The way for Labour to achieve success again in the south of England is to return to the policies of Tony Blair. So argues the anonymous author of an article in the June issue of Progress, the right-wing Labour magazine. Blair is credited with having an instinctive connection with the voters of middle England.
Others will have a different recollection of the 1990s. In the earlier part of that decade Labour was capturing swathes of council seats across the south of the country, not with Blair’s neo-conservatism as its pitch, but under the leadership of Neil Kinnock and then John Smith. And this momentum appeared to be slipping away even before the party’s landslide victory in 1997.
After Labour’s heavy defeat at the 2010 general election, there is a mountain to climb on the path back to power and this is particularly the case in the south of England. The party made some headway at May’s local elections, but advances made in Surrey, for instance, tended to be at the expense of the Liberal Democrats. In general, the Tories consolidated their dominance.
In the 1990s, Labour came close to winning councils in constituencies such as Spelthorne and Runnymede & Weybridge in Surrey. In May 2011, we failed to capture a single seat in these places. This collapse in Labour support has less to do any failure to stick to a Blairite prospectus and rather more with the disappearance of an active, committed party membership in Surrey and throughout the south.
Much is made of the new members who have joined the Labour Party since David Cameron became Prime Minister. Indeed, some 50 new members have joined in Surrey Heath, where I live. However, these encouraging figures do not tell the full story about Labour’s chances of recovery from the nadir of 2010.
Many of those who helped Labour to achieve some remarkable electoral success in the early ’90s have been lost to the party. They left not just over the Iraq war, but also over the difficulties they experienced in reconciling the actions of Labour in government with those of a social democratic party. For instance, they found the enthusiasm for privatisation difficult to understand. Even if they could be won back to the party, how many would be willing or able to devote the necessary time and energy that an effective election campaign requires?
Many new members appear to see joining Labour as an end in itself and not as a commitment to periods of intense political activity that are essential if Labour is to make gains, particularly in the south. Labour won two seats in Guildford last month, but that is a university city and so not necessarily typical of Surrey as a whole. An airline pilot stood for Labour and financed his own campaign in deepest blue Windlesham, which includes sheikhs among its residents. But he was an exception.
In many places in Surrey and across the south, a shortage of activists meant Labour’s campaign was run on a wing and a prayer. The weekend before local electors went to the polling stations, there was an SOS from Spelthorne over doubtsabout whether any nomination papers would be submitted for the election. My wife says she will divorce me if she is ever again asked to be Labour’s agent in Surrey Heath.
Labour people look in envy at the ruthlessly efficient electoral machine local Tory MP Michael Gove has, which seems capable of predicting the voting intentions of the entire borough.
The implicit message of that anonymous Progress article is that Labour can only win in the south if adopts reactionary policies to which many of its members are hostile. In fact, Labour’s task must be to oppose such policies and stand up for all those who are on the receiving end of them.
In the south, as all over the country, Conservative councils are making wholesale cuts to essential services. The young, the elderly, the disabled and the poor are bearing the brunt of the Conservative assault on jobs, services, pensions and living standards.
At the end of last year, a march against these policies in Woking – hardly a hotbed of revolutionary activity – attracted 500 people. It is around raising consciousness of the Tory attack on living standards that Labour’s policies for the south should be developed.
Even though Labour was desperately short of cash and resources this year, even in wards where we put up candidates without a campaign, we achieved a respectable level of support in Surrey Heath and some other Surrey towns. Our aim was to secure at least a toehold in terms of representation and we gained four seats, besides retaining the two we already held with increased majorities. It was also encouraging that a number of voters on social housing estates returned to Labour after a flirtation with the Lib Dems.
The frustrating thing is that, although we fielded many more candidates than we were able to four years previously, in Surrey Heath this represented only 20 out of the 40 seats that were up for grabs. In the years before 1997, we were able to put up a complete set of candidates. Now standing half that number strains the whole fabric of our small membership. After several years of there being no Labour candidate on the ballot paper, the idea that Labour has ceased to exist takes hold in some areas.
The introduction of a genuine form of proportional representation for local government would greatly help Labour in the south of England. Many refuse to support the party simply because they think a Labour vote is a wasted vote under the first-past the-post-system. Under PR, even in bad years, Labour would be guaranteed some seats on Surrey local authorities. However, after the fiasco of the referendum on the alternative vote, PR is likely to be off the political agenda for the foreseeable future.
Labour needs to establish an equality of resources and esteem between constituencies and counties in the south of England. The south should not be viewed through the prism of target seats. Labour should be challenging the current culture of reaction. Defeatism and pessimism are self-fulfilling prophecies. We should refuse to accept the argument that large parts of our country are no-go areas for the Labour Party.
Labour success has little to do with reinventing discredited policies of the previous Labour Government and everything to do with producing viable policies that engage with people’s lives. Then we might attract people to work for the party. as they did in the past. That’s the best way to make progress in Surrey, the rest of the south, and the whole country.
Murray Rowlands is chair of Surrey County Labour Party
