It took four years of hard work and listening to turn the tide.
This Thursday marks 10 years since Labour left office. But on election night in 2010, there was a silver lining in East London. It was the night the BNP were routed from one of their strongholds. A decade on we should remember and celebrate.
The BNP had secured 12 seats on the council in 2006, and if they had stood a full slate of candidates, would have taken control. These were dark times. Times when we were not sure if Labour could ever win power back. Times when we felt lost. We had our knock backs on the doorstep, in the streets and in the drafty church halls where we gathered, but we never lost our resolve. We never gave up the fight.
Instead, we reconnected over four long years. At the heart of our journey was the relentless wearing down of shoe leather, but it was so much more than this. We stopped telling people what we thought was best for them, and instead, listened. They said they wanted more opportunities for better jobs, better housing and a better place to live. We turned the tide on years of complacency and a reliance on majorities we took for granted, by tackling the things that mattered to them.
We can take heart from the lessons we learned ten years ago. If we listen to our communities, and show them we are responding to their concerns, they will meet us halfway and lend us their confidence.
Our lesson was you must earn the right to govern, not take it for granted. Ten years on, we have seen off the English Defence League, UKIP, Nigel Farage and his Brexit Party, and in 2019, we stood firm as the Red Wall fell.
Barking & Dagenham is the last bastion of the working class in London. We may be half an hour away from the City of London, but we have more in common with northern towns and the Welsh Valleys. If Labour can turn the tide here, it can be turned everywhere.
Today’s Barking & Dagenham is a world away from where it was a decade ago but has the same working-class values which our community has always believed in. Our sense of social cohesion has never been stronger even while juggling 130 cultures from around the world. We celebrate them with festivals and flag raisings. And, as a legacy of once being home to London’s fishing industry, we have secured the three iconic fish, meat & veg markets of London.
But we plan for the future, and dont just celebrate the past . We’ve got a new film studio, London’s first Youth Zone, a brand new university, and an authority that has been council of the year twice.
And at the outbreak of Covid 19 we pulled together our own Citizen’s Alliance Network of local voluntary, community faith groups who between them have contacted 25,000 people, delivered food parcels, medicines and messages of hope and support. This has important lessons for the wider Labour movement. You cannot do socialism to people – only with them.
On Friday 7 May 2010 we thought we had won the fight. Of course, it was just the beginning. The message from Barking & Dagenham is clear: the road to recovery may be long and hard but there is much that Labour can learn from it.
Nationally the past ten years has been a lost decade. As we edge slowly away from the peak of the pandemic, we need a Labour government now more than ever to shine a beacon of hope across the country. Above all we need a new deal for Britain.
We need investment in infrastructure to create more jobs, not more zero hour contracts. We need more affordable ‘homes for heroes’ for key workers. We need investment in transport.
We need investment in new technologies and low carbon alternatives if people are to work in the socially distanced new reality. If we don’t get all this and more, if what we get is another bout of austerity and further polarisation, then we may see the rise of the far right again. Labour, in councils and nationally, must lead the fight to build back better.
Darren Rodwell is Leader of Barking & Dagenham Council and in 2010 was Campaign Coordinator, Barking Labour Party
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