Dudley candidate in plea for Tories to tackle racist claim

Afzal Amin, who is standing in Dudley North next year, says that people from minority communities still perceive the party to be against them.

And he wants his party to talk to people from minority communities as the British citizens they are rather than 'as though they belong somewhere else'.

The Muslim former army captain, who is aged 39, spent several tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He wants people from minority backgrounds to join the Conservative party and be selected as candidates, but on their own merit rather than due to skin colour or ethnic origin.

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He said: "What's very clear to me is that in the Sandwell and Dudley areas where I grew up and I now live, for the vast majority of people, whether they're black or from the Indian subcontinent, the general perception is that the party remains a racist party and we have not done enough to convince them that this is not the case.

"The policies we have are very, very good policies.

"And they are right policies, but often we communicate with our ethnic minority voters as though they belong somewhere else.

"They need to recognise that we can't communicate to our ethnic minority voters with the primary reference point being the countries that their fathers came from.

"My family and I do not want to be communicated to because our father came from India – talk to me because of the NHS and other things that we are interested in."

Mr Amin is trying to unseat Labour's Ian Austin in the marginal Dudley North constituency.

He said: "There are several layers to this.

"When we talk about immigration we have to be unequivocal that we're not talking about people whose families came here three or four generations ago, we're talking about people coming now.

"The biggest economy in the world, the United States, was build on immigration.

"But we need to speak about sensible controls."