Can we really win in Southern villages?

Labour won a district council seat in Kent on Thursday in a ward we hadn’t stood in for over 20 years – with 58% of the vote. We shouldn’t lose its significance in the shadow of Bradford West.

If ever an election result showed the value of standing in every seat, this was it. Crockenhill and Well Hill comprises a village and a hamlet of around 750 houses, and shows it is not just the towns in the south that have the potential to vote Labour.
Whilst it is only a mile or so from the town of Swanley, it is by any definition a rural ward.

The result was:

Labour 304
Conservative 177
UKIP 40

Of course, choice of candidate in a village election is paramount, and ours couldn’t have been better. Jenny Dibsdall’s late husband had been the ward councillor for the Lib Dems and then as an Independent for nearly 25 years, and she was extremely highly regarded in the village, having been a parent governor at the primary school and being involved in the church and the walking group.

There is no doubt a high proportion of our vote was an individual vote for Jenny or for the Dibsdall name due to the high regard her husband was held in. There were indeed Tories gritting their teeth as they felt they had to vote Labour for the first time, because they wanted her as their councillor.

But the individual candidate will always be key, to one degree or another, in small village wards – longstanding residents will always do better than newcomers simply relying on the party banner.

Our candidate wasn’t just local, but enthusiastic, holding a ‘Meet the Candidate’ session for residents in the village hall, and canvassing regularly.
The main village is compact and easy to canvass and leaflet; people talk to each other and were motivated to come out and vote, both those who knew our candidate and those who were delighted to have a Labour candidate at last. We are privileged in having our own printing press – used widely for newsletters in the constituency, our regular Swanley Sentinels reaching issue 180 or more – so we produced high quality colour publicity, as locally targeted as we wished.

And let’s be honest, the Tory voters weren’t exactly highly motivated after the national news of the past week.

It wasn’t just winning the seat. We picked up at least one new member – with plenty of potential recruits to follow up - and three new deliverers for our ‘Sentinel’ community newsletter, which we will make a regular publication for our councillor’s reports.

Would we have won with a different candidate? With an outsider no; with a different villager quite possibly. The point is that we made the positive effort to go out and recruit her to stand. And now we’re here, we’re staying. This is a Labour village from now on.

Labour should be the natural party of the majority of rural voters. In the past, it hasn’t just been mining areas but rural villages in Kent and East Anglia that were Labour-held. Most of the tied farm cottages may have gone along with many agricultural labourers, as have most of the unionised railway crossing and station workers (and indeed some of the railways!) but it isn’t all retired millionaires and masters of the hunt. Often, unemployment is higher than urban areas, public transport is less frequent or, increasingly, non-existent, affordable housing is much harder to come by and village shops and pubs are closing at an alarming rate. The coalition cuts are hurting out here – and the Lib Dems are losing activists week on week. Virtually every village has pockets of current or former council housing; new developments in commuting distance are often filled by Londoners who can’t afford to buy in the capital, and are used to voting Labour. Much of the new build – where it is happening – is for housing associations.

There is indeed still a working class out there amongst the turnips!

In Sevenoaks constituency we have worked hard to try to stand candidates in every ward, a battle we first had to win inside our own party before we could even appeal for people to stand. In fact, the party failed to get a candidate at the other end of the district on the same day and it was left to UKIP to challenge the Tories. We will be using the new Local Campaign Forums to ensure this doesn’t happen in future.
What do we need to do to win in these villages? It’s not rocket science, but it is about localising everything and not being precious about having party branding standing out big on all publicity:

• Start with regular community newsletters on local issues all year round, village or community rather than ward-based. If you’ve few activists and little money for printing, start small but keep them regular. Without them, you won’t get the new active members

• Involve supporters, not just members, in writing for and delivering newsletters

• Think of people who work in villages who will be unionised – such as postmen and women, health workers – and get contacts through their unions

• Hold social events for all – we hold regular music evenings in the Darent Valley villages, with a Peasants Revolt event in a reconstructed medieval barn in June

• Comment on village websites and facebook pages, using our own to promote village events and gather contact details. Our facebook page for the villages is ‘darentvalley labour’. Campaigning for faster broadband is a winner!

• Where we haven't got members to stand in elections, make a positive effort to recruit community activists to stand

• Parish councillors are still important to issues such as the planning process – we should do more to encourage members and supporters to stand. The party nationally and regionally needs to recognise the value of town and parish councillors and give them more support.

• Ensuring a candidate in every election. It’s the old agent’s frustrated adage – people can’t vote Labour if there isn’t a candidate. Use key villagers, like publicans and parish councillors, to endorse them.

• In rural areas, it’s even more essential to get supporters onto postal votes.

