Workers' Liberty

See the article by Stan Crooke on this site.

"In England as well smaller parties were squeezed. This included the 'third party' the Liberal Democrats, who lost heavily to the Tories, probably as a layer of the middle class, having previously abandoned the Tories because they appeared unelectable, returned to their 'traditional party'.

Against this background socialist candidates received some impressive votes; particularly in Coventry St Michaels, where the Socialist Party were standing a new candidate, Lindsey Currie, who received 1156 votes, just 84 votes short of holding the seat. In Huddersfield Socialist Party member, Ian Slattery, standing for Huddersfield Save our NHS, received an excellent 1184 votes".

More, and SP's full results: click here.

Click here for Stan Crooke's comment.

BNP stood two councillors in North Lynn ward, the strongest LP ward in King's Lynn (and the only part of this region where the BNP seem to have surfaced.) I went last Saturday with a UEA contact, members of UNISON and 2 (possibly-ex) SWPers to lealfet against the BNP (using Unite stuff) and for the LP (using the local leaflet supplied by the sitting councillors.) Last time the 2 LP councillors scored around 850 votes each, with the only opposition coming from the Tories with around 300 votes each. This time the scores are much closer.

NORTH LYNN - two seats: D COLLIS (Lab) 436; D Fleming (BNP) 377 ; C Kelly (BNP) 365; M Tweed (C) 294; P Tweed (C) 265; A TYLER (Lab)* 422.

The BNP, present in the ward for only 6 months, have moved into second place. I will see if Andy Tyler (the longer-serving councillor) has any views about the reasons for this score. The ward contains some very impoverished areas, and the BNP leaflet, although clearly generic, contained specific local references to migrant workers, some of whom live in the ward too. There was little visible evidence of the BNP presence, but some houses/flats did display their material. The LP councillors were reluctant to take the BNP on directly, claiming to do so would give them 'legitimacy' and draw attention to them. I think these scores will serve to make them re-think their approach.

I have heard that the BNP have just had 2 successes announced in Stoke (Bentilee and Townsend and Longton North) as well as one loss.

In Broxtowe, as we feared, the area where they BNP have been working consistently in, Brinsley, they polled 439 votes against Labour's 295 (with 2 independents taking about another 200 votes between them). They did not do as well in Beeston Rylands, a recent priority area for them and near the centre of Nottingham only taking 202 (about 10%) of the vote.

Broxtowe has clearly been a major area for them. They have what is estimated to be 100 people down at the election count.

Thanks to Jim Denham for pointing me towards this summary of the Green and Respect results by (apparently) a leftish Green Party activist:

"Greens gain SIX councillors in Brighton adding to the chances of gaining our first MP at the next general election! (Brighton and Hove council results site) This means they have twelve councillors also one shy of being second party...

Respect... it looks like they've made modest gains. Respect's strategy of standing only in places they know they will do well and keeping a tight focused campaign has meant that the lowest results so far (4%) are far better than that usually polled by the far left.

Michael Lavalette... has retained his seat with an extremely impressive 52% of the vote, although he remains the only Respect councillor on Preston council. As expected Respect also won Sparkbrook ward in Birmingham (but lost their Aston seat) and Ray Holmes polled an astonishing 53% in Bolsover... anyone know anything about him? In Cambridge Respect's one candidate, Tom Woodcock, managed to pull into 3rd place (with 17%) which is unexpected but the product of two years of hard, focused work in the ward".

Quick Overview of Leeds results:

Labour gained 3 seats (2 from tories, 1 from libs) leaving the council
standing at
Lab 43
Lib 23
Con 22
Green 3
BNP 1
Others 6

This gives the libdems the senior hand in any coalition, but presumably
the tory-lib-green coalition will remain until the rest of decent
locally accountable services have been destroyed or privatised or both.

BNP suffered in their main target seats in Morley to the Morley Borough
Independents. But polled highly across the city receiving 11.16% of all
votes. Although the candidate in Middleton Park received 30% although
never threatened labour, in one of leeds' very few mostly
white-traditional-working class wards, elsewhere (Griffin co-defendant)
Mark Collett in Burmantofts and Richmond Hill polled 18% to lab 30 and
libdem 48%.

