Three facts stand out from the 2012 local election results in Coventry:
the Labour Party made huge gains; the last remaining Socialist Party
councillor, Dave Nellist, lost his seat to Labour and the voting turnout
was very low at 26.43%.
Three facts stand out from the 2012 local election results in Coventry:
the Labour Party made huge gains; the last remaining Socialist Party
councillor, Dave Nellist, lost his seat to Labour and the voting turnout
was very low at 26.43%.
Since 2008 the electoral rise of the Labour Party has been incremental. In 2010, on a voter turnout of between 43% and 72% across the city, it won back control of Coventry City Council from the Tories. In a 54-seat Council Labour seats went up from 24 to 30 and the Tories were down from 27 to 22. In that year Labour won 5 seats from the Tories and one from the Socialist Party. Rob Windsor, the SP Councillor who tragically died in January of this year at the age of 47, lost his seat polling 29% of the vote against Labour’s David Welsh of 48%.
In 2011 the rise continued with 5 labour gains leaving the balance in the Council of 35 Labour, 17 Tory, 1 Socialist Party and 1 Lib Dem, but the turnout was down to just under 37%. In the inner-city ward of St. Michaels, Rob Windsor stood again and on a low turnout of 26.7% Rob took 31% of the vote compared to Labour’s 59%.
And so to 2012. On a low turnout across the city of 26.43% Labour gained 8 seats, 6 from the Tories, I from the Lib Dems and 1 from the SP candidate, Dave Nellist. In St. Michael’s, where the SP had their last remaining councillor, the turnout was the lowest across the city at 21.37%. In a three-way contest the LP vote was 1,673 (49.4%), the SP at 1,469 (43.3%) and the Tories at 243 (7%). Coventry City Council is now Labour 43 and Tories 11 with the Lib Dems and the SP gone.
These are the facts, but how should they be interpreted? The turnout was very low falling from more than 60% in 2010 to 26%, so just over one in four of the electorate voters cast their vote. The weather did not help as it rained all day, but it also has to be said that if voters are enthused, they will brave hail and thunderstorms to have their say. With some notable exceptions the main LP message was that they had spent £millions repairing roads and pavements. So at a time of austerity and massive cuts in the living standards of working class people, tarmac and paving stones were the most important things.
There were some attacks on Tory plans for the NHS and the budget for the rich, but overall there was little to enthuse. Despite that, however, the hatred for the national government and its plans was sufficient for enough voters to turn out and cast their vote for an alternative that seemed credible and viable, despite its lack of policies and leadership. Labour therefore won by default, a vote against the government rather than a vote for Labour.
Yet even with this massive Labour majority on the Council of 43 out of 54 seats, there were already murmurings among Labour councillors at the count last night of the consequences of having such a majority. There was some fear that alternative voices, an opposition, would be raised within the Labour group on policy and positions. After all, with no threat to Labour’s dominance, the few who may not be comfortable with Labour’s “dented shield” programme of cuts to balance the budget might start to voice their opposition.
And what of the SP? Dave Nellist has a justifiably excellent reputation across the city as the one-time MP who took a worker’s wage and a fighter against the cuts as a SP councillor. Even among many LP members there is admiration for him and many say that his only fault is that he is not in the LP. But despite his standing, he has lost his seat. Despite his political and personal reputation, when workers sought to voice their opinion on the national government, they turned to the LP.
The SP had stood 17 candidates across the city, standing down their candidate in the Foleshill ward, where there was an independent candidate standing against the closure of one of the few social amenities in the most deprived area of the city, Livingstone Road Baths. A petition against closure had gathered more than 10,000 signatures, yet the independent candidate polled only 213 votes compared to the LP candidate’s 2,112.
In another part of the city, the traditional Tory stronghold of Wainbody, where the LP had never, ever won a seat there in the entire history of city-wide voting, there was also a socialist candidate but this time from the LP. Martin Hartnett, the Peugeot plant convenor, fighting his first election as a socialist after rejoining the LP a few years ago, did not win but polled just over 33% of the vote compared to the Tory vote of 42%. Here the SP candidate did not stand down and polled 1.5% of the vote.
These results have been a body blow not only to the Tories but also to the SP. Despite the low turnout voters have voiced their opinions on the ConDem government and have turned to the LP, not to any other alternative that proclaims itself to be the genuine voice for the working class in opposition to cuts.
But labour too should not read these results and assume that they are an endorsement of their dented shield policy. The first effects of the austerity programme of Cameron are beginning to bite, yet less than 20% of the planned cuts have been implemented. Over the next 5 to 10 years the gains of the working class from decades of struggle will be under attack as wages, jobs and services are slashed in an attempt to save a bankrupt capitalist system.
Yet if there is one thing that we have learned from the cuts so far, on the basis of capitalism the cuts are removing the seed corn of future growth and making the deficit even greater. Rising unemployment, coupled with wage freezes and price increases, with many workers struggling to pay off past debts for fear of the future, all mean that demand for goods and services is falling and so are tax receipts. So the government will cut even more to balance the books and satisfy the bond markets and we enter a downward spiral.
It is against this background that an opposition voice will develop in the ranks of labour, a voice that cries out against the false notion of a “responsible capitalism”. In the coming period this voice will emerge more and more in the trade unions, building on what has been done over the past year. But as we also move towards 2015 and the next general election, this voice will also be heard more and more in the ranks of the LP. It will start with isolated voices but the ferment will grow and the question will be asked more and more as to why our traditional base, our class, should have to bear the burden of a crisis that they did not cause. And it will be through the LP that many workers will look for a political answer, a socialist answer, to the crisis and not through the many forms of parties that call themselves socialist, despite the sincerity and self sacrifice of their members.
