Calvin Bissitt looks at how Labour councils can win Conservative wards and what is needed to start a successful campaign in a tough seat.

Blue Wall seats usually mean safe Conservative seats in rural and south-eastern England – areas which have reliably voted Conservative in every election since the 1980s, ‘90s and even earlier. However, almost every city, district and county council up and down the country has what could be called a “Blue Wall,” areas which are considered safe Conservative and which, in a local election, become the teeth-cutting grounds for many young, first-time candidates in local elections.

These areas, however, are not as unassailable as would first appear; and as I learnt in 2022, can be brought well within striking range of Labour with a dedicated campaign to win over local voters.

In Lincoln, I fought the Witham Ward in 2022, giving us the best result we’ve had since 2018 when we lost the last Labour councillor in the area and now, for 2023, the seat sits on a mere 8-point swing. This is something that can be done up and down the country, to not just give Labour councils better majorities, but also to start whittling at those Conservative councils otherwise thought of as out of reach.

The local issues faced in these communities and wards are often just the same as those faced elsewhere. The only significant difference is usually in the demographics, and that is where we must realise the need to fight elections on terms we know we can do well on.

If you’re a councillor in one such Blue Wall seat, start by gathering information on what the local issues are. Parking, housing, green spaces, anti-social behaviour and the nitty-gritty individual concerns – all are key to fighting an election, to understanding what your constituents want and to building a campaign around that. Being a young or first-time candidate is not the disadvantage that many think it is, especially at the moment; rather it is a chance to be a fresh face, and to push for change, and by working with those in the community, you begin building the inroads needed.

This is something that may take two or three attempts, building a reputation in the ward, before eventually you can make yourself a red brick in the blue wall. By throwing yourself into the same ward, even with its reputation as a tough one, you give Labour the best chance it can have of winning.

Here in Lincoln, one of the other ‘Conservative’ wards has a Labour Councillor, someone who has worked tirelessly through the ward to build his reputation and is often known as running a ‘Labour-lite’ campaign, one which focuses more on himself and less on the Party, with logos rarely a feature on the leaflets. It’s another tactic, by distancing the political stereotypes of the Party, in favour of fighting an election as a representative. This has given him the chance to gain endorsements of local businessmen, including one of the well-known Conservatives in the ward.

While the endorsement of a Conservative can often be seen as distasteful, the reality is that a personal endorsement for yourself, in a ward which has good demographics for the Conservatives, enables a more progressive voice for the ward, and relies on your personal reputation. It’s a strategy that Labour must look to use more in local areas, supporting candidates who gain such endorsements to publicise them.

This starts at the smallest possible level. In your CLP, look at the wards that are tough to fight and consider how we can change our strategy to better give Labour the chance to win, and how we can work with the candidates in those wards to make sure that they are building the foundations for a Labour gain. Think about if we should be rotating young candidates every year or looking to encourage them to stand in the same wards. This varies from council to council of course; here in Lincoln with yearly local elections, it works well as candidates get a chance each year to take a shot at the ward and means you can more rapidly build a reputation and see its effects.

For the campaign itself, it’s increasingly important that Labour CLPs give support, even if only a little, to the candidates standing in the harder wards, as burnout among younger candidates, left alone to battle a seat on the outskirts of the council, can be a serious issue, and it impacts the campaigns especially towards the end. A campaign day just once in the campaign period, or regularly getting another member or two along to deliver leaflets and door-knock, does wonders to speeding up the data-gathering and material-delivering and gives candidates the feeling they are part of a Party campaign, rather than just a lone voice in a sea of blue, left to sink or swim in stress.

I completely understand the considerations that CLPs have with their finances and resources: you have only a limited number of activists, and a limited cash sum to give out, often necessitating the focusing of resources into target wards. However, I would argue that CLPs need to look not just at shoring up the usual areas but building outwards. A Party that builds success elsewhere builds resources with new activists and members. The other ward I mentioned in Lincoln has seen local people, who backed the Labour candidate for his personal contributions and hard work, join the Labour Party now, and they have become fixtures in the southern wards of the city in helping us keep control of these tough areas, and have worked to help us try and get other candidates the same success.

Building bricks in the Blue Wall is not a simple task; it’s a gruelling, long-term slog, but one which we can do with the right application of time and resources, and it gives Labour a better chance further up the chain. By building Labour-voting habits in areas which otherwise vote Tory, we turn marginals to lean-Labour, and lean-Labour seats into safe-Labour seats.

We need not just the regularity of candidates, breaking the instinct to pit new, inexperienced candidates in the tough wards, cycling them into ‘better’, or more electorally ‘viable’ wards as they cut their teeth in tough areas; instead, we need to build regular faces in these wards, candidates willing to stand again and again, and to build a local profile that enables them to take the seat off the Conservatives. We need to recognise and make use of the potential of personal endorsements, even from those who have voted or vocally supported the Conservatives. It breaks down the party division and means that Conservative voters become far more likely to back a Labour candidate with personal endorsements. Finally, we need CLPs to lend the resources and time, not just at elections, but all year round, to build the foundations of a strong campaign, and support the eager members who have taken up the unenviable task of standing in these tough wards.

Calvin Bissitt is a Lincoln CLP Literature Sub-coordinator, and former candidate for both the Lincoln City Council and Lincolnshire County Council. More information on his work can be found on his Twitter account: https://twitter.com/BissittCalvin.

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lwr/4950942316. Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)