Labour Rose Surbiton - June 2018

Labour Rose Surbiton

June 2018 • Issue 01

Branch May elections open for business

Labour wins over half the UK seats across the country but draws a distressing blank with no councillors in Kingston. hh

In these days where branch closures are announced daily, we are delighted to inform you of the re-activation of the Surbiton branch of the local Labour Party.

This is a growing community of local party members committed to campaigning for a Surbiton that works for the many not the few.

Our first official meeting will be held in the Surbiton Library Hall at 8pm. We only have the room booked for an hour so please be on time as the meeting will start at 8pm sharp.

We will be conducting elections for three posts – chair, secretary and treasurer. We will accept nominations on the night, but if you can, please email your nomination in advance (see below).

All party members are invited.

There is a hire charge on the room, so we will be inviting a tiny donation. After our hour is up, we will be adjourning to the New Prince nearby where we can enjoy a less formal discussion.

LOCAL CONTACTS Nominations: scdudman@aol.com (for the attention of Struan Dudman) General: surbitonlabour@gmail.com Editorial: phila@kingstonlabour.com

While the media seemed intent on making it appear otherwise, May 3rd was actually a pretty good day for Labour. We performed quite well in most of the 150 council elections that were held in England. A total of 4,404 council seats were contested with Labour gaining an additional 79 seats to win more than all the other parties put together (2,350 or 53.3% of the total).

Labour candidates won five of the direct elections for mayor in six authorities: Hackney (Philip Glanville), Lewisham (Damien Egan), Newham (Rokhsana Fiaz), Sheffield City Region (Dan Jarvis) and Tower Hamlets (John Biggs).

Campaigners at our stall in Surbiton for the taking, but, thanks largely to the anti-semitism allegations, we actually lost six seats to the nasty party.

If Barnet was a disappointment, Kingston was a disaster. A Lib Dem landslide saw them get over 50% of the votes cast and take over 80% of the seats – 39 out of 48 – gaining 19 from Tories, two more from independents (former Tory councillors who left the party midterm) and two from us in Norbiton. They will be sorely missed.

Labour council candidates in Kingston Labour made gains across London. In Wandsworth we took five seats, three in Westminster, all from the Tories, and one each from the Tories and Lib Dems in Kensington & Chelsea. Not enough for overall control but we did gain a Labour majority in Tower Hamlets. Labour now controls 21 of the capital’s 32 councils.

Barnet was the disappointment. The slim two-seat Tory majority looked to be there

Next branch meeting Monday 18 June 8pm Surbiton Library Hall KT6 6AG It is scant reward for our excellent former councillors, Linsey Cottington and Sheila Giffin, who put in so many hours of hard work. We would like to express our thanks to both Linsey and Sheila – we really appreciate all you achieved in opposition on behalf of the people of Kingston.

2 Surbiton branch • issue 1

RBK BY NUMBERS

The borough is divided into 16 wards and is bigger than the parliamentary constituency of Kingston & Surbiton, which consists of just 12. The other 4 wards in the borough form part of the Richmond Park constituency.

SURBITON BRANCH The 4 wards in Surbiton – St Mark’s, Berrylands, Alexandra and Surbiton Hill – all voted in LD councillors (12 seats). The Tories lost 3 seats in Alexandra and 2 in Berrylands.

KINGSTON BRANCH Just 2 wards here. In 2014, we missed out on a 3rd councillor in Norbiton by 3 votes. This year, we came second (4th, 5th and 6th) and it was the only ward where we beat the Tories. LD sweep, 2 losses for Con in Grove, 2 for us in Norbiton.

SOUTH OF THE BOROUGH Chessington South, Chessington North & Hook, and Tolworth & Hook Rise – sweep for the LDs, 1 Tory loss in Chessington North & Hook.

