"London voters back low poll tax' shock!
think we can with a high-profile campaign - then we at least have a fighting chance.
I hope the unions will take an active part:
obviously local government unions have a lot at stake in terms of jobs, especially if we get
Poll Tax capped - and on current projections that seems a probability. The unions in Merton need to be brought together, and we hope that kind of alliance can be formed through the Fair Deal campaign.
We are going back to the old style, getting out there and having a go: it's not going to be a glossy PR-type campaign. It's going to be about getting people out on the streets, sending coachloads of protestors to lobby at the
Department of the Environment, rather than the council leaders meeting with civil servants in private. We want hundreds of local tenants, pensioners groups and ordinary people involved.
Some will see this as old-fashioned: but it's the only chance we've got of having a fight with this government. Some of the independents on the council may well support us, because they can see what has been done to
Merton.
I'm also hoping that some other Labour boroughs facing similar problems will want to
Everyone's talking about the
"London factor' in May's local elections. Labour won
300 seats across Britain, but
London made a negative contribution, with a net loss of
20 seats. There was an overall swing to Labour in London of 5 per cent (half the national average). The Labour
Party said that they would be launching an 'inquiry' into
"the London effect'.
David Blunkett stated that If local Labour Parties have not learned the right lessons we ought to be prepared to go in and help them get the right message across.'
Even Tony Banks MP hit out, arguing that councils must concentrate on 'bread and butter issues.
Most of the talk of the London effect is raised by right wingers looking to ditch policies they have long opposed. There is no longer any council that could really be called loony left
FEATURES create a broad front against the goverment.
Has there been much anti-Poll Tax activity
In the borough?
What of the Labour Party nationally? You gratulations after you had won in May.
found out.
Westminster and Wandsworth really played into the Tories' hands. With more campaign resources in Merton we could have won a much larger majority: and I think we could have seen victories in Hillingdon and Enfield, too.
overspenders*. In the late 1970s and early 1980s London local authority spending dramatically increased, often through the flawed tactic of increasing the rates. Now with the Tory attacks biting, and the failure of the
'municipal socialists' to offer resistance, those days are long gone.
Thatcher has claimed that the results were a vindication of the principles of the poll tax: the community charge is beginning to work'. Yet the two highest chargers, Haringey with the highest Poll Tax of £572, and
Lambeth with the second highest
Poll Tax of £547, retumed
Labour majorities similar to those achieved in 1986.
Labour suffered its losses in the next band of poll tax levels.
In Brent, the Tories played the racist card (as did the SLD in
Tower Hamlets): Labour, which had made years of brutal cuts, lost overall control. Bryan Gould admitted that la sensible Labour leadership was unable to cope fight alongside us on these issues and help us
Not particularly strong. That kind of campaigning hasn't happened very often in Merton: there aren't the organisations with campaigning experience, it's just not that sort of were hardly Inundated with help or even con-
Part of the problem was that neither the
Labour Party nor the Tories nationally took any notice at all of what was happening in the borough: then suddenly on May 4 everyone was running round trying to find out where we were. Roy Hattersley probably still hasn't
I think the Party's obsession with
Past retreats catch up on Labour
Labour lost Ealing (poll tax
6435) with a 6 percent swing to the Tories. All sections of the
Labour Party seemed surprised.
Gould said that the result came as a shock...it was a good coun cil that deserved to win. Even
Labour Briefing was shocked because the Council had suffered
"no scandals' and 'had a good manifesto' (sic). But voters did not forget that Labour had raised the rates by a preposterous 65 percent three years ago. The
Tories had led a racist campaign against "fringe groups", and their first act was to sack workers in the equalities units as a start to getting poll tax down to £370.
But what of Wandsworth? Its poll tax of £148 was clearly seen as a litmus test. There was a 7 percent swing to the Tories and their majority was increased from one to 35. The £148 figure meant that local taxation fell by
28 per cent. £17 million was taken from reserves.
Without the fiddles, the poll tax might have been £432. A council spokesperson accepted
There was a real contrast between the level of support from the London Party for the campaign in Merton and that in Wandsworth. We got on with the business - while all the help went elsewhere. We failed to win one seat by just three votes in Pollards Hill on a racist vote - we had an Asian candidate. Three votes is the kind of margin that could easily have been made up by a little extra push. I gather
Hillingdon and Enfield had some similarly close results. Yet a friend of mine in
Wandsworth who turned out to go knocking up at seven o'clock - the busiest time - was told they already had the whole patch covered, and was sent away.
I hope the Labour Party nationally will give us some support in the campaign, especially now that Tory MPs from obscure parts of the country are already asking questions in the Commons on Merton's finances. We gave the national leadership an opportunity to boast about a Labour gain in London after losing ground in the boroughs they had bragged they would win: we can't afford to allow the front bench to sit back and let the Tories attack us without a sturdy response.
that the low poll tax was unsustainable. In Maidenhead and
Berkshire, where the poll tax was £449, Tories complained that if they'd had as much help they would not have had to set a poll tax and would have given voters €200 each!
One local voter told the papers that he was "basically' a
Socialist but voted Tory because all Labour offered was a massive local tax.
In Westminster (poll tax -
£195) there was a 7 per cent swing to the Tories and Labour lost 12 seats. Local taxation fell by 66 percent. Voters were not attracted to paying for their principles.
New realist Labour has failed to challenge in action the class economics of the Town Hall.
This is not so much a London effect as a credibility gap. Is it any wonder that people were not inspired to vote for Labour councillors who will raise the poll tax while offering no fight to defend and extend collective provision?
Steve French