The Labour Government has held power for just over 100 days, experiencing a remarkable rollercoaster of highs and lows as new ministers navigate the intense scrutiny of a largely critical mainstream media. Among those elected to Parliament for the first time in July was Helena Dollimore, the new MP for Hastings and Rye and the villages.

In an exclusive interview with the Hastings Independent Press she reflected on the emotion and pride she felt when it was clear she was going to win, the compassion on a human level she felt towards her defeated rival Sally Ann Hart and the sheer relief of her supporters at Labour’s victory.

Unlike in 1997 when Tony Blair’s New Labour promised Britain a new dawn, Sir Kier Starmer’s pitch to voters back in July was much simpler and more prosaic. In essence, it was “we are sensible and trustworthy, whilst the Tories are not.” The public broadly agreed, and Labour secured a massive majority, albeit with just 34% of the national vote.

ELECTION DAY NERVES

The scale of the Labour victory was not apparent on polling day as party workers were anxiously canvassing across the town amid reports of a low turn-out, and Labour’s soon-to-be MP was seen hastily picking up a sandwich at Morrisons in Queen’s Road before heading back out to knock on more doors. Nerves were calmed at 10pm, when the BBC, ITN and Sky reported news of the exit poll which predicted a massive Labour majority. In the early hours of the morning, as the vote was being counted in the Horntye Park Sports Centre and it was apparent that Labour was set to win the seat, it began to dawn on the 30-year-old Dollimore what lay ahead of her. Her first emotion was one of pride, that as a local girl who attended the local Heathfield Community College, she was to be the local MP. She said it was a “great honour”, but one which carried “great responsibility to deliver the change people had voted for”. 

Within days of her election, Helena was caught up in the whirlwind of life as a new MP. There were the parliamentary introductions, personal security briefings, IT presentations and the swearing of the Oath of Allegiance. There was also a new dress code to observe – no trainers, only proper shoes, which made finding her way around (or not) the labyrinthine corridors of the Palace of Westminster a more uncomfortable experience than she was expecting.

CASEWORK CHALLENGE

Constituency casework did not stop because of the election, and the new MP had to take over responsibility for all the ongoing cases when she woke up on that first Friday morning. Over the course of the summer, she has pulled together a small team both in Westminster and in Hastings to tackle the workload. She said she was grateful to Sally Ann Hart for doing a proper hand-over of ongoing casework and also paid tribute to Michael Foster and Amber Rudd who have been “really generous” with their advice.

She has received over 5,000 live cases since July and, despite being initially overwhelmed, her team have managed to successfully resolve and close over 1,200 of these. Among them was a pensioner who had been unable to get his full pension for over six years but, after liaising with the Department for Work and Pensions, the full pension was back-dated and paid in full.

Cases dealing with life and death emergencies obviously take precedence, as do problems which can separate families, such as passport issues. She is confident that as her team come to terms with the scale and breadth of the casework, she will respond to problems more quickly and “begin to earn the trust of local constituents”.

The majority of casework relates to housing, and Ms Dollimore believes “here is simply not enough affordable housing available to meet the needs of the town.” This is coupled with the poor quality of some of the accommodation that local residents have to live in. The MP has already met three times with the chief executive of Southern Housing, one of the biggest housing providers, to review the most serious cases.

Housing and Planning Priorities

She is clear that what is desperately needed is more housing. She is a strong supporter of the Government’s plans to change the planning rules and to build more new homes in the town. She says she gets frustrated with the Green-led Hastings BC who argue that there is no room to build the new homes without harming the environment. “Our town is full of brownfield sites that could be homes for local people but have been sitting derelict.”

Ms Dollimore says she is also proud that the Labour government is moving ahead with plans to ban Section 21 no-fault evictions to affirm renters’ rights. She believes this will give tenants more security and confidence in their tenancies.

Another big issue is Southern Water. The problems relate not just to sewage, but to flooding and water outages. Ms Dollimore has been appointed to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee and she is keen to look at all the water-related issues in a systematic way, including the increasing number of landslips which are blighting areas along the south coast. In addition to the problems with water, the select committee is also responsible for looking at the fishing industry, and she says she is determined to raise the concerns of the local fishing community which are so important for the town.

The failings within the local education system are also on her radar. She says parents sending their 11-year-old children to schools in Hastings have a choice of three schools rated as “inadequate”. This is “simply not good enough.” In addition, she says she is determined to hold to account the University of Brighton Academies Trust (UBAT) and their allocation of funds for back-office costs rather than using them for frontline teaching for the benefit of pupils. She has been raising her UBAT concerns with the Education Secretary and is pushing the University of Brighton to take responsibility for the academy chain they have set up as “it is their name and reputation at stake, and they need to do more to resolve the problems.”

FAILING SCHOOLS AND UBAT CONCERNS

She fully endorses Labour’s plans to end the tax breaks that private schools enjoy and to use that money to “deliver better and rising standards, in every school for every child”. In this respect, her experience at St Hilda’s College, Oxford had a profound impact. The privilege and expectation of some of the privately educated students contrasted sharply with her own comprehensive schooling and was, she recalls, “an eyes-wide-open experience” which left her determined to close the gap which exists between the standards and expectations of state schools and those in the private sector.

Ms Dollimore acknowledged the criticism of Labour’s decision not to scrap the two-child benefit cap. However, she said the Government was taking action to tackle child poverty and pointed to the establishment of a cross-government taskforce to look at the issue holistically. She also welcomed measures in the Budget to set up school breakfast clubs, the £1 billion Housing Support Fund grant and the rise in the minimum wage as evidence of Labour’s determination to support working people and eliminate poverty for all.

It has been a busy and hectic few months for the town’s new MP. There have been many challenges, but Helena Dollimore says it is a privilege to be able to help people, and she is determined to deliver on what matters most to them.

• Helena Dollimore was born in 1994 and was educated at Heathfield Community College in East Sussex.
• Aged 17 she spoke at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool. She attended St Hilda’s College, Oxford, and was the chair of the Oxford University Labour Club.
• After university, Dollimore worked for Save the Children, in environments from refugee camps in Bangladesh to the civil war in Yemen
• During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dollimore trained as a vaccinator with the St John Ambulance, volunteering at a pharmacy in Hastings. She has also served as an Army Reservist.
• Dollimore was elected as a councillor for the St Helier ward in the London Borough of Merton in 2021. In 2024, after the general election was called, she resigned her council seat to stand as the Labour parliamentary candidate for Hastings and Rye. She won the seat in July with an 8,653 majority.

John Rankin has joined the Labour Party and will take the Labour Whip when he next sits in the Hastings Borough Council chamber. The Conquest ward councilor was first elected to the council in 2016 as a Conservative and he retained his seat in 2022.

He left the Tory Party last October to sit as an independent, saying he had become disenchanted with the way the party had changed since the Brexit referendum in 2016 and its adoption of “extreme right-wing policies which were anti-business and authoritarian.”

His decision to join Labour was prompted after he suffered a heart attack whilst in Alexandra Park last November There were no ambulances available, he says, and a friend had to drive him to the Conquest Hospital, only to be told that the catheter laboratory was shut. He was eventually put in an ambulance and driven to Eastbourne where he was fitted with a stent and survived.

Mr Rankin says he was lucky and had he been older or less fit he would not have survived, and, as a result, he was joining Labour, to save the NHS.

Following the local election at the beginning of this month, as reported in HIP 251, the political parties now represented on Hastings Borough Council hold numbers of seats as follows:

• Greens 12
• Labour 8
• Ex-Labour
  Independent Group 6
• Conservatives 5
• Ex-Conservative Independent 1

It is reasonable to assume that Green leader Cllr Julia Hilton, now heading the largest body of councillors, will continue as council leader. At the time of going to press, no announcement has been made, either by her or anybody else, as to how her cabinet will be composed, or whether indeed the cabinet system is to continue. However, she has expressed, post-election, an intention to develop closer working relationships with other parties. “We campaigned on the basis of wanting a much more collaborative and cooperative council”, she said, “and we will be undertaking negotiations with other parties on that basis.”

In the meantime, the Labour Party has elected current mayor, Cllr Margi O’Callaghan, as their new leader, following the unseating of former councillor Heather Bishop, who had only been in the role since January. Heather Kay, freshly elected as councillor for Wishing Tree, will be deputy party leader.

Cllr O’Callaghan’s elevation marks a further ascent in her personal snakes-and-ladders political career. In 2018 she was elected as councillor for Silverhill, and two years later took office as Chair of the Charity Committee in the cabinet of then council leader Kim Forward. In 2021 she lost her council seat, defeated by Conservative candidate Lucian Fernando (who later joined Reform UK), but in 2022, she was re-selected to contest the Braybrooke ward and won easily. 

Cllr Paul Barnett did not restore her to his cabinet, but she became chair of the council’s planning committee. A year later, in May 2023, she was unanimously elected mayor. With Labour no longer commanding an overall majority, she found herself in a position on more than one occasion to use the casting vote given her by this role to exercise it in favour of her party’s motion – and didn’t hesitate to do so. Chairing the most recent full council meeting on 20 March she  controversially brought proceedings to a halt when members of the public were seeking to protest over Palestinian issues. 

She described her mayoral position then as “non-political”. In her new role, not so much.

HUGH SULLIVAN

Hastings Borough Council will have 12 new councillors when it reconvenes later this month. Eight are Greens; four are Labour. 

In the council elections last week, when 16 out of 32 seats were voted upon, only four incumbent councillors were returned – Julia Hilton (Green) in Old Hastings, Sorrell Marlow-Eastwood and Paul Foster (Conservatives) in Ashdown and Conquest respectively, and Labour’s Trevor Webb, now representing West Leonards.

Labour captured two seats from the Conservatives, and one each from Reform UK (Lucian Fernando) and the ex-Labour Independent group (former deputy leader Maya Evans). But the overall result was a triumph for the Green party, which took five seats from Labour and three from the Conservatives. The electoral map on page 3 shows Green domination of central and eastern wards of the town. Labour gains and retentions were confined to outer areas – West St Leonards, Hollington, Silverhill and St Helens – while the Conservatives retained only the northern fringes.

The Greens have become the largest party in the full council, which is now composed as follows:

• Greens 12
• Labour 8
• Ex-Labour Independent Group 6
• Conservatives 5
• Ex-Conservative Independent 1

Cllr Hilton will no doubt remain as council leader, now flanked by 11 supportive party colleagues. She could offer to reinstate a coalition, formal or informal, with the ex-Labour Independent group led by former council leader Paul Barnett which together would constitute an overall majority. However, she seems likely to prefer a looser collaborative approach, judging that none of the rival parties are likely to act in concert to oppose any programme which the Greens put forward that isn’t extreme.

In the immediate aftermath of the vote, Cllr Hilton was naturally jubilant, claiming that the Greens had won by running a “positive campaign” and “taking residents’ views seriously”. Her party’s candidates and campaigners would be “foot-weary after undertaking a huge amount of work – not glamorous stuff, but people understood that this is a local election which matters to them, they weren’t interested in sending a message nationally. This is a progressive town, and the results show it”.

The Labour party will have taken comfort not only from winning close contests against incumbent Conservatives in St Helens and West St Leonards, but in seeing off their former deputy leader Maya Evans in Hollington and Reform UK councillor Lucian Fernando. However, their losses included leader Heather Bishop: they will need to elect a replacement in the new council.

The Independent group retain their six seats which were not up for re-election, but none of their eight candidates came near to winning a ward vote. With little funding for organisation and little apparent appetite amongst traditional Labour voters to switch away from their national party allegiance, there was a succession of grim results for them, and especially for Ms Evans, who had hoped to benefit from a strong personal following. 

Conservative leader Cllr Andy Patmore, whose seat was not under challenge, congratulated the Greens on their success. He downplayed his own party’s defeats, observing that it was always going to be a hard election for its candidates in the context of the national mood. The ex-Labour Independents had, he thought, “over-egged their own importance” and been wrong to cause a schism in the council by their defection from Labour. Now that this election was over, it was clear that all parties needed to join together to move on from what he described as a “failing council”.

None of the eight Liberal Democrat or three Reform UK candidates polled significant votes in any of the wards they contested. Reform leader Mr Fernando, despite contesting Silverhill as incumbent councillor, was humiliated by attracting less than 10% of the turn-out.

Labour has controlled Hastings Borough Council for the past 14 years, building up huge debts and mismanaging the town’s finances in the process. Recently, the local Labour Party split in two, and the Greens are now propping up a minority partnership with the new “Hastings Independents” who are the same former Labour councillors who have taken us to the brink of bankruptcy.

A Conservative council will deliver common sense leadership and the due diligence to ensure every penny of your council tax is spent efficiently. Local politics should be about accountability. Why should those who put us in this position be allowed to re-brand, walk away from their mess, and stay in control with the Green Party?

Our Conservative team pledge to implement an emergency budget on day one to immediately address and stabilise the town’s finances, along with a promise to protect the town’s green spaces by permanently removing key areas from the local building and development plan.

Greens

Since Greens have led the council we have brought a more open and collaborative approach to decision-making. The town needs an outward-looking council that makes sensible financial decisions informed by proper scrutiny and community consultation on big capital projects.

We must enable an affordable warm home for everyone who needs it. A safe long-term home is a human right. A commitment to reduce the huge health inequalities in our town needs to be threaded through all that the council provides ― from access to a safe, clean, green environment to good quality jobs and skills training,

We have one of the largest creative communities in the UK, and we should harness that to enrich our cultural and creative assets, as well as providing routes into creative work for local people. Alongside that goes a commitment to celebrating and promoting our tourism and cultural offerings, and making them accessible to all.

Independents

Eight experienced councillors resigned from Labour last December to form Hastings Independents. We now focus exclusively on local issues in order to give Hastings the strong voice it needs and deserves.

On the doorstep people are saying how tired they are of national politics and of national parties telling Hastings what’s good for them. The Labour party told Hastings to write a manifesto based on Brighton, and refused to allow the selection of candidates to be done by local people. And they have been told by London: no local partnerships, with Greens, Independents or anyone else.

This isn’t what Hastings wants. People here want a progressive left council that listens, is open, and acts on local priorities. 

We have recently held open public debates about the housing crisis, and about sport and play opportunities.

We have been working happily and well in partnership with the Green Party since January. Our councillors have solved the council’s budget challenge and secured £15m new funding for housing from government.

Labour

We have set out five key pledges to build a better Hastings and for the council to focus on its priorities and build an even better town. These include plans to:

Get Hastings building again by working with developers to deliver the homes Hastings needs, in the right places with the right local services nearby.

Take on Southern Water by working with residents and local groups to monitor sewage levels and ensure no more avoidable flooding of the town centre.

Clean up Hastings by restoring “Ghostbuster” dealing with the weeds and graffiti that blights the town and encouraging business owners to take pride in their shop fronts.

Create a safer Hastings by working with the police to crackdown on speeding, end the scourge of shoplifting and target anti-social behaviour.

Provide opportunities for young people by working with local universities, businesses and schools to raise standards and increase training and employment opportunities.

Liberal Democrats

We are fielding eight candidates in the local elections – only in wards currently held by the Conservatives and Reform UK. The Conservative Party is responsible for all manner of the ills and difficulties that Hastings and St Leonards families and our most disadvantaged are facing at the moment. They need to be removed from power at all levels of government.

Our aims at the election are to seek a closer relationship between the Council and the community; a return to the pluralism that has been lost under Labour; wider consultation in the planning system; and an end to Tony Blair’s cabinet system in local government, returning to a committee system where all councillors would be equal.

We will also seek the regeneration of shopping streets, an end to the monopoly of over-sized housing associations in public housing, and an advance of public housing in partnership with neighbouring in full awareness of the climate crisis.

Reform UK

We present a bold vision for Hastings Borough Council centred around clear communication, community-led governance, and transformative change. 

Our first priority is to transition into a unitary council, ensuring that those who know Hastings best – its people – are the ones steering its course.

We will implement targeted strategies to attract investment, support local businesses, and create new job opportunities. We will cultivate an environment where entrepreneurship flourishes and every resident has the chance to thrive.

We will prioritise investment in vital infrastructure projects to enhance connectivity, accessibility, and overall quality of life. 

We will bolster public safety measures, increase police presence, and implement effective crime prevention strategies. By fostering collaboration between law enforcement and the community, we will create a safer Hastings for all.

We will increase affordable housing stock and support those experiencing homelessness. Through collaboration with housing organisations and community stakeholders, we will strive to ensure that every resident has a place to call home.

HUGH SULLIVAN

On 13 December a full meeting of Hastings Borough Council approved budget proposals for 2024-25 aimed at saving around £4m, coupling increased fees and charges with planned reductions in staff costs.

Labour Party councillors and Cllr Lucien Fernando, who is now affiliated to Reform UK, voted in favour; Conservatives and Greens abstained. Council leader Paul Barnett issued a statement expressing pleasure that the proposals – put together by council officers on the instruction of his cabinet – had been adopted. “We will be able to start work in January on the proposals so that we have the best chance of making these savings,” he declared.

