A sad day for Blackbird Leys, a good day for the dealers
IWCA councillor Stuart Craft explains why Labour’s recent victory in the Northfield Brook by-election is a setback to those who hope for a genuine, effective working class response to the most pressing
issues on the estate, such as the crack and heroin dealing problem.
I don’t mind admitting that I felt sick to the stomach, as would anyone with working class interests at heart, to witness the sight of Andrew Smith and his smug, predominantly university-based Labour entourage
whooping it up on election night at the news of their victory over the IWCA.
Curiously, their equally smug, equally middle class but normally bitter rivals, the Lib Dems, were similarly ecstatic with just 141 votes. An elation that looks all the more odd when an additional IWCA
councillor would have actually put the Lib Dems closer to being the largest party on the council.
The only explanation that makes sense is that they see a genuine working class party like the IWCA as a threat not only to Labour but to themselves so in the long run they must consider stopping us to be of
greater importance than actually taking control of the council.
For a political party with a reputation for opportunism, and so focussed on taking power in local government by fair means or foul—vigorously promoting a policy in one council only to put the case for the
exact opposite with the same vehemence in a neighbouring local authority is a Lib Dem trademark—their activists’ evident glee at the Labour victory is on the face of it extraordinary.
Then again, both the Lib Dems and New Labour would of course like to keep the working class out of politics altogether if they could help it.
Before the IWCA appeared on the scene, concerns such as drugs and antisocial behaviour that mainly affect voters in Oxford’s working class estates like Blackbird Leys were safely ignored in the council chamber,
leaving councillors to concentrate on pet projects such as the Capital of Culture bid and repaving Cornmarket Street.
A further excuse to ignore the drugs problem
An indication of just how eager the main parties are to return to the previous cosy middle-class consensus came exactly one week after the Northfield Brook by-election when it was reported that the Leys CAD
(Community Action and Development-formerly Communities Against Drugs), ‘a drop-in centre helping drug addicts, alcoholics, substance abusers and their families,’ would be ‘forced to close because Oxford City
Council had refused to bail out the cash-stricken project,’ (Oxford Mail, 28 July, see also article above).
The ‘Communities Against Drugs’ initiative was set up with New Labour government funding shortly after I was elected as a councillor for the IWCA in 2002, when we had just conducted a number of high-profile
community campaigns against crack and heroin dealing on the estate-hardly a coincidence.
While CAD was initially top-heavy with do-gooders and self-appointed experts it has recently started to benefit from the involvement of genuine community activists so the decision by the council to pull the
plug, even when the funding required would be minimal, indicated that with its recent by-election victories Labour felt confident that working class concerns could once again be safely ignored.
Fortunately, the IWCA was able to intervene in the matter, calling for funding to continue at the South East Area Committee and inviting along a volunteer worker from CAD to put the case for retaining the
centre. We aslo highlighted the issue on our website and wrote into the Oxford Mail to protest at the closure. This approach now seems to have paid off with a consortium of organisations, including the police,
council and Primary Care Trust hastily getting together to provide temporary funding.
However, the Labour-dominated council has still avoided making any long-term commitment to the project, which is one of the few resources available to deal with local problems generated by drug addiction and abuse.
Ever since our first door-to-door survey of residents in 2001 we have been told time and time again that hard drugs are a major concern for people on the estate. Yet this issue has been carefully skirted
around by local Labour politicians throughout the past four years-an attitude of denial that persists right to the very top of the party.
Last month it was revealed that Tony Blair had tried to suppress a report showing that the government was losing the war on drugs (‘Low seizure rates give traffickers vast profits from £4bn a year business, says
report ministers refuse to publish,’ The Guardian, 5 July). The study, produced by the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit delivers a scathing verdict on efforts to disrupt the supply of drugs.
No wonder, then, that when we realised at the election count that Labour had won, one of our activists commented dryly, ‘The dealers will be delighted’.
What happened?
Regardless of our view that Labour’s victory in the by-election is a setback for Blackbird and Greater Leys, the fact remains that the IWCA failed to win enough votes. If we want to get things back on track and
ensure that we maintain pressure to improve the estate, both on the ground and in the council chamber, we have to ask why.
That New Labour’s Carole Roberts gained just under 600 votes ought not, in hindsight, to be too great a surprise. The party of government did extensive canvassing, there was the natural expression of sympathy
for the late councillor Molly Florey, and its profile also benefitted from the by-election being called right off the back of the General Election campaign, during which the estate was flooded with Labour activists.
For weeks leading up to the election, university students, councillors from across Oxford and others who had willingly answered the call that Labour put out across the whole of the South East to come to
Blackbird Leys and campaign against the ‘unpleasant’ IWCA, dutifully tramped the streets of our estate, maps in hand, eager to do their bit to help shore up the local establishment.
Yet apparently not content with their sheer superiority in terms of numbers, they introduced a new ploy, which was to deliver leaflets masquerading as personal, hand-written recommendations supposedly from
‘non-political’ residents in support of the Labour candidate. Add on a seemingly ‘no-expense spared’ telephone canvassing campaign and we can see where the boost to the Labour vote came from.
What, perhaps, isn’t so clear is why IWCA voters failed to turn out despite the 100% effort put in by our local canvassers and the positive feedback we received on the doorstep. We are of course grateful to
the 300 IWCA supporters who did vote. Yet what happened to the others we had good reason to anticipate would turn out?
The tactic of swamping the estate with canvassers and flooding letterboxes with leaflets (saying very little), carried out by all the mainstream parties had the effect of turning voters off and reducing the
overall turn-out.
The Lib Dems and also the Tories put major efforts into the Northfield Brook ward despite never having taken any interest in the estate before. The extremely low votes here at previous elections can hardly
explain their new found determination to pull out all the stops this time.
What was also remarked on at the polling stations was the pally relationship between Labour and Lib Dem activists, even though the Lib Dems have never previously bothered to turn up to polling stations in
Blackbird Leys at all. But whatever lay behind the chumminess, the fact is their combined efforts proved effective on the day.
Finally it also has to be admitted that, with the lengthy General Election campaign and two recent local by-elections, residents have for the past six months seen rather more of the IWCA engaged in election
canvassing and rather less of us getting things done on the ground, even if we have still achieved far more than the other parties managed between them.
Whereas for Labour and the others, appearing on the doorstep at election time can only increase their standing as they are rarely seen at any other time, the IWCA by contrast, is known for campaigning all
year round. But as the Northfield Brook by-election has shown, a reputation for ‘making a difference’ can be seriously undermined when all we appear to do is hustle for votes.
The way forward
July 21st was a sad day for Blackbird Leys. The IWCA’s failure to capitalise on the opportunity afforded by the Northfield Brook by-election is a step backwards, a blow against our efforts to build a
genuine, effective working class response to the many issues which blight residents’ lives. Fortunately, though, this seat along with Labour’s other seat in Blackbird Leys is to be contested again in 10
months time.
This should allow enough time to make further progress with our ongoing campaign to reclaim our community from drug dealers and other antisocial elements, as well as tackling the many other areas of concern
people have raised with us. At that stage we’ll be happy to let residents decide once again who they feel is really serious about improving our estate and our community.
Leys Independent, issue 29, August 2005
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