Socialist Party/CWI Local Election Results in England

by hs Fri May 05, 2006 23:59

one extra seat is a little dissapointing especially with the BNP doubling their seats, but it must be extremly difficult working with the less democratic first past the post system. any news from respect?

by Mark P - Socialist Party (personal capacity) Sat May 06, 2006 00:13

Moving from 6 to 7 councillors is a tiny but welcome step forward. The Stoke result was very unlucky, a left wing independent leading to a chaotic split vote. The candidate there had been a Labour left councillor who left to join the Socialist Party a couple of months ago. The results in Huddersfield and Coventry are very good.

As far as Respect are concerned, they won 16 seats. 15 of them are in East London (12 in Tower Hamlets and 3 in Newham) with 1 in Birmingham. The gains were well below what they had hoped for and are limited to the same few urban areas with large Muslim populations. They are still welcome however. Interestingly all of the new councillors come from the Muslim sections of the Respect Coalition. None of the SWP members or other long standing leftists were elected. This brings Respect's total number of councillors to 18.

The Independent Working Class Association (IWCA) won its fourth councillor in Oxford. Other than these three groups the left generally fared poorly. The obvious exception is the Scottish Socialist Party as there were no elections in Scotland or Wales. The SSP has 2 councillors.

by Oisín - ÓSF Sun May 07, 2006 00:37

While its true Labour are not a party of the left surely it would have been a better result to have Labour get the seat than allow the BNP to gain by splitting their opposition with a SP candidate, so much for a united front against fascism.

by John Meehan Sun May 07, 2006 00:43

Read an interesting discussion on English local election results and the state of the far left here :

http://macuaid.blogspot.com/2006/05/strong-showing-for-....html

Irish Indymedia readers may notice a familiar name popping up

by SP Member - Socialist Party/ CWI Sun May 07, 2006 14:07

surely it would have been better for the Labour Party to stand aside and allow the sitting councillor to win the seat ahead of the BNP. Interesting, indications are that if the SP had stood aside the Labour Party still would have not won the seat such is the disgust that Labour are held with in this ward, whereas if Labour had stood aside the SP would ahve romped home. An 'so-called' independent left candidate also stood who gained about 300 votes, with indications that he stood at the behest of the Labour Party to undermine the Socialist Party campaign, irrespective of the likely consequences that the BNP would win the seat as a result.