Hackney Central election result
A really good result for us in Hackney. I got 260 (11%), Charlie got 161 (7%). I beat the Tories. Full result below.
We have held up the socialist vote from four years ago despite the sad demise of the Socialist Alliance (and despite extensive gentrification of the ward, and the Labour council not making any cuts this year).
Moreover, we met loads of good people, and plan some good follow-up in the area. Oh, and I think comrades who canvassed really enjoyed themselves too!
Booth (Socialist Unity) 260
Fawkes (LibDem) 543
Frost (Tory) 246
Gallagher (Green) 598
Kelsey (Tory) 229
Laing (Labour 1233
Ledger (Tory) 205
Lloyd (Labour) 1259
McDonald (Socialist Unity) 161
Snaders (LibDem) 343
Stops (Labour) 1061
Thompson-Wood (LibDem) 320
PS. The Greens only got so many because they were every protest voter's third vote.
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Hate to pour cold water...
...but beating the Tories in Hackney is not that much of an achievement. Your leaflet was really good and it's a shame you didn't do better, but after a war, mass privatisation and the most right wing labour government ever, it's extremely dispiriting that socialist candidates in working class areas are polling so badly.
Meanwhile, "Respect" seems to have had all of its councillors in Tower Hamlets elected on a sectarian Bangladeshi vote (all of its white and female candidates appear to have lost to male Muslim Labour candidates) and we have 11 BNP councillors in Barking.
I don't know what the next step is, but if we face the facts, this election has been a disaster for the proper left.
It`s very dispiriting. The
It`s very dispiriting. The "Working Class" has become so fragmented and selfish that it`s not really that suprising that it`s just a hard core of left voters
left carrying the flag.
I'll comment on your substantive point later, but ...
I'm not sure how well you know Hackney, and particularly this part of it. Hackney Central has had some serious 'gentrification' over the last four years. That, combined with the upturn in their fortunes nationally, led to the Tories doubling their vote from four years ago. But we still beat them. Perhaps that's more of an achievement than you realise.
Good results in a bad election
The bigger picture is certainly bad for "the proper left". The Tories won the election hands down and the BNP made substantial gains. There is no way to put a positive gloss on that and we shouldn't try.
Socialist candidates did however do reasonably well in parts of the country. The Socialist Party were unfortunate to lose the seat of a Labour left who had recently defected to them in Stoke to the BNP, despite polling strongly. That disaster aside they won new councillors in Coventry and Huddersfield and their two sitting councillors in Lewisham were reelected. They also picked up a number of second places. Other Socialist Green Unity Coalition candidates polled respectably, including the two AWL members in Hackney. On the non-socialist left, the Independent Working Class Association picked up a councillor in Oxford.
Ironically enough it seems that hard left candidates slightly improved their vote despite the general rightward shift.
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How do we measure it?
Sure, if we're asking whether the proper left is about to win mass support and score great triumphs, our Hackney result is another bit of evidence that we're not.
But we knew that already. That is why we have mass privatisation and all the rest of it.
In the general election last year, in Nottingham East, our comrade Pete Radcliff got less than half the vote he got in 2001, despite a good campaign, a good response on the doorsteps, and a good outcome from the campaign in terms of new contacts and supporters for AWL.
Part of the reason there was a "squeeze" from a strong leftish-looking Lib-Dem campaign. But a lot of it was down to the demise of the Socialist Alliance.
That in Hackney we managed to overcome all those countervailing influences, and maintain the vote Janine got in 2002 on the back of a good, big campaign against recent council cuts and as part of a high-profile Hackney-wide Socialist Alliance effort, seems to me pretty good - on the scale of what's possible for us immediately, with our actual resources, in the actual situation we face.
In my experience on the doorsteps, the problem in working-class political consciousness is not so much "selfishness" as lack of confidence.
Plenty of working-class voters like what we say. The variation in responses in different parts of Hackney Central ward, between council (or recent ex-council) estates and "gentrified" street houses, was as if designed to give an over-simplified lesson in vulgar economic determinism: the poorer the street or estate, the better the response.
But would people who liked what we said vote for us? Often they wouldn't. They liked what we said. But who is this Socialist Unity? Can we rely on them? Why not stick with the devil we know? Or vote for a party which has a real chance of gaining control of the council? Or just not bother?
The next step? Surely it must be to see how many of those socialist voters we can convince to go beyond voting and become socialist activists.
