|
|
Post by yellowperil on Jun 16, 2018 10:42:45 GMT
The final aspect of being a councillor I wanted to explore- I originally called that aspect "casework" but on thought I would rename that as the ward councillor role. A lot of what one did as the ward member could broadly be described as casework, but maybe its a bit wider than that.It's also true that from time to time I took up casework from other people's wards, for various reasons, though if I did so I always tried to involve the relevant ward member first.
For those of you used to the norm being multi-member wards, one of the differences in the Ashford system predominantly made up of small single-member wards, the role of the ward member was particularly central to being a councillor and made it a bit more like being a mini-MP. If there was something happening in your ward, everyone would expect to turn to you, and you alone ,as the ward member.
Another feature of the Ashford way of doing things was the ward visit. At least annually, sometimes more often , a senior officer ( and for most of the time I was there that meant the Chief Executive or one of the top 3 departmental heads) would come to visit the ward on a programme arranged by the ward member to look at problems in the ward or to meet up with key people, usually ones with a beef about the council which they had taken up with the ward member and which the member was grateful to be able to visibly pass over to senior management. Or in wards like mine with a couple of parish councils it might well include the parish council chairs. All of this was additional to ward surgeries ( which in my case were usually tacked on to parish council meetings) and to meet-the- councillors surgeries usually held in a central Ashford location with a cross-party group of councillors and officers - that last one specifically to deal with general issues not ward-specific ones. All of these programmes were part of the democratisation programme introduced under our administration, and largely continued thereafter. Every time I drive through the middle of Smarden, and I continue to do so at least twice a week, I think about the notorious narrow dog -leg at the end of the street and bringing the chief executive out, who brought with him a road engineer, on one of my ward visits to think about solutions to the problem. We got short term solutions like extra bollards, and longer term solutions like a lorry ban and a marked alternative lorry route. Now I use this one example because there was of course an extra dimension to this - roads were essentially a county matter rather than a borough one. But we need Ashford's chief executive to be able to make high level contacts with KCC to jointly come up with a solution. One of the joys of the ward visit system is that it got to grips with a problem which often was across a number of bodies - flooding issues was often another such.
For wards like mine contacts with the parish councils was a vital part of the work and I have already discussed in another part of this thread how this worked for me, or didn't in some cases. Eileen was in a slightly different position as a member of one of her parish councils, and that was quite common among the rural members, while of course half the ward members had no parish councils to deal with.
Then there was the actual casework- things where constituents directly approached me, by letter , phone or e-mail or through surgeries or direct contact- I picked up nearly half of my casework while out delivering focuses or on door to door visits, not necessarily involving canvassing as such. This of course cold be a wide range of issues -sorting out neighbour disputes featured widely. Frequently involving cypress hedges and the like. Requiring all the diplomatic skills in a ward member so obviously lacking in our own foreign office, and when it came off one could feel a little more deserving of the Nobel peace prize than certain recipients- if we are talking Henry Kissinger that wasn't difficult to say. But the issues that more clearly came within the remit of the ward member, and which accounted for a lot of the cases, were about housing and planning. With housing, mostly this was people about to become homeless or actually so, people needing to move for a variety of reasons and in rural wards like mine a lot of local needs cases- folk finding homes of a sort in the centre of Ashford but desperate to get back to their home village where their roots were. A lot of this in the end required a policy change like building more local needs housing, which we were doing, but short term solutions could sometimes be found if we were prepared to sit down with housing officers and rack our brains to find an acceptable solution. Ward members putting a bit of pressure on could often achieve solutions that weren't apparent when individuals pleaded on their own behalf. When we found answers it could be extremely satisfying for all concerned, but I think I was always conscious of the problems of individuals who did not think to go to their ward member, or whose ward member was shall we say less persistent. And not all cases ended happily even when we came up with an answer. One case still haunts me, and for obvious reasons I'll be a little vague about the details, but one young lady in my ward was desperate for a move from a council house to a local needs property to make it easier to be re-united with her boy friend, and after calling in a few favours I was able to achieve that, to her great joy - only for her to be stabbed to death in her new home a few weeks later. By said boy friend.
