Gains for TUV in Ulster council elections
Most results are now in from the local council elections in Northern Ireland, held on 18th May. These elections were postponed by a fortnight due to the STV proportional representation system, which meant that counting could not have been completed before the Coronation, had voting taken place on 4th May at the same time as the English elections.
As has previously been highlighted by H&D, Rishi Sunak’s supposedly ‘Conservative’ government seems happy to abandon the Union. Ministers made clear that they hoped unionist voters would swing away from the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), led by Enoch Powell’s former campaign manager Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, towards parties that embrace Sunak’s sell-out agenda.
In fact DUP seems to have held on to most of its support, while there were significant gains for Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV), the party that refuses to surrender sovereignty to Dublin and rejects a “sea border” between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
TUV won nine seats in total, a net gain of three. They held on to their five seats on the Mid & East Antrim Council; gained a seat in Cusher (a rural area of County Armagh); regained a seat in Ballymoney while gaining another in Causeway; and gained a seat in the Court area of Belfast.
The latter gain was especially symbolic, as Court DEA includes the Shankill and previously elected a councillor from the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP), a party formerly aligned with loyalist paramilitaries but which in recent years has pursued a ‘woke’ agenda.
Until a few months ago, TUV might have expected even greater gains. But the party’s leaders would argue that it has succeeded in pulling DUP back towards its traditional agenda.
This election was a disaster for the two arms of liberal/leftwing unionism. The once-powerful UUP’s vote across the province fell from 14.2% to a new low of 10.9%, and it lost 21 of its previous 75 council seats. While the PUP disappeared from the electoral map completely, and its future now seems in doubt.
H&D pulls no punches in post-election analysis
After several days of reflection on last week’s local elections. H&D‘s assistant editor Peter Rushton has written a hard-hitting analysis of the results, seeking to draw some long overdue, hard lessons for our movement.
Peter has a long record of practical electoral activism as well as academic analysis. Click here to read his new article.
Facts and figures on the election can be found here.
Time for nationalists to decide: are we serious?
Professional politicians are notorious for ‘spinning’ even the most unfavourable election results, looking for a silver lining to the darkest clouds.
As racial nationalists, we have to be more honest than these ‘spin doctors’. Last week’s elections were appalling. They reflected years of decline, years of factional division, years of vanity, years of crank obsessions, years of tolerating substandard conduct within our ranks.
One of the most decent and intelligent men in nationalism, Jim Lewthwaite, who was elected BNP councillor for Wyke ward in Bradford with 1,583 votes in 2004, and was runner-up with 701 votes in the same ward as a British Democrat candidate in 2019, polled only 140 votes (5.1%) in Wyke this year.
To his credit, Jim finished ahead of a Reform UK candidate, but the verdict of most of his old voters was “none of the above”.
In Hollinwood ward, Oldham, National Housing Party leader John Lawrence polled 205 votes (7.6%). Though far from the worst result in 2023, this followed twenty years of nationalist decline in Hollinwood and the surrounding area. In 2002 Oldham BNP organiser Mick Treacy achieved 736 votes (23.9%) here; a year later this fell slightly to 503 votes (22.8%) and a much diminished and divided BNP never contested Hollinwood again.
UKIP eventually picked up the disillusioned White working class vote in Hollinwood, polling 37.2% in 2014, 28.9% in 2015, 30.3% in 2016, and 25.9% in 2019.
John Lawrence and NHP grew out of activity in the Hollinwood area by ‘Tommy Robinson’ (formerly of the EDL). The party is anti-immigration though non-‘racist’. In 2022 Lawrence polled 174 votes (10.1%), falling to just 59 votes (3.7%) in a misfiring by-election campaign last November, and now bouncing back slightly to 7.6% this year.
For many reasons, partly connected to allegations of local government corruption and ‘grooming’ scandals, there should be enormous potential for racial nationalism in this ward and in the rest of Oldham. Yet quite clearly that potential is not being mined. This year three Asian Conservatives were elected in Hollinwood! The new Tory councillors include Kamran Ghafoor, who was convicted and fined in 2012 for offences under the Housing Act, after failing to ensure that a property he rented out was safe to live in.
Another nationalist failure was in Swanscombe ward, Dartford, where Britain First leader Paul Golding polled a fraction under 5%. Britain First is an anti-Islam, anti-immigration, but multiracialist party that (like the NHP) has recruited both from the EDL scene and among ex-BNP activists such as Golding himself. Golding had no opposition from Reform UK, UKIP or any of its splinter parties. This was a ward where UKIP polled 16.5% in 2019 and even higher votes in earlier years, yet despite fighting only seven wards across the whole of England this year, Britain First polled less than 5% here.