But on the same day, he and all bar one of his cabinet colleagues announced their resignation – not from their cabinet positions but from membership of the national Labour Party. Cllrs Barnett, Maya Evans, Simon Willis, Andy Batsford, John Cannan and Ali Roark, all previously elected as Labour representatives, issued a joint press release announcing that they would be forming a new group styled Hastings Independents. They dissociated themselves from the national Labour Party, which “no longer provides us with the policies, the support or the focus on local government that we need”.

Cllr Barnett made a personal statement setting out his own reasons. “With sadness, anger and regret I have today resigned from the Labour Party. I will stay as an independent councillor doing my best for Hastings. Others are making the same decision, and together we will form a new Hastings Independents group. There are many reasons, but for me I just want to be able to speak out for Hastings without being told what to think, say and do by people in London”.

His colleagues have echoed his complaints about control of the local constituency party being exerted top-down from the Labour Party central HQ. Cllr Batsford has described the machinations of those at the South East Regional Office as “odious and threatening… they see Hastings just as a flag on a map. Why am I giving time and effort to benefit the brand of a party that has no interest in me or my town?” Cllr Evans cited “right wing policies and rhetoric… we have been micromanaged by Westminster-centric, unelected Labour Party officials.”

TURNER SPEAKS OUT

Cllr Turner was more outspoken. “My association with the Labour Party goes back to my childhood when my parents, as keen socialists, would allow their home to be used as an election committee room. As a child I ran around delivering Labour leaflets through the letterboxes, then as a young adult I joined the Labour Party. In later life I became a shop steward when I worked in the aerospace industry as a toolmaker. Wherever I moved to in the country, I stayed with the Labour Party.

Within the next three days two further ex-Labour councillors – former mayor Nigel Sinden and Cllr Mike Turner – joined the Independents. Cllr Sinden said that he was doing so in order to “speak up for myself… without putting a political party’s view first… I remain a Socialist but now one with the strings removed”.

“When Keir Starmer stood as leader of the Labour Party I supported him, however I’m now ashamed to admit that I did, as he endorsed the war crime of cutting off water and electricity to Palestinians in Gaza, while Labour’s position to not support a ceasefire has been a complete disgrace. The sight of a young boy carrying his dead sibling through water will forever haunt me. The Labour Party has lost its moral compass, those on the Parliamentary Labour front bench should be ashamed for not supporting a ceasefire.”

Anger over the national leadership’s stance on Gaza was clearly one spark that has flamed the party revolt. Another was the process of selection of candidates for the upcoming local elections in May this year. In former times, Labour Party candidates were very largely determined by the local constituency party and thus by local members. This time around, according to Cllr Batsford, the process was managed entirely by the Regional Office with nobody involved at local level. As it happens – and surely not by mere coincidence – six of the eight Independents were elected in 2022 and are therefore safe in their council seats until 2026. A seventh, Cllr Roark, had already decided not to stand again. However, the eighth, deputy leader Cllr Evans, who was expecting to stand for re-election in the Hollington ward in May, was de-selected, having earlier last year been refused a shortlisting as parliamentary candidate for the Hastings & Rye constituency. She alleged that there was a deliberate “blocking of people of colour from leadership positions”.

NATIONAL PARTY RESPONSE

The immediate response from the national party has been wholly uncompromising. On 15 December, the day after the resignations were announced, the BBC quoted a Labour spokesperson: “With Keir Starmer as leader, the Labour Party has changed fundamentally. The fact that these councillors, all holdouts from its previous regime, no longer feel the Labour Party is their home is conclusive proof of that.

Their performative gesture politics has driven the council to the brink of bankruptcy and, as a result, they had effectively been placed in special measures. We call upon them now to do the honourable thing and step down immediately, and allow the hardworking people of Hastings the chance to elect councillors who will put Hastings first.” 

At local level, neither the party’s official parliamentary candidate, Helena Dollimore, nor any borough councillors who remain loyal to the national party have been willing to make any comment, though it is understood that Cllr Heather Bishop has been appointed as leader of the latter group. However, a Change.Org petition was launched by Stephen Bourner demanding that the councillors who resigned from Labour should also resign their seats and put themselves up for re-election. 

Referring to the six original Independents, the petition argues that “these individuals were elected based on their commitment to uphold Labour values. Their recent resignation has raised concerns about whether they will continue to represent these values as independent leaders and the appropriateness of their actions, given the precarious financial position of the Council and gross mismanagement of the Council’s finances … The residents of Hastings elected these representatives with trust in their declared political alignment and its associated principles. Any deviation from this can be seen as a breach of that trust. It is crucial for our democracy that elected officials remain true to their campaign promises and maintain transparency with their constituents.”

GREEN INTERVENTION

Green council leader Julia Hilton, who served in Cllr Barnett’s cabinet in 2022 but was then ejected when the national Labour party instructed him to end a local co-operation agreement with her party, was critical of the timing of the resignations and called for multi-party involvement in future governance of the council.

She issued a statement: “I am not surprised that half of the Labour councillors have decided to leave an increasingly autocratic Labour Party, however their timing leaves much to be desired… Creating uncertainty now, just after passing a budget which requires eye-watering savings to keep the council afloat, is highly irresponsible…

“There are now six different political groups represented on the council [Labour, ex-Labour Independents, Conservatives, Greens, a Conservative Independent and Reform UK] and all those voices need to be heard in the important decisions that need to be made in the next two months, particularly on the budget and corporate plan. There are also huge regeneration plans being consulted on over the next three months with both the Public Realm and Green Connections project and the Station Gateway proposals currently under development. These decisions cannot be left to a group that now represents only seven [now eight] out of 32 councillors.”

Cllr Batsford suggests, however, that the freeing of the Independents group from national Labour direction will lead in itself to much more open and cooperative local democracy. “This is a moment when we can open things up and make the full council transparent,” he said. “It’s time for national politics to be taken out of Hastings”.

A cabinet meeting scheduled to take place on Tuesday of this week was cancelled, but a full council meeting is due to be convened on 24 January. In theory Cllr Barnett could then face a vote of no confidence in his leadership and/or in the make-up of his cabinet. But it’s difficult to imagine any other groups assembling the necessary numbers to offer a viable coalition alternative prior to the May elections.

It is my firm opinion that there is a dissonance between the national Labour Party and the local Labour Party in Hastings.

Reporting on National Labour’s green policies, Helena Horton of The Guardian said: “Some had feared the party would join a race to the bottom, trying to match Sunak’s vandalism of environmental policies. But the opposite has been true; climate underpins the policies of nearly all of those who would hold the great offices of state, and is a clear thread running through Labour’s electoral strategy.”

Indeed, the National Labour Party Electoral Manifesto Green Document states: “The environment is the bedrock of our economy, our security and our wellbeing. It is not something separate from ourselves; it is the food we eat and the place we live.”

And most tellingly, they re-emphasize: “Our planned interventions must be transformational, bringing about the structural changes needed to stop continued environmental degradation. Consultation and partnership working will be an important part of our approach so that we inform and engage both the public and experts. This will ensure the most recent scientific understanding is taken into account and that our plans are effectively delivered.”

Once again covetous eyes are on Combe Valley Countryside Park, which is documented as a key green space between Hastings & St Leonards, Battle and Bexhill. The conservation document was signed by East Sussex County Council, Rother District Council and Hastings Borough Council.

In my opinion there is no trade-off between wildlife, open green recreational spaces, and the fact that many councils are suffering from brimming bankruptcy. We must fight to save our Parks and not let private commercial interests sell Labour’s purported green soul for a mess of golf driving range and astroturf pottage.

Combe Valley is a winter-flooded wildlife preserve so rich that it can take your breath away. It includes Galley Hill and the edge of the sea and contains marsh, fen, reed beds, meadows, arable fields, beef herd grazing, a river, streams, bluebell woodland and so many insects, birds, mammals and even rare spiders. 

It takes one hundred thousand leaves to feed ten thousand caterpillars. They will feed one hundred blue tits and it takes those one hundred small birds to feed one raptor. So to show how intact the food chain is in Combe Valley we have the following raptors: buzzards, marsh harriers, merlin, hobby, kestrel, sparrowhawk and barn owl, and even visits by red kites. There are also thirty miles of footpaths and trails enabling everyone who lives in our coastal towns to enjoy these great green spaces. Don’t mess it up!

We cannot let any part of this great shared asset be sold off to commercial concerns. So keep a lookout for activities that show that Local Labour is not following National Labour policy – and don’t let Combe Valley Countryside Park be the endless first port of call for dumping dodgy schemes to make money. Citizens of Hastings and Bexhill – Be alert! 

Bonfire Symbols

Dear HIP,

I went to the Bonfire night for the first time and was really impressed by the organisation and great family atmosphere of the event. However, I have a couple of questions about the event that I hope someone might be able to answer for me.

I noticed that, to the right of the fire as it was being lit, there were four large burning crosses. What is the significance of that symbolism? Also, I was somewhat surprised that the main piece of music played repeatedly through the PA system as the fire burned was Rule Britannia. I was a little dismayed, as I was surrounded by people speaking a variety of languages. I was impressed by the multi-cultural nature of the crowd but confused by the message of the song. Are the burning crosses and Rule Britannia part of the usual format of this amazing event?

Laurence Flood

Privatisation disaster

Dear HIP

According to your front page article in HIP 236, Sally-Ann Hart apparently now thinks that water privatisation was a mistake.
Wow! It has only taken her 40 years to figure that out! I figured out that privatisation was bad in 1979. I wonder how much longer it will take for her to realise that every single privatisation/sell-off has been a disaster for the UK. Even the UK’s vital defence research establishments were sold off to American corporations for a tiny fraction of their value.

Marcus de Mowbray

Fencing above The Courtyard

Regarding your report Fence Following Fall in HIP 236, I am puzzled that the higher safety fencing was removed just after the funeral of the young lad. So, is it suddenly safe now?

Bryan Fisher

Café Creme

Some of your report Forsaken Café to be Offered for Castle Project in HIP 237 makes sense. The castle needs a decent visitor centre if it is to be a serious attraction, and St Mary in the Castle at the bottom of the hill needs a new function which should somehow be incorporated into the plan.
However, the cafe site would be wasted as a mere visitor centre for the castle.  It’s a stunning site, fabulous views, great accessibility via West Hill lift.  It should be a cafe/restaurant aimed at both local and tourist trade. There’s nothing else in the area bar except the Plough pub. Managed properly, it should be a little goldmine.

Peter Saunders

Forced Entry

Your headline Helena Dollimore: A Force to be Reckoned with in HIP 237 offers an opening for me to say that the only force about Dollimore is that she was forced upon Hastings Labour by the London HQ against strong objections from local Labour Party members who would have liked more than one local candidate to choose from. As it was, no one from Hastings or St Leonards was allowed on the shortlist. 

The hustings where she was selected were the most stage-managed put-up and shut-up affair ever attended by local members and run by an unpleasant National Executive Committee member who had no connections to East Sussex, let alone Hastings.  There was one, not very experienced, person from Rye on the three-member shortlist, and the questions were limited and strictly controlled. Many Labour members of 30 and 40 years standing, and lots of younger members, left the Party in droves after this, because of the control freakery and the lack of genuine interest in Hastings issues that this signified, decimating the constituency Labour Party which had boasted 2,000 members in 2017. 

I write from long experience within Labour as a former national Labour press officer, after a career in newspapers and TV. I ran two by-elections, helped run three Party Conferences, and was involved in the 1987 General Election when Neil Kinnock lost, then moved into Head of Comms roles at two large London Boroughs.  It was a long hard slog to get to 1997 and, yes, it did require unity and discipline, not a strong point of the socialist left. But it was never as undemocratic as it is now.  I even stayed loyal despite the Iraq war. 

In Hastings, where I live, I was procedures secretary in 2017 for Labour, and experienced attempts to impose totally unsuitable candidates with no interest in anything but kick-starting the bandwagon of their own political career path to Parliament. Brexit, May and Johnson followed, and Labour took a beating under Corbyn – then collapsed under the onslaught of media vilification and, so I strongly believe, a central conspiracy to undermine him, the true facts of which are yet to be fully exposed. 

The remaining constituency Labour Party in Hastings has been drained of energy and, I would say, integrity. It is deeply undemocratic. It allows no debate about anything that is not approved first by the General Secretary David Evans and the totally untrustworthy Keir Starmer – not even one of the most worrying issues of our time, Israel-Gaza, where CLPs have been ordered not to accept motions or to debate the subject.  

It is my belief that Labour do not want members other than to knock on doors at election time and raise money. They are intent on becoming a national party without democratic policy structures, with an annual conference that simply rubber-stamps what the leading Labour elite want. 

Dollimore was a councillor in Merton, using her position as a stepping stone for selection as a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate: not unusual, of course, but it is claimed she did not serve her ward as long as she should have done.  These facts, combined with her habit of climbing onto other people’s hard fought-for campaigns and claiming them as her own – as with Southern Water – means to my mind that she is singularly self-interested and does not deserve election. 

God forbid the Conservatives continue to destroy this country but Labour under Starmer does not represent a new kind of politics – rather, a self-interested, largely more-of-the-same kind of politics. 

I will continue to vote Labour in local elections, as there are genuinely hard working and honourable councillors here, working within an impossibly tight budget. I couldn’t do what they do.  They have stayed in the Party for the good of Hastings Borough – a principle and cause that is a lot better to my mind than inserting oneself into Hastings for the benefit of personal ambition.

Rosie Brocklehurst

We would love to hear from you.

Please be aware we may need to edit letters for reasons of space and we will only withhold names if this is necessary for the protection of the writer.

letters@hastingsindependentpress.co.uk

facebook.com/hastingsindependent

instagram.com/hastingsindependent

In the meantime former Hastings Borough councillor Leah Levane has been conducting a wider campaign to allow Jews who are members of the Labour party (or otherwise) to criticise Israeli government policy towards Palestinians without being branded antisemitic. In August this year, Jewish Voice for Labour, a group which she co-chairs, published data showing bizarrely that Jewish members (including Ms Levane) have been six times more likely than non-Jews to be investigated by the party for alleged antisemitism and nearly ten times more likely to be expelled – or in internal party language “auto-excluded”- from membership.  

Ms Levane found her own party membership cancelled without the right of appeal during the Labour conference in October 2021 after signing an open letter and speaking at two fringe events organized by groups, retrospectively banned by the party, which challenged the extent of alleged antisemitism within it. Another former Hastings councilor Mike Howard, also Jewish, who had been a longstanding Labour member, was suspended on similar grounds in February 2021 and was not reinstated nor even had acknowledgement of his appeal before dying unexpectedly nine months later.

Ms Levane complains that the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which is an avowedly Zionist body and doesn’t represent all Jewish opinion in Britain, has been given an effective supervisory status in determining the threshold of acceptable views within the Labour party regarding Israel, Palestine, Zionism and antisemitism. However, there seems little prospect of any change while Sir Keir Starmer remains as leader. He told Sky News last week that the violence in Gaza was “entirely the responsibility of Hamas”. He went on to recall his first words as leader that he would “rip antisemitism out of the Labour party by the roots”.

The wait for an ambulance in Hastings and Rye is the longest of any constituency in the whole of the South East, according to data obtained using a freedom of information (FOI) request. The figures, obtained by Labour’s Helena Dollimore, reveal that patients have been forced to wait an average of 37 minutes for an ambulance for category 2 call-outs, which include cases of suspected heart attacks and strokes. This is more than double the NHS target of 18 minutes, and significantly worse than nearby Eastbourne (30 minutes), Brighton (27 minutes) and Ashford (25 minutes).

The problem is most acute in Winchelsea, where the response time for suspected heart attacks and strokes is 45 minutes, and in Rye where it takes 42 minutes. The average response time for patients in Hastings, which is the best performing part of the constituency, is still more than 10 minutes longer than the NHS target.

Hastings and Rye was also the second worst-performing area in the South East for category 1 calls, which include the most life-threatening injuries and illnesses. The data shows that the constituency performed worse than Eastbourne, Brighton, Ashford, and Tunbridge Wells areas. The average response time of nine minutes is two minutes longer than the NHS target.

In July, the average response time for category 2 call-outs across the South East Coast was half an hour, while more than 3,000 patients with conditions like suspected heart attacks or strokes had to wait more than an hour for an ambulance.

These statistics from the South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust were obtained by the Labour Party and were published by the Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting, who was on a visit to the Hastings Ambulance Depot in Bohemia Road last week.

Speaking exclusively with the Hastings Independent Press, Mr Streeting said the fundamental challenge facing the NHS was one of staff shortages. He said Labour was “committed to the biggest expansion of the NHS in its history”. Ambulance services and hospitals across the South East are struggling with demand and staff shortages, with currently 1,500 doctor vacancies and 6,500 nursing vacancies in the South East region alone. More staff are desperately needed to ensure we have a National Health Service that meets the needs of the population. We need more GPs, more nurses and more ambulance staff”.

