Rushanara Ali becomes the first Bangladeshi MP elected in Britain
11th May 2010

Rushnara Ali, standing for the Labour Party, has defeated her rivals gaining 42.9% of the Bethnal Green and Bow vote with 21,784 votes, more than double those of her nearest Liberal Democrat rival. She is the first person of Bangladeshi origin to have been elected to Parliament.

Rushanara Ali was born in Bangladesh in 1975. With her family, Ali moved to the East End of London in the United Kingdom at the age of 7, where Ali attended Mulberry School and Tower Hamlets College. Growing up in Tower Hamlets, her father was a manual worker. The first in her family to go to university, Ali studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at the University of Oxford.

Ali began her career as a Research Assistant to Michael Young, working on a project which paved the way for the establishment of Tower Hamlets Summer University, offering independent learning programmes for young people aged 11-25. She also helped to develop “Language Line”, a national telephone interpreting service in over 100 languages. From 1997-1999 she was a Parliamentary Assistant to Oona King, the then MP for Bethnal Green and Bow.

She worked on human rights issues at the Foreign Office from 2000-2001. Prior to this, Ali was a Research Fellow at the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) focusing on anti-discrimination issues from 1999-2002. From 2002-2005, Ali worked at the Communities Directorate of the Home Office, leading a work programme to mobilise local and national agencies in the aftermath of the 2001 riots in Burnley, Bradford and Oldham, to prevent further conflict and unrest. Since 2005, Ali has worked as Associate Director of the Young Foundation in Bethnal Green, a thinktank focused on social innovation.

In April 2007, she was chosen as the Labour Party's prospective Parliamentary candidate for Bethnal Green and Bow and was preceded by The Respect Party’s George Galloway.