Labour’s by-election candidate has said that votes may not be enough to achieve racial progress as footage emerged of her discussing the merits of an “uprising”.

Paulette Hamilton, who is seeking election in Birmingham Erdington on Thursday, said that Britain’s black community may not get what they “really deserve” by using democratic means alone.

On Wednesday night, Sir Kier Starmer, the Labour leader faced calls to suspend Ms Hamilton as Tory MPs questioned whether she represented “democratic values”.

She made the remarks at a panel event in 2015 called “The Ballot or the Bullet: Does Your Vote Count?” hosted by the Organisation of Black Unity (OBU).

Audience members were shown clips of Malcolm X’s famous 1964 speech in which he warned that African-Americans may need to defend themselves if the US government continued to prevent them from achieving full equality.

‘I am very torn’

Ms Hamilton, who if elected will become the constituency’s first black MP, told the event: “So you talk about the bullet or the vote. I’m not sure, although I believe in the vote and I believe in our right to use that vote or destroy that vote.

“I’m not sure that we will get what we really deserve in this country using the vote but I don’t know if we are a strong enough group to get what we want to get if we have an uprising.

“I think we will be quashed in such a way we would lose a generation of our young people. So I am very torn.”

The panel discussion was one in a series of events organised by OBU to commemorate 50 years since the death of Malcolm X in 1965.

‘Disturbing’ views raise ire

Gary Sambrook, the Conservative MP for Birmingham Northfield, said that Sir Keir Starmer should “disavow any support for her or her campaign, and commit to removing the whip from her if she is elected”.

In a letter to Sir Keir, he said Ms Hamilton’s comments were “entirely out of step with the Labour Party’s principles and mainstream politics”.

Tom Hunt, the Tory MP for Ipswich, raised a point of order in the Commons asking for the Labour leader to explain the behaviour of their by-election candidate.

Nadine Dorries MP, the culture minister, said it was “disturbing” to think someone with such views might be “elected as an MP tomorrow and sitting on the Labour benches by next week”.

A swing away from Labour in by-election?

The Birmingham Erdington by-election was triggered by the death of veteran Labour MP Jack Dromey, the husband of Harriet Harman, who has been the constituency’s MP since 2010.

The seat has been held by Labour for almost 80 years, although they had a slim majority at the last general election of 3,601 votes.

James Johnson, a former Downing Street pollster, said that Birmingham Erdington is the kind of seat that six to nine months ago the Tories would have seen as a possible target.

“If we were talking about the Conservatives gaining any more of these Red Wall-style seats, then this is exactly the kind of seat you would expect to see them doing very well in,” he said.

“We would be talking about it in the same way as we were talking about Batley and Spen,” he said, referring to a seat which opinion polls had suggested Labour was on track to lose at the by-election last summer, although they went on to hold it by 323 votes.

“But the situation with the national polls is now very different. I think a lot more people would be looking at the swing away from Labour.”

But Ms Hamilton, a mother-of-five and retired nurse, told The Telegraph that Labour has to “fight for every vote” to get re-elected.

“At this moment in time, if I win by one vote, I will be happy,” she said, adding that Erdington was a “notoriously” low voter turnout area, with just 53 per cent of constituents turning up at polling booths at the last general election.

She said the biggest concern that comes up on the doorstep is the cost of living crisis, with voters more concerned about this than they are about Downing Street parties.

‘Labour has let down community’

Meanwhile, the Conservative candidate Robert Alden said voters are telling him that they feel “let down” by Birmingham’s Labour-run council which has “not invested in communities”.

“Time and again we take motions to the council calling on them to invest in Erdington, to provide match funding on bids to the Government,” he said. “When we tried to make a Levelling Up bid, they refused to put a single penny match funding in the Erdington bid. The residents are really fed up.”

Mr Alden added that many voters will find Ms Hamilton’s comments at the 2015 event “shocking and concerning”.

A Labour Party spokesperson said: “Paulette Hamilton is arguing for better representation for the black community in public life and as she is campaigning to become Birmingham’s first black MP she has a point.”