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Post by yellowperil on May 20, 2018 13:06:15 GMT
Ashford Town 1995 -a summary
With all the results in for Ashford town, with its 24 places out of 49 for the Borough, the scoreboard made interesting reading:
Labour on 13 seats, an overall majority!
Lib Dems on 9 ( I always used to notate that as e.g. 9+1 for Gordon Turner! Remember he was still a party member )
Conservatives 1
Independents 1 (Gordon Turner)
There were still 25 seats outside Ashford town to be decided, so theoretically the Conservatives could still win an overall majority, but even if they could achieve that, which felt increasingly unlikely, they would be in a very weak position to claim to run the Borough when they had been so comprehensively wiped out in the urban half. From the Lib Dem point of view ,we needed to win at least 5 seats out of 25 in the rural half to make themselves the senior partner in any potential coalition, and of course if Labour were to win any out there in the sticks, the Lib Dem target would have to go up accordingly. Before this election started,and I have found a document confirming this, we had set ourselves the ambitious goal of winning 20 seats overall, but we had probably already missed that potential with the relatively poor results in the North division: we would probably have needed 2 or 3 gains there to have any chance of reaching that 20 target. 11 out of the 25 was probably beyond us, and we still had to worry about holding our by-election gain in Boughton Aluph- after all , we hadn't done too well in holding on to the by election gain in Stanhope, had we?
Incidentally, I have framed this as thought there was a hiatus between declaring the town seats and starting to count the rural ones. In practice there was no such hiatus, so I've done that for dramatic effect! It was broadly right though that we would first know the urban results which were the first up because they would count the first boxes into the Stour Centre where the count always took place, before the boxes from more distant places got there.
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Post by yellowperil on May 20, 2018 14:09:34 GMT
Ashford Borough Council Wards by county division 1995-Ashford Rural West
This was now the decisive battleground for control of the council- a far cry from where we had been back 12 years before, and all were now craning necks to see the outcome of the crucial wards!
Bethersden(this was hardly it!)
R Oliver (Con) 239 (45.0%)
K Brannan (Ind) 171 (32.2%)
J Allcock (Lab) 121 (22.8%)
Charing(2)
R Rawlings (LD) 455 (51.1%)
D Gillard(Con) 436 (48.9%)
CW Miller (LD) 395
M Patterson (Con) 387
Great Chart
A Maltby (IND Con)519 (50.5%)
S John (Lab) 300 (29.2%)
M Eke (LD) 209 (20.3%)
Hothfield
D Hilliger(LD) 283 (58.8%)
P Patten (Con) 198 (41.2%)
Kingsnorth
R Harrington (Ind) 867 (73.6%)
J Holland (Ind) 311 (26.4%)
Pluckley
E English(LD) 415 (74.4%)
J Grebby (Con) 143 (25.6%)
Smarden
G English (LD) 487 (55.6%)
E Sutherland (Con) 389 (44.4%)
So the Lib Dems had held their two seats in Rural West and gained two more, and the "official" Tories were down to 2 with two independents, one an ex-Liberal and one an ex-Tory. Four LD seats took our tally up to 13, equalling Labour across the Borough with two more divisions to come!The only Tories to hang on were Richard Oliver in Bethersden and Doug Gillard , the local village shopkeeper who managed to keep the second place in Charing ahead of "wrong village" Bill Miller, who nevertheless had pushed the other incumbent Tory councillor into fourth place, while Bob Rawlings was safely home in first place this time. David Hilliger had made his links in Westwell pay dividends - for the first time ever we were ahead in Westwell and so comfortably ahead in Hothfield ward as a whole . Eileen was now looking unbeatable in Pluckley and even though I was another "wrong village" candidate in Smarden, I had held Sheila's seat with an increased majority. We wondered if we could have taken Bethersden if Keith Brannan had decided to stand with us again but he had reverted to going the Independent route - I suspect though his real problem was the rise of Labour there, which had the effect of saving " Little Oliver's" skin (as he was known on all sides , somewhat contemptuously!). Great Chart was another Independent triumph , unopposed by the official Tories, and Tony Maltby was to be a thorn in the side of successive Tory groups for years to come- again both Lab and LDs polling quite respectably there. Kingsnorth had been an all-Indy affair and no problem for Reg Harrington- John Holland stood against him as another Indy but years before had been a Labour councillor - back before the creation of the Borough.