We are under no illusions about the task ahead – we were slaughtered in this part of Kent at the last County Council elections (coming behind the English Democrats in every seat) and lost every MP in the county at the General Election. Of course our key target parliamentary seats must remain our priority, but a lot of our members in the south live a long way from one – and it shouldn’t mean we neglect campaigning in our rural areas – there should be no no-go areas for Labour in the south.

The day after the election, Harriet Harman referred to our victory on the Today programme, to counter the negative coverage from Bradford West. Let’s keep our rural campaigns and candidates in the spotlight.

Kevin Flack
Chair, Sevenoaks Constituency Labour Party

Parliamentary and Directly Elected Mayor selections

The NEC met recently and agreed to trigger a further 14 early parliamentary selections. A number of seats in the south will begin selecting shortly. These are:

All 3 seats in Brighton & Hove (based on the proposed new boundaries)
Gillingham & Rainham
Milton Keynes North
Reading East
Bristol South (Dawn Primarolo standing down)
Gloucester

We understand that a decision on which seats will be All Women Shortlist will be taken at the May meeting of the NEC's organisational sub committee.

In addition, the NEC approved a timetable for selecting directly elected mayoral candidates where referenda result in a “yes” vote. The only referendum in the south this May takes place in Bristol.

The "freeze date" for membership is 5 May; shortlisting by panels comprised of Regional Board and CLP reps wil take place on 16 May; the OMOV ballot goes out on 25 May; hustings meetings will take place by 10 June and the ballot closes on 13 June. Results will be declared on 15 June. Elections to the NEC & NPF and the Police Commissioner selections ballots will follow the same timetable.

A new vision for Plymouth – Labour launches 2012 Manifesto

Plymouth Labour Party has launched its full 2012 City Council manifesto promising a new vision for Plymouth. The 100 point plan has been created following thousands of doorstep conversations had across Plymouth in the last year.

Launching the manifesto, Cllr Tudor Evans, Leader of Plymouth’s Labour Group said:

“I think this is the most exciting manifesto Labour has produced in many years. Elections are fought often on negative campaigns because quite often political parties have little to say that is fresh or exciting. But this programme, with its 100 pledges for action, gives all voters something positive to vote for. It is a vision of how to create a fairer, greener, cleaner Plymouth where more people can share in prosperity."

"Plymouth needs a new sense of purpose to tackle the scar of unemployment, housing shortages and the state of our streets. We need to start punching above our weight as a city again. Labour has ambition but also the plan to make things happen.”

Plymouth Labour launched the environment section of the manifesto last week which detailed plans by the party to continue to oppose the Devonport incinerator and to extend recycling across the city.

The ten-section manifesto outlines how Labour would create a new, more open City Council. Included in the manifesto are plans to overhaul transparency in the way the Council operates, create new jobs, address the pressing jobs and housing crises across Plymouth.

Cllr Pete Smith, Labour’s Deputy Leader on the Council, added: “For the last year the Tory Council has been drifting without a clear vision of where they want to take Plymouth. Combined with deep cuts from Government we need a new way of operating as a Council if we are to protect public services and restore a sense of pride in our city. I’m a candidate in this election and I am proud to stand on a manifesto that so many people have fed into. This was not created in a Committee room but on the doorstep in every ward in Plymouth.”

Plymouth Labour is also making five top promises to voters in the May elections:
1. A new plan for jobs, to get our young people back to work
2. Keep our roads and pavements clean and in good repair
3. Encourage more homes to be available to rent or buy
4. A new deal for older people’s care
5. Campaigning to bring down crime and keep Plymouth safe

The full manifesto, that builds on these promises, can be downloaded here. Plymouth Labour also intends to make social media history by being the first party to tweet every pledge to spread knowledge of what Labour is proposing.

Southern Comfort

At the last general election less than 1 in 6 people voted Labour in the south-east. The simple, unavoidable truth is that we cannot elect a Labour Government without winning in places like Crawley, Milton Keynes, Southampton and Reading. Every radical, reforming Labour government has been the product of broad-based coalitions, with roots in every party of the country and all classes.

As Labour’s new regional champion for the south-east over the coming months, I’ll be leading teams of Labour MPs and peers on the campaign trail across the south-east – and reporting back exclusively to LabourList. First stop: Reading.

Packed lunch in hand, joining me on the 10 o’clock train from Paddington were Vernon Coaker, John Woodcock and Alison Seabeck. In 1997 we won both Reading East and Reading West. At the last election, Reading West fell to the Tories and we slipped to third place in Reading East, behind the Liberal Democrats. We must win Reading back.

Our road back to power starts in local councils, and in this year’s local elections
16 seats are up for grabs in Reading. The day started with campaigning in Redlands ward, which currently has 2 Liberal Democrats and 1 Labour councillor. Knocking on doors in all the streets around Erleigh Road, we found lots of people supporting our Labour candidate Tony Jones.