Compared to past years, when many of our potential voters were seduced either by UKIP, the Brexit Party, or Boris Johnson’s Tories, nationalists ought to have been pushing at an open door this year.
Rishi Sunak’s Tories have far less appeal to White working class Britons than their counterparts had in the Boris Johnson era. Brexit is no longer an issue, immigration remains out of control, and lower income families are hard-pressed by the cost of living crisis.
Yet British nationalism has suffered such damage (partly self-inflicted) during the past decade that hardly any of our candidates made a serious impact with voters.
There were very few honourable exceptions. Julian Leppert was an excellent councillor in Epping Forest, and although he lost his seat after four years on the council, his result (25.2%) stood out from a generally dismal crowd.
Yet even here, the question must be asked: why did the British Democrats (Julian’s party for the past year since the closure of For Britain) not begin leafletting the moment he joined their party?
Given that there were no elections in London this year, why were there not more activists out on the streets of Waltham Abbey for months before the campaign formally started, introducing the Brit Dems and highlighting Julian’s excellent record of fighting for local residents? (Again there are a few honourable exceptions: several Londoners did make the effort and should be commended for continuing to fly the flag for nationalism and avoiding disillusionment.)
Why are many nationalists in 2023 happier to protest about drag queens, or go on marches to promote conspiracy theories about CoViD, while seeming to lose interest in serious racial nationalism – especially the essential hard slog of election campaigning?
To be fair, the British Democrats have made considerable progress during the last year or two, recruiting several valuable activists. The real problems date back more than a decade, to the rapid collapse of Nick Griffin’s BNP.
When Andrew Brons narrowly failed to oust Griffin as BNP chairman in the leadership election of July 2011, it was obvious that a new party would soon be needed, yet it took years to get that party off the ground. More than 2,300 BNP members voted in that leadership election: 1,157 for Griffin and 1,148 for Brons. Probably fewer than 100 of these are today active in any nationalist party.
During recent weeks there have been arguments between Patriotic Alternative leaders and some of their former colleagues, now in the Homeland Party, about whether PA has made sufficient efforts to register as a political party, and to convert its undoubted success online into “real world” activity.
I don’t intend to take sides in that argument, because I don’t know the full facts.
But questions need to be asked as to why so many nationalists are happier on social media than on doorsteps. This applies to civic nationalists in Reform UK, UKIP and its splinters, even more than to racial nationalists.
Part of the problem is defeatism, engendered by a style of politics that overemphasises conspiracies and the presumed power of our enemies.
Of course we face great obstacles – legal, financial, and political – but these are far from insuperable. Nationalist campaigns have repeatedly punched above our weight and shocked the political establishment – especially in Burnley, Oldham, Blackburn, Barking & Dagenham and many other council areas during the 2000s – but for whatever reason, we no longer seem capable of delivering at the ballot box.
Some nationalists argue that elections are a waste of time, but they have so far failed to explain an alternative strategy.
As far back as the 1980s, Steve Brady (then a member of the National Front Directorate) explained a “ladder strategy” by which nationalists could establish networks of local branches by building on local community campaigning. Elections are certainly not the only element of this strategy, but if nationalists aren’t capable of organising a serious local election campaign, how are any of us supposed to believe that they can lead a racial nationalist revolution?
As we have consistently argued in H&D, there are only two good reasons to be involved in politics. First, to present an ideologically solid solution to the problems of our race and nation, educating the best of our new recruits. Second, to build towards gaining power, locally and eventually nationally, so as to put this ideology into action.
Sometimes one of these objectives has to be prioritised over the other; sometimes they can work in parallel; sometimes different nationalists have to devote their efforts to one or the other.
Tragically what we are left with in 2023 is a movement that too often fulfils neither objective – instead abandoning serious ideology to pursue crank fads (often imported online from the USA) that are of no relevance to the racial nationalist cause, but also have no substantial appeal to the British electorate.
Three good examples are a trio of intellectually flimsy, unBritish, indeed anti-British and anti-European political cults: Trumpism, anti-vaxxism, and Putinism.
If any individual nationalist truly believes that Donald Trump presents a genuine challenge to the New World Order; or that vaccinations and even the pandemic itself were some sort of scam or conspiracy; or that the brutal anti-European dictator Vladimir Putin is in some sense a champion of traditional European values – then they are welcome to pursue these eccentric views.