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Post by yellowperil on May 20, 2018 17:19:49 GMT
Ashford Borough Council Wards by County division 1995- Ashford Rural East
There wasn't quite the same tension around the Rural East counts as there was for Rural West , except perhaps for Boughton Aluph (Could the Tories bounce back here?- a cursory glance at the ballot papers coming out of the boxes answered that one!) but some interest for some of the others particularly Brabourne and Wye. There were some other wards where both the opposition parties were so focused elsewhere that these were the ones getting little or no attention, and so the Conservatives could relax while mayhem was going on elsewhere.
Aldington
S Foster (Con) unopposed
Boughton Aluph
R Hawes (LD) 506 (70.3%)
R Dowley (Con) 214 ( 29.7%)
Brabourne
B Farrant(Con) 418 (57.2%)
D Reynolds (Lab) 313 (42.8%)
Chilham
J Marriott (Con) 504 ( 53.7%)
T Bryson (Lab) 238 (25.4%)
M Cameron (LD) 196 (20.9%)
Hamstreet
C Drew (Con) unopposed
Mersham
J Simpson (Con) 428 (56.5%)
T Stanyon (Lab) 180 (23.7%)
M Andrews (LD) 150 (19.8%)
Wye
JC Coey (Con) 392 (43.5%)
A Turner (Lab) 256 (28.4%)
C Friend (LD) 254 (28.2%)
The Conservatives had looked a lot more vulnerable in Rural East this time wherever there were opposition candidates, and in some places like Wye and even Chilham and Mersham they may have been saved by a fairly evenly split opposition. Worrying for the Lib Dems was that in those places where there was a close contest for second place Labour was always just ahead ,even if in Wye the margin was only two votes! However the really big news for the LDs was the shift in Boughton from marginal by- election gain to solidly safe in a lot less than a year!
The scoreboard now looked like this with just the Tenterden 10 to come:
Lib Dems 14 seats (or 14+1 if you like!)
Labour 13 seats
Conservatives 9 seats
Independents 3 seats (Turner, Harrington ,Maltby -hardly a coherent group!
If the Tories retained all 10 Tenterden seats, or at least 8 of them, they would still be the largest party, but any hope of retaining control had long gone,even as a mathematical possibility. From a Lib Dem perspective , one or two further gains in Tenterden would be useful, and we were certainly hopeful of St Michaels, but knew that Labour might also be closing in somewhere, most probably Tenterden South East.We were still not guaranteed a lead over Labour and therefore the leadership of any possible Lib-Lab coalition.
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Post by yellowperil on May 20, 2018 19:57:50 GMT
Ashford Borough Council Wards by County division 1995- Tenterden
The final deciding division to see who ran Ashford for the next four years...
Appledore
M Gray (Con ) 197 (48.2%)
R Addison (Green) 110 (26.9%)
F Smith (Lab) 102 (24.9%)
Biddenden
N Bell(Con) unopposed
High Halden
H Apps (Con) 320 (60.5%)
D Dyer (Ind) 132 (25.0%)
D Buckingham (LD) 77 (14.6%)
Rolvenden
A J Hoad(Con) 426 (56.3%)
E Anthony (LD) 200 (26.5%)
J Knight (Lab) 130 (17.2%)
Tenterden St Michaels
B Wright (LD) 356 (50.1%)
E Barrows (Con) 355 (49.9%)
Tenterden East
E Blake (Con) 442 (62.6%)
D Whittingham (LD) 264 (37.4 %)
Tenterden South East
A Hale (Con) 378 (64.4%)
V Wheatley (Lab) 209 (35.6%)
Tenterden West
C Rosson (Con) 263 (62.3%)
R Brookes (LD) 159 (37.7%)
Wittersham
M Burgess ( Con) 334 (60.6%)
E Wright (LD) 217 (39.4%)
Woodchurch
G Weller( Con) 463 (56.9%)
D Mansfield ( LD) 213 (26.2%)
C Ruckliff (Lab) 138 (17.0%)
Good enough as far as the Lib Dems were concerned, and it is noticeable that the Labour surge everywhere else was much less evident in Tenterden. Where there was a battle for second place between Labour and LibDems it was the Lib Dems who were coming out on top, in contrast to Rural East, and the Lib Dems just took their main target, St Michaels , whereas Labour was still well away from taking Tenterden South East.