Martin Thomas
Not So Sure
Martin,
I'm not sure I can agree with your analysis here. I doubt that for your ordinary voter they would make much disticntion between whether the socialist candidate stood as Socialist Unity or Socialist Alliance. I think the "Who are you?", "Can we Trust You?" questions are likely to have been equally as important in either case, so I doubt that can be used to explain much.
The same is true for the "Why should we vote for you, rather than someone we know, or someone who might have a chance of winning" arguments. All of those arguments are valid reasons why socialist candidates do not get very good votes, but I think apply equally to Socialist Unity or Socialist Alliance. The same is probably not so true of Respect, for the simple reason that like it or not, Galloway is well known. It is interesting though that Respect does not tend to get such high votes in areas where they have little chance of winning.
I don't know exactly what the "gentrification" consists of, but I think socialists have to be careful on that score too. In my blog about Developing Plans for Your Community" I raised the point about the argument we had with some Councillors arguing against improving the area for fear of losing the votes of workers who felt they now lived in a nice area etc. In short its the old embourgoisement debate. Clearly, if the gentrification consists of stockbrokers, highly paid executives etc. then its unlikely a Labour candidate let alone a socialist candidate is going to get the votes of such people - though I am still in favour of planning policies and developments which balance housing development in such a way aS to pull such people into every area to counteract workers being ghettoised. But often I have seen people who are no more than lower middle class, or even better off sections of the working class characterised as such, and it seems to me that if socialists think that the only people who can be won over to socialist ideas are the very poor, or unskilled lower working class then we should give up the project now.
What socialists have to ask themselves is why is it that all of the same arguments could be applied to the BNP. Indeed, although it could be argued that the BNP got media coverage in the weeks before the election, little of that coverage was favourable. They have been subject to TV investigations such as that which led to Griffin being put in the dock, and on every occasion they are mentioned it includes referecne to them being racist etc. Socialist candidates faced no such unfavourable mainstream media coverage, so if we want to use their higher profile as an argument for their better showing we then have to also conclude that we have a very big problem in some working class areas with hard core racist ideas, because those that voted for them could have been udner no illusion what they were voting for.
Finally, I think that Blair's reshuffle should be the signal for all Marxists to join the Labour Party. The reshuffle says Blair intends to stay. He has reinforced his defences against Brown, and his letter to Blears is designed almost as a smack across the face to Brown. Despite Clarke's statement he is now likely to join the ranks of the other whingers such as Meacher and Short who having fallen out of favour have now gone into opposition. Had Blair set the stage for an orderly transfer to Brown that would have been a bad environment for the Left. But the open civil war that is now likely to erupt means that Marxists should be in the fray talking to activists in a heightened political environemnt, and of course making the argument that Brown and Blair are twins, and that if the Labour Party is to reverse the current decline it needs socialist policies, and a more radical leadership than Brown would provide.
Marxists have always in the past been able to find ways of operating even when their organisation were illegal. Despite the authoritarian nature of New Labour such methods can be used now.
Arthur Bough
Two disagreements with Arthur
I think you are wrong on two counts here, Arthur.
1. The difference between the Socialist Alliance in 2002 and Socialist Unity in 2006 is not just the second work of a two-word name. In 2002, the SA stood 13 candidates across Hackney, plus Paul Foot for Mayor. It had a cross-borough profile and a small national profile. It had stood the previous year in the General Election, and the year before that in the GLA election. The name 'Socialist Unity' came from nowhere, and was just us (we had a strong record in campaigning and labour movement work locally, but not under that banner).
2. Your comments about socialists' attitude to gentrification might be right, but they are not the point here. In this discussion, it was mentioned as a factor in the increased Tory vote. (In this ward, the Labour vote stayed about the same, and did the LibDems. The Tories' vote doubled - only partly explained by national trends.) This ward contains both Hackney Downs station, a short trip to Liverpool Street and the City, and the Town Hall. Spreading outwards from these two places, every 'spare' bit of land has steadily been filled with new courtyard developments, mainly consisting of expensive private flats for sale. I don't think it is unreasonable - nor unduly hostile to the new residents - to guess that they are probably more likely to vote Tory than Socialist.
Tory Vote in Hackney
Just a couple of points on this.
1) In inner city areas, the Tories are not usually the Right opposition. The Lib Dems are. The Tories have been squeezed out even in some quite prosperous areas.
2) Plenty of capitalists actually support New Labour - for example the Financial Times, so gentrification does not necessarily equal a Tory vote.
Well done for standing, anyway, and please do so again in future - hopefully a head of steam can be built up between now and next time. I think the point about being known is a valid one.
