Socialist Party/CWI Local Election Results in England
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politics / elections |
news report 
Friday May 05, 2006 23:54
by SP Member - Socialist Party/CWI
The Scoialist Party of England and Wales stood 19 candidates in the local elections in England on May 4th. The results are as follows:
The Socialist Party won an extra seat (Rob Windsor) in Coventry (now 3) with 40% vote in St. Michaels ward. Over the rest of Coventry the SP polled between 8% -16%. SP third largest party on Coventry Council ahead of Libs.
Outgoing SP Councillor Paul Sutton lost his seat in Stoke, where the BNP took the seat in a three way fight between BNP, Labour and SP.
SP retained its two seats in Lewisham (Ian Page and Chris Flood) and narrowly missed a third by a handful of votes.
SP member Dr. June Grunsell romped home in Huddersfield with 35% against 20% for both Libs and Lab. The SP stood as part of the Save Huddersfield NHS Campaign.
In other areas the SP generally polled between 6%- 10%.
Given the difficulties presented by the first past the post system in the UK, with the exception of Stoke, all in all a very satisfactory result for a small party like the Socialist Party.
Comments (5 of 5)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5one 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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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