The Conservatives retained 9 of the 10 Tenterden seats and so remained the largest party on Ashford Borough Council with 18 seats in total.
The Liberal Democrat group had added the one Tenterden seat (by one vote!) and so now had 15 seats.
Labour stayed on 13 seats, all of them in Ashford town.
There were 3 assorted Independents. ( 1 ex Liberal, 1 True Liberal and 1 Independent Conservative)
After negotiations, A LibDem led coalition formed the administration with Deryck Weatherall as Leader of the council and Les Lawrie as Deputy leader. Eileen became chair of the Environmental Health and General Purposes Committee, and effectively the no 3 on the council.
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Post by yellowperil on May 21, 2018 9:44:55 GMT
Some more bits and pieces about the Boughton Aluph by-election, August 1994
Rootling around among old records I have found some more interesting nuggets of information (well I thought they were interesting, anyway, so I thought I'd share them with you here).
I have (1)Rita's own thoughts, which I found printed in the local party newsletter,(2) a few additional thoughts of my own at the time, from the same source, (3)the summary weekly canvass returns to compare with the actual result, (4) the record claim for this election according to Liberal Democrat News at the time, and (5)a parliamentarians' exchange about the election between Jack Straw and Matthew Taylor.
(1)" Would I be prepared to stand as Liberal Democrat candidate? It was necessary to decide immediately. Having been interested in Borough affairs, parish councillor for many years, with retirement imminent , how could I turn down the opportunity?.
Having said yes,matters took off- the date set, then changed, holidays firm. Doubts set in. Then the team work started.
Geoff English,as campaign manager and Eileen English as my minder,introduced me to the complexities of canvass cards, they helped me draw up leaflets so I could use my little time available to canvass...Barbara Simmons proved invaluable back up, Gordon Turner turned Boughton Aluph orange with his posters. The teamwork was superb. Leafleters appeared from all over.
August 4th approached, my unavoidable visit to the USA was covered. I received the news of the result and as we celebrated by watching the Boston Red Sox I felt much too far away...." - Rita Hawes in her own words, somewhat abridged (I've shortened the list of people she thanked a bit).
(2) I had forgotten until I read that piece by Rita that both Eileen and myself (pre booked time in Yorkshire with our son) and Bill Miller the agent and a key canvasser(on business in the USA), all took a week -(the same week} out in the middle of the campaign. Hence the reference to Barbara as back up, confirmed from my own notes- the show went on in the absence of campaign manager, minder and agent, just as a bit later on, it went on without the candidate! I also had forgotten the role of Gordon Turner as poster man- remember this was Gordon the independent councillor who always helped in General Elections but usually wouldn't have lifted a finger to help the council group he declined to be a member of. My notes include an overheard whisper from a Conservative activist "their posterman's good- who is he?" I also recorded a special mention for Deryck Weatherall, our very urban-minded leader, as doing extensive canvassing in particularly remote bits of countryside and his canvass cards marked up meaningfully "post election address here". I also remarked on Louise Fish- by now an undergraduate in inner-city Leeds- "finding it all a bit of a culture shock"
(3) the canvass returns were I thought particularly illuminating. I don't have the raw data, only the summary of our expectations of the result each week based on the canvass returns to that point, and I don't know for sure which formula we used to convert the raw data into these expectations, particularly as I do know Molash was especially hard to get a commitment out of, but we seem to have done remarkably well in forecasting. By the time of the election we had achieved a 60% voter identification, which for an August election in an extremely low density ward, where we were starting with no previous VI at all, is I think pretty remarkable. And those weekly cumulative forecasts:
Week 1 (20% canvass) Con 50, LD 45, Lab 5
Week 2 (30% canvass) Con 48, LD 46, Lab 6
Week 3 (45% canvass) Con 43, LD53, Lab 5
Week 4 (60% canvass) Con 44, LD 48. Lab 8
Actual result (week 5) Con44.5, LD 49.5, Lab 6
(4) Lib Dem News claimed a world record for the longest-distant election victory for Rita at 3,600 miles, but as far as I know this was not verified by the Guinness Book of Records!
