Back from an Easter visit to home in North Wales to find out that the BNP held the seat in the Havering Council by-election on Thursday in Gooshays. A disappointing result of course. Despite Labour coming 2nd and increasing its share of the vote at the expense of the Tories (and the turnout only being a miserly 22%).However, there is no way that this overwhelmingly white working class ward should be represented by one Nazi and two Tories! We all need to try harder! I think there is more to it than just racism and Labour unpopularity.
Gooshays is not a “sink estate” but to all appearances, a well run and looked after, traditional outer London Council estate. Most of the properties I guess, have now been sold under “The Right to Buy”. I don’t think (this was on a Sunday I visited) that I have ever seen so many “white vans” parked outside homes with adverts on their sides for their self employed owners. This made me think.
Last Saturday evening in Wales, my brother-in-law, a self employed pipe lagger, proudly picked up the Mrs and I from our hotel in his brand new white transit, to go out for a family meal. My brother-in-law is a really hard and conscientious worker, who went out on site every day during the Bank holiday in order to finish a job in time.
My brother-in-law won’t have his company logo sprayed on the sides of his van because he believes that he will not be able to legally smoke while driving if it is identified as a “company vehicle”. I’m not sure that this is actually true or not?
He is not nowadays, a "natural" supporter of the Labour Party, even though he was brought up in a council estate and admits that his business has boomed out of all recognition since Labour came to power. Since most of his work is lagging central heating pipes in new and refurbished hospitals, schools and other public buildings that have been commissioned due to the government pouring money into the public sector infrastructure. However, he thinks that the more business he has, the more he unfairly pays in taxes. He won’t tell me who he votes for, but I can guess.
How can we persuade him and his Essex counterparts to vote Labour?
As you can imagine, we have had a number of wide ranging conversations during the years. Often, admittedly alcohol fuelled, so not always that constructive.
I haven’t got an answer. I think that he appreciates the improvement in the NHS, local schools and crime. Although this is not enough to interest him to consider voting Labour.
The only time I felt that I really had his interest is when we discussed what will happen to him if he becomes too ill to work and will he have an adequate pension when he retires?
As you can guess, the answer is that he will be in a very serious financial mess if he becomes long term sick before he retires, since he cannot afford permanent ill health medical insurance. He is also unsure whether or not his personal pension plans will provide him (and my sister!) with a reasonable living when he retires.
Other countries have industry wide sickness and pension protection plans for the self employed. These collective schemes collect contributions from employers and contractors and share the risk. Despite being suspicious of the State in many ways, he would rather trust the the State (or evens unions?) with his money rather than banks and insurance companies (for obvious reasons).
My point is that we need to attract and appeal to the new working class self employed. Forget any old arguments about how they should all be part of some sort of Council DLO. The genuinely self employed (not false long term construction workers) must be attracted with policies that reflect what concerns them and their own particular circumstances.
Who knows, if we get this right, perhaps in the future, the Tories will tremble when we mention the electoral power of Welsh and Essex “Labour White Van Persons”?