Planning was always tricky especially for a member of the committee and it was always important to separate out ones role as ward member from that of committee member. Of course as a ward member one always was asked in committee for one's own opinion and to precis the views of one's constituents as one saw them, so always went to see applicants who were constituents and their near neighbours, and always advised them of their rights to address the committee where that was appropriate, so again this often meant advising people on both sides of the argument and keeping it dispassionate. And as a member of the committee I was often asked what to say . My advice was to come to the committee and put their point as simply as they could, explain their issues from their point of view, and not to worry overmuch about planning law as the last thing to do was to try and tell the committee what they should do as though they were an expert in planning law- which by the way is where the big developers often went wrong when they sent in their professional planning advisors who then talked down to the committee members as though they were idiots. (Okay, some of the committee members were idiots, but it didn't help their case to imply it to their face.) I will give one example in fairly general terms. One of my constituents was a professional painter and decorator, living in a small cottage with a growing family, needed a modest extension which was planned sympathetically and did not look at all out of place but was down for refusal on the grounds that any expansion on a property on the edge of the conservation area was against policy. He came and made his case that without a few small concessions on policy like this he would not be able to afford to live in his home village , which would lose all people like him- small tradespeople which the village community needed. He won his case and is still there in the village and nobody from outside would know the cottage had gained an extra room. I appreciate it is right that such cases are looked at hard and only granted very exceptionally, but that's why you have a lay committee of councillors rather than professional planners obsessed by bureaucratic rules.
These last few posts have been my attempt to answer that question about what is the point of councillors. In essence I think my answer is that the system may be imperfect but better than any of the alternatives. Just what one says about democracy , actually.
|
|
|
|
Post by yellowperil on Jun 17, 2018 8:02:07 GMT
Now, back to elections, which is what this thread is supposed to be all about. The last few posts have been off topic in that sense, but have been exploring what the end product of all that electoral activity is supposed to be- enjoying the fruits of success.! Now back to the nitty-gritty of the electoral process for the last time, in the double election of May 2005- general election and county council election together. As you might have already gathered, so not much of a spoiler, it was not to end in success. After all, the fact that I was originally planning to end this thread in 2003 and only afterwards remembered that I went back to the election treadmill in 2005 is a bit of a clue... In some ways, it was easier in 2004-5 because my expectations had been lowered. A lot. I was however prepared for one more go, for a number of reasons. First, we had a new charismatic PCC who was here for the long run and anxious to bring everybody back into the fold.Second, free from the need to be semi-detached because of my independent status on the council, it was easier to become once more fully engaged with my Lib Dem colleagues but without needing to try and run everything. Third, I had been assured (from the horse's mouth) that Richard King was going to stand down as County Councillor for Ashford Rural West( the new,much reduced division) and it was much more tempting if I didn't have to stand against someone who was well established, very popular, and a personal friend. So I was persuaded that this was the time to give it one last go. When I made that decision I was not to know that the bastard would change his mind. Never trust a politician , I say.  |
|
|
|
Post by yellowperil on Jun 17, 2018 8:42:35 GMT
Kent County Council Elections 2005: Ashford Rural West
The new Rural West division was more manageable in size than its predecessor but had lost a lot of good territory for me-Kingsnorth village and especially Shadoxhurst village had been very good for me, the Park Farm estate less so but I had worked the patch quite hard and had built up a team of helpers who could have delivered a respectable minority vote for me in the two borough wards it now comprised. We also added High Halden village which had always been a Tory stronghold but was one patch I now prepared to work hard with somewhat surprising results - again probably not a majority but a strong second certainly. The other addition was Boughton Aluph, now it seemed reliably enough Lib Dem but with two caveats- a lot of the Lib Dem vote was a personal vote for Rita which probably reverted to Tory for general elections and probably county too, so might not transfer to me without a lot of campaigning. It was also changing its demographic with a rapid expansion of new estates which were like new estates anywhere- low political interest with a default tendency towards the Tories. Nor were the original Lib Dem wards exactly safe for the county either, especially once it became clear that Richard King, actually living in Egerton, in what had been my ward, and vice-chair of the parish council there as well as sitting county councillor, was committed to standing again contrary to previous statements. ( Astonishingly my estimates from the box counts subsequently seemed to show I just carried Egerton from Richard, which if true was remarkable).