(5) At some point that week Jack Straw was making the usual unpleasant noises about the general irrelevance of the Liberal Democrats, so the by-election provided some nice mud to throw back, which not only referred to the Lib Dem gain from the Conservatives but also the 21.1 % drop in Labour vote share here. Nice debating point, Matthew, but really there was nowhere for the Labour vote to go realistically except to us if they wanted the Tory out, and before this the Labour vote had been inflated by the absence of a Lib Dem candidate.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on May 21, 2018 10:20:13 GMT
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Post by yellowperil on May 22, 2018 15:51:43 GMT
Of course I have spent a long time admiring Pete's handiwork and all that yellow on the map and you can now all see where that name yellowperil comes from. ( I never did get round to buying that gold Ford Focus but I did have the YP numberplate for it!) It therefore took me quite some while to notice something which is in my mind not quite right, though Pete has vigorously defended his choices to me and I can see his argument. The problem with shading by party is that there is a problem with the independents if they still claim a party allegiance as well as being independent locally- so no problem with Kingsnorth where Reg Harrington is Independent pure and simple (he was neither of those things, but you know what I mean). South Willesborough, with its True Liberal now also going as just Independent, and Great Chart where Tony Maltby had gone from Conservative to Independent Conservative are a bit more of a headache. Pete has changed South Willesborough from yellow to grey on the map on the basis of the change in ballot paper description, and I can see his point, but I also know that this was actually the time when Gordon was most closely aligned to the Liberal Democrats in his career, he had been working closely with us ever since his key role in the Boughton by-election, and probably dropping the somewhat controversial styling of "True Liberal" was probably a peace offering! In the case of Great Chart, Pete left it coloured blue on the grounds that Tony Maltby still styled himself Conservative ,albeit an independent one, and the official Conservatives didn't oppose him, but I know Tony was to show himself in the new council as virulently anti-Tory as anybody! So I look at Pete's map and mentally turn Kingsnorth grey and South Willesborough yellow, but otherwise they're lovely! |
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Post by yellowperil on May 22, 2018 16:03:51 GMT
I have been working through the earlier posts and making a few edits to correct some minor errors and omissions. I have also explained a bit more who two candidates were at the appropriate points in the story- Frank Laughton Junior, the victor of the second Stanhope by election, to help differentiate him from the father, and Anne Picking, Ashford councillor aka Anne Moffat, MP for East Lothian.
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Post by yellowperil on May 22, 2018 18:52:13 GMT
Ashford Borough by elections 1995-9
As before, I am putting in a holding post here to keep a place in the story for by- elections which took place during the 1995-9 council, i.e while the Lib Dems and Labour were running the council. I am at present aware of two but do not yet have the full details to hand- I have again gone Ashford's electoral services department to ask them to have a rummage! I am fairly sure of two - a Labour gain from Lib Dems in Singleton and a Conservative gain from Labour in Central, which would have left Lib Dems just ahead of the Labour party and so still the senior partner in the coalition, just by one seat, and the coalition still hanging on with 27 seats between them out of the 49, but full details I hope in due course. I know Singleton was caused by the tragic and unexpected death of our promising new Singleton councillor Mike Pickett almost before he could get started, and his replacement by Labour councillor Alan Alcock his near neighbour- they lived on the same little close on the Singleton Fatrm estate. More anon, I hope.
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Post by hullenedge on May 22, 2018 19:25:30 GMT
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Post by yellowperil on May 22, 2018 21:48:01 GMT
Thanks Hullenedge for those interesting fragments from 1974, which was of course where my very first comments on this thread began the discussion- back to the old district councils from which Ashford Borough was forged. I would prefer not to get diverted back to that at this stage of going forward through the 90s and beyond -maybe we could go back to earlier times when I have finished the present project? Quite interesting for me though as I was around in that era and voting in the old south east ward of AUDC.The results from 1973 on those ward boundaries are of course available on The Electionscentre website.
