00:00 Glyn Robbins: Thanks [?], thanks for inviting me. And also, while I'm on the subject of thanks, thanks to everyone — several of whom I can see in the room today — who actively supported our campaign in Bethnal Green and Bow. I think we did run a very good campaign, a campaign we can genuinely be proud of. I'm less sure to what extent we can be pleased with the outcome, but perhaps we can discuss that. The way I've framed this initially is really in terms of the three objectives that I set
00:30 for myself, and hoped that others would buy into, at the outset of the campaign. The first of which was to try to take a step in that elusive achievement of uniting the left — or at least trying to take some steps towards that process in one place, a united left in one constituency, if you like. And I think we can tick that box, really. I was very pleased that during the course of the campaign we had active involvement from — I can't list them
01:03 off the top of my head — but half a dozen different left organisations, including you, and also from people who weren't involved in left organisations. I think that's the real achievement, and I'm very, very pleased about that aspect. That unity has been potentially somewhat strained by a meeting that we had last night around the question of the mayoral election on the 11th of June, and we can talk a bit more about that. But overall there was a really good spirit, and a lot of what I regard as
01:35 very damaging infighting and sectarianism was sort of parked for the period of the election campaign, and that was great. So we did that. The second objective I had was to try and set out, again on a local level, the groundwork for a more progressive type of left-wing politics — again without any delusions of grandeur, but hoping that our campaign and the forces around it
02:07 would offer people in Bethnal Green and Bow a genuine alternative, something that wasn't just a kind of Labour Party lite, or that the alternative [?] wasn't perceived as just a sort of lunatic fringe irrelevance. And again I think we did that, really. We pumped out a load of information — as some of the people in the room will testify, in terms of their calloused feet and worn shoe leather.
02:38 We delivered 30,000 of what we called a "takeaway", which was, I suppose, our main appeal offer, to use that marketing language, to local people. And we covered a range of issues: housing being first and foremost, because it happens to be the thing that I'm most associated with and know most about, but also Palestine, education, racism — the issues that I think really matter
03:09 and which I also think the other parties fail to address. So to that extent, again, I think we can certainly have a partial tick in that box. So, two out of three ain't bad, as the mighty Meat Loaf once said. The third objective, however, was to try and challenge New Labour, and I don't really think we did that. I think the vote clearly indicates that, for a variety of reasons, two of which I'll touch on, we didn't punch
03:40 through — albeit that the vote that we got was creditable, you could say, by TUSC, TUSC-Left Unity, or Left Unity, whichever permutation, compared to other results in other places. It wasn't bad. But realistically, alongside even the other parties standing in Bethnal Green and Bow, we really didn't get to where I think we needed to be in order to feel
04:11 fully satisfied. And the two reasons I'd identify for that: one is — I've already alluded to it — obviously our expectations were raised, and perhaps unrealistically, but I don't think they were entirely. I think there was good reason, if you were at the Waterlily, which was this huge rally that happened on the 30th of April, the week before the election, which had been called to challenge, and I suppose object to, the election court decision. And if
04:43 you'd heard somebody unscripted who spoke from the platform — just an ordinary person, in inverted commas — who both supported Lutfur Rahman and then added in his contribution "and I will be voting for Glyn Robbins on the 7th of May", and then a room of well over a thousand people cheering — I think there was every reason to think that we would do better than we actually did. And I think there's various reasons for that. I think some of them are to do with
05:14 the nature of Tower Hamlets First, which is the loose coalition around Lutfur. But I think what we also witnessed, really, was a default back to the Labour Party, for a variety of reasons, but I think not unrelated to the election court itself, which really was sending a very clear message to the people of Tower Hamlets: behave yourself, you need to go back to a safe political home, no more of
05:47 this voting for anti-establishment parties or people who have challenged [the established parties?]. You need to come into line. And obviously you'd have to put that alongside the natural inclination for people to vote Labour in the face of the possibility of a Tory government. I guess we didn't manage to fully explain that actually voting for me and getting a Tory government were unrelated. That was quite a difficult argument to make. In fact the other
06:19 argument that was difficult to make — and I guess this probably, if I was to say one reason why I think we didn't do as well as we might otherwise have done given the strength of the campaign overall, and I'm sure this is going to be a bit more of the sort of marketing speak — but really was to do with brand. Left Unity, TUSC: which, with all due respect to all people concerned, those are two names that no one had ever heard of, I think. And again, I'd say this with all due
06:51 modesty: I think my own name is better known than either of those two organisations. TUSC — again I think we should discuss it, but I personally found it an extremely difficult idea, concept, badge to explain to people. When you're trying to win a political argument in two minutes you haven't got time to go into what TUSC means. So that was a problem. And other
07:24 people in the meeting last night were raising some quite interesting questions around TUSC and its identity. Someone said — I hadn't really thought of it this way — but, you know, we're constantly labouring "austerity": the word does not connect with how a lot of people perceive what's going on at the moment. It's a kind of coded language that we use, and I think there's something to be said for that, actually. So how we presented those arguments I think was problematic in relation to
07:55 TUSC. I feel much more — if I had to choose only one of those two labels it would undoubtedly be Left Unity. I think that was a name that, when you said it, had a certain resonance. It's clear enough. We within this room know that there are sort of complexities and issues beneath that label, but I think for a lot of people the idea of the left
08:26 and the idea of unity have an immediate resonance. Unfortunately Left Unity has not been firmly enough established since its creation to have been able to push us onto that higher level electorally. So I don't propose to speak for that much longer — we can discuss the nuances — but those are my main conclusions. I think subsequently some
08:57 interesting things have developed around the Rabina Khan campaign, which was sort of there in nascent form during our campaign. There was one particular meeting — I'm not sure anyone else here was at it — which was the week after the Waterlily meeting, when we got not a huge attendance, there were about 30 people there, but there was a layer of younger Bangladeshi activists, not all Muslim but mostly, who were raising some quite interesting criticisms of Tower Hamlets First
09:28 and saying things like: well, how do we get involved in this thing? They've decided Rabina Khan's the choice for me — but did we get a say in that? How was that decided? And sort of raising quite interesting questions about, I suppose, the possibility for a political engagement that may have something to do with Tower Hamlets First, but certainly is resistant to this — I suppose I'd characterise it as this very much top-down and personality-driven
10:01 model of politics that Tower Hamlets First and others appear to be wedded to. So that's — unless there's any immediate questions, I don't need to say any more for now.
---