But once any or all of these cults infect a nationalist party or movement, they become a toxic threat to our cause. The vast majority of British voters will never believe that CoViD vaccinations were a mass poisoning plot; they will never take Donald Trump seriously; and they will never support Putin’s semi-Asiatic hordes.
The inevitable unpopularity of these causes would not matter if any of them were essential to our core racial nationalist ideology: but they aren’t. At best they are a distraction, at worst a fatal liability.
Urgent priorities for rebuilding nationalism in 2023 should involve identifying topical issues in target wards: questions of immediate local concern that can be explained to voters in ways that make the underlying ideology of racial nationalism clearly relevant to their daily lives.
We have the great advantage that truth is on our side, and truth cannot be suppressed forever. And we should avoid the tempting excuse that the system is rigged, or that ‘they’ control everything so there’s no point in any form of practical resistance other than ranting on social media.
The political conspirator Cassius, in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, tells a comrade:
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.“
In 2023 racial nationalists should not blame the system, or the media, or our opponents. Such obstacles will always exist. But with sufficient will and intelligence, they can be overcome.
Vivat Rex Carolus!
The UK’s racial nationalist movement – battered and bruised after a grim set of election results this week – will have had mixed feelings about today’s Coronation of King Charles III.
Amid the inevitable wokeness, welcome elements of British tradition remained visible and audible throughout the event.
The spirit of the United Kingdom, the heritage of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, is still alive.
And the same is true of racial nationalism in these dark times.
It will very soon be time for our movement to face some hard truths. This website and forthcoming issues of our magazine will not shy away from expressing these truths in strong terms, even at the risk of offending some readers.
But for today, we wish our new King well, and hope that he and his fellow Britons can interpret the Archbishop’s words at the Enthronement in terms that ensure loyalty to the Union, Race and Nation.
Stand firm, and hold fast from henceforth this seat of royal dignity, which is yours by the authority of Almighty God.
May that same God, whose throne endures for ever, establish your throne in righteousness, that it may stand fast for evermore.
Local Elections 2023
for updated list of this year’s nationalist results, click here
England’s last racial nationalist councillor – Julian Leppert in Waltham Abbey Paternoster ward, Epping Forest – was defeated in Thursday’s elections. Julian polled 187 votes (25.2%), which is likely to be the best nationalist election result this year, but lost his seat to a Conservative candidate.
This year Julian was standing as a British Democrat, having been elected four years ago for the now-defunct For Britain Movement (and having been a BNP councillor a decade ago).
Most of England held local elections on 4th May – a first chance for voters to give a verdict on the latest reinvention of the Conservative Party under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. These elections were also a final chance for Reform UK, the civic nationalist party that grew out of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party but has so far failed to make any serious impact.
For H&D readers, one of the most interesting results was in Walkden North ward, Salford, where Ashlea Simon of Britain First polled 405 votes (18.2%).
This was down from 508 votes (21.6%) last year, but realistically it was another good result for Ms Simon and her party, given that this year they faced opposition from Reform UK, who finished bottom of the poll with only 68 votes (3.0%).
Britain First focused a great deal of effort on this Salford campaign, and the result contrasted with nearby Broadheath ward, Trafford, where their candidate Donald Southworth polled 153 votes (3.6%). Paul Harding managed 214 votes (13.1%) in Hockley & Ashingdon ward, Rochford; Nick Lambert 108 votes (12.6%) in Ballard ward, New Forest; and Nick Scanlon 61 votes (10.2%) in Darenth ward, Dartford. The Britain First candidates in Bideford South ward, Torridge, polled 15%, benefiting from the fact that the Tories did not contest the ward. Ironically the second-worst Britain First result was for their leader Paul Golding, who polled 6.9% in Swanscombe ward, Dartford.
Former BNP councillor Graham Partner achieved another of the best nationalist results overnight, with 94 votes (15.9%) as independent candidate for Hermitage ward, NW Leicestershire. Another nationalist standing without a party label was David Hyden, backed by activists from the new Homeland Party: he polled 81 votes (5.7%) in Cannock South ward, Cannock Chase.
The National Front’s sole candidate this year was Tim Knowles, who polled 40 votes (1.8%) in Codnor, Langley Mill & Aldercar, Amber Valley.