The Shadow Secretary of State went on to outline how Labour would bring in reforms, such as introducing counsellors into every secondary school and new Community Mental Health Hubs. These new services, he declared, will mean patients will be seen faster and they would relieve pressure on some of the overstretched services, be it in general practice, A&E departments or within the ambulance service.

He said it makes his “blood boil” that after 13 years of Tory government, the UK has the largest waiting list and the lowest patient satisfaction levels in the history of the NHS, compared to the shortest waiting times and highest satisfaction levels when Labour left office in 2010.

When questioned about how the country could afford the extra investment, Mr Streeting said Labour’s plans were “fully costed and fully funded”. They would see “£1.6 billion going into the NHS through the abolition of the non-dom tax status and abolishing the tax loophole enjoyed by private equity fund managers.” He did admit that Labour would look to “those who can afford to pay more taxes and not to those who are struggling with the cost-of-living crisis.”

He insisted that reform is also important, and that the extra money would be used to try to shift services away from hospitals and back to communities. One of the problems of the current mismanagement of the NHS, he said, was that patients often cannot access a GP and are therefore forced to go to A&E. The cost of seeing a GP is £40, whilst an A&E visit typically costs £360, so by shifting the focus of the NHS out of hospitals and back into communities he said there were “savings to be made with better results for patients.”

The message of the last Labour government, he said, was that “investment and reform will deliver results. We will use spare capacity in the private sector to bring down waiting lists faster. It is about fairness. Why should the poorest have to wait for treatment whilst those who can pay beat the queues by going private? Working class people should not be left behind. Privatisation of the NHS is not the answer. Nor is a social insurance system. The NHS should always be a service free at the point of use, and Labour will safeguard that for future generations.”

He concluded by saying, “People across Hastings and Rye and the villages in between have been badly let down by 13 years of Conservative government.” He said “voters here have a powerful vote because the constituency will decide who is in power after the next general election. A vote for Labour will not only give Britain the change that is needed, but it will also mean the community gets a local champion in Helena Dollimore – one of the best parliamentary candidates in the entire country, who will fight tooth and nail for her community. She will get their voice heard in Parliament and heard within the new Labour government.”

HUGH SULLIVAN

Hastings Borough Council leader Paul Barnett started his regular column in the Hastings Observer last Friday – “I was delighted that at this week’s Annual Council meeting, an all-female mayoral team was elected. Cllr Margi O’Callaghan is our new mayor, with Cllr Heather Bishop as her deputy”. He went on to confirm an unchanged cabinet of Labour councillors, described as “a strong and professional team to lead the Council through what promises to be a very challenging year”. He made no mention of the political drama being played out around him.

At the centre is Cllr Lucian Fernando, elected as a Conservative in 2021 to represent Silverhill ward and remaining under the Tory whip until less than three months ago but recently transferring his allegiance to the Reform UK party.  He voted at the council meeting last week for Cllr Bishop as deputy mayor along with her Labour colleagues against a combination of his former party and the Greens, who favoured an alternative candidate (also female), Cllr Claire Carr.  The contest was therefore tied at 15-15, and the freshly seated Labour mayor O’Callaghan was able to exercise her constitutional power within minutes of acquiring it to declare a casting vote on party lines in favour of Cllr Bishop.

Cllr O’Callaghan had been deputy to retiring mayor Cllr James Bacon over the past year, and her own election to the higher position was politically uncontroversial. All 31 remaining councillors voted unanimously to elevate her.  The contest between Cllrs Bishop and Carr then ensued.

Green leader Julia Hilton told the chamber: “Given the make-up of the council now [in which Labour holds 15 seats, a minority], it’s about time we started rotating the mayoralty between the political parties, as happens in many other local councils. The leader of the council made some mention of looking at this last year, but nothing further has happened. We have supported Margi as mayor…We need to demonstrate the direction of travel that actually makes some tangible commitment to cross-party and collaborative working.”

Generous speeches were made from each side, glowing personal and community virtues being attributed to Cllr Bishop from Labour ranks, the same to Cllr Carr from Green and Conservative benches. The latter was “a true community champion” according to fellow-Green Cllr Glenn Haffenden. Then came the vote on a show of hands, followed immediately by Mayor O’Callaghan tipping the balance with her second vote.

Next on the agenda was Cllr Barnett’s announcement of unchanged cabinet portfolios, including the reappointment of Cllr Maya Evans as deputy leader, followed by votes on a slate of appointments for chair and vice-chair of council committees. In each contested case the Labour candidate was successful over Green or Conservative challengers, to the extent that Cllrs Alan Roberts, Nigel Sinden and Trevor Webb ended the evening holding eight chair or vice-chair roles between them and a total of 16 committee places. The explanation is easy to relate: Labour voted as a immoveable bloc whilst their opponents failed to (or chose not to) exercise similar resolve. In no case was the vote of Cllr Fernando decisive.

Another casting vote

However, that wasn’t the case with the final agenda item – Cllr Barnett’s proposed programme for the year, in which he has described the main challenge as tackling homelessness while achieving a balanced budget.

Here all 32 councillors again voted on party lines, Labour supporting the motion to approve the programme, Conservatives and Greens opposing in concert. Cllr Fernando again lifted his arm along with Labour. The resulting 16-16 tie was again resolved by Mayor O’Callaghan giving her casting vote to her own party.

A storm of recriminations followed from the losing side. Cllr Haffenden asked: “Is there an alliance with Reform UK that we’re not aware of?”

Conservative councillor Peter Pragnell described Labour’s behaviour in taking advantage of Cllr Fernando’s vote as a “power grab…propped up by one member of an extreme right-wing racist party”.

Cllr Fernando responded: “There is no alliance. I voted for the good of Hastings borough.” He also denied that Reform UK was a racist party. “I myself come from a minority – I would not be standing for a racist party. Controlling immigration is not racist.”

“Diametrically opposed”

Cllr Hilton addressed Cllr Barnett directly. “In your last leader’s column in the Observer you talked about how all 32 councillors are here because we care about our town, its people and economy. But your actions this evening show that you don’t really care about the opinions and skills of the non-Labour members of this council and have returned to the old ways of working within your Labour cabal. It seems a short-sighted move to abandon all commitments to shared working and rely on the support of a councillor who belongs to a party with views diametrically opposed to your own.” 

She went on to ask if there was any real commitment to improving governance when meetings to reform the constitution have been repeatedly cancelled at short notice, despite unanimous support for her motion calling for improved decision-making back in December. “At the moment the only way to get information on key decisions like the future of St Mary in the Castle or what might happen to football in this town seems to be to force a motion to come to full council. This is no way to conduct decision-making.”

Beyond the chamber she was even blunter. “Even a quick glance at Reform UK’s twitter feed shows a party whose views are against policies to tackle climate change and using all the standard far-right tropes that immigration is causing the crisis in our NHS”, she said. “Hastings Council is a proud supporter of our town’s status as a Community of Sanctuary. How does that square with a Labour administration relying on the votes of a councillor sitting as a member of Reform UK whose whole belief system is anti-immigrants?”

However, Labour councillors and members seem unrepentant. They are pleased, as their leader confirmed, with the outcome. Moreover, one source indicated that while they might have been willing to support another Green party councillor such as Cllr Haffenden to become deputy mayor, they regarded the choice of Cllr Carr to be the alternative candidate as a provocation, deliberate or otherwise. It may be recalled that the latter defected from Labour to the Greens two and a half years ago, some months after she was the only councillor in the chamber to refuse to endorse the appointment of her then Labour colleague Ruby Cox as deputy mayor. There’s an irony there, bitter or sweet according to taste.

PAUL McLAUGHLIN

It may have escaped the attention of some folk in Hastings, but last week voters across England went to the polls in the largest round of local elections since 2019, with more than 8,000 council seats up for grabs in 230 local authorities. 

Despite not having any direct involvement in the election, the results will inevitably impact on the politics of Hastings and shape the political discourse over the coming year. They will also set the narrative ahead of Hastings Borough Council (HBC) elections next May and the General Election in the parliamentary constituency of Hastings and Rye, which must be called before January 2025.

Rother District Council was one of the authorities to hold an election. Its results will give Labour and the Greens a big boost. They will also be a major worry for the Conservatives.

The Tories lost five seats on the night and, although it is still the largest party on the council with 10 seats, Sally Ann Hart, the MP for Hastings and Rye, will be concerned at her party losing votes in what were traditional heartlands.

Serious campaigning

Labour gained an extra five seats, and now has seven councillors. Helena Dollimore, the prospective parliamentary candidate, will have been delighted at the election of Simon McGurk and Cheryl Creaser in Rye and Winchelsea. It was apparent that Labour took the campaign very seriously – with the number of red garden stakes being evidence of an effective and visible ground campaign which the party will hope to repeat next year. Labour supporters in Hastings will also believe that if the party can pick up votes in such true-blue areas, then Ms Dollimore can overturn the current 4,043 Tory majority to win the seat at the General Election.

The Labour Party may themselves be concerned, however, at the surge in support for the Greens, who now have three seats on Rother Council. Julia Hilton’s party did well in the HBC elections last year taking seats off Labour to deny them control of that council, and they will be hopeful of taking even more next year after their performance in Rother last week.

With the count completed, Rother Council now has ten Conservatives, seven Labour, seven Liberal Democrats, seven Rother Association of Independents (RAI), three Greens and three Independents. It is anticipated that an Alliance coalition of Labour, Lib Dem, Green and RAI councillors will again team up to run it under the continued leadership of Doug Oliver (RAI). The Conservatives will not, and will again form an opposition.

One of the biggest issues from last week’s elections was the process of voting itself, being the first at which voter ID was required. All voters had to bring with them photographic ID before they could put their cross on the ballot paper. 

It is too early to know the full extent of the impact of these new rules. Turnout in Rother averaged 36%, three percentage points below the equivalent elections in 2019. There may be many factors determining this local fall in voter participation, but there were national reports of some voters being turned away from polling stations because they lacked the proper kind of photographic ID.

The government’s own research suggests that around 2 million potential voters in the UK may not have the appropriate ID, with many of these already among society’s most marginalised. 

Former Vice Chair of Hastings and Rye Labour Party, Kay Green, is a socialist activist but no longer a ‘party animal’. Here, she interviews Gill Knight about what’s been going on recently.

This week, the Equality and Human Rights Commission declared itself satisfied with the action Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has taken to, in his words, “drive out anti-Semitism” but local former members are surprised, to say the least, about who the Party has “driven out”. Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL), a national network group for Jewish Labour members, have stated that as a result of the party’s actions, “Labour is no place for left wing Jews”. They say that since mid-2021, they have ‘repeatedly alerted the EHRC to the disproportionate targeting of Jewish members of the Labour Party for disciplinary action over allegations of antisemitism’. So, what is going on? I asked Hastings and Rye Labour Party’s former Women’s Officer, Gill Knight, about her activism, and her experience of the Party.

(Left: Gill Knight, photo by Samara Jayne Martin)

Gill told me her story over a coffee at a local community gathering after the National Education Union rally on 1 February, where I found her on the local People’s Assembly stall – a new initiative for our town that she is helping to set up.  Gill has been a political activist since she retired some 18 years ago, and the chaos that has been UK party politics in recent years has not had the power to change that at all. She was actively involved in anti-austerity, anti-benefit sanctions and housing campaigns with Unite Community before the Labour Party started cutting back on members, and that work continues to this day. 

Gill was Women’s Officer for Hastings and Rye CLP from around 2016 until their AGM in October 2021. She told that meeting the reason she was standing down was that she didn’t think the local Labour Party was interested in women’s rights.

Long-term activist

During her tenure as Women’s Officer, she worked, through Women’s Voice, to encourage women to come forward to be councillors, running some excellent political education and outreach events for local women, including International Women’s Day parades and talks, and sessions of confidence building and public speaking delivered by her union, Unite. She founded a Labour Women’s Forum after obtaining a grant from Labour’s Regional HQ. She then organized a series of meetings to draw up a constitution and programme of events, including Ella Baker community engagement training. During her time active within the party, the percentage of female councillors in Hastings rose to almost 50%.

Her activities in the Party were not, though, limited to the remit of her Women’s Officer role. She worked in the local party office in 2015, when Sarah Owen (now MP for Luton North) was the candidate for Hastings and Rye, and has taken part in campaigns and canvassing in both local and national elections every year, so she was neither a ‘single issue’ member, nor one of those who was only active under one particular leadership.

Cancelled

She attended the party AGM in December 2022 expecting her active involvement to continue but, when voting came up, was informed curtly that she was not a member, and should not be at the meeting. At first, she thought perhaps her direct debit had run out – she was slowed up (for a while!) after having a stroke a year or so back, so it was easy to imagine something might have gone wrong. She emailed the local Party Chair but got no reply. Checking her bank account, she found that her last payment had gone out in September, and on applying to the CLP Secretary, was told that the party had cancelled her membership in October. There had been no communication at the time and to this day, there has been no explanation.

There does not appear to be anything in the Labour Party’s rule book that allows for the rash of unexplained suspensions and expulsions the Party has been indulging in, and Gill herself is particularly angry that so many Jewish socialists, including several in her own constituency, have been targeted. Local cases have included popular community activists such as the late Mike Howard, who was Jewish, and who died with the Party’s accusation hanging over him, and former HBC councillor Leah Levane, also Jewish, who was expelled in the middle of a Party conference that she was attending as a delegate for Hastings and Rye. As an ex-member myself, I have my own ideas as to what the ‘purges’ have been about and although random expulsions seem to be a feature of Labour at the moment, I suspect the kind of intolerance it shows is symptomatic of the way party politics generally is going.

No need for party activists?

Gill isn’t Jewish, but she is a socialist and a committed activist. There, I think, is the vital clue to what’s going on. perhaps it’s more that activists, especially socialist ones, are a nuisance to politicians who would prefer a US-style, PR-driven campaign that doesn’t have unpredictable humans involved. 

As the Housing Officer for the Sussex Coast branch of Unite, Gill worked with Rory Heap to initiate the Housing Action Group. She tells me they have been campaigning to make housing a trade union issue, and it is now on Unite’s National Forum. She had much to tell me about the urgent housing needs in our town, and what Unite Community are doing about it. She still works with former Labour Party comrades including councillors, via Unite’s Housing campaigns. She also volunteers for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and is currently working with the Israeli Campaign Against House Demolitions, and attends national women’s conferences, taking part in feminist campaigns in the UK and internationally. 

Rejection

It’s a great shame, both for democracy and for those so rudely kicked out that Labour has chosen to reject people like Gill – but like many activists, she hasn’t found being outside the party made much difference to her political work. I asked her whether she’d notice the difference when the next election campaign comes around.  She said she doesn’t know how that’s going to be, yet. She won’t campaign for, or vote for, any political party that breaks its own rules and doesn’t respect democratic process.

The coalition of Labour and Green party councillors, which has shared control of Hastings Borough Council since the local election in May, has fallen apart. The two Green councillors, Cllrs Julia Hilton and Glenn Haffenden, who were serving along with six Labour members on the council’s cabinet, have been ejected from it by council leader Paul Barnett. 

Labour will now attempt to go it alone as a minority party, having 15 out of 32 councillors. The Conservatives hold 12 seats; Greens the other five.

Cabinet May 2022

It appears from separate statements made by Cllrs Hilton and Barnett at the end of last week that there has been no falling out between the parties at borough level. Labour and Green councillors had just voted together (against Conservative opposition) to endorse the recent cabinet decision to take grounds maintenance back in-house, a programme led by Cllr Hilton as portfolio holder for Climate Change and the Natural Environment.

National Executive intervention

Rather, the ejection of the Greens from cabinet has been demanded by the Labour party’s national executive. According to an open letter from Cllr Hilton, the national party threatened Cllr Barnett with expulsion if he failed to take this course.

In announcing the ejection, Cllr Barnett issued a statement giving personal thanks for “the professional response and relationship I have enjoyed with Cllr Julia Hilton the leader of the Green Party group … and the hard work Cllr Glenn Haffenden and herself have put in to their roles within the cabinet”. He went on to state that he would be “looking to find a way to continue that constructive dialogue as we move forward. We are all passionate about our town, the climate change challenge and the huge need to protect our residents from the Conservatives’ destructive policies.” However, he also admitted that any new arrangement would have to be “in agreement with Labour’s national executive committee”. 

In the meantime Cllr Hilton issued an open letter expressing her “huge regret” that Cllr Barnett had “bowed to pressure” which will force him to run “what will be an unstable and inefficient minority administration” in place of an “arrangement which was working well [with] growing openness and transparency.

“That national Labour Party officials should wade in and pull the strings of the local Labour group with no thought for the best interests of the people of Hastings and St Leonards shows a complete disregard for local democracy”, she wrote. “Clearly the national Labour Party cares more about its own internal rules than the lives of people in our town and places little value in parties working together.”

“High-handed”

She called upon local Labour councillors and members “to protest in the strongest terms against this sort of high-handed behaviour on the part of their leadership, and to defy national Labour diktats that go against the interests of local communities”.

