Hi John,

The results of the Batley and Spen by-election are a comprehensive humiliation for the far right. Anne Marie Waters received just 97 votes, and Jayda Fransen a mere 50 votes. Both polled fewer votes than the Monster Raving Loony Party. 

The politics of the far right was comprehensively rejected in this election. But the toxicity of the campaign, and what the election tells us about the nature of the far right challenge today, shows that there is no room for any complacency. 

I know the seat well from many years of HOPE not hate campaigns in the area. I visited the seat to join HOPE not hate supporters and leaflet. While the result was satisfying, I am worried about the situation. This is a long email but I wanted to share my thoughts with everyone. 

The far right are looking for a break through and thought they had a chance here. The by-election had been called by the election of Tracy Brabin, the MP for Batley and Spen, to the post of West Yorkshire Mayor. The far right vote ended up being derisory, but they saw a chance to make in-roads and we needed to stand in their way. The area was a former BNP stronghold, with the party having a councillor in the area and receiving 3,685 votes in the constituency, a 7.6% share, in the 2010 General Election. More significantly though, the school where a teacher showed a picture of Mohammed to students in an RE lesson is in the constituency and should have been useful campaign ammunition for all anti-Islam and anti-multicultural parties.

Thankfully, the far right parties ran atrocious campaigns. And it was bad even by their own low standards. There was very little campaigning by any of them and the widely promoted For Britain rally last Saturday never materialised after cheerleader Stephen Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) failed to show. Instead, our spotters noted that the 20 For Britain supporters who were in the area ended up driving around the constituency, only stopping to allow for candidate Anne Marie Waters to pose for photos and to cover up Galloway posters with their own.

We ran an active campaign for HOPE. In contrast to the far right, we were active throughout the campaign, delivering three different leaflets into streets where our data suggested that they would be best received. We had an amazing response, with several people putting up our first leaflet, which doubled up as a poster on one side, in their windows. Just as importantly, we made many good links locally, all of which puts us in good stead for our post-election work. A massive thank you must go out to everyone who helped in our campaign.

Despite the positive result, this was a toxic campaign. While the far right have been humiliated, George Galloway’s attempts to use the politics of division to win office fortunately fell short. This campaign should be another stain on his reputation. His negative, angry and aggressive campaign created a toxic climate on the ground, with Labour Party campaigners chased, abused and even physically attacked on the streets.

Galloway campaigned heavily against ‘woke culture’ and there was hardly a speech, interview or leaflet where he didn’t attack LGBT rights, the trans community and sex education in schools. This only further toxified the local political discourse, and the Labour candidate received a torrent of online abuse for her own sexuality. While Galloway ran a divisive and misogynistic campaign, it is important that we differentiate the candidate from the people who voted for him. Just like BNP voters of old, people vote for extreme and divisive candidates for a whole variety of reasons and many of these are grounded in real or perceived grievances. While Galloway’s anti-LGBT narrative might have attracted the support of some (Muslim and non-Muslim) opposed to LGBT rights, others would have voted for him for a variety of other reasons too. Understanding, addressing and even challenging these grievances has to be a vital lesson for all political parties going forward. A failure to do so will only allow these grievances and disillusionment to grow and harden.

Labour figures have questions to answer too. The distribution of a crass leaflet with a picture of Boris Johnson with Indian leader Narendra Modi was clearly designed to tap into anti-Modi feelings amongst Muslim voters and will undoubtedly rebound and only further inflame tensions between Hindu voters and Labour in other parts of the country.

Now we start a new phase in the campaign. While the political and media circus will now move on from the area, the toxicity stirred up by this election will remain. There is lots of work to do and this is what HOPE not hate will now be focusing on. We will be supporting a number of local initiatives that seek to bring local people together and joining with the local More in Common group and the Jo Cox Foundation to hold a community fun day in earlier September. To help build this event, and to promote a more unifying message, we will also produce a tabloid newspaper which will be distributed across the constituency in August.

The by-election challenged cohesion across Batley and Spen and while voters overwhelmingly rejected those spreading hate, we cannot kid ourselves that it is job done. Quite the contrary. Division, suspicion and mistrust runs deep locally and has even been hardened during this campaign. But we can at least move forward hoping that the comprehensive rejection of far right extremism, coupled with the popular revulsion for Galloway’s divisive campaign (as best exemplified by the open letter put out by Muslim women on the eve of poll), will give confidence for more people to speak out more publicly.

HOPE defeated hate yesterday, but now a lot of hard work will be needed to put into action Jo Cox’s eloquently words: "We are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us." HOPE not hate is willing and ready to play our role in doing this in by supporting local leaders Batley and Spen.

Sorry for such a long email but I really do think this is an important moment. Anyway, thanks for reading.

Nick

Nick Lowles
CEO, HOPE not hate