One of England’s newest (civic) nationalist parties – the National Housing Party UK – had three candidates this year. Callum Leat polled 228 votes (10.3%) in Dodington ward, South Gloucestershire. Former BNP and For Britain Movement activist Gary Bergin polled 149 votes (4.1%) in Claughton ward, Wirral. And NHPUK leader John Lawrence polled 205 votes (7.6%) in Hollinwood ward, Oldham.
Dr Andrew Emerson, a former BNP candidate who has for some years been the sole candidate of his own small party Patria, polled 6.4% in Chichester East ward, Chichester.
The first British Democrat results overnight were in Essex. In Kursaal ward, Southend, former East London BNP activist Steve Smith polled 42 votes (2.6%), finishing narrowly ahead of a candidate from the Heritage Party (a civic nationalist splinter from UKIP) who polled 2.1%. Mr Smith’s Brit Dem colleague Chris Bateman fared slightly better in Laindon Park ward, Basildon, with 89 votes (4.2%).
The British Democrats had better news during today’s counts, with Julian Leppert’s 25.2% (see above) being easily the best nationalist result this year, though David Haslett faced a tough campaign in the multiracial Saffron ward, Leicester, and polled 34 votes (1.9%). In Wyke ward, Bradford, Brit Dem leader Dr Jim Lewthwaite polled 140 votes (5.1%), finishing five votes ahead of a Reform UK opponent.
Some very poor overnight results for Reform UK indicated that they have very little genuine local activism, despite high profile backing at national level from the likes of Nigel Farage and GB News. (Speaking of GB News, one of their political commentators Sophie Corcoran was heavily defeated as Tory candidate for Chadwell St Mary ward, Thurrock.)
Even in Lichfield, where former Tory mayor Barry Gwilt defected to Reform UK earlier this year, neither Mr Gwilt nor any other Reform UK candidate stood for election this week.
The only good news for Reform UK so far has been in by far their best branch – Derby – where they retained six seats across their two wards, Alvaston North and Alvaston South.
One of the very few really active Reform UK branches is in Bolton, where they had 34 candidates, but none were elected. (Their strongest Bolton vote was 17% in Farnworth North.)
Even in areas such as Lincolnshire’s South Kesteven council (which includes Margaret Thatcher’s birthplace Grantham), where Sunak’s Conservatives lost many votes and seats, the ‘protest vote’ went to independents rather than to Reform UK or any of the UKIP splinter parties (two of which have already closed down). It seems that the Farage era is very definitely over.
Further confirmation of this came from Boston, another Lincolnshire council, which was one of the main UKIP and Brexit Party target areas of the past decade. UKIP lost their last remaining Boston council seat yesterday. Reform UK contested just one Boston ward, where they finished with only 4%, behind an English Democrat candidate on 7%.
English Democrat leader Robin Tilbrook polled 10.3% in Shelley ward, Epping Forest. Nationwide the EDs had five candidates, including Steve and Val Morris in Bury who polled 6.1% and 2.9% respectively.
Election counts continued this afternoon. H&D will have full reports and analysis on results as they arrive throughout the day.
(There were no elections this week in Scotland or Wales. Northern Ireland’s local elections are on 18th May.)
On the campaign trail in Bradford
H&D‘s assistant editor visited Bradford yesterday to campaign with our patron Dr Jim Lewthwaite, chairman of the British Democrats, who is contesting Wyke ward at the Bradford City Council elections on 4th May.
Jim was a councillor for Wyke ward from 2004-2007 and was among the first campaigners to draw attention to the city’s infamous ‘grooming’ scandal.
H&D is a non-party publication and we encourage our readers to support racial nationalist candidates regardless of faction.
Dr Jim Lewthwaite, a Cambridge-educated archaeologist, has been a regular speaker at H&D‘s John Tyndall Memorial Meetings, including last September’s event in Preston which also commemorated Colin Jordan and Richard Edmonds.
Ex-BNP official suspended by Tories
A former senior official in Nick Griffin’s BNP has been exposed in Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party. The Tories have suspended Andy McBride from party membership, but he remains a Conservative candidate on the ballot paper for Bracknell Town Council in Berkshire.
During the late 2000s McBride became notorious as an especially factional and obstreperous BNP official. As regional organiser for South East England, he was a bitter enemy of H&D and sought to obstruct or even purge Griffin’s enemies from BNP ranks. His targets included well known supporters of former BNP leader John Tyndall, including the late Richard Edmonds and Warren Glass.
Now it is McBride himself who is being purged from his new party. He is accused not only of past roles in the BNP and Britain First, but of allegedly ‘racist’ posts on social media.