At the time of going to press there was no indication amongst Labour councillors in Hastings that any defiance is in the offing. However, a number of local Labour party supporters have been vocal on social media in criticism of the intervention by the National Executive.

Less than four months ago, the same executive barred another councillor in cabinet Maya Evans, from seeking nomination as prospective Labour candidate for the parliamentary constituency of Hastings & Rye. There were similar expressions of outrage vented then on social media at the manner in which Helena Dollimore, seen as the national executive’s preferred candidate, was selected. A formal letter of protest signed by a number of prominent councillors and ex-councillors, including current cabinet members Judy Rogers, Andy Batsford and Simon Willis, was submitted to the executive. But no response has ever been publicly aired. 

The letter describes Cllr Evans as “a popular figure locally, holding a senior council position for Labour, and with a track record of community activism for good causes”; it argues that she “fully deserves a chance to compete alongside other excellent candidates in a democratic selection process locally.”

(Left) Cllr Maya Evans; (Right) Sally-Ann Hart MP

The letter goes on to complain that no grounds have been given by the National Executive for her exclusion from the process, nor has any breach of rules been cited. On the contrary, it refers to a “commitment in the procedures that candidates supported by trade union affiliates be automatically longlisted” – Cllr Evans has the backing of Unite and others – and asserts that it is “a matter of basic party democracy” that the local constituency party should have the right of selection.

“Rebuilding the PLP” 

That’s plainly at odds with the powers wielded by the National Executive, which has been refashioned since the election of Sir Keir Starmer as party leader in place of Jeremy Corbyn two years ago. The Guardian newspaper last week reported “allies” of Starmer as “insisting the party is merely weeding out individuals who would not be effective MPs, and rebuilding the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) to make it more unified”. But in the same article, a spokesperson for the former Corbyn-supporting pressure group Momentum was quoted as saying: “This is a brazen, systematic attempt to exclude anyone to the left of Tony Blair from the PLP, with Keir’s people being parachuted in instead.”

The integrity of Parliament must be upheld… I am no longer able to support Boris Johnson as Leader

Other “Labour sources” are reported to suggest that Cllr Evans has been told that her involvement with Stop the War campaigns, including arrest and conviction relating to anti-Iraq war protest in 2005, is regarded with disfavour, as is the local party’s decision to enter into a cooperation agreement with the Greens on Hastings Borough Council. However, she herself has denied that any reason has been given to her by the National Executive.

Hart renounces Johnson support

In the opposing camp, and exercising a quite different kind of personal assessment, Sally-Ann Hart, sitting Conservative MP for Hastings & Rye, eventually made a public call on 6 July for prime minister Boris Johnson to quit, having up to that point (barely 24 hours before his resignation) maintained a position of steadfast loyalty.   

Since her election to Parliament in December 2019, Mrs Hart’s voting record had shown virtually unblemished support for Mr Johnson’s government, and only a month earlier, on 7 June, after publication of the Sue Gray Report on “Party-gate” and a vote of confidence within the Conservative  party,  she issued a formal statement: 
“I feel strongly that the unrelenting attacks on the Prime Minister are detracting from the Government’s hard work and effective policy making over the past two and half years…Bearing in mind the mandate given to the Prime Minister at the last General Election by the electorate, I refuse to engage in party political navel gazing at a time of national and international crises by voting against a democratically elected leader. It has always been my view that it should be the public who determine the Government of the day, and, for this reason, the Prime Minister continues
to enjoy my support at this time…Most people that I speak to in Hastings, Rye and the surrounding villages want to draw a line under this and focus on the real issues facing our local area, the country, and the world.”

On 6 July, however, she took to Twitter to reverse her stance: “Considering the further revelations that have come to light [presumably related to the appointment of disgraced Deputy Chief Whip Chris Pincher], and given that the integrity of Parliament must be upheld, on behalf of my constituents of Hastings and Rye I am no longer able to support Boris Johnson as Leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister”. 

Would-be Labour MP Maya Evans questions her exclusion

A “long list” of candidates from whom one will be chosen to represent the Labour party at the next general election in the  Hastings & Rye constituency was unveiled last week.

The date for such an election may be more than two years in the future.  However, in the aftershock of the Conservative party slumping to seismic by-election defeats in Devon and west Yorkshire, the chances of this constituency returning a Labour MP at the next general election for the first time since 2005 look distinctly favourable. The prize of selection as official Labour candidate may be valued in proportion. 

According to Alan Mathison, chair of the local constituency party, the approved list contains just three names –  Christine Bayliss, Bexhill councillor and leader of the Labour group sharing power on Rother District Council; Helena Dollimore, currently a councillor in the London Borough of Merton though raised in a village outside Battle; and Simon Thomson, who is a councillor in Bromley working for a national food charity.

Omitted

The names of two other locally prominent would-be candidates – Cllr Maya Evans and Bella Sankey, who had each taken to social media in the days before the announcement of the list to promote their respective candidacies –  do not appear.

Cllr Evans had set her stall out on Instagram: “I’m proud to announce that I am running to be Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Hastings & Rye, the constituency I have lived and worked in for nearly 20 years, and the borough I’m privileged to be council deputy leader [of]…I’m standing to give Hastings and Rye a local champion, with a strong track record of fighting and winning for local people, on the issues that matter to you.” She went on to cite endorsements from previous Labour candidate and council leader Peter Chowney, from fellow councillor in cabinet Andy Batsford, from local community activists Rossana Leal (Refugee Buddy project) and Sarah Gomes Harris (Hastings Rental Health), and from trade unions Unite and the RMT.

Bella Sankey meanwhile issued a press release, describing herself as a charity director and high profile human rights campaigner, “born and raised on the East Sussex coast” and now a mother to two toddlers with a local primary teacher husband in the area. She had contested the safe Conservative seat of Arundel & South Downs at the 2019 general election but was now clearly looking for a more winnable candidacy. Her endorsees included Cllr Trevor Webb, Hastings Borough councillor but also co-leader of the minority Labour group on East Sussex County Council. And she was backed by a grant from the party’s MotheRed pressure group which is campaigning to get more mothers with young children elected to the parliamentary party.

Racism inferred

Ms Sankey has not posted any reaction to her omission from the list. Cllr Evans has, however, vented her disappointment openly. Confirming that she had not been given any reason for her non-selection despite the range of endorsements she had shown, she inferred racist factors: 

“ In my time as councillor I became the first woman of colour on Hastings Borough Council, and the first person of colour to reach a senior leadership position. I will continue to push the boundaries of what is possible for those discriminated against and oppressed. 

“In this regard I am concerned at the growing pattern of left-wing BAME women – including Labour leaders in local government such as myself – being prevented by the national Labour party from standing for selection. In Hastings two BAME women have been blocked, despite enjoying significant local and trade union support. No justification has been given for my exclusion.”

Listed candidates

The two women who made it to the National Executive’s “long list” have contrasting profiles in age and experience. 

Ms Bayliss, 61, once a police officer, later a civil servant, is cabinet lead for regeneration in the cross-party Alliance group which controls Rother District Council. On a dedicated Facebook page she describes her background as a Hastings girl made good – attending school here, “walk[ing] the beat as a police officer in Bohemia and Silverhill” and “attend[ing] adult education classes at Archery Road before going to the London School of Economics as a mature student to study Social Policy and Administration”. She claims to be a “winner” in her previous electoral career.

Ms Dollimore, by contrast, is 28.  As a school pupil in Heathfield, she campaigned against cuts to education budgets in East Sussex, helped set up the East Sussex Youthbank, and was appointed vice-chair of the national Young Labour group while reading history and politics at Oxford University. She now works for Save The Children, but during Covid lockdowns and restriction periods she returned to the Rother area – both parents live locally – and worked as a volunteer vaccinator in Ore. She claims support from several Hastings councillors including Judy Rogers, Godfrey Daniel and Heather Bishop, and has been nominated by the GMB, Unison and a number of other unions.

Mr Thomson has no known profile within the constituency. He is said to have had family in Fairlight when he was young, but has lived in south-east London for upwards of 20 years. A former BBC journalist, he contested Dartford for Labour in the general election of 2015 and has subsequently become a councillor in Bromley.

Mr Mathison was due to convene a constituency meeting of the party earlier this week to take the selection process forward.

Under Labour party rules it is a panel of the National Executive which draws up the “long list” and submits it to the local constituency. A committee within the local party may then whittle the number down to a “short list” with a ‘one member, one vote’ ballot of all constituency members determining the final selection. But in this case the national body seems to have already done the whittling: it seems odd to describe a list of three as “long”. 

There is no transparency nor accountability in this national process. The Executive and the local constituency are together required to follow a 23-page protocol described as “procedural guidelines” which are designed “to ensure that there is equality of opportunity in each constituency and that Labour’s candidates are drawn from the widest possible pool of talent”. There are copious provisions aimed at  promoting “diversity”, including a stipulation that the long list must contain at least 50% women and include at least one BAME member. However, the Executive panel does not provide any justification of its selection decisions.

At the first meeting of Hastings Borough Council since the local elections, Labour party chief Cllr Paul Barnett was voted back last week as council leader by a “co-operative alliance” of Labour and Green councillors.

The outcome of those elections – loss of three Labour seats to the Greens – is that there are now 15 Labour councillors, 12 Conservatives and five Greens. A 12-year period of Labour domination is thus at an end. Although they still hold a majority, they need the support of one of the two other parties to form a stable administration. To the surprise of no-one, they have chosen to co-opt the Greens rather than the Conservatives for this role. 

Paul Barnett fronts his cabinet (missing Cllr Ali Roark)
CREDIT: Hastings Borough Council

Accordingly, out of eight posts in Cllr Barnett’s cabinet, two will be taken by Green councillors. Green leader Julia Hilton will be responsible for climate change responses and the natural environment; new councillor for Tressell ward, Glenn Haffenden will lead on the urban environment.

Labour reshuffle

There has also been a major reshuffle of posts within the Labour ranks. Cllr Andy Batsford, who has maintained a high profile for several years as lead member for housing has been switched to health and culture; Cllr Maya Evans becomes deputy leader and takes over responsibilities for housing and community development; Simon Willis, newly elected in Ore, inherits the finance role from retired councillor Peter Chowney and also leads on equalities; Judy Rogers, returned by just five votes in Castle ward, takes the key planning portfolio along with governance and community safety; Ali Roark, new to cabinet, becomes chair of the Charity Committee.

Cllr Barnett was keen to stress that the new council would adopt a more open and inclusive approach to policy than in the recent past.

He said: “For all of us — and I think I am speaking for all three political parties — there is more that joins us together in terms of our love of Hastings and our determination to make this town a truly great town. There is more we agree on than we disagree on…We shouldn’t be having the debate purely on political allegiance. It doesn’t make any sense for the vast majority of the things we do.” 

“Tough decisions”

Some “really tough decisions”, however, would have to be made, particularly in the two areas he identified as having maximum priority – balancing the council budget and addressing the shortage of housing.

“We are all going to have to take responsibility for those tough decisions and I hope we can work together and find ways of changing the way we work in order to deliver a better budget for this town and better set of services as a result.”

Cllr Hilton echoed Cllr Barnett’s sentiments in commending the “co-operative alliance” agreed between the Labour and Green groups which, she said, “commits both groups to working together in the best interest of Hastings council and the people of the town in a co-operative, open and participatory matter.” She revealed, however, that one of the five Green members – Cllr Claire Carr, see below – had declined to join the alliance, and would in effect act as an independent councillor while pursuing a separate Green agenda.

There was also an early indication that other Greens, too, may keep Cllr Barnett and his Labour colleagues guessing on whether political support will be forthcoming on any given issue. After Cllr Barnett announced that the constitution of council committees would be shared between members of all three parties, but that the planning committee would have a Labour chair and thus an inbuilt majority, Conservative leader Andy Patmore countered with a proposal that this key chairing role should be rotated, so that no party would have consistent control. When this counter-proposal was put to the vote, two Greens stuck their hands up in favour along with the 12 Conservatives, while three abstained. Mayor James Bacon exercised his casting vote to reject it, so Cllr Barnett got his way on this occasion. That may not always be the case. 

By Terry Eagleton

Published by Verso Books, 2022, paperback, rrp £12.99,
available at Bookbuster, 39 Queens Road

Review by Tim Barton

With our fundamentally undemocratic ‘first past the post’ system of allocating seats in Parliament, it is simplistic to suggest that the ‘principled’ way to place one’s vote is with the party you most agree with. It is a luxury many voters do not have if they wish to see ‘their’ party win, or hope to defeat the worst option party. A tactical vote may, in some circumstances, perhaps most, be the ‘principled’ choice. This does of course rankle, which is why some of us bang on about Proportional Representation, a bill of rights, citizenship training, to name but a few constitutional changes we would be the better for.

But there are limits and for many Labour voters I know, many of whom have voted Labour all their lives, ‘even under Blair’, the new Labour leader has been deemed beyond the pale. The latest council election results are interesting but nationally what do they really mean? ‘Labour has limped to success through Tory failure. It is a poor basis for hope’: this is a diagnosis of the position of Starmer’s Labour Party after the May council elections from James Butler in the London Review of Books. I think it a fair diagnosis. Frankly, Johnson lost votes rather than Starmer winning them. With the current governmental clown-show, Labour should have done even better. In Hastings, it seems the Green vote was bolstered by many former voters switching from both the Tory, and in greater numbers, the Labour party.

MORE OF A KILLER INSTINCT THAN HE IS GIVEN CREDIT FOR?

Come the next election, what may this mean? Certainly, past ‘mid-term’ council elections that have acted as a protest vote do not reliably determine the more tribalistic general election results. It seems there are many irons in the fire, including ‘the plague that shall not be named’, Brexit, the Northern Ireland border farrago and the current ‘cost-of-living crisis’. The latter is a perfect storm caused by the other issues, wildly exacerbated by rising fuel prices and the post-Thatcher culture of greed. And it is beginning to get severe criticism from across the electorate.

Can Starmer gain from these crises? A ‘senior aide’ told The Guardian’s Jessica Elgot that ‘Keir has got way more of a killer instinct than he is given credit for.’ Sadly, he has not shown this as Opposition Leader, even a little bit. Where he has shown it is in regards to internal party discipline. Many of the votes lost in May were, frankly, in protest at the shabby treatment of Corbyn as much as with Starmer’s weak record in opposition to the farcical excuse for a government he faces (so far). Witch-hunts that emulate Kinnock’s in the 1980s, and court the Blairites, have been severe and unjust: not least, with regard to the issue of whether to restore the whip to Corbyn. The whole mess around Corbynism has lost a huge amount of good will from younger voters, especially as the Party they supported launched a civil war on their symbol of hope.

CONTRADICTORY IMPULSES?

Eagleton’s book is a useful tool in beginning to understand Starmer. Starmer only became an MP in 2015. He appeared to be a safe choice for leader, supporting the Corbyn project but not passionately. To my mind he smacked of opportunistic ambition. And that hunch is being borne out every day that passes. Yet he came to prominence with a track-record of supporting left-wing and human rights causes. How do we square this with his knighthood; with his gallows hangman approach to dissent within the party; with his toe-the-line attitude to the establishment, and in the ‘we are at war’ (but we are not) culture promulgated by Johnson?

He has long shown what many might say are contradictory impulses. He worked hard to protect IRA prisoners’ rights, while at the same time supporting Police use of rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse protestors in Catholic districts who were against Loyalist marches being routed through their streets. Since this Loyalist Orange march had paramilitary regalia, and known extremists, threaded through it, one might have suggested the route be banned. But instead, Starmer did what the state chose in Cable Street, when Mosley’s fascists marched through largely Jewish parts of London’s East End in 1936. It is no wonder ‘the left’ don’t trust him.

SHOULD WE TRUST THIS MAN?

Ironically, in his youth, Starmer wrote for far-left magazines. He also, more recently, stood on a platform supporting boycott of trade with Israel, a stance he and the PLP now deem to be ‘antisemitic’ and cause for expulsion. Not to mention having been, apparently, against the Iraq War. However, as I see it, when he came to prominence as a lawyer, the path to power was harder through centrist Blairism, which had become a big pond (and lest we forget, at least until Iraq, a popular one), but rather through swimming upstream with smaller fry, as a big fish in smaller ponds.

Whilst he presumably had no Blofeld-like plan laid out in crayon at age 10, as Johnson probably did, and whether he was fully conscious of the possibilities of giving the appearance of a left-winger whilst aiming ‘higher’, this dynamic, certainly at least from the mid-90s onward, could help square the circle. At most points he also engaged in Establishment-friendly activity. In my view he played the long game to get to the top, and was not wholly the ‘man of conviction’ he appeared to be: or rather, that he held different convictions to those he publicly supported. Hilary Wainwright has said that Starmer has ‘an insatiable need to ingratiate himself with established authority’.

