Muslim and voted for Labour at the council elections. Whatever way people vote, everybody has their own reason.”
Cllr Abdi-Wali studied at Leeds University but said the student politics scene there had not attracted her.
She returned to London, joining more community projects in Camden.
In 2015, she signed up for the Labour Party, although not amid the rush of new members to get Jeremy Corbyn in as leader; she voted for Andy Burnham.
“We had an MP [Mr Starmer] here in 2016 who was really inspirational,” said Cllr Abdi-Wali, when asked about that time.
Later, she felt she had to focus on local politics because “one devastating thing after another was happening on an international level which I couldn’t do anything about.”
She cited Brexit and Donald Trump’s presidency.
In politics and in life
I have known and campaigned with Sagal for years, who is always happy to turn her hand to anything.
Our cricket on Hampstead Heath was fun, but I can’t say that she is the most skilled batswoman!
Sagal is serious about her faith, but wears it lightly. Although she never drinks, she is happy to come with those of us who do to a pub.
Which is where she was recently: folding leaflets to distribute, with our then Member of Parliament, Keir Starmer.
Sagal is a passionate European and – with the rest of Holborn & St Pancras Labour Party – marched against Brexit.
British Somalis
Sagal is very much a Londoner. She is proud to be British, but if she was elected as our Member of Parliament she would, as far as I can tell, be the first woman of Somali origin to be an MP.
The first MP who could trace his heritage to Somalia was Sir Mark Hendrick. He was elected Labour MP for Preston in 2000.
The Somali community in England and Wales was 176,645 strong in 2021, as recorded by the Census. They are scattered across the UK, with the largest number in London. Some of the earliest communities are to be found in Cardiff, Bristol, London and Liverpool. They arrived as sailors and were also recruited from Somalia and Somaliland to join the British armed forces in both the First and Second World Wars.
There have been ethnic minority British MP’s for 259 years. James Townsend was first elected to parliament in 1767 and had a grandmother who was from the Gold Coast, today’s Ghana. Today some 90 MPs are ethnic minorities – around 14% of the total.
Perhaps one more will be added if Sagal wins the selection to be Labour’s candidate in the forthcoming by-election. I believe she can win and will do all I can to support her.
Martin Plaut 