In 2011 McBride and his close ally, Ulster businessman Jim Dowson, resigned from the BNP and formed Britain First, together with former BNP official Paul Golding. Three years later, Dowson and McBride quit Britain First after a dispute with Golding. McBride made his way into the Conservative Party, while Dowson operates a series of Ulster-based fundraising enterprises alongside Nick Griffin.
McBride has written several garbled, ideologically incoherent replies to recent exposés by local newspapers. In his way, McBride is probably a sincere Christian whose politics are fundamentally reactionary and anti-Muslim rather than racial nationalist, but who ventures into colourful language and politically incorrect metaphors on social media.
The sad end to his political career shows that old-fashioned reactionaries have no future in today’s ‘woke’ Conservative Party. But equally, the fact that someone as ideologically vacuous as McBride ever became a BNP regional organiser is a damning indictment of the Griffin era.
UK Local Elections 2023
Nominations have closed for more than 8,000 contests at this year’s local elections in England and Wales. (Northern Ireland’s council elections have a slightly different timescale, and there are no elections in Scotland this year.)
The nationalist and broadly patriotic cause in the UK is still going through its post-Brexit transition, and this is reflected in the small numbers of candidates from racial nationalist parties. You can find a comprehensive list of candidates and parties by clicking this link, but these are the main headlines.
- The British Democrats are the main electorally focused racial nationalist movement, and have five candidates this year, including Julian Leppert who will be defending the seat he won four years ago in Waltham Abbey Paternoster ward, Epping Forest. Mr Leppert won that seat as a candidate of the now defunct For Britain Movement, but he joined the Brit Dems after FBM leader Anne-Marie Waters closed down her party.
- Britain First, led by former BNP official Paul Golding, is the main electoral voice of the anti-Islam movement. It is in principle a non-racial, anti-Islam party, though it includes several veteran racial nationalists. They have eight candidates this year, and their main campaign is likely to be in Walkden North, Salford, where Ashlea Simon will seek to build on the 21.6% she won last year.
- Another anti-Islamist party which has grown slightly during the past year is the National Housing Party, which has three candidates this year, including former BNP and FBM activist Gary Bergin in Claughton ward, Wirral.
- Patriotic Alternative (the country’s most active racial nationalist movement) is still not registered as a political party and therefore unable to contest elections.
- The British National Party, which during the 2000s won many council seats and elected two Members of the European Parliament, has effectively ceased to exist: once again this year there are no BNP candidates anywhere in the UK, and in all likelihood there never will be again.
- The National Front, which during the 1970s was one of Europe’s largest racial nationalist parties, still ticks over as a guardian of racial nationalist ideals, but has only one candidate this year: Tim Knowles in Codnor, Langley Mill & Aldercar ward, Amber Valley.
- Former BNP organiser Dr Andrew Emerson is again standing in his home city of Chichester for his small party Patria.
- Two nationalist independents are standing this year: former councillor Graham Partner in Coalville, NW Leicestershire, and Gary Butler in Shepway, Maidstone.
- The English Democrats, who are a non-racial party but who campaign for an English Parliament as well as immigration restrictions and other issues of interest to H&D readers, have five candidates this year, including party leader Robin Tilbrook in Shelley ward, Epping Forest, and husband and wife team Steve and Val Morris in Bury. Two former ED activists have defected to the rival English Constitution Party and will stand in Barnsley.
- Various civic nationalist parties that grew out of UKIP remain bitterly divided and ideologically confused. Reform UK (by far the largest and best funded) have 480 candidates this year, but unless they can make a serious impact this might be their last serious campaign. UKIP itself has only 48 candidates this year, while rival splinter groups include the Heritage Party with 64 (plus a mayoral candidate) and the Alliance for Freedom & Democracy with 23.
(Please note that election reports and statistics on the H&D site do not usually include parish/town council elections. We only focus on the borough/district council level and above.)
Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party (which was the main vehicle for the pro-Brexit cause) split in 2018 with Farage founding the Brexit Party, which eventually evolved into today’s Reform UK, led by Farage’s close associate Richard Tice.
Reform UK remains by far the largest vehicle for the broadly civic nationalist cause in the UK, but it is ideologically poles apart from most H&D readers. Tice’s party is blatantly non-racist, and economically liberal. H&D has long argued that the slow death of Reform UK (and of Farageist politics in general) is necessary before the British racial nationalist tradition can revive.