Should we trust this man? Eagleton will help you to make your mind up, but Starmer’s cards are held close to his chest. However, a week or so ago a story went around indicating that he intends to ‘move away’ from the promises of the last manifesto – a manifesto that did not lose the election, a billionaires’ media war on Corbyn did that – a manifesto that I and many others felt made Labour, all too briefly, both the principled and pragmatic choice.

Confused? You will be, on next week’s episode of PMQs…

Cllr Claire Carr, who was newly elected as Labour councillor for Castle ward at the borough council election in May, announced last week that she had left the party and joined the Greens. That doubles the Green party representation but leaves Labour still in firm control.

Cllr Carr described her decision as “sad” but based it on “equality” issues: “I have reached the conclusion that I will never be treated fairly or have my voice properly heard on behalf of the residents of Castle Ward if I remain in the Labour Party. As the mother of a gender non-conforming child, a member of the LGBTQ+ community and a strong advocate for equality, I have been sidelined, gagged and isolated.” 

She added that she felt she had found her home. “Green Party policies align much more closely to my views… I now feel accepted and valued as part of a team who are working in the town’s best interest with a spirit of collaboration.”

Existing Green party councillor for Old Hastings ward, Julia Hilton, welcomed Cllr Carr’s move. “I am delighted that there will now be a Green group – rather than just me as an individual – able to hold Hastings Council to account for their actions.”

At the time of going to press, the local Labour party has made no comment. 

Last Sunday’s Hastings Pride festival was billed as a major event in the town’s calendar – the more so because of cancellation not only of the 2020 event but also of the Brighton & Hove Pride weekend which should have taken place earlier in August. The sun shone obligingly; the costumes were colourful; the crowds were large, if not overflowing; the music line-up, themed on the 1980s and including drag artists and cabaret performers, was pitched to the target audience. Hastings Pride (HP), joint organisers with the Hastings & Rother Rainbow Alliance, promised to deliver “our biggest and best yet”.

Among the credited sponsors of the event was Hastings Borough Council; and the town’s mayor, as its formal representative, was due to officiate in the parade.

But behind the scenes an ideological battle had been raging for several weeks. Back in May, following the local borough council elections, a new mayor and deputy mayor were elected, both from the ranks of the majority Labour councillors. The local party met in advance, picked Cllr James Bacon for the main post and Cllr Ruby Cox as deputy, and instructed its body of councillors to vote accordingly in the council chamber.  Cllr Bacon was duly elected unanimously by the full 32-strong council, including Conservative and Green opposition; Cllr Cox received 31 votes, but with one abstention lodged by a newly elected Labour councillor Claire Carr.

CREDIT: Alexandra Whatley

“Transphobic posts”

Cllr Carr gave no public explanation for her abstention either in the council chamber or in the immediate aftermath. However, it soon emerged that her refusal to endorse Cllr Cox arose from what the Rainbow Alliance have described as “concerns over harmful trans-phobic posts” which the deputy had “shared on social media”. 

The Alliance say that they had “ongoing concerns about transphobia” within the local Labour party as well, and that they tried, with HP, to engage with the council to resolve them. Cllr Judy Rogers, a former mayor and current cabinet member, eventually responded, telling them that Cllr Cox had agreed to issue “a public apology”.

The apology, when it came, was framed in terms that Cllr Cox  “did not understand the complexities of the issues surrounding trans rights” in her previous sharing of a media post. This wasn’t enough for her critics. They demanded that she “acknowledge that trans men are men and trans women are women, and should be treated as such”. Cllr Cox is said to have refused.

Labour party statement

The Hastings & Rye constituency Labour party in the meantime issued a statement: “It is Labour Party policy to support trans rights, and we stand in solidarity with the trans community. The party backs self-identification and reform of the Equality Act and as a local party we will continue working to further that aim.”

Nevertheless the Alliance and Hastings Pride maintained their stance that no-one from the mayor’s office, and no councillors who voted for Ms Cox (which is all of them bar Cllr Carr), would be welcome in an official capacity at the Pride event. 

Chair of the Alliance trustees Gary Rolfe, who is also founder and facilitator of its “trans non-binary group”, said that Cllr Cox’s stance was in breach of Labour party policy (though he is not himself a member) and that council leaders were “colluding with her views”. He argues that the party “should not allow her to hold a prestigious position in the community”. She should resign forthwith and, if not, she should be disciplined by the party.

Support for Cllr Cox

Cllr Cox herself has made no public statement. However, others have used social media – in particular through the Mumsnet website – to post messages supportive of her, branding the Alliance’s demands of her as bullying and intimidation and criticising her councillor colleagues for failing to back her. Comparisons are made with Salem witch-hunts and Mao’s China, while questions are raised as to how representative the Alliance and HP are of LGBT+ people in general. One trenchant post asked “How have we got to a stage where groups like this can demand of elected representatives that they must make a statement of belief in a quasi-religious doctrine?”

Another post which gained approval states: “Pride is there to run a festival essentially. Not develop political policy and implement it.”

Several councillors including Cllr Bacon did in fact attend the Pride event on Sunday in a private capacity, and the party leadership may be hoping that the issue will fade in topicality now it has taken place. Clearly the Alliance intend otherwise. Their spokesperson Chrissy Brand said: “We will celebrate Hastings Pride on Sunday. However, the local campaign to ensure basic human rights for a vulnerable part of our LGBTQIA+ community will now ramp up. We will not rest until those that are elected to serve the people show support to some of the most vulnerable.” 

Asked how Cllr Cox could be forced to resign from her position of deputy mayor if she will not do so voluntarily, Cllr Carr made it clear that she expects the Labour leadership to take disciplinary action.

Ten years on from its original adoption (see side panel), Hastings Borough Council has indicated that it plans to refresh the town’s Equality and Human Rights Charter, and last week the Hastings & Rye constituency Labour party (CLP) issued a formal statement that it will be inviting community groups, voluntary organisations, businesses, sports clubs and service providers to sign up to a refreshed version. 

If this sounds harmonious, however, certain members of the CLP appear to be treating it as anything but. The party was meeting this week with one particular issue set for debate – not the relatively poor showing of its councillors standing in the local elections last month nor the perfunctory nature of decisions taken within the Borough Council as highlighted in our last edition (see HIP 177: Fear of Democracy?), but the vexed question of transgender self-declaration.

The CLP’s recent statement seemed to pre-empt any debate on this by including within it a declaration in uncompromising terms:

“Transgender people continue to face widespread discrimination and there is still a long way to go on issues such as education, equal access to public services, levels of LGBT+ hate crime, and mental and physical wellbeing. 

“As a party we’re committed to ensuring trans people can live their lives with equality, dignity and respect. We will resist any attempts to roll back hard-won rights and we are committed to reforming the Gender Recognition Act 2004 to introduce self-declaration for trans people.”

But self-declaration remains a controversial subject at national party level. When, following a consultation process, the government announced last September that it was not going to amend  the Gender Recognition Act 2004 to entitle trans people to self-declare their gender without satisfying medical requirements, Labour shadow minister for Women and Equalities Marsha de Cordova, responded: “After three years of toxic debate, it is deeply disappointing that the government have let trans people down at the last minute…. Labour is committed to equality and inclusion for trans people and we continue to support updating the Gender Recognition Act to introduce self-declaration for trans people.” However, this statement provoked a counter-blast from others in the party opposing the policy, who pointed out that there has never been a formal decision by any national executive body to approve it.

The issue appears to be provoking similar division in Hastings. The abstention recorded by newly elected councillor Claire Carr at the otherwise unanimous council vote electing Cllr Ruby Cox as deputy mayor last month has been widely reported as a mark of disapproval for Cllr Cox’s previous stance against self-declaration and her expression of other views alleged to be “transphobic”. 

Cllr Carr is chair of the local Labour LGBT+ branch. At the time of going to press, neither she nor Cllr Cox has made any public statement since the vote. 

The 2011 Charter

In April 2011 the Hastings Local Strategic Partnership adopted an Equality & Human Rights Charter for the town. The Charter is described as a set of shared principles based largely on the Government’s Equality Act, which had been introduced the previous October.

Its purpose was expressed as “improving services in response to the diversity of communities in the town”.

Major local institutions – not just the Borough Council but Sussex Police Authority, the Fire and Rescue Service, what was then Sussex Coast College, Hastings Voluntary Action and other service providers – made a “commitment” to eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct that was prohibited by or under the Equality Act. 

The Charter committed them specifically to advance equality by taking steps to remove or minimise disadvantage suffered by people by reason of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race (including ethnic or national origins), religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation or socio-economic status; and also to “meet the different needs of people from these groups where their needs are different from the needs of other people”.

Hastings & Rye MP Sally-Ann Hart was among those who filed through the ‘no’ lobby, despite having earlier described as “brilliant” the campaign fronted by Manchester United and England footballer Marcus Rashford to extend free school meals over the summer holidays. 

Her refusal to cast her vote in favour of state support for food provision over last week’s half term holiday and in the Christmas holidays to come has provoked harsh criticism from local Labour party politicians. It also galvanised a large number of restaurants, cafes and bars in Hastings to offer free meals to schoolchildren that, taken together, will have meant that none should have had to go hungry.

The political battle at both national and local level has been intense. At the beginning of September, Rashford unveiled a Child Food Poverty Taskforce supported by major supermarkets and food distributors with the aim of expanding the provision of free school meals to every child whose family is on universal credit, both in term time and over holidays.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed that local councils could finance support for the most vulnerable families in the October half term week from a £63m fund created in June to cover “local welfare assistance”. But the Local Government Association (LGA) retorted that this funding had been directed to be spent before the end of September and had been “outstripped” by demand. 

Cllr Richard Watts, Chair of the LGA Resources Board, issued a press release last week declaring: “No young person should have to go hungry, and ensuring vulnerable pupils are provided for is a top priority for councils.” The Social Mobility Commission, itself created by Mr Johnson’s administration, backed Rashford’s campaign, pointing out that the pandemic was having the biggest impact on the poorest areas of Britain where people are already struggling to afford food.

Locally, a spokesperson for East Sussex County Council (ESCC) said that they currently fund free school meals for 13,800 pupils across the county during term time at a cost in excess of £100,000 per week. That number represents approximately 22 per cent of the children in East Sussex schools (but excludes those at 11 Academy schools which administer free school meals themselves).  

ESCC had received just under £600,000 from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as an emergency grant, and used it to offer financial support to the county’s food banks and organisations working with food bank users as well as for fuel vouchers.

Hastings Borough Council has not received any emergency funding from central government for this purpose, nor sought any contribution from the county council, but has channelled £2,000 from its own COVID-19 response budget through the Education Futures Trust to provide food, according to its media office, “to the most vulnerable children”.

The Hastings & Rye constituency Labour party called Mrs Hart’s negative vote in parliament “disgraceful”. Today (Tuesday) supporters plan to meet at the doors of the Conservative party office in Theaklen Drive, St Leonards to lay plates there decorated with political messages.  According to their spokesperson, the plates “symbolise the empty plates of children living in poverty, and protest about their cruelty towards the most disadvantaged in our society”.

Meanwhile, a large number of food outlets in town joined in nationwide action to ensure that no children should go hungry last week. The No Bones café at the Prince Albert pub in Cornwallis Street and Southside Wrappers at Priory Meadow were first to advertise (through social media) free meals for schoolchildren. Others came thick and fast, most offering free packed lunches on one or more days last week on an unconditional basis to any presenting school-age children, though one or two sought to tie them in with the sale of an adult meal. 

Responding to these initially spontaneous offers, a community group, Hastings Food Action has attempted to co-ordinate provision – not just for the half term week but also focussed on longer term needs. But with many outlets about to close again under renewed lockdown conditions, who will be there to provide next time? 

The council meeting took place just eight days before the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) published its long-awaited report into antisemitism in the Labour Party. The two events are inextricably linked: the initial refusal of the Labour Party to adopt the IHRA definition formed a central part of the long running accusations of antisemitism that were made against it. And this led to the extraordinary decision to remove the whip from Jeremy Corbyn just five days ago. 

Cllr Judy Rogers addresses a council meeting in 2019

The council motion for the adoption of the IHRA definition was filed and led by Cllr Dany Louise, who was elected in 2018 as Labour candidate in Old Town ward but quit the party less than a year later citing antisemitism in the national party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. She later went on to write a blog in the midst of the General Election campaign last autumn cataloguing experiences of alleged incidents of antisemitism within the local party, including the instigation of multiple anti-Israel motions at party meetings, refusal to avoid major religious dates for non-Christians when setting the yearly council calendar, and the appointment of another Jewish Labour councillor Leah Levane as chair of the Labour group in the council (see our report in HIP 142 Jews and Anti-Semites in Hastings: The Peculiar World of Dany Louise).

Objections

So why is the IHRA definition so contentious, why does Cllr Louise object to Cllr Levane, and why was there no pushback in the council meeting? 

This can only be understood by looking into the history behind the IHRA definition. It was first published in 2005 as a ‘working definition’ by the European Union Monitoring Committee, with the aim of providing guidance on monitoring incidents of antisemitism, but it was never formally adopted by the EU and removed from their website following criticisms from academics, jurists, and human rights lawyers, many of whom are Jewish. 

Some believe that it is too vague to be of any value in determining what constitutes antisemitism, and can thus be misused; others argue that it stifles free speech in criticisms of Israel. Even Kenneth Stern, the Jewish-American author of the original text, has said he thinks that its use in quasi-legal settings would be “unconstitutional and unwise”.

Party politics

However, in 2016, it was adopted by 31 member countries of the IHRA, and subsequently by mainstream political parties in the UK, though rejected by the Green Party on the ground that the definition was “politically engineered to restrict criticism of Israel’s heinous crimes upon the Palestinian people”. 

Within the national Labour party there was much debate before adoption. A grouping styling itself Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL), set up in 2017, argued that the IHRA examples of antisemitism fell short of providing “a clear and unambiguous statement based on attitudes to Jews as Jews, not attitudes to a country, Israel”. Co-chair of JVL is  Cllr Louise’s Hastings bugbear, Cllr Levane.

Within the council meeting last month, continuation of the Labour party feud was headed off by an amendment tabled by Cllr Judy Rogers. While accepting the full IHRA wording including its stated examples, her amendment added further examples that are designed to protect those criticising Israel – and even campaigning against its actions – so long as the actions are not tied into antisemitism: seemingly, a somewhat circular argument but one which carried the field.  Cllr Louise agreed (with some stated reluctance) to accept it. Cllr Levane said nothing, and abstained on the motion, which was otherwise voted through unanimously.

It remains to be seen whether Sir Keir Starmer will find – or want to find – an equivalent compromise with Mr Corbyn in the national party discourse.

There will be an election for deputy Labour leader, and therefore effectively of the council, two days previously on 16th March. 

At the meeting last week three candidates put themselves up for election as prospective leader – Cllrs Andy Batsford, current cabinet portfolio holder for housing, leisure and community engagement, and Trevor Webb, who also represents Central St Leonards & Gensing on East Sussex County Council, along with Cllr Forward. Each made “a very good pitch for the position”, according to HIP sources. There was then a ballot conducted by single transferable vote. It does not seem that there was any input from non-councillor Labour party members.

Born in Bexhill, Cllr Forward has lived and worked in and around Hastings and St Leonards all her life, with a former main career as primary school teacher. She has five children and five grandchildren.  

Fellow councillor Margi O’Callaghan described Cllr Forward’s victory as “an amazing achievement for women in local politics” (though the party was led locally by Mary Denning in the 1990s) and “a fabulous accomplishment to see such a strong woman elected to succeed Peter Chowney.

“Even though she has some big shoes to fill – both Peter and Jeremy Birch had a huge positive impact on our town – I feel that Kim has the drive and the vision to take Hastings to new heights and beyond.”

Peter Chowney said: “I’m very pleased that Kim has been elected as the new leader of the Labour Group and will become leader of the council. Kim has been incredibly supportive as my deputy and has my full support as the new leader, a job she already understands well and will be very good at.”

She in turn paid tribute to Peter Chowney’s legacy as leader and to his collaborative style of working. She said: “I have been involved every step of the way as we have battled with the budget to ensure that we can continue to deliver quality services for the residents of our beautiful town.”

Cllr Forward has been playing a leading role in developing plans for a new leisure and arts complex in the White Rock / Bohemia area. However the continued government squeeze on local authority budgets suggests that her primary task will be to implement a radical restructuring of services including imposing compulsory staff redundancies. The need to factor in responses to climate emergency is clearly an added pressure.

Fellow Gensing councillor Colin Fitzgerald said: “Her experience and enthusiasm are going to be vital as we look to continue standing against the disgusting impacts of Tory-imposed austerity upon our residents.”

The following exchanges – extracted and distorted across the national media – took place at the HIP Hastings Hustings at East Sussex College last Thursday evening when the four electoral candidates in the constituency of Hastings & Rye responded to a question from the floor. 

Questioner: Sally, you shared an article on your Facebook page saying that disabled people could work for less than the minimum wage. Would you care to defend that?

Sally-Ann Hart: Did you read the article?

Questioner: Yes.