To Janine
Janine, hope you go on okay tomorrow. I'm still not convinced about Socialist Unity v Socialist Alliance. There is a danger of assuming to much political culture among ordinary voters. You and I might think everybody must know who Paul Foot was but I bet if you went to do a poll of most ordinary voters they wouldn't have a clue. People involved on the Left are used to making distinctions between this or that group to the majority of ordinary people, at best we are all socialists, at worst strange people who talk a language they can't understand. The only time this breaks down is when we talk to them on an individual basis in the workplace or in the community we live, and even then its probably only a minority that really connect. The problem is that there are just too few of us for that kind of activity at the moment to connect us with enough people. I will have a strong guess that most of your vote came from the people you have been working with through your TRA. If we had enough people to do the same kind of work day in day out on every working class estate I'm sure the result would be different, but even colonising people would still only cover a very small number of estates. The difference compared to the Scottish Socialist Party I think is instructive.
To give an example of the extent to which I think the level of political culture is overestimated let me give you this example. Three years ago after Blair started the Iraq War I considered resigning my Council Seat and leaving the Labour Party. I argued strongly at a Branch meeting against reselecting the MP who had given uncritical support to Blair, but I lost the vote. A couple of weeks later at a special meeting I resigned as Branch Chair, and made clear that I was thinking about leaving the Party, having gone into detail about the danger of fascism etc. etc. At the end of all this one of the Councillors said, "But where are you going to go if you leave the LP? There is only the BNP." That level of political understanding reflected the majority of other councillors, with the exception of a couple of Old Labour councillors. Now consider that if that is the level of political culture amongst Councillors, what do you think it says about the level for ordianry workers. If they can't distinguish between being a socialist and being in the BNP what chance is there of making a significant distinction between Socialist Unity or Socialist Alliance?
As for gentrification as I said I don't know who these gentry are. If they are the kind of stockbroker, City professional type, then yes, there is not much chance, and in fact if you got their vote it probably would mean something was seriously wrong. I was just making the point that I have come across the idea many times that if someone does not fit the classic working class stereotype then they must be Tory fodder, and were that true we have no hope of creating socialism.
Arthur Bough
Psephologist's corner
Just been comparing the Hackney 'left' votes. Local results are always difficult to compare especially in multi-seat wards. Although it is slightly easier in the Hackney seats because both RESPECT and our candidates (Socialist Unity) all stood two candidates in three seat wards.
These can be expressed as a percentage of the votes cast (not as % of people voting which I don't have). For parties standing less than the full complement of candidates (as with the Hackney 'left' candidates) this underestimates their popularity. Multiplying up by 50% might give a fairer extimate so I've put those figures in brackets.
RESPECT (do they still have themselves down on the ballot paper as 'The George Galloway Party' btw) polled of the total votes 7.1%(10.6%) in Cazenove, 5.7%(8.6%) in Clissold, 9.1%(13.6%) in Leabridge, 7.8%(11.7%) in Queensbridge and they polled 5.7% in the Mayoral election in Hackney.
Janine and Charlie polled 6.5%(9.8%) despite no national party profile; no dropping of explicit calls to class politics and socialism; no concessions on the faith agenda or to 'anti-war unity'.
This rather backs up our principled refusal to be part of RESPECT from a more practical point of view.
Well done, Janine and Charlie! Good luck on Tuesday, Janine.
Pete, you'll be pleased to
Pete, you'll be pleased to know that on Hackney Council's website, you can link to the figures for each ward, including the number of ballot papers cast.
So you can do some more maths, if you like!
How do we measure it?
well done Janine and Charlie it does seem like a good result.
How do we measure it? For most ordinary people it will be seen as a poor result but then virtually every result by marxists standing as socialists (outside the Labour Party)in the last 100 years would be seen as poor.
For marxists it's not just quantities it's qualities aswell. Getting about 10% vote Janine says it was a good result and worthwhile-that is important as whether activists feel good about what they did and inspired to do more is important and the fact that nobody active in the campaign has contradicted that feeling is another indication the campaign was worthwhile.
Martin compares it to the Nottingham East result which he says was succesful(good campaign,good response,supporters and contacts for AWL etc).But the Nottingham result was only about 1%.Activists felt it was poor .It was only about the same vote across a whole constituency as in the one Hackney ward.And that was with a free state mailing of all households(worth thousands of pounds) and the loss of thousands of pounds in deposits,printing,rooms etc. The handful of supporters or contacts gained was similar to those lost by the way the campaign was run.
