The outcome of the election in Hastings reflects the trend across the country. A complete collapse in the labour and Conservative vote and a swing to the Greens and Reform.
Andrea Cowhig in Hollington and Vicky Wilson, in Ore, ran fantastic independent campaigns and all of us who canvassed for them were well aware of how these national trends were influencing people’s votes.
Andrea got 197 votes in Hollington, coming third behind Reform and Labour and ahead of the Green party and the Conservatives. Vicky got 70 votes in Ore, largely by inspiring people to vote who had never voted before, in a ward where there was an overwhelming swing to the Green party by people who wanted to keep out Reform.
Every vote they won was a vote for a united community response to the problems we are all facing and a vote of confidence in the work they have already been doing in their tenants association HASHTA, supporting tenants to fight back against unacceptable conditions like damp and mould and disrepair.
Andrea has already got regular community meetings set up to follow through on her promises in the election campaign, and Vicky is working on setting up more HASHTA meetings in her area.
In Hastings the Green party now have a big majority on the council, including new left-wing councillors who joined the Greens in the Zack Polanski ‘surge’, and one independent councillor held his seat. Reform, who got sizeable votes everywhere, won the other 6 council seats. The East Sussex County Council which has been run by the Tories forever now has Reform as the biggest party and only has 3 Tory councillors. The Greens won 6 out of the 8 county seats in Hastings.
Expectations will be high on all sides of this divide about what the new councillors will deliver.
Elsewhere across the country there were significant wins for Community Independents, many of them backed by Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party. In Tower Hamlets, Mayor Lutfur Rahman of Aspire was re-elected with 35,679 votes — nearly twice his nearest rival.
Lutfur and Aspire’s record of delivering to voters include replacing the Winter Fuel Payment and Education Maintenance Allowance taken away by the Westminster parties, ensuring free school meals for all, and providing universal free homecare for the elderly and disabled. There were more successes, too. In Newham, where the Newham Independents Party took away Labour’s majority, winning a record 24 seats and putting the council into no overall control as residents turned on Labour over its failures on child poverty, housing and Gaza.
In Wes Streeting’s own back yard, a grassroots campaign by the Redbridge Independents threatened Labour’s control, taking nine seats on the council. Your Party’s CEC member Noor Jahan Begum was among the winners.
There were more wins for Your Party-backed candidates around the country, including in Birmingham and Oldham — and in Sefton, the Lydiate and Maghull Independents contested 7 seats and won 6 of them!
However politics doesn’t just take place in council chambers and all of us will still have to contend with the looming crisis in the real world as price rises that have been baked in by the war on Iran still hit people directly in the coming months.
How should we prepare and how do we organise to make sure working class people do not pay for the crisis we didn’t create?
Because of climate change and the increased cost of gas and electricity caused by the war on Iran, we need to be prepared for the inevitable reaction from the Right – it is crucial that we know people and we are known. to them. So building community networks is important.
We need to:
- keep a close eye on Your Party – there may soon be a launch of an official branch locally.
- Continue monthly HPP meetings as a space for debate and discussion.
- Look at history of the Black Panthers, especially at how they combined radical political work with providing for and with their communities.
- Organise further discussion on the impact of AI on jobs and freedom, and it’s possible uses.
- Look at the issue of Identity Cards, which most people of all political views do not seem to support.
- We need to look at education and why there is such a rise in home schooling.
- Continue with monthly local meetings in Hollington and Ore open to local residents to listen and siscuss local concerns.
- And many more issues, campaigns…