S-AH: You read the article and it was about people with learning difficulties, about them being given the opportunity to work, because it’s to do with the happiness they have about working, and the obsession 

[some audience noise]

….it’s about learning difficulties…it’s about having….

[audience interjection: “How dare you? That’s patronising]…

Some people with learning difficulties, they don’t understand about money – it is about having a therapeutic exemption, and the article was in support of employing people with learning disabilities – that’s what it was. [Repeated audience interjection: “How dare you?] 

You should read the article. 

Paul C: It may be unpopular – I don’t mind saying things that are unpopular – but I do feel I have a responsibility to reflect what is said to me. The first person I asked for his ten-point citizen’s manifesto is here as my wing-man, Tony May. He put on his ten-point manifesto: do away with the minimum wage, living wage. He believes that there should be more opportunities for people to take whatever work they want to take.

[Audience interjection: “Everyone deserves the dignity of a living wage”].

S-AH: Everyone deserves the dignity of a job. 

[Shouts from the audience in reaction].

Paul C: Everyone deserves the dignity of a basic income and to then do whatever work they feel contributes to the community. There is so much work crying out to be done. My friend Tony May, he cleans up – he gets prizes for being the clean-up man – and, if you try to put that under a system whereby he needs to be paid the minimum wage, there would then be a welter of health and safety regulations put on top of him, it would be impossible for him to clean the litter from the streets, and that’s what he loves to do. There are people who do want to work…

Moderator: Paul, your minute’s up….Nick, if you want to comment…

Nick Perry: I don’t want to comment particularly on that, no.

Moderator: And Peter, do you want to say anything on that question or not?

Peter Chowney: Yes, I do. I think it’s disgraceful, the idea that people with physical disabilities or neurodiversity should be paid less than others – I mean it’s just shocking. [Audience applause and clapping]. I was out in an organisation called Little Gate Farm this morning where they specifically work with people with neurodiversity and learning difficulties, and we have helped them on the council. We’ve employed apprentices from that organisation, and so have lots of other employers in town. They haven’t tried to do that on the cheap, and they would be perfectly happy, as would the council….and indeed the council does pay them the £10 an hour wage. And we would always do that, and I think most employers would be happy to do that, because these people from that organisation are doing a job that they deserve to be paid the right wage for [Audience clapping], and I don’t think employers want to do anything else.

Footnote

Mencap defines learning disability as “a reduced intellectual ability and difficulty with everyday activities – for example household tasks, socialising or managing money – which affects someone for their whole life. People with a learning disability tend to take longer to learn and may need support to develop new skills, understand complicated information and interact with other people.”

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, neurodiversity “describes the range of differences in individual brain function and behavioural traits regarded as part of normal variation in the human population (used especially in the context of autistic spectrum disorders).”

Many weeks of national as well as local focus on voters in the marginal constituency of Hastings & Rye (Conservative majority 346 in 2017) should come to a head next Thursday 5th December when all four candidates will enter an open debate in East Sussex College organised by ourselves – the Hastings Independent Press. Sally-Ann Hart for the Conservatives, Peter Chowney for Labour, Nick Perry for the Liberal Democrats and Independent Paul Crosland have all agreed to take part, giving short addresses to a public audience and taking questions.

The event will start at 6.30pm and is open to all who wish to attend. However, all attendees are required to register, and are encouraged to do so in advance to ensure a place – see the HIP Facebook page for full details. There will be a maximum of 250 seats available on the ground floor of the college’s atrium hall with up to a further 100 standing places only.

We are very keen that the candidates should be pressed to explain their own and, in the case of party contenders, their party’s ideas and practical policies on both national and local issues. However, we also expect the debate to be conducted in a positive and respectful spirit that shows all of us capable of airing differences democratically and peacefully.

Immediately following the hustings event we aim to provide full coverage online (facebook and website) of who said what and how it was received. We encourage our readers to tap into this, if they are able, without waiting for our next newsprint edition. Our Issue 142 may hit the streets while the polls are still open, but the political beauty parade will be over by then.

What would you ask the candidates – Forward your questions now to info@hastingsindependentpress.co.uk or message us on Facebook

When considering who to place a vote for there may be many conflicting motivations and sources. Firstly, in a first-past-the-post system most MPs will be part of a parliamentary party and their votes on House of Commons motions will be determined by the party ‘whip’. The manifestos of each party are available online and looking at these policies might help in understanding which party best represents one’s interests and views. Be sure to find an official version of each party manifesto and watch what the leaders of these parties have to say for themselves on the Question Time Leaders Special available on BBC iPlayer.

Secondly, we must choose which person represents us as an MP. In Hastings and Rye we have four candidates running: Peter Chowney (Labour), Paul Crosland (Independent), Sally-Ann Hart (Conservative) and Nick Perry (Liberal Democrat). Each of these candidates have shown experience in politics from various backgrounds and it is worth researching each of these people to see if you would support them as an individual to represent you.  

In making the decision of who to vote for, we choose for ourselves, we also choose for our neighbours. Hastings is a town with high welfare dependency, large public sector employment, areas of deprivation, high rates of poverty and teenage pregnancy, high drug-related crime and a higher-than-average homeless population. Property prices and rents have risen dramatically over the past few years, whilst wages have stagnated. You might be affected by these issues or know people who are. These are the kinds of things to consider when choosing a political party and candidate. 

Brexit

Brexit has been a large factor in the discourse in politics over the last three years, now with clear water between each of the parties. The Labour Party has pledged to negotiate a customs union-based Brexit deal within three months, to hold a referendum on this deal versus remaining in the EU within six months, to remain neutral in this referendum and to make the outcome legally binding. The Liberal Democrat Party promise to revoke Article 50 and cancel Brexit. The Conservative Party want to ‘get Brexit done’ with Boris Johnson’s deal, like Theresa May’s deal but with checks on imports and exports between Britain and Northern Ireland instead of the ‘Irish backstop’.

Environment

The environment has also become a key issue in public debate, Extinction Rebellion (XR) has raised the profile of climate crises globally and locally, with our local XR group hosting a hustings for the Hastings and Rye candidates. This event was well attended and showed each of the candidates in a positive light with the Lib Dem and Labour candidates sticking to party lines and Crosland speaking from a more esoteric and prophetic heartfelt authority. 

Perry’s best moment was the incredible dignity and presence of mind in refusing to answer a particularly sinister question about population control and limiting human reproduction. This primitivist green perspective was also challenged by a member of the audience and all the candidates followed Perry’s example in rejecting the notion that humans are the problem with climate crises. Perry highlighted the Liberal Democrat commitment to investment in education and mental health services whilst maintaining a budget surplus, as well as reducing UK emissions to carbon neutral by 2045. 

Chowney won the contest of personal green credentials with his self-imposed flight restrictions, diligent recycling and electric bike. However, Chowney was challenged by other candidates on his record as Leader of Hastings Borough Council (HBC). Chowney carries the weight of being Leader of HBC and all the decisions that have not worked out for the council count against him in this contest. This does however give him a broad understanding of the workings of this town and Chowney is very knowledgeable of the problems we face. He missed a key party policy – using renewable energies to power a regeneration scheme, offering 20% of profits from local renewables to regenerate deprived coastal communities like Hastings. Of each of the parties, Labour are offering the greatest investment into what they call the Green Industrial Revolution, promising the largest number of jobs created, the quickest reduction to carbon neutrality and a National Education Service so that every person can be given six years of education to retrain into the jobs of the future at any point in their life, for free. Chowney commented, “Change is possible through the actions of individuals.”

The comment of the night came from Crosland when he said, “The micro is indivisible from the macro.” Which is the point Chowney lost in his statement about the actions of individuals. Recycling and electric bikes are going to do very little to offset the massive emissions created by major military-industrial complexes or the fall-out of ever-looming nuclear apocalypse. Instead, Crosland suggested a cultural shift towards a sharing economy. This touched on the need to change the systemic destruction of the environment through personal actions, national and international legislation. 

Hart decided not to attend the event and was ‘empty chaired’ by the hosts. 

Facebook ‘live’

Instead of attending the XR hustings the local Conservative candidate chose to do a ‘live’ Facebook Q&A that turned out to be a video selection of pre-prepared questions. In which, Hart continued her predecessor’s nine-year promise to do something for local fisherman, offered her support for council houses but claimed the council was responsible for that issue, and suggested that Hastings and Rye have a local referendum to determine what her position on foxhunting should be but did not indicate if she would campaign one way or another. 

Question Time

Whilst local candidates were being grilled by XR, national leaders were each given half an hour to answer questions from a live television audience in a BBC Question Time special. This extended exposure has been the most clinical dissection of each of the leaders in a campaign characterised by sound bites and media training. 

Corbyn was challenged again on the party record on antisemitism, his plans to borrow and tax to fund a huge investment package, perceived fears of him as Prime minister and his ambiguated stance on a future Brexit referendum. Corbyn announced for the first time that under a Labour government he would remain neutral in any such referendum. This settled a previous unknown variable, after which he was calmer and more confident than previous appearances, answering questions in coherent plain English. According to several polls after the event Corbyn won by large margin. 

Nicola Sturgeon was next to take questions and was clear, concise, competent, largely responding to questions about Scottish independence.  

Jo Swinson was caught off-guard in the headlights of robust questioning. For the first time in this campaign a tough interrogation exposed inconsistencies in Lib Dem policies on Brexit: both offering to revoke and hold a referendum, asking for collaboration but refusing to work with anyone, her promises to invest in public services and her voting record of supporting cuts to public services, promising to protect the environment and having a positive enthusiasm for detonating a thermo-nuclear device. Swinson drifted back into her native Scottish accent when flustered and was visibly relieved to leave the stage, having said, “I do think the best use of nuclear weapons is to use them to negotiate a way other than nuclear weapons.”

Boris Johnson was flustered and repetitive, speaking mostly in slogans and when he did drift off script he seemed abrasive. Johnson took every opportunity possible to fall back on the comfortable territory of Brexit soundbites, promising to “Get Brexit done.” After questioning, he refused to clarify why he wouldn’t release a report into Russian interference in British politics or apologise for using Islamophobic and homophobic language as a journalist, recalling Johnson’s references to Muslim women as “letterboxes” and “bank-robbers”, as well as gay men as “bum boys”. 

Tactical Voting

Given that Hastings and Rye is a marginal seat, with only Labour and Conservative candidates having a reasonable chance of winning, there is also the consideration of tactical voting. In this election, in this constituency, voting for either of the major parties will have the most impact in deciding our future MP and government. Not for a generation has the difference between these two been greater.

Tory Candidate Named As Campaign Begins…

Rother councillor Sally-Ann Hart has been selected by the Hastings & Rye Conservative Association to represent them in the general election scheduled for 12th December. She replaces outgoing MP Amber Rudd, who lost the Conservative whip after resigning from Boris Johnson’s cabinet in September and will not be standing for re-election. 

The selection took place last Friday at Claremont School when party members met to hear pitches from three “finalists” in the candidacy process – Cllr Hart; Tim Clark, living in Ashford but employed as the principal of Skinners’ Academy in Hackney; and Stephen Bates, a business entrepreneur in food and hospitality with strong links to Europe. 

Mr Bates admitted that he had voted Remain in the 2016 referendum, though he was now committed to “getting Brexit done”. Cllr Hart and Mr Clark confirmed themselves as strong Brexiteers. Cllr Hart won a substantial majority on a second ballot.

The stage is thus set for a three-way contest in the constituency next month over the issue of Brexit, with each candidate clearly following respective party lines: Cllr Hart seeking to push through Boris Johnson’s leave deal; Nick Perry, the Liberal Democrat, committed to revoke Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union (without a referendum in the unlikely event of gaining overall power); and Cllr Peter Chowney, for Labour, adopting Jeremy Corbyn’s policy to seek further negotiation with the EU, with any resulting revised deal to be put to a second referendum.

Brexit is far from the only issue of course, with Labour in particular keen to highlight the effects of almost a decade of “austerity”, presided over by the Tories (in coalition with the Lib Dems until 2015) on the economic and social fabric of the town, and promising an agenda of radical change, including huge investment in green industries. How this plays out locally remains to be seen.

For those unimpressed by mainstream politics, there is also a fourth candidate, Independent Paul Crosland, who wants to pause 5G, enhance community care and cohesion, and promote a low carbon economy. He says his target is only 365 votes, but as Ms Rudd’s margin last time was 346, that’s not to be ignored.

For a profile of Cllr Hart click here and further discussion of Mr Crosland’s intervention, click here

Perry is standing for the current election on a platform of stopping Brexit and remaining in the EU. However, in this tightly contested Labour/Conservative marginal, a lot of his party’s local campaigning is aimed at attacking Labour, rather than Conservatives. 

On several occasions Perry has drawn attention to the meme page, Peter Chowney memes for Hastings and Rye teens, claiming that there is something weird about the page but declining to elaborate on the insinuation any further other than it being a ‘gut reaction’.

On 10^th November, the Hastings and Rye Liberal Democrats Facebook page published a sponsored post to appear locally that attacked “Jeremy Bloody Corbyn”, before swiftly editing out the ‘bloody’; along with other posts aimed primarily at attacking Labour. 

Nationally, the Liberal Democrats are hoping to attract more Remain supporters from the Labour party than they are Conservatives. Categorically ruling out coalitions and attacking Labour could be a strategy to boost the ovaerall LibDem popular vote; which will be key to the post-electoral defeat analysis playing out as an argument against first-past-the-post and for electoral reform.

These two election strategies, stopping Brexit and attracting as many Labour votes as possible, seem antithetical in Labour marginals like Hastings and Rye; however, Perry is confident of the ‘Lib Dem Surge’, telling HIP, “Hastings & Rye voters will use their judgement as to which candidate will best represent Remain in Hastings & Rye. 

“Our own data, based on this year’s actual election results, and additional independent polling, suggests that there is a Liberal Democrat surge here, and the election is wide open.”

In election materials, Perry has claimed to be “out in front”, referencing polling conducted by Coastal Action CIC (CA). CA is a polling company run by local PhD students, James Prentice and Chris Connelley, who produced the survey he quotes identifying the ‘Best Remain Coalition Candidate in Hastings and Rye’.

In their research CA state: “The survey asked Remain voters which party they identified as a Remain party, the aim being to create the pool from which a stop No Deal candidate could be chosen.”

This meant that those surveyed were first asked which parties they identified as a ‘remain’ party, which then limited their choices of candidates in future questions to those from these parties. This meant that Labour, who have not ‘identified’ as either a ‘leave’ or ‘remain’ party despite backing a second referendum with a clear ‘remain’ option, were selected against by many respondents in the opening stages of the polling.

The resulting bar chart, which appears on Perry’s election materials under the heading ‘Nick Perry out in front’, is an outrageous and bizarre example of data manipulation by the Liberal Democrats that has become memetic throughout this election; especially when contrasted with Hastings and Rye 2017 election results, or Best for Britain’s latest polling giving Perry an estimated 10.9% of the vote and 4% chance of success.

A poll conducted months ago, to survey the best candidate to lead a ‘remain coalition’ which has now been ruled out by all parties, and who are now  actively campaigning against each other, is being misrepresented as a poll of electoral prospect.

CA told HIP, “Our polling was undertaken some time ago, before the party conference season, the October 31st Brexit deadline expired and well in advance of the current General Election being called. 

“It sought to explore local Remain voters’ political instincts at that time, and in those circumstances. Results were duly published and content became accessible in the public domain.

“How the data continues to be used and interpreted is beyond our control.”

Nick Perry said: “The Coastal Action polling which showed me ‘out in front’ is just factual reporting”. 

In an article printed in Hastings in Focus, Hastings and Rye Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate, Nick Perry, cited indices where areas of Hastings are highlighted as suffering from deprivation. He stated, “The newly-released 2019 Index of Multiple Deprivation shows Hastings Borough becoming more deprived in seven out of the 11 identified domains, which has got to be a major cause for concern for all of us who care about it.”

The 2019 Index of Multiple Deprivation provides very little detail about local authority areas but does indicate that Hastings is now the 13th most deprived local authority in the country, dropping from 20th since 2015, according to data issued by the government’s Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Baird ward was the neighbourhood indicated as suffering the worst deprivation and was the one Perry highlighted to criticise his rival, Peter Chowney, the Labour parliamentary candidate and Hastings Borough Council (HBC) leader. 

In response, Peter Chowney pointed out that, up to 2010, the Labour government had made significant investments in Hastings, spending over £300m on infrastructure projects, apprenticeships and other training schemes for young people in the most deprived areas. Some of that regeneration money went towards building new office accommodation in the town centre, industrial units on the Enviro 21 site on South Queensway and the Saga building in Priory Square.

Chowney said, “A failure to understand what infrastructure spending could achieve was part of the problem when the Liberal Democrats went into coalition with the Tories in government, and brought in nine years of austerity that ended such investment. No more ‘flashy building projects’, an end to new healthcare facilities, an end to better schools and colleges.