The other new factor was to be an unexpectedly vigorous campaign from Labour, who astonishingly showed signs of fighting Rural West as though they thought they could win it, instead of their usual token effort which would have been to stand a more or less paper candidate. Of course, it was always a bit different when the county election ran alongside the general. But two other factors had changed- first the new demographic with a lot more compact suburban new estates in Boughton and GreatChart and a lot less of the deeply rural electorate gave them some hope. The other factor was the Labour candidate and her campaign manager -Mrs Watts, with her husband Mark the -at that point- ex-MEP, providing highly professional back up. In the event Labour was to make big inroads into the vote within the new Great Chart estates where the Watts now lived, but minimal impact elsewhere. The other candidature also making some impact was Hilary Jones, yet another Egertonian and another old friend, who was standing for the Greens, much to our dismay, and this was an election on which the Greens were definitely on the up everywhere. Well,not everywhere, really, but quite widely.
R King (Con) 4913 (55.3%)
G English (LD) 1964 (22.1%)
J Watts (Lab) 1457 (16.4%)
H Jones (Green)558 (6.3%)
So that was it, a very disappointing end to my career as an election candidate, and I was never to be tempted to try again. It was,or I suppose it should have been, some consolation that four of the six other Lib Dem candidates in Ashford did better than me, but somehow it wasn't! I will look at those other six campaigns, and the concurrent general election, before I finally sign off from this thread.
|
|
|
|
Post by yellowperil on Jun 17, 2018 11:49:15 GMT
Kent County Council elections 2005- Ashford Central
Central, like North before it, was always keenly contested, but like North before, it usually ended up with a Tory victory, and this was no different The Tories fielded Elizabeth Tweed, Mike Angell shifting to Rural South on what some might have regarded as a chicken run, and Labour had Mick Hubert who might have been seen as the fox in that case. Lib Dems fielded Bob Cowley, always industrious and a credible candidate but not really expected to challenge in that company, and there was some interest from both the Greens and the Ashford Independents
E Tweed (Con) 2835 (42.6%)
M Hubert (Lab) 2242 (31.5%)
R Cowley (LD) 1156 (17.4%)
L Sansom (Green) 265 (4.0%)
A Serretiello(AI) 164 (2.5%)
So the Tories reasonably comfortably home there, although the closest of the five seats the Tories were to win, and more or less to expectation, though I'm sure Mick would have expected to run closer than he actually did.
|
|
|
|
Post by yellowperil on Jun 17, 2018 14:00:43 GMT
Kent County Council elections 2005- Ashford East
The Ashford East division will be fought more vigorously than usual simply because it was tied up with a general election and so Tory and Labour voters who normally just wouldn't have bothered to vote would be expected to turn out anyway, so that made for a greater challenge for George Koowaree- we were sufficiently worried for all of us to pitch in and spend some time helping George, even in the midst of our own keenly fought elections, so even county candidates from other divisions like Bob Cowley, Bob Packham, StuartDove and myself would all have done a session or two in Ashford East- whatever else happened we had to hold Ashford East. The Tory Bernard Heyes was putting up a really strong challenge, and Labour were also unusually active - they maybe could afford to be as they were only contesting 4 of the 7 divisions, an unusual strategy in a general election year, but they were really concentrating their fire. And, once again , both Greens and AI put up candidates and nobody could be quite sure how many votes they would take away from the three mainstream candidates.
SG Koowaree (LD) 2553 (36.8%)
B Heyes (Con) 2182 (31.5%)
I Groves (Lab) 1704 (24.6%)
S Dawe (Green) 257 (3.7%)
D Nelson (AI) 235 (2.5%)
So once again after some real concerns, the division went the way it always went. I still don't know why the county divisions always managed to behave so predictably in terms of who actually got elected, regardless of all the cross-currents that seemed to be happening on the way!
|
|
|
|
Post by yellowperil on Jun 17, 2018 14:22:03 GMT
Kent County Council elections 2005 -Ashford Rural East
A slightly different pattern of in Rural East voting as this is the first of three divisions where Labour failed to stand a candidate, which from the look of it was probably a big boost to the Lib Dems, and maybe to the Greens. Charles Findlay was standing for the Conservative cause once again while Stuart Dove was now far enough into his retirement to be prepared to stand in his home division, where he proved an effective and popular candidate. As well as the Greens getting their expected substantial vote in Wye, the Ashford Independents would be prominent with Jack Woodford as their candidate also chasing that same vote.
