Socialist Resistance

An archive of socialistresistance.org, 2002–2022

Tottenham: our campaign builds a new active base

by Doug Thorpe  |  Socialist Resistance no25  |  page 6

This is scanned newsprint, not web text. The original PDFs carried no text layer at all, so every word here was read off the page by OCR. Expect dropped opening letters, run-together words and wrong characters. There was no contents page to cut the paper up by, so the articles were found from the size of their headlines: a headline may carry its kicker, and where an article ran beside a boxed panel a few lines of the neighbour can appear. The scanned issue is the authority; this text is here so the words can be found at all.

In Tottenham, RESPECT candidate Janet Alder polled 2014 votes (6.4%). This consolidates the vote RESPECT received in Tottenham in the GLA elections in 2004 and compares well with RESPECT's votes in other areas outside of East London and Birmingham.

The vote, while important, underestimates the impact

had in the Tottenham election.

The RESPECT campaign was by far the most visible in the borough with activists outnumbering the Labour party on the streets, whether at stalls, leafleting tube stations or canvassing door to door. The campaign drew in over a hundred people to help in some way or other.

Strong support was shown by the Turkish, Kurdish and Muslim communities with many shops displaying RESPECT posters, and new contacts were made with the Somali community.

But, while, Janet Alder personally received a warm reception in the AfroCaribbean community, we were less successful in drawing young black people into active support.

The Labour candidate, David Lammy, played on his local links with the black community and this was difficult to break down, particularly with older members of that community.

However, the Labour party was seriously rattled by RESPECT's campaign and our ability to put more supporters on the streets. A particularly pathetic example of this was David Lammy personally going around on election day with his agent trying to intimidate our representatives at polling stations by photographing them, clearly miffed by the fact that RESPECT could cover every polling station in the borough and Labour couldn't match this.

We did not ever expect to win in a constituency where the Labour candidate held a maJority of nearly 17,000 from 2001. That majority was cut by 4,000 votes this time, but the Liberal Democrats benefited most -largely on the back of the national media portrayal of them as the main anti-war party.

RESPECT's longer term aim was to build its active base in Tottenham and this has been successful, with a ward structure established and hundreds of contact

Unfortunately of those contacting us to offer support turned out not to be registered to vote, and this is something we will have to pay attention to before the Council elections next year, when there is a more realistic prospect of getting

candidates elected.

Overall, RESPECT supporters in Tottenham have been buoyed up by the campaign and, even as the campaign shop was being dismantled, bleary-eyed but enthusiastic discussions were beginning on campaigning activities for the months.