Stratford, Finchley & Ilford Labour Campaign Day and the more people see of Ed Miliband - the more they like him

Saturday was a busy campaigning day. In the morning I went to the Sarah Sackman's headquarters in Finchley & Golders Green, to help deliver leaflets on behalf of "trade unions together" (TULO). This was a really well organised office with a friendly but competent briefing and no hanging around. Recommended.

By coincidence there was a large group of activists from Tower Hamlets there led by PPC Rushanara Ali and Labour Council leader, Rachel Saunders.

In the meanwhile I missed the Stratford High Street Labour stall (see above top) organised by West Ham Labour PPC Lyn Brown and Chair, Charlene McLean.

In the afternoon West Ham Labour were out campaigning for Wes Streeting in Ilford North with PPC Mike Gapes from Ilford South. Afterwards, we all agreed that we had the best canvassing responses  we had ever seen while in Ilford North and that we had some really positive feed back about how well Ed Miliband had done in the TV Q&A with Cameron the day before.

Is this a coincidence or is it that the more people see of Ed the more they like him? I think not.

Tower Hamlets Labour Leader & Councillors Supporting #J10

Message from Tower Hamlets Labour Group on #J10 strike action:

"On behalf of the Labour councillors in Tower Hamlets we wanted to send you a message of support ahead of strike action on Thursday.

We know that the decision to strike is not an easy one to make, but the policies being pursued by this Government are destructive to the public services you run and the residents young and old which they serve. The decisions on pay and pensions are ones which continue to erode the moral and faith of public sector workers, especially those on the lowest wages who have been particularly hit by the year on year cuts to their real pay.

The only fair way to judge a Government is on the choices they make. Sadly instead of rewarding the lowest paid and other public sector workers this Government has chosen to prioritise tax cuts for the most wealthy.

We want to also take this opportunity to thank you and your colleagues for all your work in improving the lives and opportunities available for people in this borough.

Along with our Labour councillor colleagues we will be visiting pickets across the borough on Thursday to show our support for your action.

Yours in solidarity

Cllr Rachael Saunders and Cllr Shiria Khatun
Leader and Deputy Leader of Tower Hamlets Labour Group"

(Hat tip Daniel Hassell with Rachel on march)

Sylvia Pankhurst and the East London Federation of Suffragettes

"Campaigning greats - Sylvia Pankhurst and the East London Federation of Suffragettes - Wednesday, 14 November 2012

This event is an opportunity to learn from campaigning greats. The East London Federation of Suffragettes, led by Sylvia Pankhurst, galvanised women and men to campaign for Votes for Women.

Professor Mary Davis, leading biographer of Sylvia Pankhurst, will speak, and Cllr Rachael Saunders will present her research on the campaigning methods and tools used by suffragettes in the east end of London. The chair is Kathryn Perera, Chief Executive of Movement for Change, the home of community organising in the Labour Party.

Hosted by Tower Hamlets Labour Party and the East London Fawcett Society, kindly supported by London UNISON Labour Link.  To sign up please click here". 

(Hat tip Chris Weavers)

A letter to Bradford West from Tower Hamlets

"I felt sick to my stomach when I saw the news from Bradford. George Galloway was an appalling MP for Bethnal Green and Bow which is why the people of Tower Hamlets rejected Respect so decisively in May 2010. I hope you can stop the rot quickly and avoid losing council seats in May.

I don’t pretend we’ve got all the answers for you as you work out how to tackle Galloway, but we’ve had nearly ten years to learn some lessons. You’re the experts on your area, so make use of this as you will as you rebuild the Labour party in Bradford West.

Whilst Galloway’s core supporters are rallying and celebrating, many local people will be feeling uncomfortable with what’s been done, or nervous of the consequences. Oona was amazing in the period after her defeat, attending meetings and talking to people, acting as a focus for worries and uncertainty – still trying to do casework! The Labour Party was visibly still there for people even when we had lost. That was a basis for rebuilding. Jim Fitzpatrick MP was then stalwart in dividing his time attending campaign sessions in his own seat in Poplar and Bethnal Green and Bow until we selected our new candidate.

