Adur

[Admin Twaddleford]

Adur

14/29 Up

[carolus]

Current council: Con 19, Lab 7, Green 1, Ind 2.
Con held a byelection in Dec 2021 in Hillside by 33% over Green.

Split wards:
Eastbrook - 1 Con, 1 Lab. Lab defend. Double election last year finished Con, Lab, Lab, Con.
Southlands - 1 Con, 1 Lab. Con defend. Double election last year finished Lab, Con, Con, Lab.
Southwick Green - 1 Con, 1 Lab. Con defend. Lab gain by 4.2% in 2021.
St Nicholas - 1 Con, 1 Green. Con defend. Green gain by 11.3% in 2021.

Other wards of interest:
Mash Barn - Lab gain from UKIP by 2.2% over Con in 2021.

[jamesdoyle]

14 seats in 14 wards

Con: 13 (not Marine; Cons never stand against the Shoreham Beach Independents)
Lab: 13 (not St Nicolas - see below)
LibDem: 4 (Buckingham; Mash Barn; Southlands; Southwick Green)
Green: 11 (not Buckingham, Eastbrook, Hillside)
Ind: 1 (Marine - Shoreham Beach Residents hold)

Con:
three defences (Cokeham, Peverel and St Nicolas) where they are fielding new candidates, and in Hillside the defending councillor had died so there's a 'new' candidate there. Peverel's Con candidate lives in Worthing; I guess he must work in Adur, but I don't know if voters will know that. Actually, I've just realised he's the sitting councillor who should be defending in neighbouring Cokeham - do the Cons expect to lose that?
In Eastbrook, and Southwick Green they have the losing candidates from last year, and in Mash Barn and St Mary's they are fielding losing 2021 candidates (Mike Mendoza, Brian Coomber) from other wards. St Mary's is definitely a paper candidate then, and Mash Barn probably.
The leader, Neil Parkin, has done a runner from St Nicolas, won by the Greens last year. He'll be safe in Hillside, but it's not a good look.

LibDems are down from 9 last time, and there's no pattern to where they are standing. The end is nigh?

St Nicolas is a straight Con-Green fight. Won by the Greens last time, I think tey're about to get their second councillor. Is there a Lab-Green pact? Difficult to see what the Labour side is, but maybe Greens not standing in Eastbrook?

www.adur-worthing.gov.uk/media/Media,167324,smxx.pdf

[tonyhill]

The end has been nigh for the LibDems in Adur ever since they imploded after running the council for years. An object lesson for them (though I'm not sufficiently clued up as to know what the lesson is!)

[John Chanin]

Apr 6, 2022 10:59:56 GMT tonyhill said:

The end has been nigh for the LibDems in Adur ever since they imploded after running the council for years. An object lesson for them (though I'm not sufficiently clued up as to know what the lesson is!)

An object lesson for all of us in admitting ignorance and not feigning omniscience.

[jamesdoyle]

Apr 6, 2022 10:59:56 GMT tonyhill said:

The end has been nigh for the LibDems in Adur ever since they imploded after running the council for years. An object lesson for them (though I'm not sufficiently clued up as to know what the lesson is!)

My understanding of the history is as follows:

Adur is made up of a number of discrete parts: east of the Adur is Shoreham, Southwick and a bit of Portslade, and west is Sompting and Lancing. And then there is Shoreham Beach, nominally a part of Shoreham despite being on the other side of the river, but a world unto itself. In the early party of the 20th Century, Shoreham beach was briefly the home of the British film industry, and was viewedf by most people as being as decadent and depraved as you might think from that.

Shoreham eastwards was always more urbanised, and tends to look to Brighton. Lancing and Sompting are more rural (albeit with the railway works in Lancing), formed the Worthing Rural District, and looked to Worthing.

So, going back even before the reorganisation in 1974, the two parts hated each other. East is East and West is West, etc..

The split was reflected in the LibDem party, and essentially was there throughout the growing success of the 80s and early 90s. There were four separate branches - Sompting, Lancing, Shoreham and Southwick, and they each managed their own affairs. But the party was held together by two very big personalities: Martin King and John Robinson. Martin led the group on the council, and John managed the party behind the scenes. This was fine, until the late 90s.

(Note: this is when I got involved; Worthing LibDems had little to do with Adur until the boundary changes for 1997 put four eastern Worthing wards in with Adur to form East Worthing & Shoreham).

Martin King was the obvious choice for parliamentary candidate - he was very well-known, mostly well-liked (he could be abrasive at times), and had a brain the size of a planet. The outgoing Tory MP was very unpopular so the Tories had a new and untried candidate. A good opportunity for the LibDems to gain a seat, possibly. But Martin hadn't told people that he had been suffering for many years from MS; it wasn't noticeable, essentially being in remission, butd not long after the campaigning had started, he had a major relapse, probably caused by the stress, and went rapidly from bad to worse, hardly being able to campaign at all. (By the end of 1997, he couldn't get around without walking sticks, and within a couple of years was permanently in a wheelchair). So the Cons won the seat, and Martin had to resign from the council due to his health.