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Post by yellowperil on May 23, 2018 12:35:04 GMT
The Lib- Lab administration on Ashford Borough Council , 1995-9
This thread is mainly about elections rather than the consequences of them, but I do need to say a little about what happened in practice while the Liberal Democrats actually ran the council. Of course they only had 15 councillors out of 49, and very soon that had dropped to 14, and with Labour on board a joint administration held , for most of the four years to the next lot of all-out elections, 27 seats out of 49 so an overall majority of 5. Without wanting to anticipate too much the later history, I should perhaps say that the coalition would not survive the next election and the subsequent decline of the Lib Dems has now reached the point where George Koowaree is the sole remaining Lib Dem councillor on Ashford. So one might conclude that the joint administration of 1995/9 was a total failure. However (maybe unsurprisingly) that is not how it feels like to me.
We had a detailed and wide-ranging programme ( unlike Labour) and we set about trying to implement it, though everything had to be agreed with Labour first which made progress slow. We had I would say a pretty good senior team - Deryck Weatherall was a very experienced councillor, naturally cautious and patient and managing to keep the rest of us who really expected faster progress in check. Fred Winslade as a former chief financial officer of one of the district councils from which the borough was formed, was able to keep a close check on finances and watch just what the officers were up to - sometimes we might fear he might go native himself on us, but I don't think he ever did! Barbara Simmons took over Planning and fully immersed as chair of Planning so was of course non-political -she kept largely out of council politicking. The area of council policy where we most felt we could make a difference was in the environmental field and this Eileen very much made her own- our chief executive Ernie Mexter liked to refer to her as "Mrs Green" - from Ernie that was a compliment, actually! There were 3 committees of the council with substantial impact on environmental policy. Environmental Health had all the statutory duties and including General Purposes was liable to have all sorts of extras tacked on to its responsibilities. Local Agenda 21 was trying to bring in the wider community into post-Rio environmental planning for the 21st century The Hothfield Common committee not only was involved in running the council -owned nature reserve, a hugely important stretch of lowland heath, but had a wider remit to look after all council-owned open spaces and to examine their environmental impact. Eileen took on the chairmanship of all 3 committees so they were co-ordinated and all extremely active.Two of those had a big community involvement and we were forever had the council chamber full of community groups of all types talking about the future direction of the council, so Eileen had a very high profile. So what was Labour up to while all this was going on? Some of their councillors were very much on board with what Eileen was doing and helping that out, but in general Labour had their own particular area of policy interest, which was housing, and they were given a pretty free hand there to get on and do their own thing there.
What was I up to? I was of course a new councillor learning on the job, and had to spend a lot of my time working my ward and getting myself better known there. I was never though one of those back bench councillors who keep their mouths shut and their profile low. I had my maiden speech in, on the first full council meeting I attended as a councillor, and soon was notorious for bringing policy motions to full council to be debated and approved sometimes with expressions of boredom and rolling of eyes from Tories and Labour alike. I also had taken on the role of group secretary making sure the group councillors were aware of what we as a party group had democratically agreed so that we all spoke with one voice where possible, without ever having a fierce whipping system imposed.
What we didn't realise at the time was that political life would never be as easy again as it was in those first two years, not least because for then our Lib/Lab council at Ashford was matched by a Lib/Lab administration for Kent, and pursuing some of our policies would be a lot harder once the Tories were back in County Hall. What is more the county elections were going to be a very different proposition if we had a general election on the same day. I will interrupt this look at the Ashford brief period of power to deal with the two lots of elections and come back to look at the wreckage of our hopes after the polls were over.