C Findlay (Con) 4132 (52.3%)
S Dove (LD) 2212 (28.0%)
S Harvey (Green) 964 (12.1%)
J Woodford (AI) 604 (7.6%)
Well Stuart certainly did better than me in terms of number of votes, majority conceded and percentage vote. I like to think that was all down to his not facing a Labour opponent, but maybe not...
|
|
|
|
Post by yellowperil on Jun 17, 2018 16:08:31 GMT
Kent County Council elections 2005-Ashford Rural South.
This was an interesting one for me because it included some of the bits of the old Rural West I had lost, and Emily Neighbour , who could be regarded as the next generation of potential Lib Dem candidates, was taking on Mike Angell, a well established County Councillor but moving from another division, and Peter Davison, the leader of Ashford Independents and a man of great ambition. And that was it- no Labour, no Green, so the choice for anyone from the centre and leftwards would be between Emily and basically two Tories who had fallen out with each other. And of course a general election day, so people turning up to vote for their Labour GE candidate could make that choice or spoil their ballot paper, Okay, the whole area was blue enough for the Tory to be able to come through unscathed but it was chance in a lifetime for Emily.
M Angell (Con) 3384 (47.5%)
E Neighbour (LD) 1875 (26.3%)
P Davison (AI) 1868 (26.2%)
The Tory comfortably home, but a creditable performance from the relatively inexperienced Emily, actually pushing Peter Davison into third place, even if only just. Emily had a better vote share than me, and conceded a much smaller lead to the Tories, although her total number of votes was slightly lower. I think of all the results in this set, this was the one which gave me the most satisfaction,because it seemed to offer most hope for the future, although it was not to be, partly because Emily moved house not long after, not out of the Borough but out of this division and so losing one of her priceless assets, being everybody's local neighbour.
|
|
|
|
Post by yellowperil on Jun 17, 2018 18:42:32 GMT
Kent County Council elections 2005-Ashford South
The South Division was back as safe Labour, it seemed, and maybe the Labour strategy of concentrating only 4 of the 7 divisions was designed to make absolutely sure. Labour had Derek Smythe defending this Labour seat, and maybe his job was made easier by having all 4 of the other parties to split the opposition. Jim Wedgbury was providing the Conservative challenge. but Bob Packham for the Lib Dems had good support especially in Victoria, and as elsewhere where they stood the AI and Green candidates were a bit of an unknown quantity
D Smyth (Lab) 2476 (41.5%)
J Wedgbury (Con) 1636 (27.4%)
R Packham (LD) 1131 (19.0%)
M Elliff (AI) 430 (7.2%)
H Dawe (Green) 291 (4.9%)
Labour was in fact comfortable, so could they have afforded to put up candidates in all 7 divisions or were they right to concentrate?
|
|
|
|
Post by yellowperil on Jun 18, 2018 7:09:12 GMT
Kent County Council elections 2005 -Tenterden
The last division to be considered here is Tenterden, and surprisingly that was left to a straight fight between Conservative and Lib Dem-no Ashford independent was to be expected but no Green and no Labour less so, especially with a General Election going on. . It was of course always going to be a safe Tory hold, but a chance for Barry Wright to mop up the anti-Tory vote.
P Hill (Con) 4927 (63.9%)
B Wright (LD) 2780 (36.1%)
So in percentage terms, Barry's result was the second best Lib Dem result, only fractionally behind George Koowaree's, and in actual numbers of votes, it was the best. Of course , this was principally down to the lack of alternatives, but you still have to get people to make their marks on the ballot paper. It does mean that a lot of potential Labour voters offered the choice of voting for Barry or leaving the ballot paper blank, chose the former, and that is hardly surprising as Barry was a high profile candidate, he was well liked across the political divides, and whatever happened he still wasn't going to get in!