You’ve seen the politics of division at work. “Real” Muslims vs “thirsty” Muslims. Vicious lies have become key campaign tools for some in Tower Hamlets, from claims that Oona wanted to ban halal meat to lies about mayoral candidate Helal Abbas being a wife beater. In my council election in 2010 many people in the ward received a letter telling them not to vote for me because I was a Jew. (I’m a Christian, but facts are beside the point). By that evening our ward activists had written, stuffed and distributed a letter to those thousands of voters setting out our opposition to that politics of hatred. Our support from local Bangladeshi Muslims strengthened. The lies and hatred must be challenged.

It’s too easy sometimes for Labour Party officers or staff to enforce the use of an old campaign formula because it worked before, or it’s what they know. Our best election campaigns have been formed through having a strategic campaign lead and leaving space for people’s good ideas. Everyone has to be able to make a contribution and it has to be valued. Fighting these people is tough, and investing in relationships to build the Labour Party’s resilience is important.

Get your own house in order, but always have a hand out to those who truly want to come home and help Labour win again. Some of your members will have asked people to vote for Galloway. They can’t be Labour Party members any more – we have rules, and we can’t let the party rot from within. At the same time, Labour won’t win again without the support of some of the people who voted Respect. Tough judgement calls to be made.

Never retreat into campaigning comfort zones. If we believe in communities where people from different backgrounds live alongside one another, we have to model that and learn from one another. Mono ethnic canvassing teams send the wrong message. If there’s a big Iftar party take someone who’s never been inside a mosque to share the food. It’s not only bright young graduates or long term campaign experts who enjoy voter ID number crunching – every activist should be briefed and engaged.

There’s no such thing as a “community leader” who can single handedly deliver huge blocks of votes. In my ward there are a number of women’s circles who come together for Islamic prayer and to talk about their children, family budgets…exactly like the mother’s coffee mornings in the church hall in the village in Wiltshire where I grew up. We win when we are where people are.

In any election, we have to appeal to people’s heads and people’s hearts. Respect feeds on anger and alienation. Labour can remind people of our achievements and set out a strong policy programme for the future. We only win when we also have a strong message of hope that people can believe in. Working out clever policies and presenting ourselves as competent bureaucrats won’t be enough.

Good luck. Let us know if we can help".
Rachel Saunders

Tower Hamlets: A bit of a flashback

Tower Hamlets Councillor Rachel Saunders gives her personal take on what has gone wrong with the local Mayoral election.  Hat tip Labour List (and Unmesh Desai!)

"Thursday night, the night Labour lost Tower Hamlets, felt like a bit of a flashback. The venue was different, York Hall instead of Canary Wharf’s Winter Gardens, but Oliur Rahman and Rania Khan were doing V for Victory signs, hard working Labour activists were miserable and Ken Clark (London Labour's regional director) was at the front of the room looking grumpy.

One difference though – in 2006 I went up to a couple of Labour councillors and gave them a piece of my mind for working as a part of a group of Labour councillors who were making deals with Respect and others to save their own skins and knife councillors they disliked. This time Lutfur Rahman was victorious, but no longer in the Labour Party, at last openly supported by Respect and by others who travel through political parties as it suits them.

This election result came after a messy summer, where two separate panels made up of NEC and regional board members decided not to shortlist Lutfur Rahman, but he got on the shortlist through an appeal. Having previously declined to shortlist him, NEC members chose not to accept his nomination by the local party, and voted instead to impose the sitting council leader Helal Abbas.

Abbas is a decent man with an impressive personal story. From his leadership of the local squatters movement in the 1980s, standing up for Bengali families in desperate need who were excluded from social housing, to his record as the first Bangladeshi council leader, Abbas was the best candidate to steer us through the difficult times ahead. Why did he lose?