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Post by carlton43 on May 23, 2018 12:45:30 GMT
The Lib- Lab administration on Ashford Borough Council , 1995-9This thread is mainly about elections rather than the consequences of them, but I do need to say a little about what happened in practice while the Liberal Democrats actually ran the council. Of course they only had 15 councillors out of 49, and very soon that had dropped to 14, and with Labour on board a joint administration held , for most of the four years to the next lot of all-out elections, 27 seats out of 49 so an overall majority of 5. Without wanting to anticipate too much the later history, I should perhaps say that the coalition would not survive the next election and the subsequent decline of the Lib Dems has now reached the point where George Koowaree is the sole remaining Lib Dem councillor on Ashford. So one might conclude that the joint administration of 1995/9 was a total failure. However (maybe unsurprisingly) that is not how it feels like to me. What is your response to the assertion that the LDs are attractive to the less politically aware voters up to the point of being in power when that attraction then totally evaporates as people witness that they are much the same as other parties and sometimes worse? |
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Post by yellowperil on May 23, 2018 14:09:39 GMT
The Lib- Lab administration on Ashford Borough Council , 1995-9This thread is mainly about elections rather than the consequences of them, but I do need to say a little about what happened in practice while the Liberal Democrats actually ran the council. Of course they only had 15 councillors out of 49, and very soon that had dropped to 14, and with Labour on board a joint administration held , for most of the four years to the next lot of all-out elections, 27 seats out of 49 so an overall majority of 5. Without wanting to anticipate too much the later history, I should perhaps say that the coalition would not survive the next election and the subsequent decline of the Lib Dems has now reached the point where George Koowaree is the sole remaining Lib Dem councillor on Ashford. So one might conclude that the joint administration of 1995/9 was a total failure. However (maybe unsurprisingly) that is not how it feels like to me. What is your response to the assertion that the LDs are attractive to the less politically aware voters up to the point of being in power when that attraction then totally evaporates as people witness that they are much the same as other parties and sometimes worse? It would be foolish to deny that there isn't always an element of that- some of our original supporters in this case were basically agin the council, and when we became the council and the party that was agin the council was now the Tories, they'd vote Tory ,and when the Tories came back to power next time they found the Ashford Independents or UKIP. I don't think "totally evaporates" is fair comment though. We had a lot of support for what we were doing and I heard often enough - from traditional Tory voters- that we were the best councillors they had ever had. Quite a few of us outside the traditional Liberal areas ( like Rita, Eileen and myself) hung on to our seats after we lost control of the council, though we lost one or two others of course, and our own seats were then only lost either when we retired or where the boundaries were redrawn in a terribly unfavourable way for us. What didn't happen was that a lot of new generation LDs should have materialised to replace us. Maybe it will happen in time but hasn't happened yet.I will talk more about these things when I get to the appropriate point in this thread, which at the moment is just about at its apogee! |
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Post by carlton43 on May 23, 2018 15:52:35 GMT
The problem with democratic politics is that the 'decisions' on who gets to be 'in power' often appear to be in the hands of the least informed, the least committed and the most febrile members of the electorate?
The nature of politics is that there are strands
Quality of the raft of policies
Quality of the body of candidates
General competence of the group to administer anything
Relationship to practicality and available finances
Ability to prioritise in the face of very difficult choices
So, we can have a body of well-educated well-intentioned people who as a body together are not very competent and who are unable to prioritise to save their own lives.
Or, a body of quite nice plodders with very little experience and not much by way of policy, but who work well together and know how to cope with decisions.
Or, a mixture of plodders and duffers but with two astute political experts able to weld them into a force to push through policies in a most effective manner.
One never quite knows how it will turn out? And the decision forming part of the electorate who turn out or don't turn out, who vote Green then UKIP, then LD and then for Sally's lad whoever he is standing for......they add that magic and unpredictable element of uncertainty that makes so much come right or turn to ashes in one's mouth!
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Post by yellowperil on May 23, 2018 16:37:46 GMT
General Election May 1997
The decision to coincide the General Election with the County Council ones rather overshadowed the latter, so I will deal with the Westminster election first, although of course the two election campaigns were inevitably mixed up together, and undoubtedly produced different results and hugely higher turnouts for the Counties than would have been the case had they stood alone. In terms of the general election , we have to bear in mind a national context of the huge swing from Conservative to Labour going on in the country ( Conservatives losing 178 seats and Labour gaining 146)
The Liberal Democrats were approaching these elections with some difficulties. Christine Headley had left the area after the last general election and we had been trying to recruit a suitable candidate, hopefully one who would see it as a long term project. In the end we adopted John Williams ,who wanted Ashford as it was his nearest available constituency from his home and place of work - in Germany. We got a glowing reference from his home party where he was an active member -of the FDP. After the hustings he got an 87% vote of our members, so we liked what we saw of him and in many ways he was a good fit for the constituency. He was a professional translator of scientific and medical works between German and English and though born and brought up in Wales he now spoke his English with a slight but noticeable German accent.His scientific background was such that he became very interested in the then topical issue of BSE (or "mad Cow disease" ) where he was an acknowledged expert whose voice was in demand on television from time to time over the issue. We did have a very controversial meat rendering plant high up on the Downs behind Wye, where Eileen with her environmental hat on was very much involved, and John and Eileen worked closely together on that. The snag was that he often had to be back home in Germany keeping his translating business going. It did mean that when this became a double election we found the county elections were getting a higher priority than the Westminster one and with the national rise of Labour we were always going to struggle to hang on to the second place we had had with Jo Hawkes , Neil MacMillan and Christine Headley. Nationally the party was doing pretty well (28 gains in this general election) but that was achieved by targeting the places we could win - the converse of that was where we were not going to win we went backwards, and John was caught in that situation.
