Newham Labour Buck the Trend, in the Wrong Direction.

Across London, Labour took Wandsworth, Westminster and Barnet. It was a night to excite the faintest of Labour hearts, although it is possible that registering their disgust at the behaviour of those at the top of the party, Conservative voters simply stayed at home.

But while London experienced a massive swing to Labour, in Newham and Tower Hamlets (more on LBTH later), we see the figures going in the opposite direction.

May 4th 2022: Newham Labour has 57 out of 60 councillors.

May 6th 2022:  Newham has 63 out of 66 councillors.

It looks like an improvement. But maybe not.

Let’s explain. In May 2018, 60 Newham councillors were elected under the Labour banner. You will recall that they had up to eight councillors under investigation for various concerns, mainly antisemitism. However, only one Cllr Nazir Ahmed was actually suspended and he subsequently chose to resign the Labour whip and remain on the council as an independent. He did not stand in Newham in 2022, but he did stand for Lutfer Rahman’s party in Tower Hamlets where he failed to get elected in the St Dunstan’s ward.

It may seem surprising that eight can be under investigation but only one suspended. That was clearly one of the factors which caused former Cllr Peppiatt to resign the Labour whip, where he cited the general failure of the Labour Party to act or even respond to allegations of antisemitism. Cllr Murphy, who resigned at the same time was more exercised by the character of the mayor, which he felt was unsuited for high office.

In the 2022 election, Labour chose to start suspending its candidates before the election had started and South American Stalinist, Belgica Guana was suspended for posting antisemitic comments. If you thought that Newham Labour had sorted out its internal antisemitism, you were wrong. The question is, how many of the current intake will expose their antisemitism during this term of office?

For the first time since the 2006 local elections a ward has gone to an opposition party and the Greens have picked up their first Newham councillors in Nate Higgins and Danny Keeling. On a council where the mayor has sought to remove councillors as far away from decision making as possible, they are unlikely to have a major impact. 

The political history and the demographics are very different in Tower Hamlets, but in 2018 Lutfer Rahman’s Aspire Party lost its 10 seats and took only 15% of the vote, to Labour’s 46%. In 2022 they took 36.95% of the vote, to Labour’s 36.53% and obtained a clear majority of three seats over and above all the other parties. Zero to 24 councillors in one election. And the mayor.

Labour still had a landslide in Newham in 2022. Sixty-four (or rather 63 as Belgica Guana was suspended) out of 66 is a tremendous victory, one which most local parties could never imagine in their wildest dreams. But it hides some concerns for the future of Labour in Newham. 

The first is the loss of the seats in the new ward of Stratford Olympic Park. The Greens came from nowhere and achieved a clean sweep in the ward. They will now be rejuvenated and are likely to push for greater influence in the West Ham wards along the A12 and down the Lea, where the demographics will favour their message. 

The Greens came 2nd in Forest Gate North; 2nd in Forest Gate South; 2nd in Maryland; 2nd in West Ham; 2nd in Canning Town North and 2nd in Stratford. These were not close seconds, but the Greens have established themselves as the leading opposition party in the NW of the borough. If they are prepared to consistently work those wards over a whole council term, they might create a genuine upset next time round. Arguably, they are Newham’s second party at the moment.

Although they did not win in their target seats in Beckton, they made a creditable showing (a clear 2nd place) and Labour was known to be anxious and focussed a major effort to retain the seats. If the Greens were to work that seat over the next four years rather than simply in the four weeks before an election, who knows what would happen.

This is the first time that Labour have lost a seat in an election since 2006. When in 2002 Alan Craig won a seat for the CPA, he did so with a strong local reputation and on the back of a successful scare campaign against the redevelopment proposals.

In 2006, when Respect won three seats in Green St, they did so in the wake of the 2003 Iraq invasion which angered many local Muslims.

In 2022, the Greens won their seats in a straight fight with no external factors influencing the electorate.

In a further article we discuss the rise of communitarian politics in East London. Newham has not been immune to this. The success of Respect in 2006 was the success of a communitarian party which focussed on the issues and grievances of one community. Fiaz did the same in her campaign for selection and to secure a stunning percentage of the vote in 2018. She has fallen out with a particular group within the community and her vote took a body blow as a result.

The massive majority in Newham may lead Labour to be complacent, as they were in Glasgow or Stoke or recently in Hull. Treating the electorate like toadstools is a recipe for eventual defeat. That may not worry Mayor Fiaz who has clearly set her eyes on higher things, but it should worry her colleagues and those of us who live here.