It was this sort of thing that distorts the overall votes for each party across the Borough, which might otherwise be more meaningful when compared with the General Election vote. For what it's worth, here are the totals:
Conservative 24,009 46.0% from all 7 divisions
Lib Dem 13,671 26.2% from all 7 divisions
Labour 8,879 17.0% from 4 divisions only
Ashford Ind. 3,301 6.3% from 4 divisions only
Green 2,335 4.5% from 4 divisions only
What difference will it make when we look at the simultaneous general election , bearing in mind not only are Labour now contesting everywhere and there will be no Ashford Independent, but there will be UKIP?
|
|
|
|
Post by yellowperil on Jun 18, 2018 11:11:45 GMT
General Election 2005
This is likely to be my final post on this thread (unless of course there are any further comments and I need to respond to them), but I have certainly reached the last election I am going to deal with in any detail. As far as I'm concerned this general election campaign was rather overshadowed by the county elections and looking at the general election results alongside the county ones it seems to me the Lib Dems generally were concentrating on the counties and giving the general election a lot less weight,whereas with Labour it seems to have been rather the other way round,with that rather oddly focused Labour campaign concentrating on Ashford North and Ashford South and only putting up candidates in two of the five other divisions.
We had a new candidate, and he had much to commend him. Chris Took was youngish, energetic (another competitive long distance runner)and a relatively newly elected city councillor in Canterbury (on a one-vote majority!). He was serious about giving it a long-term go ( he became the first two-time candidate we had had since Clive Dennis when he stood again in 2010). I think the strategy of concentrating on the counties and building up our local presence was his and he was prepared to think in the long term for the Westminster seat-he proved the value of that when he stood again in 2010 and substantially improved on his 2005 showing. What happened to that long term strategy after 2010 was pretty predictable by hindsight but lies beyond the scope of this present study (thank goodness). He moved into his new home in Bockhanger ward and in due course surrendered his council seat in Canterbury, which unfortunately the Canterbury Lib Dems lost the resulting by-election.
The Labour candidate was Valerie Whitaker. Now here is an oddity. As far as I am concerned, she is totally anonymous- I have no knowledge of her and cannot even summon up a picture in my mind as to what she looked like. This would not apply to any other Labour candidate from the first time I was first in Ashford right up to the present day. It must say something, I suppose about the nature of her campaign which must have concentrated on her own vote, and-or my campaign which was very concentrated on Rural West. But as far as I'm concerned a totally anonymous candidate who nevertheless got one of the best Labour results at general election level, while the Labour vote was so notably poor at the county level at the same time. Very odd.
The line-up was completed by the Greens (our very good friend Richard Boden from Wye), and UKIP, but in the early days of UKIP where they were always going to come fifth and last - a decade later they would be in second place, but that's another story and not for this thread.
D Green (Con) 26,651
V Whitaker (Lab) 13,353
C Took (LD) 8,308
R Boden (Green) 1753
B Stroud (UKIP) 1620
So compared with the counties, the Conservatives were up around 2,600, Labour up about 4400, Lib Dems down 5300 and Greens nearly 600.
As a fifth party , UKIP was of course much weaker than the Ashford Independents, which accounts for the shortfall.
So with the possible exception of a few corrections and additions, that's it folks. End of story . Any comments , comparisons, etc, welcomed.
|
|
polupolu
Lib Dem
Liberal (Democrat). Socially Liberal, Economically Keynesian.
Posts: 1,261 
|
Post by polupolu on Jun 18, 2018 19:55:17 GMT
Thank you.
