That Election Result - One Month On

“What do you think you’ll do now?” asked Ruth Cadbury, long-time Brentford Labour councillor and Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Brentford and Isleworth, at the local election count last month.

“That’s easy,” I replied. “I’m going for a beer”.

It would be an overstatement to say I’d sidestepped the question. As far as I was concerned a well-earned drink once the formal business of the day was finally done was as long ahead as I could be bothered to contemplate at that particular moment in time.

The ICG had just fought what had without doubt been its hardest, most high-intensity election campaign in its twenty-year history. More literature had gone out, more doors had been knocked, and more residents spoken to on the doorsteps than in 2002, 2006 or 2010. The outcome of it all had been a substantial defeat. We had held second place in both Syon and Isleworth, indeed widening the gap between ourselves and the third-placed Tories from the previous contest in 2010, to the obvious surprise and disappointment of the victorious Labour teams, but we were still a very long way behind Labour in both.

LABOUR GAMEPLAN

This, according to the script which had been written in earnest by Labour strategists in the immediate aftermath of 2010, was the contest following which the ICG would finally chuck in the towel and collectively take up fishing. That’s not going to happen, so in that much at least the Labour gameplan had failed to come to fruition notwithstanding the party’s decisive win at the polls.

But there was no hiding from the scoreline – the ICG’s vote had been pinned back to 1998 levels whilst Labour had chalked up tallies of 1500 to 2000 and beyond in every ward outside of Chiswick. The Tories were down to eleven seats (which came almost as a relief to them after persistent whispers of a total wipeout in Osterley and Spring Grove) and the spectacularly mismanaged UKIP adventure had predictably ended in tears.

As always many things were said on all sides during the course of the campaign, and one comment on a local Internet forum from a perennial Labour Party mouthpiece to the effect that “voters aren’t buying into ICG ideology” repeated on me in the light of the result. The lady in question, whilst no longer an activist nor even technically a party member, is nevertheless somebody who wields influence with Labour in Isleworth and who would have been relaying feedback from the stump rather than speculating.

Nevertheless I believe she is wrong. Or wrong at least if the point she was trying to make was that voters who had formerly supported the ICG are now consciously rebelling against attempts to involve them in decision-making and preferring instead the lazy option of deliberately electing politicians who will make decisions on their behalf based upon their own agendas rather than having consideration for the wishes of the wider public. The idea that electors who just a few years before had marched against library closures and embraced litigation against Thames Water over Mogden have suddenly decided to put their placards down and to collectively present their backsides to be kicked makes absolutely no sense at all.

In support of my view I would cite Labour’s own election material, excellent as it was in its layout and presentation, in which the party’s “community” credentials were given pride of place. From (definitely false) claims that Isleworth’s Labour councillors had fought to save Isleworth Public Hall for the community to (probably false) promises that no libraries or community centres will be closed during this administration, Labour outgunned the ICG not by trumping our ideology with its own, but by persuading a good many of our erstwhile voters that it now shared our primary concerns and could at last be trusted with the (our) family silver.

SUPERIOR

That Labour’s campaigning techniques are now immensely superior to those it had adopted during earlier contests was also a major factor. It is hard to credit that in 2006, when we won all six seats across Isleworth and Syon wards, Labour did not put out a solitary leaflet in the latter, far less knock on a single door. Instead its “campaign” during that year was apparently based entirely upon an assumption that the party would win simply because the locals had a duty to give it their support. Or that in those days ours were the only candidates who paid particular attention to wooing postal voters.

Today we find ourselves up against campaigns in which canvassing data provided by ward activists is processed and responded to by a central, computerised and often salaried party machine, in which individual letters tailored as “responses” to individual concerns can be mailed to individual voters without any extra effort having to be expended by the local teams, which themselves are fortified by squads of activists drafted in from other areas. Tens of thousands of voters throughout the borough were known to have been contacted by telephone canvassers, and none of this takes into account the additional ballast of Labour election material coming through the letterboxes in support of the party’s European election efforts, which would have had some kind of positive spin-off for the local teams however unintended.

But then again all the same things can be said about the Conservatives, who had some very impressive candidates in the field (Fadi Farhat in Isleworth and Ron Mushiso in Syon spring immediately to mind) as well as some less inspiring ones . They too (absurdly) channeled most of their efforts into wards such as Isleworth and Syon, leaving themselves more vulnerable than they needed to have done in marginal areas such as Hounslow South (which they lost) and Osterley & Spring Grove (where they dropped a seat). They too contacted thousands of voters by telephone, and drafted in outside help on the stump, not least from their sitting Member of Parliament. They too produced a dazzling portfolio of glossy, money-no-object leaflets. Even so they once again came in in third place in both wards, just proving the old adage that one cannot make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.

CONVERGENCE

Labour’s victory in the ICG’s target wards, thus, was not down primarily in my opinion to the vastly superior resources that it was able to call upon, although that undoubtedly was a big factor, but to the (for us) unhappy convergence of an unpopular Tory-led government with a feeling amongst residents that the time had come to trust a local Labour Party which at last was proclaiming the virtues of community engagement, even if (as some old cynics believe) it did so with fingers firmly crossed.