After at least two years of generally dismal election results, Reform UK has (on paper) done well to field 480 candidates at this year’s council elections. But it has very few serious functioning branches. Tice’s best branch by far is in Derby, where the entire council is up for re-election, including the six seats presently held by Reform UK who have a full slate of 51 candidates for the new council.
In addition to Derby, Reform UK has three other really substantial slates of candidates: Bolton (34), Amber Valley (28), and Sunderland (24).
Who is standing where in the 2023 local elections
On this page you will find a comprehensive list of nationalist results at the 2023 elections, and also lists from various parties that grew out of the pro-Brexit movement and that some would consider broadly nationalist/patriotic despite being multiracialist.
Nationalists standing this year included –
British Democrats: 5 candidates
Wyke ward, Bradford: Dr Jim Lewthwaite 140 votes (5.1%)
Laindon Park, Basildon: Chris Bateman 89 votes (4.2%)
Waltham Abbey Paternoster, Epping Forest: Julian Leppert 187 votes (25.2%)
Saffron, Leicester: Dave Haslett 34 votes (1.9%)
Kursaal, Southend: Steve Smith 42 votes (2.6%)
Britain First: 8 candidates
Darenth, Dartford: Nick Scanlon 61 votes (10.2%)
Swanscombe, Dartford: Paul Golding 107 votes (6.9%)
Ballard, New Forest: Nick Lambert 108 votes (12.6%)
Hockley & Ashingdon, Rochford: Paul Harding 214 votes (13.1%)
Walkden North, Salford: Ashlea Simon 405 votes (18.2%)
Bideford South, Torridge: Philip Green and Anne Townsend 108 and 96 votes (15.0%)
Broadheath, Trafford: Donald Southworth 153 votes (3.6%)
National Front: 1 candidate
Codnor, Langley Mill & Aldercar, Amber Valley: Tim Knowles 40 votes (1.8%)
Patria: 1 candidate
Chichester East, Chichester: Dr Andrew Emerson 92 votes (6.4%)
National Housing Party: 3 candidates
Hollinwood, Oldham: John Lawrence 205 votes (7.6%)
Dodington, South Gloucestershire: Callum Leat 228 votes (10.3%)
Claughton, Wirral: Gary Bergin 149 votes (4.1%)
English Democrats: 5 candidates
Old Leake & Wrangle, Boston: David Dickason 75 votes (7.0%)
Besses, Bury: Steve Morris 139 votes (6.1%)
Holyrood, Bury: Val Morris 102 votes (2.9%)
Leighton Linslade North, Central Bedfordshire: Antonio Vitiello 133 votes (4.0%)
Shelley, Epping Forest: Robin Tilbrook 34 votes (10.3%)
English Constitution Party: 2 candidates
Dearne North, Barnsley: Maxine Spencer 118 votes (8.2%)
Dearne South, Barnsley: Janus Polenceusz 37 votes (2.1%)
Independents:
Cannock South, Cannock Chase: David Hyden 81 votes (5.7%)
Shepway North, Maidstone: Gary Butler 114 votes (7.0%)
Hermitage, NW Leicestershire: Graham Partner 94 votes (15.9%)
A broader analysis of the results and their significance will appear on this website during the weekend. Candidates from civic nationalist and pro-Brexit parties included:
Reform UK: 480 candidates
Amber Valley 28
Ashford 1
Barnsley 4
Basildon 1
Bedford 2
Blaby 1
Blackpool 5
Bolsover 1
Bolton 34
Boston 1
Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole 1
Bracknell Forest 1
Bradford 3
Braintree 4
Breckland 2
Brentwood 1
Broadland 5
Bromsgrove 1
Bury 1
Canterbury 3
Castle Point 2
Central Bedfordshire 6
Charnwood 6
Cheshire East 2
Cheshire W & Chester 3
Chichester 2
Colchester 4
Coventry 1
Crawley 1
Dacorum 4
Dartford 5
Derby 51
Dover 1
Dudley 4
East Hampshire 3
East Herts 1
East Lindsey 1
East Riding of Yorks 4
East Staffs 2
Eastbourne 2
Eastleigh 1
Elmbridge 2
Epping Forest 2
Exeter 1
Fenland 1