Your thread has been totally engrossing.
|
|
|
|
Post by matureleft on Jun 25, 2018 9:14:07 GMT
General Election 2005
This is likely to be my final post on this thread (unless of course there are any further comments and I need to respond to them), but I have certainly reached the last election I am going to deal with in any detail. As far as I'm concerned this general election campaign was rather overshadowed by the county elections and looking at the general election results alongside the county ones it seems to me the Lib Dems generally were concentrating on the counties and giving the general election a lot less weight,whereas with Labour it seems to have been rather the other way round,with that rather oddly focused Labour campaign concentrating on Ashford North and Ashford South and only putting up candidates in two of the five other divisions. We had a new candidate, and he had much to commend him. Chris Took was youngish, energetic (another competitive long distance runner)and a relatively newly elected city councillor in Canterbury (on a one-vote majority!). He was serious about giving it a long-term go ( he became the first two-time candidate we had had since Clive Dennis when he stood again in 2010). I think the strategy of concentrating on the counties and building up our local presence was his and he was prepared to think in the long term for the Westminster seat-he proved the value of that when he stood again in 2010 and substantially improved on his 2005 showing. What happened to that long term strategy after 2010 was pretty predictable by hindsight but lies beyond the scope of this present study (thank goodness). He moved into his new home in Bockhanger ward and in due course surrendered his council seat in Canterbury, which unfortunately the Canterbury Lib Dems lost the resulting by-election. The Labour candidate was Valerie Whitaker. Now here is an oddity. As far as I am concerned, she is totally anonymous- I have no knowledge of her and cannot even summon up a picture in my mind as to what she looked like. This would not apply to any other Labour candidate from the first time I was first in Ashford right up to the present day. It must say something, I suppose about the nature of her campaign which must have concentrated on her own vote, and-or my campaign which was very concentrated on Rural West. But as far as I'm concerned a totally anonymous candidate who nevertheless got one of the best Labour results at general election level, while the Labour vote was so notably poor at the county level at the same time. Very odd. The line-up was completed by the Greens (our very good friend Richard Boden from Wye), and UKIP, but in the early days of UKIP where they were always going to come fifth and last - a decade later they would be in second place, but that's another story and not for this thread. D Green (Con) 26,651 V Whitaker (Lab) 13,353 C Took (LD) 8,308 R Boden (Green) 1753 B Stroud (UKIP) 1620 So compared with the counties, the Conservatives were up around 2,600, Labour up about 4400, Lib Dems down 5300 and Greens nearly 600. As a fifth party , UKIP was of course much weaker than the Ashford Independents, which accounts for the shortfall. So with the possible exception of a few corrections and additions, that's it folks. End of story . Any comments , comparisons, etc, welcomed. I've been away a few days. I wanted to see how you ended this. It's a great thread that I have much enjoyed. From an outside perspective I suppose a strategic challenge was to eliminate Labour as a serious competitor at local or constituency level. You present a picture of a quite resilient, largely focused, Labour party determined to keep its strongholds with forays beyond only when the wind was clearly favourable. Beyond the scope of your story they ran into UKIP challenges in their base areas I think, but the 2017 election suggests that they continue to have some grip on their core. In other parts of the south (say Eastleigh or Winchester) these areas of Labour strength (too small to win a constituency but enough to hold some council seats) have often been crushed by LibDem focus work. Every area is different but I'd be interested in your reflections on that. |
|
|
|
Post by yellowperil on Jun 27, 2018 13:45:42 GMT
I am still mulling over a full response to the question from matureleft and need time to research the more recent history because I have been somewhat detached from it, but haven't been ignoring it- its an interesting question. In due course I hope to give a considered answer here. |
|
|
|
Post by yellowperil on Jun 28, 2018 10:27:21 GMT