It is worth relating that having spent several months on the doorsteps speaking, and listening, to many thousands of local voters, I didn’t encounter any hostility whatsoever towards the ICG – other than, of course, from one or two who had been hostile to us to begin with, whom I had called upon partly in the forlorn hope that they might have had a change of heart and partly out of devilment. Nobody had “turned” on us per se. But what I did to be honest witness, and almost exclusively from those whose “traditional” sympathies had been with Labour before they had turned to the ICG in the first place, was a tangible dilution of their enthusiasm towards us. Many who had told us in previous contests that they would “definitely” be voting for us were telling us this time that we could “probably” count on them (which as any experienced canvasser will confirm translates into “probably not”).

In the event it was our trusted core support – those who have become almost “traditional ICG supporters” now that our participation has extended over several contests – who stuck with us. In a conversation with a Labour councillor recently I joked that I could almost name the people who voted for us this time around – an exaggeration, but not a ludicrous one. This was particularly so in those areas where one would expect the Tories to perform relatively well. In the owner-occupied areas of Isleworth ward, off the Worple Road and around Old Isleworth (ironically the areas targeted by the “UKIP” candidates, presumably at Labour’s suggestion) we outperformed Labour, whilst the Tories received proportionately fewer votes, considerably fewer, than they did on Ivybridge. It would appear that the votes we had previously taken from the Conservatives remained with us, whilst those we had taken from Labour on the whole drifted back. This is worth bearing in mind because it means that, for the short term at least, Labour clearly now has a psephological as well as an ideological interest in us continuing to take part in elections.

WHERE TO FROM HERE?

Which brings me nicely to the question of where the ICG goes from here because it is clear that, more than ever before, any decision on our part to abandon the electoral path (a logical decision on account of the growing disparity in resources between community-based candidates and national political parties) is unlikely to meet with the approval of our erstwhile Labour opponents. It was, in my view, our biggest mistake of the 2010-2014 period that our decision as to whether or not to stand this time around was permitted to hang so much on us receiving that approval. We should never again, in my opinion, allow our critics to set the agenda for us in such a way – our strategy henceforth must be determined solely by what suits us and our community best.

Labour’s victory, both in our target wards and across the borough, was massive, but perhaps ironically the local party is now inevitably a prisoner of its own success. With an “official” Conservative opposition which is not only small in number but also weak, demoralised and stale (the “newest” amongst them – Sam Hearn – having been first elected to the Council at a by-election in 2008) the temptation for local Labour to revive its proud tradition of factional infighting will be tremendous. Amid all this, those Isleworth and Syon voters who “returned” to Labour from the ICG on account of its commitments to community-building are unlikely to respond favourably to any reversion to the bad old ways. Having made the commitment, Labour is now obligated to deliver.

Will it do so? The signals, as is so often the case, are mixed and in some respects conflicting. Our aforementioned Labour forum correspondent has delivered herself of the interesting view that with the Conservatives in such utter disarray, Labour’s likely “opposition” will for the purposes of this administration be the ICG and the G15+ group of residents’ associations. Flattered though I was, being an active member of both, it ill portends that a political administration charged with the task of governing in the best interests of a whole community should instinctively consider organised groups of residents to be its opposition.

But can the views of one party spokesperson be accepted as those of an entire organisation? Particularly one that has historically been so fractious and factional?

Appointments to the new Cabinet may offer us some clue. The new Leader of the Council is Syon’s Steve Curran, who as an officer of the Griffin Park Residents’ Association a decade or so ago impressed me a great deal but who since, having been transformed from poacher into gamekeeper in his role as a senior councillor, has worried me in equal measure. On his watch Councillor Curran has overseen the demise of HFTRA (the Hounslow Federation of Tenants’ and Residents’ Associations) and the attempted marginalisation of G15+, but as Leader he may have fresh ideas (at the election count he assured me that he was in favour of a “HFTRA Mark 2” to give the tenants back their voice – I told him we would see soon enough whether this was so).

Perhaps more enlightening – or alternatively perhaps not – are the appointments of the community-minded Syon Councillor Theo Dennison as Lead Member for “Citizen Engagement”, and of Isleworth’s Sue Sampson for “Communities”, a role which includes as a subheader “Community Engagement”. There are all manner of permutations to be read into this one. Do they represent two factions, each appointed to a near-identical role by two different power blocs within the Labour Group? Has the Leader appointed both in the hope that they will counter-balance, maybe even neutralise, one another? Or are they to be two distinct roles in spite of the apparent similarities? It is known that Sue fought hard within the Labour Group to have this particular job appended to her portfolio – is it, for her, just about having the capacity to pour funding into pro-Labour community projects on her own patch (before anybody mentions it I have never suggested that Labour in Isleworth is anti-community per se, just that it has historically been highly selective about which community projects it embraces and which it opposes, invariably depending upon where said projects are perceived to stand politically)?

CHANCE ENCOUNTER

I have made it my business to try to find out more about where the administration is likely to be heading with all this. I have already had the benefit of long discussions with two prominent local Labour Party members, one following a chance encounter and the other by appointment. I am optimistic that at least some elements within the new administration, particularly much of the new intake, are serious about wanting to take a new and more enlightened approach to community engagement and I think that they at least should be supported by those of us within the community whose causes are likely to benefit from any success they might enjoy.

I also think we should be prepared, both as a community and (for the ICG) as an organisation, to be open-minded about whether local Labour as a whole is prepared, and indeed structured, to deliver on its promises. Those who are keen to may need our support or even our help in their struggles with those who are perhaps less so. It is my hope that, in such an event, the ICG’s support or help will be readily forthcoming.