D Green (Con) 22,899 (41.4%)
J Ennals (Lab) 17,544 (31.7%)
J Williams (LD) 10,901 (19.7%)
C Cruden (Ref) 3,201 ( 5.8%)
R Boden (Green) 660 (1.2%)
S Tyrell (NL) 89 (0.2%)
Yes this had been the election year of the yogic fliers of Natural Law, and the brief pre-UKIP intervention of the Referendum Party, but these were mere distractions whereas the real story was the rise of New Labour to the point where they got within sight of the Tories in Ashford- closer than Liberals/SDP/Lib Dems ever got. Now what would all that do to the parallel county council results?
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Post by yellowperil on May 23, 2018 19:08:57 GMT
1997 County Council Elections
It is I think evident that the numbers are massively up compared with normal county elections - something like half again the number of people going to the polls and all those extra voters there because they were also voting for the General election candidates at the same time. In the normal way of things you would expect this to favour the two main parties, especially as they were coming out on top in the General anyway, and especially you might expect it to favour Labour, because they were surging to an exceptionally good General Election result. There is of course two other significant factors. This was the end of the four year period of the Lib/Lab administration at County Hall, so to some extent it is the electors' verdict on that administration- a vote of confidence or time to give a good kicking? And then it was also the mid term point in Ashford of the Lib/Lab administration there, so again we awaited the voter's verdict on how well we were doing.
The Lib Dem candidates this time had all stood before at previous County and/or Borough elections- no novices this time and they were all out to maximise their vote- again the parallel general poll would encourage that. They were Jackie Smith in North, Malcolm Eke in South, Fred Winslade in South East, myself in Rural West, Paul Burnham in Rural East and Barry Wright in Tenderden, so 3 of the 6 sitting Borough councillors.
Labour had Derek Smyth in North, who probably really fancied his chances, Ray Allen in South , who must have been quite sure of victory this time, Mike Wiggins in South East and this time this was a serious candidate and former PPC against Fred; H Everest in Rural West, C Crowfoot in Rural East and D Neale in Tenterden- the last 3 relatively unknown, probably paper candidates and it was fairly clear Labour had a different strategy which was to target the 3 town divisions. hard and forget the others, knowing that the big GE vote would get the rural vote anyway to some degree.
The Tories had a few changes of their own - all 4 of their sitting councillors were changed, though that was in part John Grugeon doing the chicken run from Rural West to Tenterden. Mike Angell was fighting North his time. Simon Bates South, and Dodwell South-East , while Richard King came in for Grugeon in Rural West- very bad news from my point of view as Richard was a very nice man and a good friend of many years standing- we had among other things appeared in pantomime together. He was of course one of my constituents and had been very supportive of me as borough councillor but I knew he was really a Tory- always shrugged his shoulders and said he didn't know why, just always had been brought up that way - but now when offered the chance to be county councillor couldn't resist. Charles Findlay in Rural East completed their line up.At leastno "others"to complicate the story anywhere . 6 seats with the 3 mainstream candidates.
Ashford North
M Angell (Con) 3772 (40.6%)
D Smyth (Lab) 2969 (32.0%)
J Smith(LD) 2541 (27.4%)
Ashford South
R Allen (Lab) 3972 (55.0%)
S Bates((Con) 1778 (24.6%)
M Eke (LD) 1473 (20.4%)
Ashford South East
F Winslade (LD) 3581 (42.3%)
M Wiggins (Lab) 2582 (30.5%)
G Dodwell (Con) 2310 (27.3%)
Ashford Rural West
R King (Con) 4482 (46.8%)
G English (LD) 3106 (32.5%)
H Everest (Lab) 1983 (29.7%)
Ashford Rural East
C Findlay (Con) 4510 (51.4%)
CP Burnham (LD) 2689 (30.6%)
C Crowfoot (Lab) 1583 (18.0%)
Tenterden
J Grugeon (Con) 5812 (54.3%)
B Wright(LD) 2745 (25.6%)
D Neale (Lab) 2151 (20.1%)
So in the end, once again no change: 4 Conservatives, 1 Lab, 1 Lib Dem. I was of course bitterly disappointed to spend 4 years planning to avenge my narrow defeat, only to lose by a lot this time, I could try to take some consolation from the numbers (only losing candidate to break 3000 votes, say) but in reality it was no consolation at all, particularly as it became clear there would be a new Tory administration in County Hall.