I am no going to try and answer the questions posed by@matureleft about what happened next, and he was I think particularly interested in the Labour performance, for obvious reasons. I have had to look up the figures- I am no longer directly involved in any of this because of my domestic situation, and I was unable to summon up much enthusiasm before to have really studied the figures closely- more a question of shuddering and turning over quickly. However, let's start with a few summary statistics from the 2011 and 2015 local elections- I have no intention of going through the results ward by ward. There were of course 43 places available Conservatives 2011: 43 candidates, 30 elected Conservatives 2015: 43 candidates, 34 elected Labour 2011: 23 candidates, 5 elected Labour 2015: 34 candidates, 4 elected Lib Dem 2011: 18 candidates, 2 elected Lib Dem 2015: 7 candidates ,1 elected Ashford Independents 2011: 32 candidates, 5 elected Ashford Independents 2015: 9 candidates, 2 elected UKIP 2011: 3 candidates, 0 elected UKIP 2015: 19 candidates, 1 elected Greens 2011: 6 candidates ,0 elected Greens 2015:16 candidates, 0 elected Inds 2011: 8 candidates, 1 elected Inds 2015: 5 candidates, 1 elected. will add to this with some comments shortly. You will appreciate I am concentrating attention on the Borough elections, and the county and Westminster elections will tell a rather different story. Here goes! 1. The scale of the Lib Dem collapse post 2010 is frightening, and will be replicated in many areas, of course. It isn't just a reaction to the coalition, though, it was also that coincided with the inevitable departure of some of our most reliable activists (not just Eileen and myself) as the years catch up with us, and clearly it wasn't a good time for finding replacements. I don't think we actually lost many active members directly because of the coalition government, though maybe enthusiasm cooled somewhat. It was the lack of candidates especially by 2015 that bugs me more than the actual loss of seats -only fighting 7 out of 43, so much less than UKIP and the Greens. 2. The Tories were able to mop up because no other party really stepped up to the challenge of the vacuum left by the Lib Dems, and the opposition was seen as hopelessly divided among themselves. A number of the other opposition parties were able to mop up some of the former Lib Dem votes, but hardly ever enough to win. The fact that the election was running alongside the general election was undoubtedly very helpful to the Tories, of course. 3.Labour at this level were pretty disappointing, I would have thought, given the opportunity the collapse of the Lib Dems gave them. They certainly stood more candidates and piled up more votes but actual success remained very localised.Indeed, some of the areas which had in the past been good for LDs in working class urban areas where you might expect Labour to strike back went in all sorts of directions -Labour indeed in Aylesford Green, and one of the Victoria seats, but Conservative in Highfield, Norman and Bockhanger , Independent in South Willesborough, and UKIP getting a foothold in Beaver. As matureleft had said, earlier they had been quite disciplined and organised to keep to their strongholds, but by now they seem less sure where they wanted to be. A lot stronger than the Lib Dems, obviously, but unable really to capitalise on that. 4. The Ashford Independents were imploding- they had expanded their operation radically in 2011 but by 2015 it was all coming apart at the seams- hence a number of independent candidates eschewing the AI umbrella. 5. UKIP at this level never really made much impression however well they were doing at Westminster or county elections, no real breakthrough atborough level. As I said, I'm not going to say much at ward level or I shall finish up trying to do the whole history post 2005 without the insider information I had for 1983-2005. but I can't resist one remarkable result from 2015- the North Willesborough one. The Lib Dems put up just one candidate for the two- member ward ( George Koowaree , former Borough councillor but for the last while concentrating on his county councillor role) Both incumbent LD councillors (Bob Davidson and Jeremy Adby ) had defected to the Tories, and while Bob had retired Jeremy was standing again in his new colours. There were of course 2 Tory candidates and 2 Labour, and one each Green and Independent, so 7 candidates for two places. And the result was LD 1147, Con (Adby)1019, Lab 623/565, Ind 436, Green 406, Con 317. One LD & 1 Con elected -and absolutely no doubt here people were voting for personalities and not all for party labels. |
|
|
|
Post by tonyhill on Sept 2, 2018 17:42:57 GMT
By its very nature this set of posts by yellowperil was unlikely to generate a huge response, which makes it difficult to gauge how popular it was. I for one found it extremely interesting. Whether this would have been the case to the same extent had it been about the history of the Labour or Conservative Party on a particular council I am not so sure. During the course of yellowperil's posts I wondered whether the members of this Forum would be interested in a similar series of posts about Eastleigh given that Martin Kyrle has written two books on the subject. If there is significant interest he is happy for me to put relevant extracts into a thread (if someone can tell me how to start a thread). Over to the members of the Forum - I don't want to waste my time or anyone else's if people have had enough of the minutiae of local politics for a while.
