Independents ‘making breakthrough’ in Ealing as Labour support tanks

Independents in the London borough of Ealing have been “making a breakthrough” as support for the Labour Party there is tanking. Labour currently dominates in Ealing, but Ealing Community Independents (ECI) leader, Craig Smith, told the Canary:

The number of people who are willing to admit on the doorstep that they’re voting Labour is breathtakingly low. Single percentage figures… So I know that things are going to look very different on May 8th.

Building “a credible alternative to Ealing Labour”

He compared the credentials of these independent and Labour councillors and what they stand for, saying:

None of the people that are going to be candidates for Ealing Community Independents are career politicians. None of them have been councillors before […] Essentially, all of our members are part of local residents’ associations. We have people who lead litter picking campaigns. We have people who are recognised community champions.

So they all do something as community organisers above and beyond just wanting to become councillors. Because, honestly, that’s been part of the problem with Ealing Labour Council over the years – 16 years now of councillors just doing it because they enjoy the status but they don’t want to get their hands dirty. They don’t actually want to be seen between the elections.

In waging an independent campaign to remove Labour’s majority on Ealing Council, he insisted that:

It’s the largest ever attempt by a new party or a grouping of independents to do this.

Their efforts to offer local voters “a credible alternative to Ealing Labour” include a key promise not to cut public services.

Labour has consistently “cut back on crucial services”, Smith lamented, with numerous children’s centres “up for the chop” last year. And he stressed that independents would “reverse” that policy.

In short, ECI’s position is that, if their candidates are in charge:

you won’t see any cuts or closures or privatisations to frontline vital services [adding that] more than 20% of the working population is earning below the London Living Wage.

And to fight back against that, ECI councillors would work:

to make sure that all of the local employers are paying at least the London Living Wage to their employees

Holding housing developers to account

Smith also highlighted the need for more “affordable housing” which ECI is pushing for.

He explained why the current situation needs to end, and what ECI would do to deal with it:

As with many councils, Ealing Labour Council makes promises every year that it consistently breaks in terms of new house building and the number of affordable units that go into the developments that they’ve given planning approval to…

Essentially, planning approval is given for a major developer to throw up a block of flats. They agree to a certain ratio of affordable housing and then, almost inevitably, by the time that development is finished, they renege on the promise and say ‘it’s no longer affordable, costs have gone up, we can’t afford to do that’, and they reduce the number of units.

So literally every year, Ealing Council come back and say ‘oh, we haven’t hit our target’. And they don’t seem to be at all embarrassed about it.

So one of the things that we are sort of committing to do is to hold the developers to their initial obligation… I think the public and the developers need to know that we are serious when they make a commitment and they get an approval in the first place, that we expect affordable and social housing to go into those developments.

You can see all of ECI’s policies and positions here.

Ealing deserves better

Labour’s tanking support in Ealing is, in part, due to councillors being so disconnected from residents. As Smith asserted:

The thing that we hear most consistently is how angry they are at the lack of responsiveness from their councillors.

These independents have been making it clear to residents that unlike Labour, they put the voices of ordinary people at the heart of what they do. One key question when canvassing is whether people have heard of ECI. And though it’s a new party, Smith notes that:

Increasingly, people are saying yes. So it’s definitely working. We’re making a breakthrough.

ECI has also received the endorsement of Your Party. And it has been strategic too, having positive conversations with the local Green Party. As Smith clarified:

We agreed not to stand in three of their highest priority wards.

But the Greens, he said:

have pressure from above, from the central party, to field candidates, as many as possible, across all of the wards… So they are fielding candidates in our wards.

There hasn’t been active Green campaigning in ECI target wards, though.

Cooperative efforts between independents and Greens are entirely possible, as the Hackney campaign this year has shown. But as numerous independents around the country have told us, the national Green Party seems to be gauging where it can get significant support with minimal effort, and where it struggles — ahead of local elections.

Because of our highly problematic, anti-democratic voting system and obscenely wealthy individuals force-feeding Reform’s racist elitism — now is the time for change. To stop far-right Reform and an increasingly authoritarian Labour, Greens must work more collaboratively with independents.

Smith hopes this will happen after the local election, with parties to the left of Labour coming together to hold it to account.

Featured image via the Canary