Above all we need to remember why it is that we have fought elections in the first place – not through force of habit or because we as individuals desire to be councillors but because we want to realise specific objectives for our community. If those objectives can be realised in spite of our electoral defeat then there can be no valid argument for not recognising the fact and no justification for regarding the political powers that be as our adversaries any longer. No reason to fight against them.

There is an awful lot that we can achieve whilst free of the organisational straitjacket that being committed to fighting elections has consigned us to. It is a fresh new approach which I sincerely believe has, for us, come of age.

Setting the Record Straight on the Isleworth Labour/UKIP Tie-Up

As I've said elsewhere I am keen to move on from the confrontational politics which have occupied me up until now. Nonetheless after careful consideration I do feel it is necessary to provide the update on the Isleworth Labour/UKIP saga that I had hoped to include during the last days of the campaign, had time permitted me to do so.

I do this not to provoke further conflict, but to consign these events to record in case either they continue to be disputed, or the quarrel should be continued by those involved in them in spite of my desire for them to be laid to rest.  It was, after all, part of both UKIP's and Labour's strategy during the last few weeks of the campaign to simply deny the existence of this shoddy arrangement in the hope that by saying it isn't happening enough times it could somehow just be magically wished away.

Shortly after my original article on the subject appeared on this blog one of the three Isleworth UKIP candidates, Kelly Adams (formerly Males), posted an item on the BrentfordTW8.com community forum in which she claimed to have been provoked into standing as a candidate for UKIP after having acquired documentary proof of two Freedom of Information requests that I had made involving the property in which she resides.  I reproduce a copy of the post in question below:

 

The sequence of events as claimed by Kelly is clearly nonsense.  The UKIP "colleague" of hers whom I rang was the then Hanworth Park councillor Rebecca Stewart, and this conversation took place on the very evening that I had encountered Kelly and local UKIP leader Colin Botterill out collecting nomination signatures for her endorsement as a candidate - in other words after the event.  Why else would I have 'phoned a member of UKIP to discuss Kelly who, prior to this encounter, I had never associated with UKIP and whom I would never in a million years have expected Ms. Stewart to have even heard of?

That Kelly was given the information about my FoI requests at all, information which was supposed to have been confidential, would appear to provide evidence of dodgy practice by somebody at the London Borough of Hounslow which in itself vindicated my decision to investigate the local authority's conduct over this whole matter.  But LBH misconduct aside, it takes a number of weeks to acquire information via FoI.  Had Kelly made her request, as claimed, as a consequence of my conversation with Ms. Stewart she would barely have received the information she had asked for by polling day.

So, self-evidently, any information Kelly had received in respect of my FoI requests did not come into her possession as a consequence of my call to Ms. Stewart, but rather would have reached her some considerable time beforehand.  How?  Your guess is as good as mine, unless that is she had a close contact who was an officer at the council - or a councillor!

Then we have Mr. Botterill's account of events.  In an interview conducted with the Hounslow Chronicle (online version) he related how Kelly was originally to have been the only UKIP candidate in Isleworth ward, but that her two colleagues were recruited by her after I had apparently behaved badly towards her on the night when I had met her and Mr. Botterill out collecting nominations.  Here is the appropriate excerpt from the article in question:

 

I have already noted, in my previous article, how when I encountered Mr. Botterill in Worple Avenue he was in the company of three girls - Kelly and two others.  I also gave an account of how on that occasion he had glad-handed me and told me, even there and then, how his party would only be fielding one candidate in Isleworth.

Below is the list of nominations which was later published in respect of Kelly Adams:

It is necessary to note at this point that nominations are published in the sequence in which they are collected.  At the time of our encounter, Kelly's nomination paper (which I saw) was already almost full.

Now here are the nominations published in respect of her two fellow candidates (who, we are told, were recruited by Kelly on a later occasion):

We are being asked to believe that, on the later occasion when the other candidates collected their nominations (Kelly already having gathered hers), not only did they find all the same residents at home but that they all signed in exactly the same sequence!

That Colin Botterill is a bare-faced liar is thus a demonstrable fact that I would be prepared to stand by before any judge in the land.  But the question is why did he lie?  What had he done that he felt he had to hide and, more importantly, why did he do it?  And how precisely did he envisage that his bizarre actions would benefit UKIP?

A further mystery developed with the arrival of Isleworth UKIP's long-awaited leaflet, two days before May 22nd.  I'll not comment on its content as to do so would be superfluous, but I reproduce it below:

What really was interesting about this leaflet was the name of the election agent.  All published material produced in support of an election campaign is required by law to carry the name and contact address of the validly nominated election agent.  All other UKIP candidates throughout the borough were represented in this capacity by Mr. Botterill but the three Isleworth candidates - uniquely - were represented by Kelly:

Why should this be?  One can only hazard a guess, but it would be a good one.  In all likelihood Mr. Botterill knew that the Isleworth leaflet would be not only an exclusively anti-ICG tract but a defamatory one at that and, demonstrating some rare good judgement, decided he did not want to put his name to it.  Kelly's financial assets are widely known to be significantly less than zero and thus any action for libel, even if I could afford it myself, would be a non-starter.