The difference could not be simply explained by Liberals or Greens standing (they stood in a single ward in 2003 and the SA still managed 800 votes-over 10%)
No -the one thing Martin gets right is the demise of the Socialist Alliance. In 2001 it brought together virtually all the activists who called themselves Marxists in Nottingham which meant on the streets we had more activists than the bourgeois parties.We were visible and the campaign was difficult but democratic and importantly activists felt it was a good result(over 1100 votes-not far from saving the deposit)and drew in other people inspired by the campaign.The 2005 campaign drew in few outside AWL.In 1979 and 1987 the IMG and the RCP had stood and got criticised by AWL for doing so and they got.. 1%. But now Martin justifies on the same grounds as the RCP did theirs-we got some contacts and stuff what effect it has on other activists or the working class.The mistakes in the campaign we're typified when the May Day event advertised as open to all was cancelled and effectively restricted to AWL members.
Winning seats catches headlines but does not necessarily mean an advance for working class organisation.In the Kidderminster seat won by the doctor in 2001 against local hospital closure, deals were done with local tories.The seat won by the SP's doctor was not on the basis of being socialist but on a "Save Huddersfield NHS ticket" and the other non doctor candidates on the same ticket got a fraction of her votes.We had a Communist councillor in the 80's and 90's in Nottingham that held the balance of power on the council but that was built on 40 years of standing and doing "drains and dustbins" work that was the same as a good liberal or labour councillor, failing to build a group of socialists to carry on the work.
It's not easy to win 10% of the vote for a socialist-Tom Mann was the most famous trade unionist and socialist in Britain when he stood in the Nottingham east constituency in 1924 but only got 10%.
A socialist's name is not enough- Ken Coates(the ex MEP for Notts) got just 1% in 1999 by having just one or two people round him control the campaign and Arthur Scargill's SLP has similar results. Significant factors seem to be is the candidate known and trusted locally,does the campaign draw in activists who feel they will not be ignored by those who run the campaign,do the issues connect with the voters, is the campaign visible-all factors which seem to have been more the case in Hackney in 2006 than Notttingham in 2005.
Tim Cooper
The Huddersfield result
I know nothing about the various left wing election campaigns in Nottingham over the last few years, but I do know about the Huddersfield result Tim mentions and his comments deserve a reply.
The local Socialist Party in Huddersfield was a prime force in setting up a campaign against attacks on the health service in the area. Very quickly the Save Huddersfield NHS Campaign developed some substance and has been able to organise demonstrations of more than 2,000 people, massive by the standards of the town in recent years.
The campaign, which is a broad one, decided to stand candidates in the local election - a political step forward for a community campaign on what is after all a class issue. Three candidates stood, including one Socialist Party member who is a local doctor and has also been the most prominent campaign organiser. On her election material she declared her socialist views and she was identified as a Socialist Party member, but she was standing as part of a broader slate rather than as an SP candidate.
How precisely a local election victory for a socialist, standing as part of a community campaign against health cuts, could be regarded as something other than a (small) "advance for working class organisation" is, I must admit, beyond me. In the circumstances, such a campaign taking steps into the electoral arena is a rather more important gain than say for instance a candidacy which is essentially an excuse to distribute socialist propaganda (as some of our other campaigns are!).
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How to measure results
Mark P says he knows nothing of the left wing campaigns in Nottingham but knows about the Huddersfield result and that it is beyond him that a victory for a Save the NHS candidate could be anything other than "an advance for working class organisation".
That's a pity.
I wonder how Mark assesses the result.
If it is from the Socialist Party website he refers us to then it is understandable.Their press statement headline "SP election successes" and then features the "Save the Huddersfield NHS" victory as if it was an SP victory saying it is the equivalent of the Wyre election result of another doctor that was the biggest upset of the 2001 election.
That comparison is very pertinent.
The Wyre result and campaign was much more dramatic.Instead of marches of 2000 in a once Labour northern town we had marches of 12000 in a tory middle england town.Instead of one councillor elected on a save local hospital services ticket we had an MP and later 16 councillors elected! Was this anything other than "an advance for working class organisation"-no! Was the election of a Communist councillor in Nottingham automatically one-well the Green Party who he defected to didn't think so.