Folkestone & Hythe 3
Fylde 1
Gateshead 1
Gravesham 3
Great Yarmouth 2
Halton 1
Harborough 1
Harlow 1
Hart 1
Hartlepool 10
Havant 1
Herefordshire 6
Hertsmere 2
High Peak 1
Hinckley & Bosworth 4
Horsham 2
Hull 1
Hyndburn 1
Ipswich 1
Kirklees 1
Leeds 3
Leicester 1
Lewes 1
Lincoln 5
Lincolnshire 1 [county council by-election]
Liverpool 1
Luton 2
Maidstone 1
Malvern Hills 2
Manchester 2
Mansfield 1
Medway 2
Mid Devon 1
Mid Suffolk 2
Milton Keynes 7
Newark & Sherwood 1
North Herts 2
North Kesteven 5
North Norfolk 2
North Tyneside 5
NW Leics 2
Peterborough 1
Plymouth 2
Portsmouth 2
Redcar & Cleveland 2
Reigate & Banstead 1
Rochford 2
Rugby 2
Runnymede 1
Rushcliffe 1
Rushmoor 1
St Albans 1
Salford 1
Sandwell 9
Sefton 1
Sevenoaks 1
Sheffield 5
South Gloucs 2
South Holland 1
South Kesteven 3
South Norfolk 1
South Oxfordshire 2
South Tyneside 1
Southampton 5
Spelthorne 2
Stafford 7
Staffs Moorlands 1
Stevenage 1
Stockport 4
Stockton-on-Tees 10
Stoke on Trent 1
Stratford on Avon 1
Sunderland 24
Surrey Heath 2
Swale 4
Tamworth 1
Teignbridge 1
Tendring 4
Thanet 2
Thurrock 3
Tonbridge & Malling 2
Trafford 2
Tunbridge Wells 1
Uttlesford 3
Vale of White Horse 1
Wakefield 2
Walsall 9
Warwick 1
Watford 5
Waverley 2
Wealden 1
Welwyn Hatfield 3
West Berkshire 2
West Devon 2
West Lindsey 6
West Suffolk 2
Wigan 3
Winchester 1
Windsor & Maidenhead 1
Wirral 5
Wolverhampton 1
Worcester 1
Worthing 1
Wychavon 2
UKIP: 48 candidates
Braintree 1
Breckland 1
Brighton & Hove 3
Cambridge 1
Chelmsford 1
East Cambridgeshire 1
Eastbourne 3
Elmbridge 1
Folkestone & Hythe 1
Hinckley & Bosworth 1
North Lincs 1
North Tyneside 4
Nottingham 2
Pendle 1
Rother 10
South Staffs 2
Surrey 1 [county council by-election]
Tamworth 2
Tendring 1
Test Valley 1
Thurrock 1
Torridge 2
Warwick 1
Wealden 2
West Berkshire 1
Wigan 2
Heritage Party: 64 council candidates + 1 Mayoral
Arun 3
Bedford – Mayoral Election
Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole 1
Bracknell Forest 1
Braintree 1
Broadland 1
Burnley 1
Cambridge 1
Chelmsford 1
Chichester 1
Cotswold 1
Crawley 3
Dover 1
East Devon 1
East Hampshire 1
East Herts 1
East Suffolk 1
Elmbridge 3
Hart 1
Horsham 1
Ipswich 1
King’s Lynn & W Norfolk 1
Maidstone 1
Medway 1
Milton Keynes 1
North Lincs 1
N Warwicks 1
Plymouth 2
Runnymede 1
Rushmoor 1
Slough 1
South Hams 2
South Staffs 1
Southend 2
Swale 1
Tandridge 1
Teignbridge 7
Test Valley 1
Tonbridge & Malling 1
Warwick 1
Watford 1
West Berkshire 1
West Oxfordshire 2
Wigan 1
Woking 3
Wokingham 1
Worthing 1
Alliance for Democracy & Freedom: 23 candidates
Blackburn with Darwen 1
Broxtowe 1
Charnwood 1
Cheshire W & Chester 1
Coventry 1
East Riding of Yorks 1
Fenland 2
Fylde 1
Havant 1
Ipswich 1
Leicester 1
Oldham 3
Preston 1
Rochford 1
South Ribble 3
Wyre 3
Political change in Britain: 40 years after Bermondsey
Political journalists have been looking back forty years on the anniversary of the Bermondsey by-election, a famous gain on 24th February 1983 for the Liberal / SDP ‘Alliance’, whose candidate Simon Hughes achieved what is still the largest swing in by-election history: 44.2%, turning a Labour majority of 11,756 into an Alliance majority of almost 10,000.
Most of the publicity (including several interviews with the defeated Labour candidate Peter Tatchell) has focused on the question of ‘gay rights’, an agenda that has moved on considerably in the intervening decades. Tatchell made no secret of his homosexuality, though at the time he was not so closely identified with the ‘gay rights’ cause as he later became.