And yet Mr. Botterill, as UKIP leader, was clearly happy for a highly defamatory anti-ICG campaign to be conducted in his party's name.  Why?

One rather telling aside was a little, abortive and frankly rather daft smear campaign which appeared a week or so before polling day and fizzled out very shortly afterwards.  In essence the rumour was put about that I was in some way in league with David W. Griffiths, the original and rather eccentric UKIP candidate who remained in the fray as an independent after being dropped by his party and who circulated leaflets claiming that he was still the "leading UKIP candidate", urging Isleworth residents to vote for him as their first choice and thereafter for two of the three "official" candidates.

Quite why I would encourage anybody to vote for any UKIP candidate, Official or Provisional, as opposed to the three ICG candidates who were in the field, was not explained, but the groundless rumour (originated by Labour) was dutifully carried by Mr. Botterill to the Hounslow Chronicle, who repeated it along with my firm denial.  Shortly afterwards Labour's Sue Sampson saw fit to bring the article to the attention of the UKIP candidate Kelly Adams (supposedly a political rival) via Facebook, where they are friends, as is shown below (the "Isleworth British Legion Legion" account is maintained by Kelly):

Those who attended the Verification of Votes on the evening of Thursday 22nd May and the Counting of Votes on Friday 23rd May could not have helped but have noticed that Kelly (the only Isleworth UKIP candidate who bothered to attend either) spent the entire duration of both in the company of her Isleworth Labour friends.  True she sported the purple rosette and went through the motions of "sampling" (the practice engaged in by anoraks of trying to record the numbers of votes achieved by each slate of candidates as they fall out of the ballot box onto the counting table) - on a sheet identical to those being used by the Labour counting agents and probably provided to her by same - but, absurdly, she only recorded the votes cast for UKIP and in so doing entirely defeated the object of the exercise.  When the result of the contest in Isleworth ward was announced, her delight was evident, which some may have considered strange bearing in mind that the party she apparently represented had come fourth.

Like I said at the beginning, I have no heart to continue the squabbles which occupied me for far too long prior to May 22nd.  I certainly have no hard feelings towards Kelly Adams, who is herself a nice person and whom I feel was exploited during the campaign as a vehicle through which other people's battles were being fought.  But it is important that these deeply cynical events are recorded, should they need to be revisited for any purpose in the future.

As for the mysterious Colin Botterill, he lost his seat and it really couldn't have happened to a nicer person.  Why he did what he did I still have no idea, but unlike most captains whose duty it is to go down with their ship, Mr. Botterill made sure his ship went down with him.  His genuine candidates, some of whom were noticeably of good quality, deserved much better.

A New Direction?

It's taken me until a fortnight after the local elections to update this blog again and there has been a simple reason for that - I wanted to get away and spend a couple of weeks doing the things that normal people do who are not involved in local politics and election campaigning.

The results of the local elections in Hounslow can be found here. It was a Labour landslide, with the party winning 49 seats on the local authority to the Conservatives' 11.

The Labour bandwagon proved far too much for the ICG on this occasion. We maintained our status as the second "party" in both Isleworth and Syon wards and beat two Liberal Democrat candidates in Brentford at the first time of asking (astounding when one considers that the Lib Dems actually held a seat in the ward until just over four years ago), however we were a long way behind all round. A simple analysis of the voting patterns tells us that we held onto the votes that we had won from the Conservatives over recent elections but that those traditional Labour voters who had also flocked to the ICG in recent contests largely returned "home". There are a number of likely reasons for this, and I will rehearse some of them at a slightly later stage.

For the ICG for now it remains only to take stock, and perhaps to consider more seriously the option of adopting a new approach on a non-electoral model. There is no reason for us to wait around pining for the approval of our hitherto political "opponents" - if it suits us we should just do it, unilaterally, and see where it leads us.

On a personal note I want to get away from the quarrels and bickerings of the past, but before I can even try to do this there are some matters arising from the election which need to be consigned to record just in case they ever need to be revisited and there will be more of that anon.

Please watch this site for further details, as well as for some post-election analysis and general soul searching.

Isleworth Labour and UKIP Together in Big Local Election Con-Trick

Labour in Isleworth fields slate of “UKIP” candidates in bid to split protest vote

The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) is standing three candidates in Isleworth ward in the London Borough of Hounslow at the local government elections on May 22^nd – the only full slate being fielded by UKIP anywhere in the borough other than in its target ward of Hanworth Park, where it currently holds two seats.

But these are UKIP candidates with a difference.  That is because they are not UKIP candidates at all, but rather are “Labour” candidates who have been “loaned” to UKIP by Labour, or at least by one of its ward councillors, to the right-wing party in an attempt to split the protest vote which is likely to go to Labour’s main rival in the ward, the politically centrist and non-racist Independent Community Group (ICG).

That is not to say they are, necessarily, Labour Party members.  But their friendship with a serving ward councillor has led to them agreeing to participate in a con-trick being performed by the local Labour Group on the voters of Isleworth ward.

Even more astonishing is that UKIP’s local leadership is fully aware of the bogus nature of its candidates, but has proceeded to use them anyway, one can only presume so as not to lose face after having failed to meet its promises in respect of the number of candidates it would stand.