With red kites (the bird kind) overhead in Katesgrove ward, we met residents who are backing Labour candidate Rose William’s campaign for landlords to be made to clear up mess and overgrown gardens, and chatted to parents at Katesgrove Primary School.

Hitting the airwaves on BBC Berkshire, I had the chance to explain how our policy to put all over-75s on the cheapest tariff for their gas and electricity could save over 9,000 pensioners in Reading as much as £200 a year, proving that even when there is less money around Labour can still deliver fairness for elderly people struggling with their soaring bills.

After Reading, John Woodcock and I hit the campaign trail with Fiona Mactaggart and our colleagues from Slough’s Labour Council – a shining example of a council that has refused to be paralysed by the huge, frontloaded cuts imposed by this Government. At a great Progress event later that evening we talked with local councillors, candidates, party members and activists about how we can recapture and shape the centre-ground and win again in the south-east.

Arriving back in Doncaster just before midnight, I reflected on the day, how we’d won in places like Reading in 1997 and what we need to do to win them back. Times have changed. We’re not going to win the next election trying to recreate the 1997 campaign. The easy optimism of the late nineties and the noughties has given way to a different mood. More anxious. More insecure. Living standards flat-lining. Unemployment rising. Concerns about identity and community. We will address those insecurities, show that Labour is a party for all times, and not just good times and prove that we understand that fairness is about what you put in, as well as what you get out, and a fair welfare state is based on rights and responsibilities.

But, most of all, we’ll be ambitious and optimistic, and show people that Labour is on their side if they want to work hard and make a better life for themselves and their families.

Next stop: Southampton.

Caroline Flint MP is Labour’s Regional Champion for the south-east

This article was first published on Labour List

"Super Thursday" in Braintree

Congratulations to Braintree Labour Party on two fantastic by election victories last night. Three seats were being contested - Braintree East, Braintree South and Great Notley and Braintree West. Labour posted 6.5% and 10.2% swings in East and South respectively to take two seats direct from the Conservatives. Although unsuccessful in the Great Notley and Braintree West contest, Labour still managed to achieve an impressive 9% swing from the Conservatives. All in all, a very good night for Labour in Braintree.

Good luck to Labour's newest councillors Eric Lynch and Martin Green.

Managing expectations

The battle to manage expectations has begun. In a recent interview Tom Watson MP, deputy chair of the Labour Party and campaign coordinator for both the local elections and the Mayoral contest in London thinks 350 seat gains is the upper limit for Labour’s expectations. Watson claims his figure is “a realistic, stretching challenge”, but local government polling experts, Professors Rallings and Thrasher of the University of Plymouth suggest “Labour is on course to make upwards of 500 gains and take control of several additional councils”.

Watson understands why these numbers matter. Despite gaining 850 seats in last year’s local election results – no mean feat one year after posting our worst general election result in 80 years – the fact that this fell below a media expectation of a four figure gain, meant that the results of 5th May 2011 were written up as a Conservative victory.

These numbers are of course national predictions. What can Labour realistically expect to achieve in May in the South?

Firstly, 2012 is likely to see Labour build on last year’s success in standing more candidates and contesting more seats. In the east of England 79% of seats were contested compared to 60% in 2007; in the south east and south west, the figures are 66% (53%) and 51% (34%) respectively. In an interview before last year’s Labour Party conference, deputy leader Harriet Harman committed the party to contest 80% of seats this time round. Given that half as many seats are being elected in 2012 compared with 2011, this is achievable.

Secondly, Labour can and must win control of a number of local authorities. As the list below demonstrates, there are no more than councils in which Labour has a realistic opportunity to take control.

Thurrock +1
Norwich +2
Exeter +2
Harlow +3
Plymouth +4
Reading +4
Great Yarmouth +5
Southampton +6
Crawley +6
Cambridge +8

While one might assume that the eight gains required in Cambridge are out of reach this time around (a Labour seat from 1997-2005 but where we are now in third place), a failure to make one gain in Thurrock, two each in Norwich and Exeter and 3 three in Harlow would be a terrible blow to the party’s prospects for 2015. All ten of these councils house marginal seats that Labour must win in 2015. The stakes at play in these seats are high.

Finally, of the 63 local authorities in the south holding elections in May, eighteen have no Labour representation whatsoever. If Labour is able to achieve its target of contesting 80% of seats across the south, and if the mood of public dissatisfaction with coalition cuts is reflected in the ballot box, then new Labour Groups will be established from 6th May right across the political south. Labour councillors in Adur, Castle Point and Woking will be a sign of success.

Although the parties’ spin doctors will be doing their best to talk up their respective results, they may both end up on the losing side. As local elections are taking place on the same day as the London Mayoral rematch, our London-centric media will ensure that the political coverage on Friday 4th May is all about Ken. Or Boris. Or both. It seems unlikely it will be about whether Labour has 350 or 500 new councillors.

Stuart King is Editor of Southern Front