On the campaign trail in Barnet

Candidate Philip Clayton reports on the day of campaigning in north London last Saturday

Our meeting place last Saturday was the Sunshine café in New Barnet, well named as the day started and stayed nice and summery, with breezes sending clouds scudding. When I got to the café, Fred was already ensconced at a table overflowing with paper, boxes sitting in the chair next to him. Our chair, Kieran, had arrived a few minutes earlier.

As we sipped coffee I began to have pangs of anxiety imagining that nobody would turn up. Then Steve, an old friend of Kieran’s, drifted in. Kate and Andrew turned up from Haringey; I had spoken to Kate at the last big London meeting but didn’t know she is national secretary. Terry came from Islington and so did Tom all the way from Croydon and B. from Edgware. Ollie and Eve, full of bustling energy, turned up from Southall, bringing with them a proper roof mounted loud speaker system.

It is difficult to describe how grateful I felt for this show of support and solidarity. In the last elections I had stood for parliament and the council as an Independent and got a good vote for the council, despite only being able to deliver 500 leaflets. I had always felt that with some help I could do better.

Soft underbelly

From our first branch meetings I have argued that there is no point in Left Unity’s existence if we don’t stand in elections, particularly local elections, as they are cheap to enter and costs low. I also strongly believe that local politics is the soft underbelly of the party system. I am, unscientifically I admit, convinced from talking to people in the aftermath of the last election that three quarters of my voters were first timers. Seventy per cent of eligible voters don’t bother – and it is these we have to reach.

The leaflet – the third part (on the right) is the front page after folding

Fred, ever the organiser and organised, starting handing out maps and leaflets. I was told that I would be in the car with Ollie and Eve. Their car has loudspeakers, with a volume that soars above the traffic racket. I soon discover that even though we’re moving slowly there is only time to say short phrases – and that if you say “for public need not private greed” enough times it’s easy to accidentally say “for public greed not private need”. (You also have to be careful not to swear with the microphone on.) But it is surprising how many supportive honks we get from passing cars. Some pedestrians cheer, though there are sometimes jeers too.

Back at the café for a quick bite we are impressed by the stall that Fred has erected outside the huge Sainsbury’s opposite. We have a nice range of literature and apparently there has been some interest. Back on the road I find it is difficult to keep track of where we have been. Barnet is the second largest borough in London by population and the third largest by area at 33 square miles.

We are fighting the Oakleigh ward in Barnet, north London, where I have been living for six years. Oakleigh has a population the size of an average market town such as Barnstaple, with 15,000 voters. This is a Tory ward with hardly any campaigning and the candidates, none of whom live in the ward, take their election for granted. Despite Labour vowing to hold their strongest campaign ever there has been no sign of their candidates in the ward, and their manifesto is a pathetic joke.

Housing and poverty

The current Tory council is full of people with views that Thatcher would have found extreme but are now regarded as common currency. Homelessness is high and council housing is rapidly being exterminated. Where it does exist it is being “regenerated” and “redeveloped”, which means getting rid of tenants and if they are allowed back at all giving them only temporary tenancies. “Regeneration” always involves letting private developers build thousands of homes aimed at the luxury market.

Barnet has “solved” the housing problem by abolishing the waiting list – and if anyone becomes homeless they are moved out of the borough. Tom Davey, the council’s head of housing, has openly said he doesn’t want poor people in Barnet.

However, to disguise this Barnet recently had a regal visit from Boris (“£250,000 a year is peanuts”) Johnson. Heavily chaperoned by the police and with the public barred, he handed over the keys to three council houses. These are the first built in Barnet in 21 years, and with 20,000 people needing housing it would take 133,000 years to meet current need at that rate of construction.

The visit of ‘Peanuts’ was to show his support for Richard ‘Genius’ Cornelius, our sainted council leader, who recently declared that a massive £45,000 cut in funds for school catering for the most extremely disabled pupils would “be considered fair by most people.” ‘Genius’ Cornelius was quite happy however to spend £120,000 on two ceremonial cars.

This is what we are fighting against – and Labour is not expressing any of the seething anger that most people feel. It will still be an uphill battle to do better in this particular area as a Left Unity candidate than I did as an Independent candidate a few years ago. But there are still two weeks to go and I just hope we can surprise a few people.

The Barnet campaign will be out again this weekend and the next. To get involved in the campaign contact Fred at barnet@leftunity.org or 07941 893212