It will take a bit longer than a day to articulate what went on in the Bangladeshi community over the past few weeks and months. It is important to be clear that our greatest campaign leaders and activists were Bangladeshi, and that Lutfur presented himself as “Real Labour”, exactly like Respect before him – the bonds that tie our party to the east end of London remain strong, and our opponents only win by impersonating us.

I think our loss has two root causes. One, despite London region intending to run a short selection process and leave us a long summer to campaign, the cock ups and conspiracies meant we must have appeared to our electorate to spend the entire summer warring amongst ourselves. Combined with the London mayoral selection and leadership elections that many of us were involved in, we can’t blame our electorate for feeling like we lost our focus on what should really matter. We did continue to run campaign sessions several times a week, but not everyone will have seen us. This will have contributed to the very low turnout.

Secondly, Lutfur’s narrative was up and running before our story had its boots on. Lutfur presented himself as a victim of the evil Labour Party machine. He had much of the Bengali media behind him, and the intervention of Ken Livingstone, who turned up a few days before polling day and did a walkabout with Lutfur that the BBC were available to film, meant that Labour Party process was all anyone could talk about. Added to this was a smear campaign more filthy than I could have imagined – and I’ve seen a few nasty ones since Respect came into town.

Make no mistake though, there is no difference between the coalition of people that came within one councillor of toppling us in 2006 and the people who managed it on Thursday. Previously Ken Livingstone came to Tower Hamlets to slate Jim Fitzpatrick MP and give Galloway a hug, this time he slated Abbas and hugged Lutfur. Siraj of Clifton restaurant was a supporter of Galloway then and he’s a supporter of Lutfur now. Oliur Rahman, the first Respect councillor and opponent of Jim Fitzpatrick in 2005, who has been a member of four political groups in as many years (SWP/Respect, Left List, Labour, Lutfur), was crowing at the Labour defeat.

The selection process was a mess, but the NEC were absolutely right to stop Lutfur being the Labour candidate.

We defeated Respect convincingly in May 2010, and we’ll do it again. We’ll do it in exactly the same way. Again, we have a wave of new activists who are disgusted at what they have seen and want to defeat it. Again, we have excellent local organisation and hard working talented activists and councillors. We’re stronger than before, with two excellent Labour MPs. We’ll win back the hearts and minds of the people of Tower Hamlets through demonstrating that we understand their concerns, and that only Labour can represent the whole of our community.

This time we’ll have to stand up for them in opposition at the Town Hall. If you oppose the politics of hatred and division that Galloway stood for in Tower Hamlets - before we drummed him out - then stand with us".

London Biennial Conference (III) - Housing Workshop, Ken, Motions and Election Results

This is the last post on the London Labour Party conference held on Saturday. Life moves on rapidly nowadays. Who would have guessed on Saturday we would now be celebrating an income tax increase for the rich! Lovely stuff, better late than never.

Lunch was provided by Newham Labour group, many thanks for a nice curry and glass of wine. Nothing too good for the workers. In the queue I met properly for the first time Hackney Councillor and well known Labour blogger Luke Akehurst. We both agreed that it is a bit strange to come across folk in person that you have only met electronically beforehand.

I forgot to return the conference workshop forms in time so I had been put down to attend the Contact Creator workshop. Now this is an important campaigning tool but I am already due to attend training so I bunked off to go to the “London Housing in the Election” workshop. This was being run by Cllr Jamie Carswell, Deputy Mayor of Hackney. Joanne Milligan chaired. Also present was Paul Stone Deputy Leader of Islington Labour group. The heroine of the hour, new Tower Hamlets Councillor and diss-respect slayer, Rachel Saunders was there with Labour NEC member and employment rights lawyer, Ellie Reeves.

Housing had been a key London issue of the conference so far, mentioned by most speakers. The fear is that Boris is road testing for the national Tories in London. As Robin Wales had said already, don’t believe what he says; look at what he actually does.

