The news that Labour lost the Brent East by-election, its first such defeat
in fifteen years, and on a 29 percent swing, seems to have been greeted
elsewhere in the country with a fair dose of joy. "It serves Blair right",
one woman told me, with forty-five years membership of the Labour Party
behind her. Another friend suggested that the result might yet win some
breathing space for Andrew Gilligan and the beleaguered BBC!
Living not in Brent East, but South, some fifty yards on the wrong side of
the complex constituency boundary, it was strange to see my area being so
often in the news. For example, the Independent suggested that the large
Asian population of the area had rebuffed Blair. Well, the largest minority
in Brent is actually the Irish. Most people will probably have missed Lembit
Opik the most travelled MP in the UK and his "patriotic" appeal to the
readers of the Irish World, but Kelly McBride highlighting the murder of her
brother Peter by British soldiers (who on serving their prison sentences for
murder were allowed back into the army, and were even promoted) deserved
more coverage from the papers than she received.
Another annoying mistake was the common observation that seven-year old
Toni-Ann Byfield had been murdered in the area (South again, not East), and
the claim that frequently accompanied, it that any party could win by
promising the voters to clamp down on crime. For the record, this was the
centre of all three of the major parties' campaigns, and the lack of local
interest in jailing black youth probably explains a certain indifference to
the campaign shown in the 36 percent turnout.
The real issue was the war. And while the Liberal Democrats annoyed many
Stop the War activists by patronisingly claiming to have opposed the war
(meaning: they opposed it until it began) by participating in every demo
against it (of which there was apparently one), none of this compared to
Labour's hedging. The Blairite candidate secured nomination in part by
telling a selection meeting that he had voted in the European Parliament
against the war on every opportunity that he could. This checkable lie came out
only after the selection vote had been taken.
Labour claimed to have sent 200 MPs to canvass. But having spent most of my
nights doing the same, I can report having seen some three dozen Lib Dem
teams out on the trot and -- just one group of Labour Party members, two men
in suits accompanying a student. Another lesson of the campaign was the
continued withering of Labour's activist base. The new Labour campaign
headquarters was staffed by party full-timers from South London, who spent
their days spitting blood against the Liberals, more numerous, rooted,
confident, across the road.
It is sad to report the relative failure of the Socialist Alliance: at
three-hundred odd votes, we failed to reach even two percent. Our Sundays were
spent on our Big Red Bus with literally hundreds of people waving and
cheering. Yet the evenings spent canvassing pointed to a different truth,
that many people hadn't heard of us, while others were confused by the
prevalence of single-issue anti-war candidates (some six at the last count)
and most just wanted to give Labour a bloody nose.
In fact, living in Brent felt a bit like being in Sheffield in 1997 when the
Tories were kicked out. The main difference was that this time,
working-class people spitted blood and promised to vote for everyone and
anything -- but not Blair. People here are desperate for change, but whether
any sort of left will benefit, we'll see.
