As previously featured on LDV, Duwayne Brooks was running to be a Liberal Democrat councillor in one of yesterday’s by-elections. Duwayne, along with fellow candidate Jenni Clutten, won. Congratulations to them both.
Labour’s campaign was at times, shall we say, unusual, with a heavy emphasis in their leaflets of a plan of their to have the Union Jack* flying over Lewisham Town Hall. As Dave Hill has written over on The Guardian:
How does that work for you? It made me a little queasy. Shouldn’t Labour concentrate on exposing the BNP for what it is rather than pandering to the nationalism it exploits?
You can read his full post here.
* Pedants may wish to point out that as Lewisham Town Hall is not a ship, or even a canal boat, it wouldn’t be the Union Jack but the Union Flag. But I can out-pedant you by pointing to the BBC’s policy, though of course in return you can out-pedant me by highlighting that the BBC uses a different capitalisation policy from this post. But let’s just agree not to fly it upside down. And thank goodness the quote in Dave Hill’s piece is correct.
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8 Comments
Even if Labour are foolish enough to try to pander to BNP voters they are actually missing the point to think it is about a flag.
The typical BNP-voter is convinced that his or her life would be hugely better if the government “put British people first”, which usually involves “not giving money” to one group or another and giving it “to British people” instead.
The BNP are actually about eoconomics, albeit an absurd simplistic view of economics. That’s why BNP support is mostly concentrated socio-economically: in a few low-income, low-employment, low-education areas with high levels of social problems.
My take is plain on this.
Is it true they (Labour) put out a leaflet saying the BNP were on the verge of winning and people should vote Labour to stop them?
If you run the authority and want to fly the Union Flag over buildings then go ahead and do it. That’s what we did in Oldham back in 2002 (AIUI the advice we had at the time was there were no restrictions)
There is also the St George’s day good morning I wrote….
The killer quote though, from the 2nd or 3rd Labour leaflet, is this:
“Many people are beginning to think of this election as a referendum on getting our flag over the town hall and sending a message to the softies who are ashamed of our union jack”
Beneath this quote was a pic of one of the labour candidates wearing a suit with a pit-bull on a leash.
Dog whistle stuff, eh?
Haven’t seen any of these leaflets. Sound quite remarkable. But:
(a) I do support every major party working hard in every election where the BNP are standing. Don’t know what the majority was but if this line took 50 votes off the BNP then it may have been critical to the overall result; and
(b) Letting the BNP corner the market in flags, anthems, St George’s Day, concerns of working people is really really bad politics; and
(c) That’ll have been a Staffy not a Pit Bull.
The terrible result in Swanley St Mary’s might not have occurred had there been more parties than the BNP fishing for the non-incumbent vote. Both Labour and the Tories are incumbents there in different ways. Labour run the town council, Tories the borough, Labour the country, Tories the County Council.
UKIP stood last time but not this time. No sign of independent left. Lib Dems stood in county council seat but not usually in borough council elections. I don’t know why that is. They are now the main opposition on that council.
Perhaps there is some Lib Lab pact in operation? Probably didn’t help.
I know there
There are a lot of people who would never vote for the BNP but feel that the English majority are often taken for granted…. Flags are – in more senses than one – symbolic here.
As Chris Paul says, we must make sure that racist parties don’t corner the market on these issues.
I have left this comment on Dave Hills Guardian blog but republish it here because I feel so strongly about the issue.
I see a lot of Labour Party by election campaigns across the country, but particularly in London. I see campaigns where the Labour Party is defending seats, challenging for seats or simply put up a ‘token’ candidate. I see Labour campaigns in areas where they control the council, where they are the official opposition and where they have little or no representation.
This is the first time I have seen Labour campaign material that not once, not twice but three times made a big play of a campaign to fly the Union flag over the Town Hall in Lewisham. Lewisham Town Hall – a building and council that the Labour Party has controlled for over 20 years.
So instead of campaigning on how good they are at running the council, or dog sh*t, ort trees, or protecting the local environment or any other of the local issues that council by-election campaigns are normally about, the Labour Party decides to campaign on having the Union flag flying over the Town Hall. Was that really THE issue in Lewisham at this time?
And the difference in this by-election? An opposition Party – who held the ward anyway – had as one of their candidates a black man standing for them. The temerity of it!
Hugh Muir had a very good article in today’s Guardian about the state of race relations ten years after the publication of the Macpherson report. I suggest today, that in Lewisham Labour Party, and probably the senior echelons of the London Labour party (at least) there should be people examining their consciences over the by-election campaign run in Downham ward Lewisham.
Why? Because one of the victorious candidates on Thursday night was Duwayne Brooks. Thats Duwayne Brooks the (then) boy who was with Stephen Lawrence on the night he was murdered by racists in south east London.
Just think about it all you apologists for the Labour Party. Imagine what you would be saying if the Conservatives had run a campaign like that which the Labour party ran in Downham ward in the last four weeks? The campaign wasn’t about Union flags; it was about sending dog whistle messages to certain sections of the electorate in Downham. You set back the campaigning efforts of John Cruddus and others and give encouragement to racist parties. Thank god the tactics failed, and failed miserably.
Nick, thanks for explaining the context of all this….
I appreciate what you are saying, and I’ve no doubt you are right.