Earlier this month the Financial Times (June 3) asked an important question: “Can Jeremy Corbyn restore Labour’s working class vote?” This article’s title, posed as a question, then zeroed in on the electoral misfortunes of Mansfield, a constituency in the East Midlands, that “last year sent a Conservative to Westminster for the first time.”
The report begins by introducing Steve Yemm, “until recently the chairman of the local Labour party”; although the journalist fails to mention that this pessimistic local Labour powerbroker is a Blairite.
It seems that Yemm, who has now been pushed out of local political influence owing to his dodgy politics, is not a big fan of Corbyn:
“He worries that Labour’s rebirth under Mr Corbyn is hastening a political realignment in the working-class communities that have long been the party’s bedrock.”
Nevertheless it is noteworthy that “The party’s Mansfield membership has more than doubled in the past two years…”
We then meet Lee Anderson, from neighbouring Ashfield, who “blames Mr Corbyn for almost single-handedly shrinking Labour’s margin there from nearly 9,000 votes in 2015 to just 441 last year.” This time the Financial Times acknowledges Anderson’s Blairite pedigree, pointing out that he is a “longtime Labour councillor who defected to the Conservatives in March.”
What the reporter, however, neglects to point out is that before joining the Tories Anderson had been the office manager for Ashfield’s local Blairite MP Gloria de Piero; and that his departure from Labour was hastened by the positive influence of socialists within the Labour Party, who had successfully deselected him as a Labour councillor (in January).
Again, not mentioned in the article is the shocking fact that another person close to Gloria de Piero (her electoral agent and office manager… yes another office manager), Melanie Darrington, also left the Labour Party only last month to join the Ashfield Independents. Earlier this year Darrington even had the gall to try to get selected to stand as Mansfield’s new parliamentary candidate, but thankfully she was beaten by the pro-Corbyn socialist alternative.
Neverthless despite these important ommissions, here the Financial Times reporter at least does introduce us to Sonya Ward “the longtime youth worker was selected [in February] as Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Mansfield with Momentum’s backing.” The article then explains:
“The miners’ strike, which she witnessed as a child, was still being felt in a pervasive distrust of politics, she argues. Labour’s policies could make a difference but ‘the difficulty is that so many people are so despondent that they find that hard to believe’.”
It is this despondency that can only be overcome by putting socialist politics into practice (like by refusing to carry out Tory cuts). This is why it is so important that the Labour Party members must, like Mansfield, firstly kick out their Blairites representatives, and then begin to lead a militant struggle against the Tory austerity (the latter of which still needs to be done in Mansfield).
Thus, in answer to the question initially posed by the Financial Times’ article, it seems likely that Corbyn and his supporters do have the potential to restore Labour’s working-class vote in areas like Mansfield. Related to this, the Financial Times reporter makes the following points about Mansfield’s Corbyn supporters:
“In September, three months after the [General] election, a few thousand souls braved the rain to hear the messiah [by which they mean Corbyn] speak in Mansfield. The crowd ranged from retired miners to teenagers. It was an encouraging moment for Labour.
“But winning back Mansfield will require more sweat than magic, according to Ms Ward and Mr Lee. They are promising a sustained campaign — not just turning up a month before election day and calling on the loyalty of a monolithic working class.”
This is a great start, as sustained campaignly is most certainly needed to win back Mansfield to Labour! And so far it seems that Sonja Ward and her local supporters in the Labour Party have positioned themselves on a positive trajectory for achieving such success. This was further evidenced around the time of Corbyn’s aforementioned rainy visit to Mansfield, when Ward bucked the local trend and became the first prominent member of the Mansfield Labour Party to speak out in support of a hugely popular local campaign against NHS cuts, the Save Chatsworth campaign (which had been running since July).
Tragically, in the months prior to this stand-out moment of defiance, the local Labour Party — run by the likes of Yemm — had refused to give any public backing to the local Save Chatsworth campaign. A campaign which was being actively supported and led by local Socialist Party members; and a campaign that, through the hard work and determination of many people, eventually proved victorious (in February).
One can only hope that other Corbyn-supporters within local Labour Party’s across the country take heed of what has happened in Mansfield and finally begin to take firm action against the scourge of Blairism that still maintains a stranglehold of much of their party’s elected positions.
It is more than possible that a Corbyn-led government could come to power within the next year, but if the thousands of Blairite local councillors and hundreds of Blairite MPs are not deselected before then, then we can be sure that they will be the first in line to undermine the ability of a Labour government from leading the much-needed fight to promote a socialist future for Britain.
Thoughts of a Leicester Socialist 