BACKGROUND

After years of enjoying only a nominal presence in the London Borough of Hounslow, UKIP exploded onto the local scene at the end of May 2013 when four sitting Conservative councillors – Colin Botterill, Rebecca Stewart, Beverley Williams and Gill Hutchison – resigned their party whip and formed a UKIP group on the Council.  The new group announced its intentions to contest the 2014 local elections with a view to increasing its representation in Hounslow by taking advantage of the wave of popularity presently being enjoyed by leader Nigel Farage and his party.

        

UKIP AND THE ICG

Within days the ICG was accused by Labour critics of having met with UKIP councillors to try to persuade them not to stand in the wards which we would be targeting if we decided to contest the local elections.  As it happened we hadn’t – we had had no contact at all with them at that time – but we decided that we would anyway.  Although most if not all of our key people did not share UKIP’s main policy positions – on Europe and immigration – we were supportive of the party’s plans for local referenda and for recall of under-performing MPs (and by implication councillors) and, besides, saw nothing sinister or wrong about trying to talk a right-wing but democratic party out of contesting elections on our home turf.  We had two meetings, the first with Councillors Stewart and Williams and the second with all four.

During those meetings UKIP attempted to talk us into agreeing a two-and-one arrangement in which we would field two candidates each in Syon and Isleworth wards and UKIP would field one, with a tacit agreement in place for each of the two groups to big up the other, in effect a joint slate.  We declined on the grounds that we did not want to be associated with their – or indeed any – party political cause, as that would be contrary to everything we stood for.  Some time later UKIP advised us that they would be standing one candidate in each of the wards, and this remained their position thereafter.

In fact, it even remained their position earlier this month when by pure fluke I “caught” Councillor Botterill (pictured above) in Worple Avenue - I think with his three candidates - collecting nominations, and he glad-handed me and told me even then that UKIP was only fielding one candidate (“You know Kelly, don’t you?” he asked sheepishly) in the ward.

Not recognising the other two girls, I assumed at that point that they were just hangers-on of some sort.  But yes, I did know Kelly.  Kelly, I told him, was a very close friend of Isleworth Labour councillor Sue Sampson and was certainly no UKIPer.  She owed an awful lot to Councillor Sampson (of which more below) and no way would she be standing against her in an election without her blessing.  I expected Councillor Botterill to be surprised by this news, but he wasn’t.  He just looked at his shoes (fortunately for him he was also wearing dark glasses) and walked away.

Kelly Males/Root/Adams - Isleworth "UKIP" candidate - hosts the Mayor of Hounslow at a community event fronted by Isleworth Labour councillor Sue Sampson (below)

Immediately I telephoned Councillor Stewart, and during the course of that evening we had a couple of conversations about Kelly.  But I have to say she seemed more concerned by some of my other information (of which more later in the campaign) than she did about the fact that Kelly was a Labour “ringer”.  But still, she reassured me, at least UKIP were only fielding one candidate!

I’m getting ahead of myself here though, so once again more of this anon.

      UKIP AND THE “ANTICHRIST”

I should mention in the meantime that Kelly was not, in fact, UKIP’s preferred candidate in Isleworth.  This was a chap called David W. Griffiths, a name with which I was vaguely familiar although he and I have never actually met.

Mr. Griffiths, for all I know, may be a very nice bloke, but I was aware that he had some “form” when it came to political controversy.  Nothing wrong with that necessarily, as a repentant ex-member of the National Front I have plenty of form myself on that front.  But some comments he had made recently – and openly, as a UKIP member – had been reported in the national press and so I thought it was strange that Councillor Botterill and his colleagues had selected a man to be a candidate who had delivered himself of the view, in the wake of Nelson Mandela’s death, that some people were “born to be slaves”.

And so I contacted Councillor Stewart, to alert her to her colleague’s faux pas.  For good measure I sent her a copy of an old article from the local Chronicle in which Mr. Griffiths had claimed during an interview to have been the Antichrist, chosen by persons unknown to bring an end to Christianity on Earth and also taking the slightly controversial view that homeless people should be shot in the streets and homosexuals should be banished to an island.

WAS COUNCILLOR RUTH CADBURY INVOLVED?

Mr. Griffiths’ past activities, or his views on slavery, were not the only thing Councillor Botterill needed to be concerned about.  He had, after all, already circulated his own election leaflet to most of Isleworth ward, apparently without the party’s approval, in which he had declared his “two big things” to have been “old people” and “breastfeeding”.  The leaflet was, shall we say, a tad unconventional.

But at the same time that I had contacted UKIP in a genuine attempt to be helpful (and also, I freely admit, in the hope of knocking out a rival candidate who would have attracted some protest votes otherwise destined for the ICG no matter how eccentric his views), Brentford Labour councillor and parliamentary hopeful Ruth Cadbury was tweeting a copy of the leaflet, presumably provided to her by her Labour colleagues in Isleworth, to her many followers – including, of course, the local press.

Some might consider it odd that Councillor Cadbury, whose political savvy is acknowledged by friend and foe alike, should have done a thing that must inevitably have had the effect of removing a UKIP candidate from the field who would have served a useful purpose in drawing protest votes from ICG candidates without there being any danger of himself being elected.  Unless, of course, she knew that her Isleworth colleagues were waiting impatiently in the wings for the opportunity to offer the hapless Councillor Botterill a helping hand?