Jamie is also the “London Councils” lead on Housing. The major concern about Boris is that he has ditched the 50% target for social housing in all London new build schemes. Boris has also increased the eligibility for access to subsidised shared ownership to those with an income of £72,000 pa (from £60,000?). Possibly even worse Boris has cancelled the vital infrastructure projects such as the DLR extension to Barking and the Thames Gateway Bridge. What this means is that Barking is still supposed to have been identified as an area of housing growth but what is the point of building more housing if there is no transport infrastructure for residents to get to work. Doesn’t Boris understand the concept of “joined up thinking?

The most graceless thing of course by our so called “London Mayor” is his proposal that 45% of all social housing should be built in the 9 Labour boroughs which have only 27% of the population. Gerrymandering or what? Effectively, what this mean is that Tory boroughs will only allow private housing developments and will try and export their “poor” (and God forbid potential Labour voters) to Labour boroughs. It had been pointed out many times that Boris is surrounding himself with advisers associated with the very wicked former Tory leader of Westminster Council, Shirley Porter. The Tories obviously also believe that social housing is tenure of the last resort and the desperate. So out of sight out of mind?

Interestingly Jamie reminded us that the horrible term “Social Housing” was invented by one Michael Heseltine. Jamie prefers the term “Public housing” which I think is far better (even though in the States it has similar negative contentions to social housing – but there you go).

There was other interesting stuff on Boris, such as he is including rebuild in his 50,000 new homes target (so if he knocks down 50,000 homes in the next 4 years and only builds 50,000 new ones then he will have still reached his target); the impact of “gated communities” (communities???), the Warwick 2 housing statement (level playing field for Councils and RSLs), shortage of family seized housing units, HMOs, managing areas were there are more than one public housing landlord.

There was a bit of cut and thrust in the Q&A. While the future of Council Housing is of course still very important it has to be recognised that a significant percentage of housing stock in London has been transferred (30-35%?) or built by RSLs so we have to take this on board. We must make sure that we are pursuing policies that ensure that such new (and old) public housing landlords are being held to account.

I made a suggestion that while there are some very good RSL public housing landlords there are some very, very bad ones. One solution would be for Labour councillors and party members to join the boards of such landlords to drive up standards. Landlords who treat their residents badly will also treat their staff with similar disdain. Councillors also need to call rogue landlords to account in their boroughs. This is an issue that needs exploring further.

There was a very poplar suggestion that all empty homes should have their council tax increased the longer they remained empty and Paul Smith (deputy leader of Islington Labour Group) came up with a very good idea about organising a petition against Boris getting rid of the 50% target.

Afterwards was Ken Livingstone's speech which went down very well. Ken was on form. He thanked the Labour Party for the magnificent effort that everyone put in during the GLA election. He led in all but 4 London boroughs which puts paid to the ES lie that he was the Zone 1 mayor. It was the collapse of the Lib Dem vote that caused most problems. Ken sincerely hoped that people would not take this out on Brian Paddock by voting him out of “I’m a Celebrity”. Since Boris had cancelled the congestion charge on Porches et al in central London, he now has a financial “black hole” to fill – so watch out ordinary Londoners.

Next we debated resolutions on health & safety and housing. There were also emergency motions on Boris cancelling transport schemes, Post offices POCA contracts and windfall taxes. I spoke, so did UNISON delegates Gloria Hanson and Rae Voller.

The election results were very interesting. West Ham Alan Griffiths lost to Luke Akehurst. Check out Luke’s post (and take) on these results.

Most of the conference then seemed to decamp to the nearby Edward VII pub where over a pint or three the world was properly put to rights and a good time was had by all.

Victory to Labour at Mile End East – Galloway well beaten into 3rd place by Tories

Just (00.44) got the result via text from the Council By-election at Mile End East, Tower Hamlets, London. Labour Candidate, Rachel Saunders and local Party activists slaughtered the opposition. Lab 1208, diss-Respect 604, Con 630 and Lib Dem 110. I don’t know the turnout but I suspect it was high for a Council by-election. This is a very good result for the Labour Party, a clear victory.