As for the left: AGS stood in half a dozen seats across the city getting
around the 2.5% vote except in the heartlands of Chapel Allerton where
Monica Samuels recieved 9.3% of the vote, but never challenged New
Labour who polled 52%. AGS did well to beat the Green Party (7.5%)
although the believed threat of the BNP(3%) apparently led some AGS
supporters to switch to labour at the last minute.

In City and Hunslet the battle between Respect and AGS never happened.
AGS winning a pathetic 42 votes while Respect did well to receive
13.8%(520 votes) up from 5% last year. Their votes apparently not being
at the expense of new Labour though; as the green and lib-dem vote
collapsed and Respect, BNP and Tories all increased their share.
Respects voters presumably largely defecting from the libdems. Like AGS,
Respect barely bothered to campaign in the ward however, seemingly
relying on the status of candidate Muserat Sujawal within the local
community to bring in the votes.

Elsewhere: in Bradford Labour gained 2 seats(1 from tories, 1 from
greens) and the BNP none. Respect took 7,9 and 11% of the votes in the
three seats it stood.

The BNP's assessment of their own results (as of Friday evening, 4 May, with not all the counts yet in) is: "the BNP overall lost 8 councillors at borough/district level but gained 8 councillors at the same level".

The latest count on the BBC News website (22:00 on 4 May) is a nett gain of 1 councillor for the BNP, and 10 councillors elected in the seats contested in England.

Unite Against Fascism gives the same estimate: a nett gain of one councillor for the BNP, bringing them to a total (including seats not contested on 3 May) of 50 councillors across the country.

According to Respect's own website, "Respect elected 3 councillors, bringing the total to 20 across the country. It also secured eight second places and thirteen third places". The BBC website gives the same figure of three Respect councillors elected, and reckons that to show zero overall loss or gain compared to the situation before the polls in the seats contested.

The BBC estimates a nett gain of 16 councillors for the Greens, making them the biggest gainers after the Tories, who were 875 seats up across England. The Green Party themselves list 18 gains.

Solidarity Scotland, Tommy Sheridan's splinter group from the SSP, has found reasons to gloat despite its electoral rout.

"Solidarity, Scotland's Socialist Movement emerged as Scotland's leading party of the left in yesterday's Scottish elections. After only a few short months in existence the Solidarity vote totalled twice as many as the other left parties combined..."

In other words, Solidarity Scotland did better than the SSP.

Indeed it did, despite the SSP scoring better in some pre-election opinion polls than Solidarity Scotland. In the regional list vote across Scotland, Sheridan-Solidarity got 31,066 (1.5%), and the SSP 12,731 (0.6%). In 2003 the SSP got 6.7% across Scotland.

Why did Sheridan-Solidarity do better? Probably because Sheridan's "name-recognition" is better than the SSP's. The SSP is paying a heavy price for focusing too much of its political effort, in years past, around boosting Sheridan as a personality.

So far as I can establish, Sheridan-Solidarity and SSP each won just one councillor in the council elections also held in Scotland on 3 May.

I notice while checking the Sheridan-Solidarity website that the Muslim Association of Britain (British offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the biggest political-Islamist movement in the Arab world) ranks high among the weblinks prominent on the site's front page, even higher than the Stop The War Coalition.

Martin Thomas

In Coventry, the SP lost one of their seats in St Michaels, the first time in eight years that they've lost in a straight one-on-one election. Not entirely sure what this represents as their vote held up relatively well compared to last year. The difference is actually that Labour's vote went up, after a campaign dominated by the candidate leaning on his TGWU background (he's the convenor from Peugot Ryton), and putting out leaflets claiming (untruthfully) that "only Labour can beat the Tories".

The SP were also bested by the BNP in Henley, another ward where they stood, although both were miles behind the main parties.

Respect got nowhere in the one ward (Foleshill) where they did stand.

Overall interesting because Labour gained four seats across the city (one from the SP, one from the Liberals and two from the Tories). The Labour vote held up very well in all wards, and even rose in several. Campaign in general dominated by Labour candidates at least posing left - "the Tories have cut your services, only Labour will protect the NHS, I like trade unions you know" etc. Evidently this paid dividends.

I have posted this elsewhere on the site.