NEW MALDEN BRANCH Old Malden spoilt the LD clean sweep in K&S by returning 3 Tories, including ex-council leader, Kevin Davis. The 2 independents, who had defected from Davis’ team in disgust, did not defend their seats. The LDs gained all 6 remaining seats, in St James and Beverley, from the Tories.

NORTH KINGSTON BRANCH (RICHMOND PARK) Here’s where the Conservatives did a little better, retaining half their seats.

They held Coombe Hill, lost 1 seat in Tudor, 2 in Coombe Vale and all 3 in Canbury to the LDs. CHANGES FROM 2014 In 2014, Con got 39% of the vote and won 28 seats (2 defected midterm), LDs 31% and 18, Lab 17% and 2.

In May, LDs got 52% of the votes and won 39 of the 48 seats. Con dropped to 31% and won just 9 seats.

Lab got no reward for 12% of the vote. Greens dropped from 7% to 3% and UKIP from 5% to 0%. Kingston Independents (KIRG) got 2%.

Our team in St Mark’s

Corporate Newsletter • April 2012 • Issue 214

From the catastrophic results of the Kingston council elections, Labour looks for crumbs of comfort and hope While the results in the election did not go as we hoped, the encouraging thing about the response on the Surbiton doorsteps was the ‘anyone but the Tories’ attitude.

ground on the Lib Dems. Next time we have to do more. Can we deliver as many leaflets as the Lib Dems? How about garden stakes: can we match them across Surbiton and paint the town red? With the help of every one of you reading this – of course we can!

In other wards...

Labour finds more reasons for hope across Surbiton

Phil Austin, Kezia Coleman & Caoilte O’Connor raised our vote in St Mark’s from 12.2% to nearly 15%.

Unfortunately, that vote went mostly to the despicable Lib Dems, but their victory was as hollow as it was resounding. Their message, ‘Tories are horrible, Labour can’t win here’, while being an effective means of winning power, was more about what they weren’t than what they planned to do.

More positively, we made gains in our Surbiton target ward – maybe the only instance in the borough of an increased vote share for anyone but the Lib Dems.

Our St Mark’s team canvassed every street in the ward, delivered four leaflets, set out two street stalls and provided a teller at each polling station from 7am till 8pm. Given that the candidates weren’t finalised until January, this was some feat.

It was nowhere near enough, as we lost

Tactical voting Such was the fear of the Tories getting back in, that the Lib Dems won over 50% of the vote and, in some parts of Surbiton, that rose to 60%. It seems we are more antiTory than the rest of Kingston. But Surbiton is also more pro Lib Dem as they swept the board winning all 12 seats here.

However, two years ago, in the mayoral elections, we saw very different results. In St Mark’s, for instance, Labour got more first votes than anyone (35.9%) and this in a system where your vote is transferred to your second choice if your selection is not among the top two. Imagine the number

In Berrylands, Labour unveiled the dream team of Rob and Sarah Jane Brownlie, and Nannette Herbert. While in Alexandra, Kris Srisaravanapavaan emerged as a lastminute candidate. Yet, by delivering his personal message to voters, he was able to beat his Labour colleagues by over 75 votes. Of course with a name like that, he’s used to writing lots of letters!

Thanks to everyone who contributed to our campaigns especially our agents, Dave Cooper, Johnnie Byrne and Tony Banks.

SJ and Rob work tirelessly with the underprivileged and have social enterprises here and across Africa, while Nannette holds the local council to account for any misconduct.

of voters for the Greens and other small parties who then transferred support to Labour with their second vote.

The perfect opportunity, you would think, to vote Lib Dem first, even if you were worried about the hateful Zac Goldsmith getting in. Yet the Lib Dems got just 12%.

To us, this suggests they are not the firstchoice party of the people of the Borough, simply a means of keeping the Tories out.

In the same way as we saw the general election in England become a two-way fight between Tories and Labour, in SW London it has become a battle between Tories and their likeliest opposition. A clear sign of the divisiveness of this odious Tory party.