Despite the national economic problems, Rachel got roughly twice as many votes as Galloway’s Respect and the Tories. These are the published 2006 Council election results. It’s a bit complicated (actually very) to compare since in 2006 the Ward returned 2 Labour and one Respect Councillors. But since then the Respect Councillor (who was also a SWP member) has defected to the Tories and the current Respect Candidate (playing community politics it would appear) actually stood as an independent last time against Respect and Labour. He only marginally increased his vote as a Respect candidate compared to that as an independent, which I think indicates the true level of poplar support for the ultra left brand of Galloway’s Respect (less than 100 voters or so per ward).

I was very impressed with the way that the local Party had organised the campaign. I started off with a team of keen and enthusiastic Labour Society students from local university, Queen Mary (see photo with local MP Jim Fitzpatrick). Then later on I fell in with my West Ham CLP compatriots, John & John, in a canvass team headed by Rachel’s Husband! We were knocking on the doors of “Labour promises”, who were people who had indicated they were Labour supporters but had so far not voted according to the polling agents.

I canvassed mostly the “East End Homes” blocks in Southern Grove, Bow (next to where I use to work in the UNISON office). We went round and around these blocks trying to catch supporters and remind them to vote! The only sign of the opposition I saw was one strangely “suited and booted” respect canvass team (with Green rosettes) who appeared to be having some sort of stand up row between themselves near English Street. Things were probably pretty fraught for all political activists tonight. The polls closed at 10pm and we were still “knocking people up” at 9.45pm. Afterwards we went for a fairly well earned beer and curry in Brick Lane (photo). I assume they are still celebrating in Brick Lane even now as I type and, why not, well done everyone, especially Rachel.

Fighting the Good Fight in Mile End East

After the Forest Gate South coffee morning with West Ham MP, Lyn Brown, I drove over to Tower Hamlets to help out in the by-election in Mile End East (vote this Thursday). The Labour Party candidate is Rachel Saunders and I had been told to make my way to the Burdett Estate.

I drove along St Paul’s Way looking for Labour canvass teams. Opposite St Paul’s school was the Gorgeous One himself, standing on the pavement shouting into a megaphone surrounded by about half a dozen of his diss-respect acolytes. They were huddled around him trying to hand out leaflets to an empty street.

I slowed down and opened the car window to try and listen what he was going on about. I could not make out any coherent statements only incredibly loud ear piercing electronic feedback noises interwoven with occasional barely recognisable grunts. You could not make out the sentences but it seemed to be all about being aggressive, bombastic, bullying and threatening. You could imagine him sneering “We are keeping an eye on you, we know where you live”. What was amazing was how seriously he was taking all this. He appeared to think he was on a podium addressing a packed rally - shaking his arm up and down while vigorously pointing his finger at an audience of no-one. I thought it was all quite symbolic. A little man in the true sense of the word living on supposed past glories in denial of reality.

The rag bag of supporters gathered around him (nearly all white and male) should have been out on the “knocker” talking to local people and trying to persuade them to support their candidate.

I wondered what the SWP would have made of this when they had been in charge of respect. At least they had the sense to know that such prancing about is no substitute for organised and systematic canvassing. Of course, their belief that such actions were furthering the revolution was equally as deluded as George who believed that diss-respect would replace the Labour Party.

I soon joined up with Labour canvass teams. There was a really good turn out by local members and Councillors. I was sent to join a team which included Rachel herself; Council Leader Lutfur Rahman, A M Ohid Ahmed, Alibor Choudhury, Marc Francis, Shiria Khatun and UNISON member Cllr Sirajul Islam with his 9 year old daughter (get them while they are young). Councillor Carli Harper-Penman was out and about with London Assembly member, John Biggs.