|
|
|
|
Post by andrewp on Sept 2, 2018 17:57:17 GMT
By its very nature this set of posts by yellowperil was unlikely to generate a huge response, which makes it difficult to gauge how popular it was. I for one found it extremely interesting. Whether this would have been the case to the same extent had it been about the history of the Labour or Conservative Party on a particular council I am not so sure. During the course of yellowperil's posts I wondered whether the members of this Forum would be interested in a similar series of posts about Eastleigh given that Martin Kyrle has written two books on the subject. If there is significant interest he is happy for me to put relevant extracts into a thread (if someone can tell me how to start a thread). Over to the members of the Forum - I don't want to waste my time or anyone else's if people have had enough of the minutiae of local politics for a while. Yes please. I for one would appreciate it. I agree with you that Yellow Perils posts on Ashford were extremely interesting. |
|
|
|
Post by yellowperil on Sept 3, 2018 10:16:25 GMT
By its very nature this set of posts by yellowperil was unlikely to generate a huge response, which makes it difficult to gauge how popular it was. I for one found it extremely interesting. Whether this would have been the case to the same extent had it been about the history of the Labour or Conservative Party on a particular council I am not so sure. During the course of yellowperil's posts I wondered whether the members of this Forum would be interested in a similar series of posts about Eastleigh given that Martin Kyrle has written two books on the subject. If there is significant interest he is happy for me to put relevant extracts into a thread (if someone can tell me how to start a thread). Over to the members of the Forum - I don't want to waste my time or anyone else's if people have had enough of the minutiae of local politics for a while. Yes please, and as you are already in the relevant area , i.e. historical elections, all you need to do is press "create thread" on the top bar and you're away! Looking forward to it. |
|
|
|
Post by tonyhill on Sept 3, 2018 16:17:15 GMT
OK - got that, thank you. Now I need to have another look at the books and see what I am letting myself in for!
|
|
|
|
Post by yellowperil on May 4, 2023 15:32:27 GMT
I had in mind that I might resurrect this old thread which has now lain dormant for 5 years or so.I had been looking it over for past results in relation to the present day contests and thought the time might have come to take the really long view- my thread had been about the period 1979-2005, although at the end there were a few comments in response to questions about the next couple of election cycles. However, when we have this week's results ( and writing this on the afternoon of election day I have absolutely no idea how they will look- unlikely to be very favourable from a narrow personal or party political point of view), I will have another two decades of elections since I retired from active politics and it became more of a spectator sport. I'm not sure I would want to take on writing the history of those next two decades across Ashford in full, which might entail as much detail as the two decades already dealt with,and I won't know the inside story in the same way. I thought though I might take a few wards where the boundaries are pretty intact over 4 decades. My old ward which in my day was called Smarden and now is weirdly called Weald North, still comprises the parishes of Smarden and Egerton, and would be a good place to start. Quite interesting to see how its gone since exactly, and the result of today's election might just make it even more interesting...
|
|
|
|
Post by yellowperil on May 21, 2023 14:38:26 GMT
I had promised(threatened?) to return to this thread and update it for the last two decades, ward by ward- at least for those wards which have continued in existence more or less unchanged. Somebody might object to coming up to 2023 in a thread which is specifically historical, but hey, before you know it May 2023 is history. Anyway the attempt is to look at the same ward over more than 4 decades, and I'm not aware of anyone doing that anywhere else, So I am starting with Weald North, or Smarden as I knew it. Other than the change of name, and a very minor redrawing of the Egerton/Charing Heath boundary which may have affected one property,the ward in 1979, when I start, is the same as the one in 2023. The nature of the ward in terms of demography, etc is more or less the same throughout- there was some new development in Egerton in the nineties ( my era) and a big new estate in Smarden added in the last few years, but compared with many such places the physical transformation of the two villages is modest. I think it may also be true that the social changes you see in many such villages (arrival of the nouveau riche!) is less pronounced than in many neighbouring villages.We mainly have avoided the new gated estates which in my eyes are the worst excesses to avoid! Briefly the ward was safely Tory from 1979 (and indeed earlier) until 1991, Lib Dem from 1991 to 2003, and back in the Tory fold ever since - even , one might underline, in 2023.I intend to show all the actual results in the next post.
|
|