Was our prospective MP involved in the deception and confidence trick that was about to be pulled on the voters of Isleworth by her fellow Labour candidates?  The jury remains out as I write.  But her tweet was indeed featured in the Chronicle and the local UKIP leader, who must surely have already known from the national publicity it had generated that his first-choice candidate had made such appalling statements about slavery, now had no option but to withdraw him.

This was on Thursday, April 10^th.  Two days later Councillor Stewart surprised me by advising me that UKIP had “possibly” found a replacement for Mr. Griffiths.  Apparently it was a lady who had long been interested in being an Isleworth candidate but whose “papers” had spent “a long time coming through the system” as UKIP had a strict candidate vetting process (I promise I am not making this up) which took about six weeks to complete.  But I shouldn’t worry, at worst there would only be one UKIP candidate in Isleworth ward!

LABOUR LENDS A HAND

Nominations closed on Thursday, April 24^th and the full candidate lists were published the morning after.  UKIP had put up a full slate of three candidates in Isleworth – Kelly (whose surname is Males and her maiden name is Root but had listed herself as Adams, one assumes to have her name listed at the top of the ballot paper), Melanie Flynn and Sharon Smith.  It would seem the two new candidates had somehow found their way around UKIP’s foolproof six-week vetting process.

Melanie Flynn we had never heard of, although she seems to have arrived on Councillor Botterill’s doorstep at the same time as the others and must be assumed by her continued participation to be happy in the company she is keeping.  I’ll add more information on her if and when any comes to me.

But if Kelly Males/Root/Adams is not an obvious enough “plant” by Councillor Sue Sampson there should be no doubts at all when it comes to Sharon Smith.  Here’s a few little screenshots from the Brentford TW8.com and Chiswick W4.com community forums to be getting along with.

 

A Labour voter, a “socialist”, a staunch defender of former MP Ann Keen’s infamous expense claims and an opponent of fox-hunting – perfect UKIP material if I must say so myself!

I have been promised some further damning evidence, as if any was needed, that Sharon is contesting this election as a “UKIP” candidate for no other reason than to “do Sue a favour”.  When I get it I shall post it onto this blog.

Kelly and Cllr. Sampson, Dec. 2013

But let us go back in the meantime to Kelly Males/Root/Adams.  As I wrote earlier Adams is not her current married name.  Neither is it her maiden name.  It is not even the name of the father of her first children.  She may for all I know have a legitimate reason for having suddenly acquired the name “Adams”, other than to put herself at the top of the ballot paper where, traditionally, there are a few more votes to be had.  She has, I am assured, presented “evidence” of her name change to the elections department at the London Borough of Hounslow, and she will be aware that it is a criminal offence to falsify such evidence and must know I will be having this looked into.  But is it just me who thinks it strange that somebody who is in the business of trying to win votes should suddenly change her name to one by which none of her own friends and contacts knows her?

Under her own name Kelly is an active kind of girl, often to be found supporting good causes.  One cause that she supports is called Middlesex Anti-Racist Action (MARA).  In the screenshot reproduced below you can see her name on its list of followers:

Nothing wrong with that.  Only as you can see here MARA is not particularly fond of UKIP:

Another contradiction.  But nothing is so much a contradiction as Kelly’s apparent ingratitude, by standing against her, to Councillor Sampson.  It was following Councillor Sampson’s intervention that Kelly and her family were able to move into the large council dwelling in which she currently lives, with tens of thousands of pounds and hundreds of hours of work spent on it, without having to go through the Locata system which ordinary mortals are required to negotiate before being rehoused.  

One way in which Kelly was able to repay Councillor Sampson was by writing a letter to the Chronicle in October 2013 taking a pop at various local community organisations, such as The Isleworth Society, the Isleworth Public Hall Users Group and the Friends of Isleworth Public Hall.  Generally the Labour Party in Isleworth has been reluctant to go onto the offensive against community groups, other than the ICG, because their avowedly non-political nature would make them unreasonable targets in the eyes of decent local people and the party has always been at pains to hide its essentially anti-community instincts, by which I mean its opposition to any form of community organisation operating outside of its own discipline.  Kelly's was one of a series of letters written by various of Councillor Sampson's personal friends which basically took on this dirty work.  As recently as six months ago Kelly's affinity with the Labour administration in Hounslow was there for all to see:

  
A CONFIDENCE TRICK ON ISLEWORTH’S VOTERS

As I explained earlier there is a very good reason why Labour feel they would benefit from having a slate of UKIP candidates in the field during this local election campaign.  Although the ICG and UKIP are two very different organisations both would be likely to benefit from any “protest vote”.  With one UKIP candidate standing people who had voted for that party in the European election which is being held on the same day might have been inclined to give their other two votes to the ICG.  That won’t happen, Labour figure, if UKIP has three candidates.

As for UKIP, their motives for entering into this sordid alliance are less clear as only humiliation and embarrassment await them even if these candidates were to win the election in Isleworth.  One can only speculate, but it is likely that their actions were motivated by nothing more than the desire to maximise the number of candidates they could boast they were standing.  But in doing so they have demonstrated that they are utterly untrustworthy, duplicitous, cynical, and by no means least desperate.  How could anybody in this borough take such a shoddy and amateurish outfit seriously?