It might have been possible to hold things together, but John Robinson became a judge at pretty much the same time, and had to stand away from local politics. 

Without John and Martin, the feelings between the two halves of the district party ran high, and there was no one to stop them. Things were also exacerbated by the fact that two members of Lancing LibDems, -we'll call them S and D - had managed to get control of the branch, and began to cause problems. They were very, very anatagonistic personalities, and drove away several prominent Lancing LibDems, did the same to Sompting, and then started work on Shoreham and Southwick.  Eventually, S and D's actions were so catastrophic that the whole thing imploded and the constituency party was suspended by HQ. There was an issue with a seriously large bequest from an elderly member, which had been verbally promised to Adur LibDems through Martin King, but somehow it disappeared, and that was never heard of again.

It became very difficult for the local party to put up candidates, campaign properly, and so on, and the party's representation on the council just withered away. 

Even in the early 00s, when I got involved in reestablishing the party, there were significant numbers of former members who swore they'd only come back if S and D didn't. And HQ, in their wisdom, decided to give Lancing and Sompting back to S and D, who treated it, and particularly Lancing Parish Council, as their own personal property.

Lessons?:
proper scrutiny of candidates, and honesty from candidates
succession planning
don't kick problems down the road, deal with them before they fester
don't rely on HQ to get things right

[matureleft]

Interesting, but I'd be careful about one detail in this account...

Otherwise it's a familiar story but in a sharper form. Local parties are fragile. They are normally entirely voluntary organisations. Without reasonably strong governance (a decent number of committed members prepared to handle the tasks) they can become dependent on a tiny group. Personalities, health (and just moving home) make a hell a lot of difference with consequences that seem inexplicable to outsiders.

[tonyhill]

Thank you very much for the explanation James. When I was involved in sorting out constituency problems in the 1970s (Portsmouth, Fareham) Party HQ was equally useless.

[jamesdoyle]

Apr 6, 2022 15:57:40 GMT matureleft said:

Interesting, but I'd be careful about one detail in this account...

Otherwise it's a familiar story but in a sharper form. Local parties are fragile. They are normally entirely voluntary organisations. Without reasonably strong governance (a decent number of committed members prepared to handle the tasks) they can become dependent on a tiny group. Personalities, health (and just moving home) make a hell a lot of difference with consequences that seem inexplicable to outsiders.

Fair point, edited.

[jamesdoyle]

Eastbrook (Adur DC)

Gillian Lennon (Conservative) - 444
Carol O’Neal (Labour) - 752

Rejected / invalid - 8
Turnout - 36%

LAB hold

[jamesdoyle]

Buckingham (Adur DC)

Emma Evans (Conservative) - 520
Nico Kearns (Lib Dem) - 288
Joseph O’Halloran (Labour) - 442

Rejected / Invalid - 6
Turnout - 41%

CON hold

[jamesdoyle]

Cokeham (Adur DC)

Richard Aulton (Labour) - 369
Tony Bellasis (Conservative) - 568
Lynn Finnigan (Green) - 136

Rejected / invalid - 11
Turnout - 31%

CON hold

[jamesdoyle]

Churchill (Adur DC)

Sylvia Knight (Labour) - 423
Helen Mears (Green) - 134
Steve Neocleous (Conservative) - 601

Rejected / invalid - 9
Turnout - 34%

CON hold

[jamesdoyle]

Hillside (Adur DC)

Rebecca Allinson (Labour) - 547
Neil Parkin (Conservative) - 559

Rejected / invalid - 6
Turnout - 33%

CON hold

oof.

[jamesdoyle]

St Mary’s (Adur DC)

Catherine Arnold (Labour) - 857
Brian Coomber (Conservative) - 389
Jane Mott (Green) - 209

Rejected / invalid - 12
Turnout - 38%

LAB hold

[jamesdoyle]

Peverel (Adur DC)

Stephen Garrard (Labour) - 399
Leslie Groves-Williams (Green) - 91
Paul Mansfield (Conservative) - 524

Rejected / invalid - 8
Turnout - 30%

CON hold

[jamesdoyle]

Manor (Adur DC)

Carol Albury (Conservative) - 629
Maggie Rumble (Green) - 153
Nigel Sweet (Labour & Co-op) - 382

Rejected / invalid - 7
Turnout - 36%

CON hold

[Pete Whitehead]

There's some odd results here such as the Tories having a bigger lead in Cokeham than in Buckingham, but overall not a bad set of results and certainly compared with Worthing (which must have turned into a cesspool in the couple of decades since I last went there)

[jamesdoyle]

May 6, 2022 12:47:30 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

There's some odd results here such as the Tories having a bigger lead in Cokeham than in Buckingham, but overall not a bad set of results and certainly compared with Worthing (which must have turned into a cesspool in the couple of decades since I last went there)

That's what two decades of Tories running things will do for you

[jamesdoyle]

Marine (Adur DC)

Pam Alden (Labour) - 341
Victoria Benson (Green) - 347
Julia Watts (Independent) - 742