From the top of the blocks you could look around and see small groups of Labour Party canvassers wandering around the estate. There was even a balloon stall. Interestingly I saw no Tory canvassers at all. It may appear that the local Tories have something in common with Galloway and don’t want to support former SWP associates?

The canvass itself I thought went well. It was somewhat surprising (I say no more) that some voters said they had been told that the respect candidate was also the Labour Party candidate?

For the first hour or so I could still hear the whine in the distance of the Respect megaphone. Eventually it died away so peace and quiet resumed. Who knows what when people stir up community politics and hatreds, but I have no doubt that eventually diss-respect will also fade away and become yet another weird and wonderful footnote in extremist east end politics.

Meet outside Mile End Tube (there is only one obvious entry/exist) 6pm tomorrow, 2pm and 6pm Wednesday. People wanted all day Thursday. Contact

Rae Voller - Labour’s Voice for Romford

After canvassing for Rachel Saunders in Mile End East Ward, I then went last night to a reception for Rachel (Rae) Voller in Committee room 5, House of Commons.

Rae is the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Romford in the next general election. She is also a UNISON activist and elected member of UNISON National Labour Link committee (and its deputy chair).

Local Romford Labour Party members and UNISON members who live in Romford had been invited to meet Rae and discuss local issues.

I was there with my colleague, John Gough (London Ambulance Service) on behalf of the London UNISON Labour Link committee.

Rae gave a confident and very coherent “off the cuff” talk (without any notes!) about who she was, her background, why she joined the Party, her trade union and why the Party was so important for her and what she believed in. She mentioned her passionate belief in better social and childcare facilities for young and old. Her fear that the Tories have committed themselves to cutting Surestart. Rae is a midwife by profession and her colleagues, who are community based, are horrified at this prospect since they see the good that these centres achieve with families. For her Politics is all about making a difference, changing real peoples lives for the better, its not about the politicians you just see on TV.

Rae spent most of the meeting taking questions and comments (and asking questions back herself) about what Romford people think is important and what we should do to as a Party and her as a candidate to earn the votes of the people at Romford at the next general election.

Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor Jack Straw popped in to say "hello" and give a short speech reminding everyone that, although he represents the Northern consistency of Blackburn, he is really an Essex boy! Born in a LCC Council estate in Harold Hill. Romford and the surrounding area was his old “stomping ground”. His Mum aged 87, still lives in the area and had served as a local Councillor until she was nearly 80.

He describes life in politics at this moment as a “roller coaster”. He is still optimistic of victory at the next election, the maths are with us (we have some 356 seats while the Tories have under 200). He talked about his belief that politics is about improving people’s chances and how we need to defeat the BNP. We must win back the traditional solid Labour LCC estates. The BNP only succeed when we leave a vacuum in local politics for them to move into.

Victory in Romford in 2010 (or before) will be tough to achieve since the sitting Tory MP has an 11,500 majority. However, from 1997 to 2001 it was a Labour seat and the constituency is surrounded by sitting Labour MPs. If anyone can do it, it will be Rae.

Afterwards, some of us went to watch the debates in Parliament, while others managed to have a quick sherbet or two in the “Sports and Social” while putting the world to rights. I’ll leave it to your imagination to guess which option I took.

Rachel Saunders 4 Mile End East

Today was for me a very busy Labour Movement day. I went on an excellent UNISON training event on Pension governance which will finish tomorrow (I’ll post on this later), then at 6pm I met up with Labour canvassers outside Mile End Station to go out and work the ward for the forthcoming Council by-election in Mile End East.

The Labour Party candidate is Rachel Saunders, (see picture) who will make a superb Councillor if she is elected.

Rachel works for UNISON as a national officer. She went off with a canvass team including Councillors Helal Uddin Abbas (former leader of Tower Hamlets Council) and Marc Francis. I went with another team together with local ward Councillor Motin Uz-Zaman.

We went to a high rise tower block in the ward which was run by the large housing association “Places for People”. The block was actually in a very good condition and seemed to be well run and cared for by residents and staff. The canvass went very well even though I am always a little doubtful about what people tell you to get rid of you from the door step.