“But on top of that infrastructure spending, there was also a lot of money invested through Area Based Grants and other funding streams in social and economic projects, building up community structures in the poorest neighbourhoods and running projects, through the council, to set up apprenticeships and other training schemes for young people in the most deprived areas, to begin to tackle the skills shortages and poor educational performance. That had resulted in deprivation levels beginning to reduce.  

“After 2010, the Liberal Democrat and Tory austerity programme scrapped all that too. And on top of that, the Hastings Council’s core budget was slashed, with £55m cumulatively cut from our £15m annual budget since 2010. Inevitably, this led to big reductions in services, so much of the community development and training initiative work the council had been doing had to cease. East Sussex County Council suffered similar cuts, leading to further community projects in Hastings being scrapped. These cuts hit social services and other support programmes for vulnerable people hard, too, leading to big increases in homelessness, rough sleeping and anti-social behaviour, all of which pushed up costs for the Borough Council as levels of homelessness tripled and the numbers of people sleeping rough on our streets increased thirteen-fold.”

In his article, Perry argued, “However tough the national funding settlement is, all councils have choices on what they organise, how they prioritise and who gets what slice of the meagre pie they have been given.” 

Perry suggested, “For example, the Council could have decided to use its considerable land and property portfolio to set up a network of one-stop hubs powered by solar energy in our local neighbourhoods. These buildings could be used to provide a range of easy-to-access community and outreach services that encourage and engage residents (rather than cost extra bus or taxi fares).”

He continued, stating, “The Labour Council is the establishment, having been in office with big majorities since 2010. And it looks like it has been as seduced by a ‘flashy building projects’ approach to regeneration as was the Tory administration immediately before it.  

“The Labour leader of the Council sits on the Board of Sea Space, Sea Change (Sea Sick, or whatever it is called now), the totally opaque, unaccountable quango that has managed to spend millions and millions of pounds on unused commercial square footage in the town centre and the failed Enviro 21 industrial park off Queensway.”

Perry also criticised the council for squandering regeneration money, letting Brighton University close their Hastings campus, passing up opportunities to work with Hastings United Football Club, not completing the Hastings Greenway, allowing the Ore Valley Community Land Trust to be evicted and carpeting the long-vacated Priory Square building.

Again, Chowney responded, “Some of the schemes Nick mentions in his article, such as the Hastings Greenway Project, are worthwhile, but they need proper funding to be realised. He seems to think, though, that none of these projects need government investment, it’s just up to the council to ‘enable’ them: ‘hand-ups not hand-outs’, as he says. All that’s needed is for the country’s most deprived communities to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, they don’t need any financial investment – it was the policy of the austerity government he supported for all those years. It didn’t work, and it never will.”

The council leader continued, “We know what the reasons for deprivation in Hastings are. Poor transport infrastructure means employers won’t relocate here, exacerbated by low skill levels in the local workforce and poor educational achievement, coupled with a lack of support for mental health, addiction and other social problems. None of these are things the council can fix without additional funding, and certainly not with the huge funding cuts we’ve had to cope with, at the same time that pressures on council spending have significantly increased.”

Local authority funding is a glasshouse for Perry to be lobbing rocks from but may be an ongoing attack line for the fifth-time-running parliamentary candidate. In his role as Council Leader, Peter Chowney is arguably one of the people who has invested the most into preventing the excesses of poverty and deprivation affecting the residents of Hastings, but he supports the lead Lib Dem policy – remaining in the EU – and Labour have adopted a second-referendum policy. So, without the virtue of an exclusively ‘remain’ candidate, look forward to a bloody fight between these two in the upcoming election. 

By Greg Philo, Mike Berry, Justin Schlosberg, Antony Lerman and David Miller
Pluto Press, rrp £14.99

Review by Kay Green

There are so many people trying to use bullying and false accusations as political tools lately that when I heard Waterstones had backed out of a book launch during Labour Party conference, I went straight to my local indie bookshop and ordered it.

At the time, I didn’t even remember what it was called – “can you get me a copy of that book Waterstones were afraid to launch at conference?” I said. A principle is at stake, but also, curiosity is a strong motivation. If you are doing your politics by trying to scare off your opposition’s supporters, take it from me – it’s not just immoral, it also doesn’t work.

There were several events that bullies tried to see off at Labour Conference, and this isn’t just a Labour problem. Just as neighbours are finding their way into the newspapers for trying to punch and kick their way to agreement over Brexit, so political groups are getting into a frenzy of attacks on their detractors. If you or yours are doing this, take it from me – it’s not just that you are doing their publicity for them, it’s also that you are apparently losing. Many of us assume that bully-tactics and abuse are the recourse of failed political groups. If they could do it by numbers and reasoned argument, we think, they would.

Amazingly, even that last piece of information has a possible spin to it – politics is currently rife with ‘cry bullies’ – those who have realised that the bullies are seen as the failing minority sometimes, so rather than trying to drum up support by honourable methods, they arrange to have themselves bullied, so they look like the virtuous victims of a dying opposition.

Never let a bully win! Let’s solve it right now by standing up to bullies. Let’s look precisely where they are trying to stop us looking. To follow my own advice, here is a review of the book Waterstones backed out of launching. (To be scrupulously fair, they did apologise and James Daunt said their attitude at the time was a mistake – but he said it after the book was safely launched elsewhere so…)

So: when asked how many Labour members had been reported for antisemitism, responders in a national poll went for between 14% and 40%. When asked why they thought this, a common response was “because of the amount of media coverage about it.”

And indeed, between 15th June 2015 and 31st March 2019, the national newspapers have carried around five and a half thousand articles about antisemitism in the Labour Party – and that’s before you start on the TV news. Well there you go – there’s no smoke without fire, and why would reporters and writers keep bashing on about it if it wasn’t true?

If you ever did media studies or sociology in school, you are probably coming up with some ‘yes buts’ by now. If you didn’t, please take a moment to read about moral panics and media amplification. In short, billions, trillions of ‘events’ happen every day. What you see in the newspapers and on TV is not ‘the news’ it’s what reporters choose to look at and, if they’re profit driven, choosing virulent stories that get attention is the way to sell their product – and if they have a political bias, well those stories don’t need to be true…

NEVER LET A FACT GET IN THE WAY…

We know from government and independent studies in recent years that all of our society, political and otherwise, has problems with racism, sexism and classism and we know that among political parties, Labour (although not brilliant) does better than most in dealing with those things. We even know that Labour (although not 100% innocent) has a membership that is somewhat less antisemitic than the general population. The true figure for members who have been investigated for antisemitism is something like 0.1%.

The trouble is, if you go on about a thing like that for long enough, and if you search obsessively enough for problems, you risk infuriating people to the point that you make the story true – self-fulfilling prophecies! And that is why Greg Philo, Mike Berry, Justin Schlosberg, Antony Lerman and David Miller have written this book, Bad News for Labour: antisemitism, the party and public belief. In it, they study what has actually happened; how Labour came to adopt a draconian set of rules and examples which many believe will do anything but help to resolve the situation, and what the consequences might be.

Happily, they also “offer suggestions on a way forward for Labour as a key progressive force and … point to the need for unity against all forms of racism in the times that lie ahead.”

‘DON’T BUY THIS BOOK! DON’T GO TO THAT MEETING! DON’T LISTEN TO THESE PEOPLE!’… 

This is a useful book – buy it, read it – not least because there are people who don’t want you to.

• Bad News for Labour: antisemitism, the party and public belief can be ordered from Bookbusters.

Links to articles and sources are available at www.kaygreen.blog 

Fight For Amber Rudd’s Seat Reduced To Three-Way Contest 

The local Green Party issued a statement last Sunday that it has decided not to field a general election candidate in the Hastings & Rye constituency “in the current political circumstances”. The party has also indicated that it will not endorse any other candidate to replace Amber Rudd as MP –  unlike in 2017, when it gave official backing to the Labour challenger, Cllr Peter Chowney.

Meanwhile it has been reported, though at the time going to press there has been no official confirmation, that the recently appointed Brexit party candidate Tom Bewick has shifted his attention to another constituency. Thus, if an election is triggered within the next few weeks, which appears probable, it seems that there will be just a three-way contest in Hastings & Rye between Cllr Chowney, Nick Perry of the Liberal Democrats, and an as yet unnamed Conservative.

Andrea Needham, Hastings Green Party spokesperson, said, “In the Green Party – unlike in other political parties – decisions are made by the membership. In this instance, members voted not to stand a general election candidate. We have made no deals or alliances with any other party…(The party) will instead be focusing on its campaign for the 2020 Hastings Borough Council elections. We urge all voters who want to see real action taken to tackle the climate emergency to vote Green in the 2020 local elections.”

It is understood that Cllr Chowney made a pitch to Green members at a meeting last Thursday. Although he did not win their official electoral endorsement he subsequently put an upbeat slant on their decision: “I’m very pleased. 

“They made the decision after I explained what policies I supported, and how the need to prevent climate change was, in my view, by far the most important issue facing humankind.

“I outlined other policies I’d be promoting too – including support for proportional representation – whether they decided to stand aside or not.”

Mr Perry had also offered to meet with the Green membership to ask for their endorsement as the ‘Remain’ candidate. Following their withdrawal he told HIP: “This is an honourable decision by the local Green Party. It will help to keep the Remain vote united, and of course I accept their wish not to endorse another candidate. With the Conservatives’ new candidate being Brexit Party endorsed, Hastings & Rye will have a choice between a hardline pro-Brexit Tory and a Stop Brexit Liberal Democrat. The Labour Party will tell us their position on this pivotal issue after the election”. 

East Sussex College, Hastings played host to a local Labour Roots Rally last Saturday as the party starts to mobilise its half-million membership to fight an expected upcoming general election. 

PICTURE: Julia Kotziamani

Labour Roots is described by organisers as “a rolling series of open events, bringing together activists and the public with Jeremy Corbyn and members of the shadow cabinet.” Organisers report reaching the 430 capacity attendance of the college, including book sellers, stalls, organisers, college staff and general public who were present for the climax: speeches made in the college atrium by Jeremy Corbyn, Barry Gardiner and Diane Abbott. 

Earlier, the event featured multiple workshops, titles including Winning the Green Industrial Revolution, Refugee Buddy Project, Persuasive Conversations, and Digital Army training. 

Winning the Green Industrial Revolution featured Mr Gardiner, shadow Secretary of State for International Trade, and local activists, who discussed what such a revolution would mean for Hastings. This included consideration of green unionised jobs, new green skills and education, and a cleaner community to live in “for the many – by the many”. Mr Gardiner spoke of the need for renewable solutions to energy needs and their efficiencies, quoting the ability of ground source heat pumps to reduce the annual heating bills of some households to just £13 and the great potential of coastal towns to generate tidal, wind and solar power. These industries are becoming increasingly efficient, offering renewable energy at approximately £48 per megawatt hour (MWh), as compared to nuclear energy from Hinkley Point where in 2012 the guaranteed price – known as the “strike price” – was set at £92.50 per MWh plus inflationary increases.

The Refugee Buddy Project discussed the biggest challenges for the refugee community and opportunities for residents in Hastings to organise solidarity and support for settled refugees.

Persuasive Conversations gave people a chance to practise talking, and listening to people’s concerns, about Labour policies; similarly, Digital Army training gave online activists advice on how best to spread news and policy online via Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Jeremy Corbyn, in Hastings last Saturday, tells HIP:
“I believe in a welfare state”

Universal Credit 

Between the training sessions and speeches Mr Corbyn made time to talk to local Hastings newspapers. His central message was: “I believe in a welfare state.” 

He suggested that the problems of displaced communities, of frictions between wealthy incomers and existing communities, and of generating new industries in Hastings could be addressed by reversing changes to how benefits are paid under the Universal Credit system. The current system, he said, causes rent arrears: “The five week wait for money under Universal Credit has seen people unable to pay their rent on time and risk being made ‘voluntarily homeless’ by landlords who apply the letter of the rules.”

He criticised the ‘two child’ Universal Credit policy, which provides support for a maximum of only two children, and claimed that “getting rid of this alone will stop up to 300,000 more children being pushed into poverty.”

In addition, there should be more housing stock available to the local community for social housing.

Renewable Energies

Mr Corbyn echoed Mr Gardiner’s earlier suggestion of the great potential for Hastings to generate renewable energies which could be used to subsidise coastal communities “left behind” in terms of wages and growth; he quoted the statistic that earnings in coastal communities like Hastings were on average £1,600 lower annually than comparable inland towns. 

In the culminating speeches Ms Abbott promised to end the ‘hostile environment’ for migrants, including closure of the infamous Yarl’s Wood and Brook House detention centres. Mr Gardiner, Cllr Maya Evans, migrant champion Rossana Leal, and local poet and activist Penny Pepper also addressed the crowd. 

Mr Corbyn included a promise to build 37 new wind farms across the UK with 51% public ownership. From anticipated profits, 80% would be earmarked for decarbonising the economy and tackling climate change. The other 20% would be invested back into coastal communities like Hastings.

By David Francis

No. This Supreme Court Judgement does not restore hope. It does not fill me with optimism.

I’m not complaining about the spectacle of our Etonian overlords being made to look like fools. But we are skating on very thin ice when we rely upon a caste of unelected judges and political bureaucrats to safeguard us from the predation of Tories.

You can have as many Supreme Court rulings, legal requirements and Labour Party legislative manifesto promises as you like. But if we haven’t gained our living and working improvements and secured the safety and welfare of our families by hard, tough political and economic action, by solidarity, by the realisation and exercise of our own power, it is absolutely meaningless and it will, I promise you, it will, be taken away from us when the parliamentary political weather vane changes.

Lower working hours, decent pay, health and safety, tenancy rights, democratic rights, universal education were all hard won by our forebears: by our actual grandparents if you’re as old as me. If we think we will have those ‘rights’ and benefits for very long simply by the action of ‘Likes’, petitions and the opportunity to vote when the politicians decide to call a General Election, we are extremely irresponsible, naïve and foolish and it will come back to bite us.

I don’t know what else to say. The least you could do is join a trade union.

David Francis reacts to news that former Labour MP John Mann has resigned from the commons to work as an ‘antisemitism Tsar’ for the government and been made a Lord.

In other news, John Mann. Good riddance, obviously, but I cannot read the phrase ‘Anti-Semitism Tsar’ without letting out an ungodly howl of horror.

Even the most casual student of the history of the Russian Empire would know how particularly inappropriate this title is.

State and church sponsored pogroms, blood libels and murderous conspiracy theories aside, I can’t believe that John Mann never even got around to seeing Fiddler on The Roof.

I realise that the term ‘Tsar’ might have lost some of its historical relevance for a New Labour politician of Mann’s vintage: we all remember how, during the Blair administration’s programme of dismantling democracy and replacing it with Joined-Up Government, the title of ‘Tsar’ was given to any useful fool vain enough to accept the task of solving social issues considered too thorny for elected politicians. Surely this is a Tsar too far.

I don’t suppose he coined the title or that it’s in his actual job description but I would hazard the view that even allowing the press to use the word ‘Tsar’ in the same breath as ‘Anti-Semitism’ in respect of his new role casts grave doubt on his judgement and his ability to carry out this important task.

The decision of Amber Rudd, former Work and Pensions Secretary, to abandon both her ministerial position and her party allegiance has received full coverage nationally over the past fortnight. We add a Hastings perspective on page 9 – “Ruddiculous”.

As MP for Hastings & Rye she wrote a letter to her constituents on 10th September (posted on her website) stating: “Nothing will change in terms of my local engagement for as long as I remain your MP, which I hope to continue into the next General Election”. This wording in itself might suggest that she was holding out a possibility of remaining beyond it. But the letter also struck a valedictory note – “It has been an absolute honour to be the MP for Hastings & Rye”. And plainly the local Conservative Association will not retain a candidate who would not take the party whip. It is understood that a selection process is being swiftly undertaken to find a replacement Tory candidate.

With government and parliament in apparently terminal conflict at Westminster, it seems inevitable that there will be a general election within the next couple of months. So where does that leave the other parties and their respective candidates?

The obvious beneficiary of Ms Rudd’s fall might seem to be Labour’s Peter Chowney, keeping a high profile as leader of Hastings Borough Council and only 346 votes short of matching her in the general election of June 2017. However, an analysis of that vote (see page 3) in comparison to the previous electoral result in 2015, when Sarah Owen was the Labour candidate, suggests a more complex picture.

Peter Chowney

Mr Chowney improved Labour’s standing between the two elections by over 11%. But Ms Rudd also increased her share of the vote, albeit by only 2.3%. What narrowed the gap to such a close margin was the collapse of the UKIP vote and the decision of the Green party to withdraw its candidate and give a positive endorsement to Labour. This time round the Brexit party, effectively replacing UKIP, will surely take Leave votes off Labour as well as from the Conservatives; the Green party seem unlikely to repeat their endorsement of Labour;  and there is also an apparent resurgence of the Liberal Democrats who by the stance taken at their party conference at Bournemouth last weekend have moved into clear water as champions of Remain.

