I’ve long been one with a penchant for fighting Labour.
I grew up on Lincoln’s famed Tower Estate. Growing up I was surrounded by real poverty, and the consequences of that poverty. I remember the fire engine arriving to extinguish a car that had been set alight just a few doors down. Our neighbours (who’s children I played with) disappeared one day – they’d been operating a cannabis farm from their council house and got caught (my bedroom wall had been occasionally warm to touch…).
Our Labour district council had long withdrawn from the estate. Crime was high, deprivation everywhere, play areas neglected and services non-existent. Our Labour councillors all lived miles away, were only ever seen a few weeks before May, and didn’t respond to queries.
However, there was real pride in and on the estate. Many people had chosen to build foundations through right-to-buy and consequently were very invested in the area being better. As council-housed families grew, they were often placed on Tower Estate given the number of three-bedroom homes. There has always been a local shop servicing the 400 homes and the disused quarry next door was a teenager’s paradise.
I’m incredibly proud to have come from Tower Estate. I was born a five minute walk away at County Hospital, went to the local primary school (a 15 minute walk away). I lived there a full eighteen years before going to university. The experience of Tower, and a useless Conservative county council and neglectful Labour district council, is why I joined the party aged 15.
We are the only party that actually likes council estates. Our method of community campaigning is perfect for adopting the pride shown and highlighting we care. We want to build more council homes, recognising that social housing with amenities is a recipe for good, strong communities. Unlike Labour, we don’t see them as ballot box fodder.
Only our middle-class snobbery could limit our recovery (or indeed birth) in Labour-facing areas. Too often when hearing about plans to target areas in council elections I wince as people talk of ‘Labour areas’ or make disparaging remarks about how we’ll never win this or that council estate.
Council estates are not Labour. Tower Estate, which had Labour councillors continually for almost five decades, now has three Lib Dem councillors all elected on around 50% of the vote. Lincoln’s Liberal Democrats have proven we can win anywhere.
The Labour Government has wasted no time in launching an immediate attack on the poorest in society. The two-child benefit cap, cuts to the winter fuel allowance and the continued hollowing out of local government has provided adequate Focus content if you are starting out.
So I ask fellow campaigners to march into council estates, engage with people, listen to their concerns and campaign to make things better. You will be rewarded at the ballot box, and it is infinitely more satisfying to help the communities that are most in need of our support.
* Darryl Smalley is a City of York councillor and the English Council representative to the Federal Conference Committee.
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13 Comments
Both the Tories and the red Tories have failed those living in council estates. If the Liberal Democrats do not present as a viable alternative, expect to see Reform UK moving in. The time to act is now.
What Mary Fulton said. But the key is finding the liberals who live on the council estates, want to joint the process and take control of their own lives.
Thank you Darryl for an inspiring article; we cannot and must not rely on soft Tory seats alone as our leader seems to be doing. Community campaigning just over 30 years ago saw a council estate near me become Lib-Dem but that support went into a big decline when Nick Clegg led us in national coalition because people then saw us Tory-lite and were hit by bedroom tax etc.. Maybe now is the time to reverse that and thereby counter Reform who will use lies and prejudice and unachievable promises to drum up support.
Here in Southampton we are currently throwing everything at a by-election in Shirley ward, the western half of which is quite deprived with a good number of council houses/flats.
From what I’ve heard we’re getting good responses in that part of the ward because these voters aren’t too ideological and are keen to see someone actually trying to do something positive for their area.
If we can pull off a win here it should bode well both for our chances locally and for local parties up and down the country who are in looking to make progress in “labour areas” even if they have no councillors right now (we had none until only two years ago but are now making real headway).
Excellent article Daryl.
In 2020 I moved a motion at the South East Region AGM calling for campaigning on council estates, I lived in Sussex at the time and highlighted the lack of Lib Dem councillors in areas with high concenrations of social homes. We have a strong presence in much of the county but nothing in Crawley or Brighton. The motion was defeated.
I put the decision down to a reluctance on the part of activists to go into these areas preferring to stay in their comfort zones. The need to do this is even greater though, not only do Labour take these wards for granted their failures to solve their problems while in government will give us the chance to move in.
As Lincoln once wrote to one of his reluctant Generals ‘The necessity of being ready increases, look to it!’
The LDs had zero candidates in Crawley in the 2024 round of local elections.
At local level, all seats are divided between Labour and Tories.
Labour aren’t used to competition in the council estates there. A few LD members running a determined campaign might well bring rewards.
But there’s a hitch: the last I knew Horsham and Crawley were in the same local party. Nearly all the membership is in Horsham (and Arundel). The not so young membership have just run intense campaigns to win the local council then the MP. So seeding Crawley from Horsham would be demanding possibly too much on limited local resources.
Surely this is where some well-directed outside effort would be justified.
Love this.
Currently living in a flat on a council/ex council estate which is is the middle of one of our safest wards.
Turnout in this area is low – which is another huge opportunity for us to do real issue based community campaigning and get more people involved in politics at local govt level.
With 72 MPs come resources both of manpower and money. I realise that there are restrictions on the use of both, and that the top priority has to be to build the organisation in those constituencies we won in July so that they are as resilient as possible to the challenges they will face at the next election. However, the Party nationally could surely arrange some sort of twinning between held seats and ones where there is little activity at present. A bit of outside help and some seed money for half a dozen Focuses might make all the difference – and as has been pointed out above, Reform will be moving onto the scene, and that is a grim prospect for the whole country.
With Labour in power and a slightly better financial position, the need to completely ignore unwinnable parliamentary byelections has gone. The minimum achievement of every byelection this parliament should be to leave behind a functional local party capable of winning its target ward.
@Tony Hill: the second priority has to be building organisation and presence in the next tranche of prospective seats, as I argued in an earlier article. We ran serious campaigns in around 80 seats at the GE. If we doubled that, this would also provide an uplift to national vote share.
Derelict areas – like Crawley – are further down the list of priorities.
“Derelict areas – like Crawley – are further down the list of priorities.”
Agree – and that’s an area where Liberals don’t have any history of success – I think maybe only ever one councillor
@Chris Moore – well, the article was about Lincoln (where my granddaughter lives), a city which has had little third party activity since the days of Dick Taverne, until an activist moved there, picked a ward, and began to fight it seriously with the consequence that we now have all three councillors for that ward and have now moved on to gaining the seats in a second one.
Tony, that’s very impressive. I look forward to Lincoln becoming a serious prospect at national level.
It’s obviously true that individual activists can make a serious difference in derelict areas.
The question for me is, where do we prioritise the investment of national resources? I believe it’s right to focus any available in building up seats that are serious short to medium-term targets. At the moment, I’d say another 80 to add to the existing 80 seats where we compete seriously.
I mentioned Horsham and Crawley: Should activists in Horsham (and Mid-Sussex) spend time seeding Crawley? The ideal answer would be, “yes”. However, there is only so much Horsham activists can do – they are not SO many and relatively elderly. And they really need to dig in and secure marginal Horsham. If Crawley were a viable prospect then that investment of time and energy might be a risk worth taking.
In derelict areas like Crawley (and Lincoln previously), I think the impetus has to come from someone within the constituency. A regional organiser could obviously be used to cold call potential new movers and shakers in the derelict area. But that investment of time has to come below more vital tasks.