Tatchell was vilified by the tabloid press, who gleefully picked up the ‘homophobic’ abuse that was thrown at him, mainly by his rivals on the decaying and often corrupt old ‘right-wing’ of the Labour Party. These included retiring MP Bob Mellish and his ally John O’Grady, long-serving leader (1968-82) of the local Southwark Council.
O’Grady had been ousted as Labour candidate for the Dockyard ward that he had represented since Southwark council’s creation in 1964, while Mellish decided to retire as an MP so as to take a well-paid position as vice-chairman of the London Dockyard Development Corporation. (He eventually became Lord Mellish of Bermondsey.)
Looking back on the by-election, Tatchell’s views don’t seem especially ‘far left’ even by the standards of the time, let alone by today’s standards. The real issues affecting Londoners (then as now) included housing. Tatchell and the Labour left had (justifiably) campaigned against the record of their own party, who took local voters for granted and did far too little for council tenants.
Totally ignored by all of the mainstream parties was the ethnic transformation of London which had already begun: parts of the Southwark and Bermondsey area now regularly see gun and knife crime that would once have been rare. And today’s viewers of the 1983 by-election coverage will be astonished to see that forty years ago White working-class voters were still a very large percentage of the electorate.
Sadly the racial nationalist challenge in these areas had already declined by 1983. There were at least four rival candidates from our broad movement. Jim Sneath from the National Front polled 426 votes (1.4%) and finished fifth of what was then a record sixteen candidates. Anti-immigration campaigner Lady Birdwood (standing as an ‘Independent Patriot’) polled 69 votes (0.2%), slightly ahead of Michael Keulemans from the New Britain Party with 62 votes (0.2%), while Ann King of the National Labour Party (a tiny splinter from the NF, formed in 1981) took just 25 votes (0.1%).
This was the sad outcome from several years of decline for the NF in this area. Less than six years earlier at the Greater London Council elections, Sneath had polled 1,515 votes (8.8%) in this constituency, despite the rival National Party even then splitting the nationalist vote and taking 239 votes (1.4%). In other words a combined nationalist vote of 10.2% in 1977 had fallen to 1.9% in 1983.
It’s understandable that voters were confused and disillusioned by the factionalism that had overtaken the NF during those six years.
Many White working-class voters in 1983 backed ousted council leader O’Grady, who stood as ‘Real Bermondsey Labour’ (even though in many ways he represented the worst of the ‘Old Labour’ establishment partly responsible for the area’s decline). He took third place in the by-election with 2,243 votes (7.6%). John O’Grady died in April 2009, having witnessed the total extinction (for better and worse) of the ‘Old Labour Party’ that he knew.
But the main beneficiary of local voters’ disgust with Labour (both left and right), was the Liberal-SDP Alliance candidate Simon Hughes. Despite his own (secret) bisexuality, Hughes also benefited from the ‘homophobic’ reaction against Tatchell.
(There is still controversy over the extent to which some Alliance activists, though not Hughes himself, deliberately encouraged this ‘homophobia’.)
It’s ironic that two of the three mainstream politicians on the panel in the ITV by-election programme (see video link above) had their own ‘scandals’ in their private lives. Liberal MP Sir Clement Freud was later accused of predatory abuse of underage girls, while Tory chairman Cecil Parkinson had to resign at the end of 1983 after fathering a child with his secretary. Robert Hughes (the Tory candidate at this by-election) also had to resign as a minister twelve years later after admitting an affair with a constituent.
On most issues today Tatchell would probably fit into the mainstream of Labour, while Mellish and O’Grady would be a London version of ‘Red Wall’ Tories. The Southwark and Bermondsey area is now unrecognisable, with most of the White working-class having left, and replaced by an assortment of ethnic minorities (including many Africans) and trendy young middle-class Whites.
Yet the local Labour party remains mired in controversy. Neil Coyle – the Labour MP who eventually ousted Hughes in 2015 – has been suspended from Labour for more than a year and was recently suspended by the parliamentary standards commissioner after an incident of alcohol-fuelled ‘racist’ abuse against a journalist.
Coyle seems likely to be replaced at the next election, but sadly the days when racial nationalists could expect strong votes in Bermondsey are long gone. There are many parts of the UK where a reunited and reinvigorated racial nationalist movement has great potential, but Bermondsey is not among them. The proud history of its White working-class has long since ebbed away with the tide of the River Thames, and is now history.