By their actions both Labour and UKIP are quite consciously playing a confidence trick on local voters.  If the Isleworth UKIP candidates are elected – not unthinkable in the current climate – they will, I’m sure, “convert” to Labour on the very day of the election count, giving Isleworth electors three Labour councillors they didn’t vote for and the local UKIP unit a credibility problem to die for.  But in achieving that Labour will have helped to raise UKIP’s profile in the borough and beyond.  Remember this the next time your local Labour representative pontificates to you about UKIP, racism and xenophobia.

UKIP voters, of course, have the opportunity to support their party by giving them their vote at the European election on the same day.  Like them or loathe them, the names on the (white) Euro ballot paper are at least those of genuine UKIP candidates. 

But it is difficult to see how anybody with any integrity or respect for the democratic process can vote for either Labour or UKIP in Isleworth, or in UKIP’s case anywhere in the borough.  What a big price they are doomed to pay for three extra names on the published list of candidates.

Watch this Space

Well it's been over two months, but there is a good reason for that. The ICG will be contesting seven seats - three each in Syon and Isleworth and one in Brentford - at the local elections on May 22nd and the logistical work involved in making all that happen is horrendous for a small group such as ours without the backing of a sleek national organisation that candidates representing the big parties can depend upon.

Caroline Andrews, Shirley Fisher and Ian Speed standing in Syon. Phil Andrews, Patricia Doran and Paul Fisher are our candidates in Isleworth. And our lone candidate in Brentford ward, where we are standing for the first time, is Dave Cox (pictured), formerly the Chair of the now-defunct Hounslow Federation of Tenants' and Residents' Associations (HFTRA), which provided a voice for 24,000 tenants and leaseholders in local authority dwellings throughout the borough before being killed off in a council-sponsored coup.

For the next few weeks this blog will be used to update its readers on the progress of the campaign, and to focus on some of the issues deriving from it. To begin this process we will have a real blockbuster going up later, either this evening or tomorrow. So as they say, watch this space.

Some Reflections on a Probably Impending Battle

It's February 2014, and all the serious players in our little part of the world would appear already to be well into our respective election campaigns. For the benefit of that 99% of the population who aren't as obsessed, or obsessive, about these things as we all are, this year's local elections will take place on Thursday 22nd May - three weeks later than originally planned so as to enable them to run alongside the five-yearly elections to the European Parliament.

We in the ICG just seem to have drifted into election mode. Our position for the best part of this outgoing council term has been that we would have preferred to have taken on the role of "critical friend" to the current ward councillors and to the administration they serve in our community. Whether due to some personal intolerance on their part of all things community-led or whether, as is more likely, the rigid party system of which they are a part leaves no option for co-operation outside of that system, that co-operation has not been allowed to happen. And so, as they say, we are where we are.

There are many imponderables which make the outcome of any ICG election campaign difficult to predict. We have had four years out of office – some of the friends we made in the community as elected members will have moved away or passed away. One or two more feeble-minded souls, dazzled either by the promise or the reality of special favour, have notably jumped ship. Labour, at least, give an impression of being better organised in the wards that they were in the mid-noughties – better able to drag out their existing voter base, that is, as opposed to being more persuasive or more attractive as an electoral option.

We have a Conservative-led government, as ruthlessly austere and lacking in compassion as any pure-bred Tory regime before it. This in turn creates an instinctive counter-reaction from Labour, inspiring it to strike definable, if unconvincing, socialistic poses.

The local Tories themselves, the sole ambition of whom would appear to be to maintain two-party hegemony even if it means opposition but lacking the courage to admit that to their own members and voters, may nonetheless have been buoyed by the fact that, under the exceptional conditions caused by the event of a general election occurring on the same day as the locals in 2010, they managed an unusually respectable third place.

Then there is the UKIP factor, and how voters’ inclination to cast a protest vote at the Euro elections might impact on their choice in the local poll.

Even if community candidates were to be elected, it is clear that Labour would continue to wield an overall majority on the London Borough of Hounslow post-May 22nd. The inevitable anti-government protest coupled with the shambles that is the local Conservative opposition renders that a racing certainty.

In the light of all these considerations it would be foolhardy indeed for the ICG to do expect to do anything beyond positioning itself for the following local elections – in 2018. Then the fact that the council elections will be stand-alone and not coincide with any other contest, coupled with the likelihood of a Labour or Labour-led government and the inevitable mid-term protest against it, will set up any organised community-based alternative rather nicely. A rejuvenated Conservative (and possibly Liberal Democrat) opposition and a demoralised and tired local Labour Party could just conceivably see a return to No Overall Control, with the community this time (I would hope) holding the balance of power from without rather than being tied to a coalition in which we can have no trust. In a scenario such as this we could have lots and lots of fun.

On the doorstep it is clear that we remain strong and well-supported. Those who have admitted to not voting in 2010 in anticipation of an easy victory are resolved not to make the same mistake twice. We are older, and wiser, and fortified with new blood. We are ready for the fray, and philosophical about the fact that events have denied us the option of taking a different route towards a achieving our goal of an organised and empowered local community.

Assuming we stand for election in May, my sense is that we will give a good account of ourselves, and the knowledge that our strategy revolves around a “five year plan” rather than being dependent upon victory at the first time of asking takes the pressure off just nicely.

Bringing Out Faith in Humankind

In the short month that has passed since I posted up the article Why Does Labour Want the ICG to Contest the 2014 Local Elections? the organisation has probably received more attention and enquiries than it had done for the previous twelve months.