Even though the good doctor has retained his seat in the 2005 election along with 9 councillors in the 2006 elections is the Wyre constituency now feeling the benefit of increased working class organisation-no.Ask Unison workers amd shop stewards from the threatened hospital who took part in the demos etc and they will tell of an MP and councillors who have put Kidderminster on the map as far as health issues are concerned. But that does not automatically mean the working class are organised to defend it as a class issue.Doctors are seen as safe,respectable and middle class(and are on increasingly middle class wages several times that of working class hospital staff).Dr Taylor quietly lobbies in parliament for Kidderminster and the NHS while being indistinguishable from most New Labour,Tory or Lib MP's in his voting record-not even opposing PFI.The Health concern councillors regularly do deals with the majority Tory administration and services are still threatened and facing cuts.
Mark's SP information failed to tell him that the Huddersfield doctor was supposed to be one of nearly 50 seats contested by the Socialist Green Unity Coalition which included candidates running under various names eg Socialist Alternative,Democratic Platform and Socialist Unity.
He wasn't alone. The Tory candidate(another doctor) in the Nottingham East election spoke on a "Save Huddersfield NHS" platform and didn't know he was advancing working class organisation!
I travelled to Huddersfield this weekend having seen the coverage in the SP's paper thinking working class organisation on this "class issue" must have had a great impact to find that the council now had 3 BNP councillors aswell as split between Tory,Lab and Lib.
I would be very intrested to know how Mark knows that working class organisation has been advanced.Which part of Huddersfield or Crosland Moor has he been working,campaigning or living in? I was unable to find anyone who identified the campaign as a socialist one-the working class people I talked to saw it-like the Nottingham Tory candidate as a "broad church".
The point of my post is while quantities of votes are a tool in assessing and measuring success it is qualities which are crucial.
The failure to identify the weaknesses of a campaign and instead to put an exaggerated gloss of the success of a socialist campaign is the hallmark of the British Marxist left.
The importance of learning from history and other parts of the country(and world) and other comrades is also crucial rather than uncritically swallowing one or the other group's propaganda.
Tim Cooper
A reply to Tim
Tim my knowledge of the election campaign in Huddersfield comes not through a recent visit to the town but through two of my closest friends, who were deeply involved in the campaign, and from seeing and reading the election literature which was used. The election literature clearly and unambiguously identified Jackie Grunsell as a socialist and as a Socialist Party member.
In fact I find your last posting a little perplexing. You claim to have travelled to Huddersfield as a result of reading about the campaign in "the socialist". If only socialist literature always had such an inspirational effect on our audience! Can I presume that when I'm talking to Jackie's election organiser later on today that she will be able to tell me all about your visit, the assistance you provided, and the advice which you gave about furthering working class organisation? Presumably you didn't travel all that way without pausing for a moment to offer your clearly superior wisdom on the subject?
What baffles me more than your eagerness to take part in a little election tourism in small industrial towns, is your decision to lump together all campaigns against health cuts as if they inevitably would be as politically bad as the Wyre Forest one. The questions you don't seem to deal with are (a) is it a good or a bad thing for socialists to take part in or launch broader campaigns against cuts? (b) are such campaigns inherently as "apolitical" as that in Wyre Forest? (c) is it a good or a bad thing that anti-cuts campaigns step into the electoral arena? and (d) should socialists refuse to stand as the candidates of such campaigns?
I can tell you my answer, which is that all of the above depends on concrete circumstances. A strong anti-cuts campaign launched and politically guided by socialists is in my view a step forward - and in most circumstances a rather bigger step forward than a dozen make propaganda and flog a few papers election campaigns (which there is nothing inherently wrong with either!).
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Dear Confused
So you didn't get your knowledge through living,working or visiting Huddersfield and despite your two closest friends being "deeply involved" and you knowing ALL about the campaign through the Socialist Party you were not inspired to get involved!
. As I suspected you easily jump to the wrong conclusions from the scantiest knowledge of things.I was not inspired to go to Huddersfield for election tourism or by the Socialist I was born and brought up there and have many of my family there whom I was visiting!I guess you're not meeting your organiser friend in Huddersfield -by any chance are you an SP appartchnik? I'm sorry I saw no evidence of her or the campaign (but Huddersfield is a big town)and of course she will be busy getting advice from you and your great knowledge of the place-perhaps you could also talk to the Tory candidate for Nottm east that spoke on your friends platform.Anyway enough of this constructive dialogue. Tim Cooper
Now Tim that you've managed
Now Tim that you've managed to establish that your soul remains true to Huddersfield, perhaps you could deal with some of the political points raised in my last post, and in particular the series of questions I posed. It shouldn't take long and it would help the rest of us put your otherwise criticisms into some kind of coherent political context.
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Born and bred
LOL, what's this, an "Authentic Huddersfieldian" competition? :D