Nick Perry

Their candidate Nick Perry will be contesting the seat for the fourth time. When he first stood in 2010, at the previous high watermark of Lib Dem fortunes, he polled 15% of the vote. He told HIP after the Bournemouth conference: “Brexit is the defining political issue of our generation, and the Hastings & Rye electorate deserves – and in our doorstep work certainly seems to expect – an unambiguously pro-Remain choice. Our Stop Brexit campaign has had strong support in the constituency, where voting patterns have changed markedly since 2017.  We have seen this in the Rother District local election results, as well as the European Parliament election result in May, where the Liberal Democrats were clearly outpolling Labour, and took the laurels as the strongest Remain party.”

The local Green party will be meeting next Monday (23rd September) to choose their parliamentary candidate. “Any decisions on standing or not standing will be up to members to decide at that or a later meeting”, said co-ordinator Julia Hilton last week. However, it would be very surprising if they repeated their endorsement of Labour and Mr Chowney this time unless, at the very least, both come round to a clear pledge to hold a second Brexit referendum. Moreover Labour have never offered any reciprocity, pointedly refusing in 2015 to withdraw their challenge to Caroline Lucas in the Brighton Pavilion constituency. 

On the other hand there are no indications from the Brexit party that they intend to  withdraw their candidate, Tom Bewick – a former Labour councillor – just because Ms Rudd, whom they were targeting as a closet Remainer, has bowed out.  A member of their promotional team, who stressed that he was not privy to the thoughts of the party’s inner circle, commented that “ it would very much depend on whether the new [Conservative] candidate is a Brexiteer, and that will be hard to prove. I believe that the local Tory party would vote for a remainer.”

So where does that leave Mr Chowney? Keeping silent for the moment, still weighing alternative Brexit options – like his party leaders, it seems. All he would say this week is that “with an unknown Tory candidate standing, and the Brexit Party fielding a candidate too, it obviously gives Labour a good chance of winning the Hastings & Rye seat.”  

But all the evidence, both from the Euro elections and successive national opinion polls, is that such fence-sitting is not appreciated by a large swathe of the electorate. The forthcoming poll looks anything but predictable.

On the 28th of August, Boris Johnson announced his intention to prorogue parliament from the 9th September until the 14th October, shortly after parliament was due to resume from summer recess and two weeks before the Brexit deadline. 

In a letter to MPs Johnson wrote, “This morning I spoke to Her Majesty The Queen to request an end to the current parliamentary session in the second sitting week in September, before commencing the second session of this parliament with a Queen’s speech on Monday, 14 October. A central feature of the legislative programme will be the government’s number one legislative priority, if a new deal is forthcoming at EU Council, to introduce a Withdrawal Agreement Bill and move at pace to secure its passage before 31 October.”

This move greatly inhibits plans by a coalition of opposition parties to prevent a ‘no-deal Brexit’ and greatly increases the possibility of a vote of no-confidence in the government. Jeremy Corbyn had recently given ground to other parties by offering to use parliamentary mechanisms to prevent a no-deal Brexit without a vote of no-confidence; but without this option a vote of no confidence leading to a general election seems far more likely. 

The move has drawn criticism from all quarters including from within the Conservative Party. Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, is at the time of writing considering her position. 

Amber Rudd, our local MP, posted on Twitter: “Ruth Davidson is a wonderful talent and person, and we owe her a tremendous debt for turning our fortunes around in Scotland. Our Party is a better one with her in it and I hope she will continue to contribute to public life.” 

In conversation with the journalist Sophy Ridge earlier this year Rudd had said, “The idea of leaving the European Union in order to take back more control into parliament, and to consider closing parliament in order to deal with that, is the most extraordinary idea I’ve ever heard.” 

She went on to say the move would be “absolutely outrageous”, and that it, “is a ridiculous suggestion to consider proroguing parliament.” On another occasion she compared such a move to the actions of the ‘Stuart kings’. For over 24 hours her Twitter feed has remained conspicuously silent on the matter. 

During the Conservative Party leadership election Sajid Javid said of suspending parliament, “You don’t deliver on democracy by trashing democracy. We are not selecting a dictator of our country.”

On the international stage, President Trump tweeted in support of the Prime Minister, “Would be very hard for Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of Britain’s Labour Party, to seek a no-confidence vote against New Prime Minister Boris Johnson, especially in light of the fact that Boris is exactly what the U.K. has been looking for, & will prove to be “a great one!” Love U.K.”

In response Corbyn wrote, “I think what the US president is saying, is that Boris Johnson is exactly what he has been looking for, a compliant Prime Minister who will hand Britain’s public services and protections over to US corporations in a free trade deal.”

There has been speculation by pundits that the move is part of a strategy in order to bring about a general election. In which, having placed Brexit in peril, Johnson can play the role of a champion of the people, delivering on the referendum result; in this election he is likely to cast opposition parties as elite politicians trying to frustrate and prevent the ‘will of the people.’ 

Defenders of the move will point out that suspending parliament for a Queen’s Speech is part of ordinary parliamentary procedure, this proroguing is only an extension of this process, context removed. The trouble with suspending democracy, even to enforce another form of democracy, is that when people accumulate power, they are unaccustomed to giving it back. A coup to seize control of the legislature, even if promised as temporary, has been the start of many dictatorships. After which we can expect heavy investment in law enforcement and the military, but very little investment in public services and mass privatisation via a US trade deal. 

This centralised and autocratic form of government, headed by a hitherto unelected and dictatorial leader, who has used demonisation of the ‘other’, economic regimentation and the suspension of democracy to supress opposition, is the literal definition of fascism. 

This is not the only possible future outcome. It is one worth paying serious consideration to and calling out at every step of the way.  

Nigel Farage’s Brexit party have appointed a candidate to contest the parliamentary seat of Hastings & Rye at any forthcoming general election. He is Tom Bewick, a former Labour party councillor who served as the chairman of the education committee for Brighton and Hove City Council. 

Sitting MP Amber Rudd recently joined Boris Johnson’s cabinet with, apparently, an explicit pledge, demanded from all cabinet members, to work towards Britain’s exit from the EU on 31st October, “no ifs, no buts” (see “A Woman For All Seasons”). 

However, that’s clearly not sufficient from Mr Bewick’s point of view. He was quoted in the Daily Mail earlier this week: “Hastings voted to leave in 2016, but it is represented by an MP that has done everything possible to thwart our departure from the EU. Amber Rudd has also voted three times for the failed Withdrawal Agreement, which would deliver Brexit in name only.”

Defending a slim majority of just 346 votes, Ms Rudd’s seat looks at serious risk if she haemorrhages support from Brexiteers as well as being opposed by Remainers. Political observers will recall that at the last election in 2015 the Green Party withdrew its candidate in favour of Labour to give the latter’s candidate, Peter Chowney, a better prospect of toppling her. And with the idea of electoral pacts gaining favour nationally on the Remainer side after the Liberal Democrat victory in the Brecon & Radnorshire by-election last week, divided candidacies between the Tories and the Brexit Party will give a huge opportunity for any combined opposition next time round.

What does the role of climate change champion involve? 

My portfolio title is climate change, biodiversity and sustainable development – it’s a thematic remit which embraces all other portfolios. On a practical level that converts to me needing to know what is going on across the Council and ensuring that climate change is prioritised. 

So, for instance, if there’s a planned new development of housing, I will be flagging up that homes need to be zero-carbon. I’ll push for them to have things like insulation, solar panels and electric vehicle charging points. 

Or, in the case of procurement, I will be lobbying for the Council to prioritise contractors who are carbon neutral or are at least trying to off-set the negative environmental consequences of any works done. 

The overall aim of the Council is to go carbon neutral by 2030 – it’s a really tall order but we need to at least try.

You can’t introduce green policies into a vacuum, you need to take into account that there are 14 million people in this country living below the breadline. They don’t have the headspace or economic security to be thinking about how they can go carbon neutral. 

Resolving social injustice and stopping the climate change crisis must go hand in hand. If we’re serious about halting global temperatures from increasing by 1.5C in less than 12 years, then the most economically marginalised in our society must be prioritised. Green socialism is part of what Labour have coined the Green Industrial Revolution – practical solutions coupled with the awareness of putting the most vulnerable first, while fuelling the economy.

“The overall aim of the council is to go carbon neutral by 2030 – it’s a really tall order but we need to at least try”

Maya Evans

What has Hastings Borough Council pledged?

HBC passed a climate emergency motion back in February, in which we pledged, among other things, to set up a working group and develop a procurement policy that reduces our carbon emissions. 

Our objective is to make Hastings Council carbon neutral by 2030 and aim to supply 30% of the town’s electricity through local sustainable energy, generated on Council-owned land and buildings. I’m pleased to say a number of Council buildings have already been fitted with solar arrays, for instance Summerfields Leisure Centre, Castleham Business Centre East and Muriel Matters House. 

We have a major hurdle in that HBC doesn’t actually own that much land or property, we are very limited in available spaces, especially spaces which are south facing, can host a substantial number of arrays, and are located close to a mains which will feed electricity into the national grid. 

We’re currently looking at all potential sites, some, like the country park, are controversial for some people; others, like West St Leonards retail park, are not so much. 

Central government have made it extremely difficult to generate sustainable energy, at the end of March they ended the feed-in tariff for people with domestic solar arrays, and in 2015 the Government, under the reign of Amber Rudd as Energy and Climate Change Secretary, ended subsidies for onshore wind turbines. 

The Council is faced with either sitting on our hands praying for a Labour Government who will revolutionise energy generation; or pressing ahead with plans in areas some would consider not ideal; but will move us closer towards the goal of sustainable energy generation. 

I’ve already heard very helpful suggestions such as “why can’t solar arrays go on the Pebsham landfill”? 

I’ve inquired about Pebsham dump, though, I’m told the land is still too unstable for use. However, I’ve also been told by others, outside of the Council, that the landfill site could be made safe and usable. And therein lies a quandary – do we take a potentially expensive gamble with public funds, ignore one set of advice and possibly end up with egg on our face if we go with another recommendations? Can you imagine the headlines: “Council sinks into the stink of the dump”… I’m quickly learning that my new role involves taking risks, but it’s also essential to be responsible with tax payers’ money. It’s a tricky balance.

My portfolio also includes protecting and developing biodiversity, and this is a very good example of ‘conflicting experts’. So, in relation to the solar arrays in the country park, some say it will be detrimental to biodiversity, while others say it will enhance it, or not have an impact either way.

I’ve already set up several working groups to promote biodiversity; one is a political campaigns group and the other is an apolitical community group with a crossover of growing experts and artists. The aim for both groups is to increase education around the importance of biodiversity and to help people appreciate that the continued existence of humans is inextricably linked to the survival of other species.

We are already aiming to eliminate single use plastic in council buildings, festivals and events held on Council land, but this is an area we don’t have an incredible amount of jurisdiction on. I wish we could be like New York State and ban throw-away plastic bags from all shops in Hastings, but sadly we don’t have that power.

Containers made out of biodegradable products are obviously a better way forward, however they only really work if composted. If they go into the sea it’s still potentially harmful for a marine creature who eats it or gets trapped or injured by it, and then if a corn starch cup gets mixed into recycling then it contaminates the process. 

I personally feel we should do away with single use items, but that would take action from national government; however it’s entirely possible to bring in a scheme whereby there are four or five standard-sized returnable glass bottles which everything from milk to washing up liquid comes in. 

On transport, we are talking to supermarkets about installing electric vehicle charging points and we will be scrambling through the thickets of bureaucracy that surround available grants for funding off-road walking and cycling. 

What would you like to see the council doing over the next year?

I’d like to see the council making a substantial inroad on the above pledges, as well as working through the ‘33 actions a local authority can make’ recommended by Friends of the Earth in its March 2019 briefing. I’d like the Council and the community to work together on creative initiatives which educate and elevate everyone in society. 

I’m also thinking about how Hastings can successfully launch a new green business drive by attracting green tech industry to the town, while also making carbon neutral industry attractive to small local businesses. 

Hastings needs to be ‘open for green business’, making use of our natural resources such as wind, tidal and solar power. We’re a town famed for tourism, foreign language students, sustainable fishing and looking after the sick, elderly and vulnerable – we need to use these assets to harness business opportunities. Green industry is the future and I want Hastings to be at the forefront of taking advantage of this opportunity which will provide employment while also supporting sustainable development.

Are there any successful schemes you can draw on?

Nottingham Council has done pioneering work on ultra-low emission zones, using parking charges to channel into better public transport. London is aiming for 80% of journeys to be by foot, bike or public transport by 2041. Greater Manchester has committed a 10-year plan to build 120km of segregated cycle routes on main roads, and over 1,400 new or upgraded cycle and pedestrian crossings. 

Ipswich and Cambridge have included a requirement for all new homes to meet a higher  Code for Sustainable Homes level (Level 4). Local authorities can also help homes and businesses link up with grants, for example the Warm Up Bristol and Better Homes Yorkshire programmes. Solihull plans to switch all its 24,000 street lights to well-designed and well-directed LED lights by 2024, cutting its total energy costs in half and reducing its own greenhouse emissions. 

Several London boroughs are investing in renewable energy projects. Enfield has formed an energy company that aims to provide lower carbon heat and hot water to around 15,000 residents. Setting up an energy company is something HBC has talked about, and we’d very much like to follow in the footsteps of Bristol, Nottingham and Norwich and put this into action. 

Sheffield has recently committed to only buying green energy, this is something we could look into in the interim. Manchester has supported a charity-run ‘Carbon Literacy’ project to help individuals and businesses better understand climate change and how to tackle it. I’ve already initiated a similar project from the Sustainability on Sea Festival. 

There’s lots to be done. I’ve already written to Jeremy Corbyn’s office suggesting a conference to share local authority best practice on tackling climate change. It’s all about joined-up thinking.

How can we as individuals make a difference? Do we have to go without our cars and holidays abroad?

I don’t want to focus on all the things we need to give up, I want to sell an alternative lifestyle which will be more attractive to the one we already have, a lifestyle beneficial to health and good for the environment. I want to promote the romantic image of everyone growing vegetables, people walking and cycling, exploring the beautiful British Isles as a key holiday destination – the generation of our grandparents lived like this, there are lots of benefits to this lifestyle, it’s not like we’re going back to the stone age, it’s just going to be a bit different. 

We do have the ability to change and change fast: channelling industry towards a sole purpose – look how this was done during the second world war. It’s completely possible, and beneficial on many levels.

By Julia Hinton

Back in February – thanks in part to pressure from the Hastings Green Party and our open letter calling on the council to declare a climate emergency – Hastings Council committed to making our town carbon neutral by 2030. The Council has since appointed Maya Evans as “climate champion” with responsibility for climate change, biodiversity and sustainable development. It has, however, allocated no money or resources to the task.

In order to forge a city-wide consensus on the ambition, direction, and measures that are needed to tackle climate change, we ask the Council to commit to one of our key demands: a local citizens’ assembly, tasked with having a town-wide conversation about how we can achieve carbon neutrality in the next 11 years. Essential to the initiation of such a process is a commitment from both Hastings Borough Council and East Sussex County Council to act on the recommendations generated by the citizen’s assembly.

There is a growing recognition of the value of deliberative democratic processes to revive our democracy, model thoughtful and civilised debate, and engage local people in developing imaginative and achievable solutions to the climate crisis we face. Extinction Rebellion calls for nation-wide people’s assemblies but there is a role for smaller-scale local versions as well. Oxford City Council has already committed to holding a citizens’ assembly on the topic this September. In Texas, home of oil giants, a ‘mini public’ (a representative sample of the public) tackling the future of energy, resulted in a call for investment in renewables, resulting in 1000 MW of new renewable-energy capacity.

A key principle of a citizen’s assembly is that people should be randomly selected  but representative of the local demographic. This is what makes these assemblies so powerful; they bring together people from all walks of life, then help them to bridge divides, to find common ground – and ultimately to develop recommendations that can command public support. Participants are presented with balanced evidence on the issue and hear first hand from key stakeholders with different views and perspectives. Realistically, the assembly we have in mind would probably hold nine evening meetings to cover learning about the topic, questioning expert witnesses, deliberating, and coming to a decision. Participants would be paid a nominal fee in recognition of their contribution and to help ensure that finance is not a barrier to participation. An independent governance and oversight panel would meet regularly to check the legitimacy and robustness of the process. They would also help select experts to give evidence to participants, ensuring balance in the information presented. 

This process has been used in many areas and almost always the citizen’s group involved continues to be active in promoting the ideas generated from the assembly process. While it is a relatively small segment of the population, wider input can be generated through media coverage, use of local radio-station phone-ins and a big public launch of the final recommendations.

Research by the Electoral reform Society show that over two thirds of the public want politics to be fairer, more honest and cooperative. This is one way to get there. Citizens’ assemblies require time, money, and commitment, but they can have huge value in building a consensus on the challenges we face and putting pressure on politicians to act.  

Maya Evans supports the idea and will also be taking it to local Labour branches over the coming months. Read more here.