May 6 2010 will always be remembered in Barking and Dagenham as the day the British National Party was told to pack its bags and get out. It was an incredible feeling as Rob Whiteman, the chief executive and returning officer for Barking and Dagenham, announced Margaret Hodge was to be returned as the local MP, securing 16,000 more votes than British National Party leader Nick Griffin.
It was an emotional moment for all at the Gorsebrook Leisure Centre and for those waking up to the news in at home – the moment they could once more take pride in their borough as they realised the fascists had not won over their neighbourhood with promises filled with hatred and division. It was the moment neighbours knew they belonged, were among friends and part of a community.
For local activists, their family and friends, it was confirmation that their hard work over the past four years had paid off. The new strategy of engaging with the community and making it the focus of the campaign had worked. We listened to residents’ concerns in a range of ways: coffee mornings, neighbourhood walkabouts and good old-fashioned knocking on doors. We understood their frustrations and sought to address them.
Margaret Hodge had a number of high-profile successes in the constituency: re-opening a post office, securing funding for Barking Football Club, the popular trip to the seaside organised for local families and the campaign for babies to be born in the borough.
In Barking and Dagenham, we have entered a new dawn of politics represented by a team of committed, conscientious and community-focused councillors. Political commentators are sure to analyse the collapse of the BNP in this area. They should give credit where it is due – not least to our campaign. For the people of Barking and Dagenham, the stakes were very high.
We couldn’t afford to lose.
Taking our cue from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in the United States, we used pre-existing networks, such as the popular and effective tenants and residents associations. Our aim was to re-engage the Labour Party with the community.
We supported the work of organisations such Unite Against Fascism and Hope not Hate, prioritising the campaign in the wards most at threat from the BNP. We hosted days of action, targeting the five wards on the Becontree Estate in the heart of Dagenham: reconnecting here was the priority. In four years, we spoke with 50,000 people – many on numerous occasions.
We defined our “voter pool” – those residents who had indicated support for Labour. We then targeted these people, detailing our achievements to date and explaining what we would if elected.
Our literature was professional, using designers and advisors to deliver our message. For many, leaflets are the face of the Labour Party – hence our painstaking care to ensure the content was right and the brand was strong.
And our message resonated: our campaign to save the accident and emergency at King George Hospital, provide more for our borough’s young people and our pledge to build 3,000 affordable homes.
Before polling day, we encouraged Labour supporters to get a postal vote. This had three advantages. First, black and ethnic minority voters could vote without the predictable intimidation from the far right on polling day. Second, it increased turnout among older voters who wouldn’t have made the walk to their polling station but were able to post their ballot paper. Third, we had a period of 10 days to get out the vote – writing to and phoning postal voters from the day the postal votes arrived.
On May 6 itself, we ran campaign centres across the constituency, staffed by volunteers to help in the target wards. We delivered a polling day leaflet to identified Labour supporters. We then spent the afternoon and evening knocking on doors, encouraging residents to use their votes and use them for Labour.
This result was an increased turnout from the 2005 election. And this was down to Labour supporters who hadn’t voted in the past decade. The number of people voting BNP actually increased. But our campaign increased the Labour vote significantly more, doubling the parliamentary majority and winning every council seat.
By contrast the BNP’s campaign was negative – with overt, nasty and libellous attacks on Margaret Hodge, our council candidates and borough residents. The BNP did not have any sort of conversation with voters. Its members simply drove their vans around the streets with a recording of Nick Griffin’s voice blaring through loud speakers. The BNP talked our borough down and sought to exploit tensions in the community. It favoured slogans over solutions. As far as Griffin and his cronies were concerned, this election was always about the BNP, never about Barking and Dagenham.
For four years, pundits looked at Barking and Dagenham as though the area was some sort of museum, never taking into account that for thousands of people it is home. We’re proud to live here. And we’ll work tirelessly over the next four years for our residents and to restore our borough’s image.
The tide of the BNP, with its accompanying media hysteria, is over. We’ve rebuilt trust. Now we’ll rebuild our borough. Labour in Barking and Dagenham should be proud that, through our efforts, the community endorsed the borough’s future with the hopes and aspirations of the party at its heart.