The other Mile End East Councillor was formerly a Respect Councillor and SWP member, who bizarrely defected to the Tories, so I assume he is pushing the Tory vote. So, to make sure the Tories do not win, vote Labour.

One of the residents I canvassed was a UNISON Health branch secretary who promised to “spread the word”. I had to leave early to another “Rachel” Labour event. This was "Rachel Voller 4 Romford" at the House of Commons which I will also post on soon as well.

On the "dog and bone" for Labour in Mile End

“Of course we will all vote Labour in the election. Tony Blair, when he was Prime minister did wonderful, wonderful things for our country. We will always support the Labour Party”. This is something that Labour Party canvassers don’t hear all that often I suppose.

However, this is what I heard last night from the first person I was able to actually speak to last night during a Labour Party telephone canvass session.

We were phoning electors from the Mile End East ward in our sister CLP (Constituency Labour Party) in Tower Hamlets. There is a Council election on 20th November 2008. Rachel Saunders is the ace Labour Party candidate for the election.

We were physically at the West Ham Labour Party headquarters in Stratford where we have a useful tele-canvass bank. This was set up with the help of our MP Lyn Brown, West Ham CLP and London UNISON Labour Link.

Picture is of West Ham CLP secretary and UNISON Labour Link officer for Walthamstow Local Government, Alan Griffiths, fighting the good fight by asking Mile End electors to support Rachel. Tele-canvassing is not as bad as you might think. In the majority of calls that you manage to speak to someone, there is some sort of positive outcome. I don’t think you can replace "door to door" canvassing (on the knocker) but telephone canvassing is very important if properly done.

The canvass went really well. I will make a very minor admission that the lady I was first able to speak to was Lithuanian and this was the “country” she was referring to when she was talking about the “great things” that Tony Blair had done. I’m not that sure what Tony did to please Lithuanian voters but I am sure it was something very positive.

We will continue with the tele-canvass for the rest of the campaign. If you want to help out check this post.

Rachel Saunders selected for Mile End East

A Good news story: Rachel was selected yesterday as the Labour Party candidate in the Mile End East Council by-election. She works for UNISON as a national Equalities officers and is very hard working and dedicated local Party activist.

She will make an excellent Councillor. Seen left with Cllr Motin Uz-Zaman. By co-incidence I was in the same canvass team as Rachel in Mile End last month (see here).

This is from the Tower Hamlets Labour Party Web site

"The by-election was called after Labour Councillor Rupert Bawden resigned due to health reasons.

Speaking after her selection as the candidate, Rachael Saunders said: “I am honoured to be chosen to represent the Labour Party in the forthcoming by-election. Rupert was a first class councillor and will be a tough act to follow.”

She added: “There are some serious issues facing the residents of Mile End East. Crime and anti-social behaviour is an issue across the ward, there are areas where parking needs be sorted out, and residents on the British Street Estate have talked to me at length about some of the issues they have with the contractors carrying out the refurbishment of the estate. Residents need and deserve a committed councillor to work with them to tackle these issues.”

Rachael said: “There is clear blue water between the Conservative vision for Tower Hamlets, and what residents and Labour want. The Conservative Mayor for London is proposing to close Limehouse Police station; I will lead the fight against this Tory cut. Across London, Conservative Councillors are slashing grants for voluntary organisations; I will oppose this. Conservative councils charge for the telecare alarm service for pensioners; I strongly support the Labour council’s recent decision to provide this service free of charge.”

Printed by Tower Hamlets Labour Party. Promoted by Graham Taylor on behalf of Rachael Saunders, All at 349 Cambridge Heath Road, London, E2 9RA.

If you can help out there are canvass teams out every week day evening - 6pm meet outside Mile End tube. Also there will be weekend canvassing. Call at the Labour Party campaign HQ at 349 Cambridge Heath Road, E2 9RA or Call 020 7729 6682 if you can help at other times.