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Post by swanarcadian on May 23, 2018 19:56:37 GMT
The 1997 county council results were a small source of comfort for the Conservatives on an otherwise horrific night.
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Post by yellowperil on May 23, 2018 20:17:16 GMT
From a psephological point of view the combined general/county elections of 1997 are very interesting, in that there are a lot fewer complications than there usually are when comparing two sets of elections .In Ashford's case we have exactly the same people going to the polls and there are no double seats or things of that sort to muddy the waters- the only slight complication are the three additional parties (Referendum, Green and Natural Law), standing in the case of the general election, whereas the counties have the same 3 parties in each seat and nobody else. So you can add up the combined party scores for the 6 divisions and compare it with the General Election vote, and it's much more relevant than it usually would be.
I have only done this in my head and haven't checked it on a machine, but I make it 64,039 voted in the counties and 65,294 in the general and the 3 main party votes are :
Con 22,664 Counties, 22,889 General
Lab 15,249 Counties, 17,544 General
LD 16,135 Counties, 10,901 General
So did the LibDems do exceptionally well when people were voting for county, or badly underperform for Westminster? Did all the spare LD voters go for Referendum, Greens and Yogic Flyers when the opportunity was presented?More seriously there was clearly some splitting of votes between Lab and Lib Dem.
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Post by yellowperil on May 24, 2018 17:24:13 GMT
Dealing with parish councils 1995-2003
Before dealing with the next main batch of elections which will the Borough ones in 1999, I wanted to explore a few themes around what was actually happening to us as councillors during these years- some of which may help to explain some of the outcomes in the elections.. One aspect of the work of rural councillors especially was relationships with other levels of government including parish councils and county councils. For the moment I am exploring relationships with parish councils. Eileen had always been in a slightly different position to me- she lived in the main parish in her ward and was already a parish councillor there, and the second parish was very small and she rapidly became very well known and popular there. On the other hand, I became a ward member for two very independent -minded parishes often in dispute with each other, and oneof the few things I had going for me in Smarden was that at least I wasn't from Egerton, and vice versa. I was determined to attend all parish councils as a matter of course -not all district councillors did, I knew some contented themselves with popping in on their parish councils only if there was a pressing problem, or even contenting themselves with turning up for the annual meeting. Indeed a number of my fellow rural councillors - the Tory ones- were anxious to advise me that it really wasn't necessary to keep attending all those meetings, old chap...I'm sure they were being helpful.But for me the fact that I was an outsider meant that I needed to be there to pickup all the village news/gossip.
What was immediately fascinating was that the whole feel of the two parishes was so very different. Smarden PC was a close knit little group meeting in the village hall small committee room and it was rare for there to be any members of the public present. There was a clear majority of fairly obvious active Tories and several members were the more substantial farmers of the parish There were however two or three people there already well known to me as being supportive of me personally if not necessarily LDs! I soon found that there was absolutely no politics brought to the council and the group worked enthusiastically for the parish and its needs, and once they realised I would be coming regularly they simply adopted me as one of them. and I just fitted into their little social group.
Egerton was quite different. The parish council seemed to be viewed as one of the principal entertainments of the village and the actual councillors were always greatly outnumbered by members of the public-it was not all that unusual for there to be as many as 50 members of the public present at an ordinary monthly council meeting with nothing out of the ordinary on the agenda, so the parish council were very much inclined to treat me as just one more member of the public and one who wasn't in the village anyway, so could be ignored. I got to know and become good friends with some of the Egerton councillors eventually, but at the same time I faced a lot more suspicion and actual hostility in Egerton, although I knew Egerton was always the better village for me at the ballot box when it came to that.
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