Reporters have asked to meet us with press photographers in tow, new residents' groups and old ones have been linking up with us, borough-wide bodies representing various interest groups have been keen to establish common ground, and other independents and small parties have looked to discuss strategic alliances or even just to ask for advice.

Of course we are only too aware that, should we decide to run for office again in 2014, no number of alliances or private discussions will benefit us if we don't do the hard but really vital work on the doorsteps. But the volume of telephone calls and e-mails certainly puts paid to any ideas anyone may have had that the ICG is a spent force that can safely be discounted at the ballot box.

Why Does Labour Want the ICG to Contest the 2014 Local Elections?

It might seem an odd proposition on the surface of it. After all, in every local election since 1998 in Isleworth, and since 2002 in Syon, the Independent Community Group (ICG) has been Labour’s closest competitor, either winning the seats or running Labour a close second. Both wards being safely Labour in terms of the conventional Labour-Tory dichotomy, the logic of the situation might suggest that we are an opponent they could do without.

But logic in politics can be more convoluted than it is in other areas of life and sometimes, like in the Guinness advert, things aren’t always as they seem.

I have never considered myself to be naïve, but in respect of the 2010 local elections I made two simplistic assumptions – one just prior to the contest and one immediately after – the clumsiness of which taught me that my talents for reading and interpreting political events are nowhere close to being as flawless as I had hitherto liked to believe.

The first, which I have already documented elsewhere, was my costly miscalculation that the Conservatives, having been our partners in what to begin with at least had been an easy coalition, would see the benefit in not stepping on our toes in our two target wards (which from their own perspective were unwinnable). Whilst we all naturally understood their preference for an all-out Conservative administration we figured they would view the continuation of the coalition as a next-best option should they fail to achieve that.

What actually happened was that the Conservatives were so convinced they were on the cusp of an historic all-out victory that they consciously sought to oust the community councillors in Isleworth and Syon and to replace them with Labour ones, figuring that by so doing they would be creating for themselves a softer opposition for the four years of overall Conservative control that were to follow. This didn’t necessitate any kind of formal alliance with Labour. The coincidence of a natural convergence of interests was quite enough to do the trick.

The second miscalculation came in the immediate aftermath of our election defeat. Mindful of the fact that the ICG had commanded the votes of some 4000 people over three wards even in defeat, and aware that a new wave of Labour councillors in Isleworth would be looking to make their own mark, in their own style, on the communities they had been entrusted to serve, I simply assumed that they would be keen to engage with those thousands of people who had supported and voted for us, and that an opportunity had arisen, albeit in circumstances that we would have preferred not to have existed, for some kind of reappraisal of the relationship between Labour and the local community movement.

This assumption was made especially in consideration of the fact that our defeat and their victory made it reasonable for Labour to expect that they would be “in charge” as it were. Exhausted and drained after four years of very hard work, punching above our weight as the minority group in a coalition administration, and still if I am honest reeling from the demoralising effects of the Conservative betrayal, I do not believe the ICG’s price would have been a high one. Speaking strictly for myself, at that time I would have settled for more or less any arrangement that would have allowed me to walk away from the whole thing with my honour intact.

So I’ll admit it shocked me a tad to discover that Labour had other ideas. “Why should they (the new councillors) want to work with you?” they asked us on a local online forum, and to emphasise the point they hand-delivered a limited number of uniquely unpleasant leaflets to local residents containing little other than personal attacks on myself and other ICG personnel.

In the meantime we came under attack from a former Labour councillor who had clearly assumed, for reasons which were not explained, that the ICG would simply disappear following our defeat, and who seemed to take offence from the fact that members of a community group should continue to attend meetings and events in the community!

This, it would appear, was to be the basis of Labour’s continued problem with the situation as it had turned out, and the reason why our assumption – my assumption – that the party would want to reach an accommodation with our supporters turned out to be unsound. To put it quite simply and bluntly, they didn’t want any organised community activity on “their” patch. Fortified, no doubt, by tales of how things were in the good old days, they wanted complete control of our community life and expected it as the spoils of their victory. Such an outcome, of course, would have required the ICG to have vanished completely from the face of the Earth.

This then explains the spluttering anger of the former councillor as it eventually dawned on her that, election victory notwithstanding, things would never be permitted to revert to how they had been in her day, with every single “community” initiative having to be either dominated, or smothered, by members of her party. The new councillors, by contrast, were going to have to operate within a liberated environment.

It would seem to me that such is Labour’s determination to wield absolute power over our community that it is prepared to take the risk of losing the seats it gained in 2010 rather than continue to suffer the indignity of having to treat with civic leaders and free residents’ groups on anything approaching equal terms. The assumption being made now, just as it was in 2010, is that if the ICG fights the next election and loses we will all just mysteriously go away.

I have not mentioned outside influences, as I have in other articles, and there is a reason for this. Although in spite of Labour’s smirking protestations they certainly do exist, they could surely not be decisive in determining Labour’s local strategy without a good deal of willingness on the part of the local party.

I believe that if the ICG contests the local elections next year it will have a very good chance of recapturing the seats it lost. But if it doesn’t, let me be clear – we will be in the exact same situation that we are today. The ICG is here to stay, and those who care for the dignity and the well-being of our community will never roll over and die.