“Everything pretty much changed after 9/11,” says Kaneez Shaid. “Before that I never really worried about faith, or wearing a headscarf, or anything like that, but Islamophobia started to rise in Britain around then.”
Shaid, 41, who is giving her first interview as chair of the community organising charity Citizens UK, was then a marketing professional in her mid-20s who wanted to improve Islam’s image. “I felt I needed to do something to change the perceptions and attributes attached to the brand because it wasn’t a reflection of who I am,” she says. She contacted the Muslim Council of Britain and offered advice, but this early foray into volunteering was frustrating as she says “the problem felt too vast”.
It was another few years before a Citizens UK organiser went to see her at work. Shaid says her first reaction was suspicious: “I thought, who are these people and why are they asking these questions?” Even now, after she has been a trustee for years and is used to arguing her case at meetings with politicians, she thinks the hardest thing about becoming chair of Citizens UK will be explaining what community organising is.
In a nutshell, it is working at grassroots level to strengthen civil society. Membership is via institutions such as faith groups and educational establishments, and there is a strong emphasis on face-to-face meetings, rather than social media, although Shaid says “some MPs come back to us on Twitter quicker than on email”. So far, more than 350 churches, mosques, colleges and other organisations have signed up to local chapters that organise campaigns and develop leaders to run those campaigns on everything from buses to social care. It is best known for its successful living wage campaign, which persuaded more than 2,000 companies to up their employees’ pay. Last summer, the chancellor, George Osborne, pinched the idea when he announced a new “national living wage” of £7.20 – which Citizens UK believe is no such thing. (Its own living wage is £8.25, or £9.40 in London.) Osborne’s move, however, was a vindication of years of campaigning about in-work poverty.
Citizens UK also stages assemblies during election campaigns, where members can address the politicians seeking their votes (London mayoral hopefuls Zac Goldsmith and Sadiq Khan are booked for next month).
Studiously non-partisan, Shaid doesn’t agree that having a London mayor from a Muslim background would be a boost. “I think Muslims are much more interested in the actual issues than in what politicians look like,” she says.
In London, the creation of a “London living rent” linked to income, tops a long list of new campaigns, with a manifesto expected soon. Elsewhere, Citizens UK is at the forefront of resettling refugees and last month won a case against the government on behalf of three Syrian teenagers trapped in Calais. Then there is the Citizens UK Commission on Islam, chaired by former attorney general Dominic Grieve, which it will be Shaid’s job to sell to policymakers. Health is another growth area, and a new chapter in Tyne and Wear has just launched.
Shaid appears confident, exuding the kind of can-do hopefulness that is meant to attract politicians. She agrees that things are likely to get worse for British Muslims before they get better, but laughs as she points out that swimming against the tide is what her organisation does. She talks a lot about power, and “power relationships”, but she comes from the grassroots: her local group Telco (The East London Communities Organisation) was the first chapter, and by promoting her, the charity signals its local origins.
Because its core purpose is to build capacity, Citizens UK views campaigning as an end in itself and there is much talk of passion, solutions and dialogue.
She explains that the first question an organiser asks in a meeting the charity calls a one-to-one is, what makes you angry? (Her own answer is, “people who don’t have a voice or the good things in life that I enjoy”). When charm doesn’t get results or a relationship breaks down, the charity uses “tension” to exert influence: “The next thing is to gather people, turnout”. But, as a rule, it prefers carrots to sticks. Rather than calling a strike or the direct action that other activists employ, Citizens UK makes an appeal based on morality, common sense and even patriotism. “I believe at the heart of the living wage is this thing about doing the right thing,” Shaid says. “It is a British value to treat people fairly and with dignity.”
And she says she is proud that her organisation inspired David Cameron’s “big society”, even though it is now widely scorned as a fancy term for cuts. Shaid believes the kind of bottom-up, embedded work Citizens UK does is valuable, whatever the level of public spending. “People are not always happy with solutions dropped on them from above,” she says.
She talks about its challenge to the private sector, as well as the state, attributing the success of the living wage campaign to the fact that the stories of hardship told by the charity “broke through the market … Those cleaners who get up at 4am are some of the hardest workers in Britain and they deserve good pay.”
Shaid was born in Walthamstow, north-east London, to Pakistani parents, and went to school in Southend-on-Sea, in Essex. She grew up with friends from many faiths and learned an inclusive attitude from her father. She joined Citizens UK through her college, not mosque, but takes the helm of an organisation that is strongly faith based (her predecessor Paul Regan is a Methodist minister and Neil Jameson, who founded the organisation 20 years ago, is a “pragmatic Quaker”).
Citizens UK accepts that not all mosques and churches are keen to join up, that some even value their separateness. “We go deeper and beyond that,” says Shaid. “When we ask what are the things they really want to change, they come back to things like dignity. We’re finding the common theme that brings people together – that is the magic.”
Is there any financial reward for the hours she puts in alongside her full-time marketing job and busy home life as the mother of two children? She replies: “Absolutely none, apart from the goodness it gives your heart”.
Curriculum vitae
Age 41.
Lives East London.
Family Married, two sons.
Education Prittlewell high school; South-east Essex College, BTec in business and finance; Anglia Ruskin University, BA business studies; Lord Ashcroft business school, MSc marketing; Middlesex University, Phd marketing management.
Career 2001-present: director of marketing, Sir George Monoux sixth form college; 1999-2000: customer service adviser, Ford Motor Company; 1997-99: marketing officer, Anglia Ruskin University.
Public life Chair of trustees, Citizens UK; trustee, New Adventures: Re-Bourne; staff governor, Sir George Monoux sixthform college; awarded an MBE in 2013 for services to young people and the community in east London.
Interests Running, arts and education.
