I’m a Labour Councillor and so’s my Mom*

By Grace Fletcher-Hackwood / @msgracefh

At around 11am on Friday, someone on Twitter commented that “I’m a Labour councillor” appeared to be the new “I am Spartacus”. With over 800 new Labour councillors elected overnight, it was beginning to seem that half Labour’s online community could put a ‘Cllr’ in front of their Twitter name. Except those in Scotland, of course.

For me this seemed especially true. I was finally declared councillor for Manchester’s Fallowfield ward at around 4am, by which time it had been clear for hours that – as Cllr Amina Lone predicted here on Thursday, frankly terrifying me that we were setting expectations of the Lib Dems too low – Manchester Labour had won every one of the 33 seats up for election. Every single Manchester Labour candidate I had campaigned for, and an even larger number that I hadn’t, had suddenly become part of the Labour council I’m so excited to work with.

And after around an hour’s sleep, I got on a train to Walsall, the town I grew up in. My mom, Sue Fletcher-Hall, was selected last summer as Labour’s candidate for Bloxwich West, a ward which had been all Tory until Labour won one seat in a by-election in July. Since Walsall’s count was being held on Friday morning, I’d decided to attend. There, things got a bit more weird.

I’d only been a party member for a couple of years before leaving home in 2003, and hadn’t got particularly involved beyond delivering leaflets (I’d had the usual first-branch-meeting experience of being half the age of the next youngest person there, not having any idea what everyone was talking about, and deciding never to go back: West Midlands Young Labour gave me most of my opportunities for campaigning, which is why I believe so firmly in the importance of Young Labour in encouraging members into the party), so it was an entirely new experience to look around a count and see the names of the areas I grew up in; not to mention a surprising number of people I knew. There was a Tory councillor I’d gone to sixth-form with; a couple of Independent and Lib Dem candidates who were parents of my sisters’ friends; and the list of Walsall’s newly-elected Labour councillors included not only, inevitably, a friend of mine from Twitter – the unstoppable Gareth Illman-Walker – but also one of my old primary school teachers, who I hadn’t seen since I was ten.

(Meanwhile, my best friend was elected a councillor in Blackburn, and James Alexander, the first person who ever suggested that I stand for election for anything, had become the leader of the City of York Council, which Labour had just taken from the Lib Dems. I was starting to feel like I needed more sleep.)

Of course, there were differences between the Walsall count I was at and the Manchester count I had left. Manchester had had a Lib Dem opposition and one sort-of Tory; Walsall has had a Tory council since 2003, until this week when it fell into no overall control; and only one of the six Walsall Lib Dems lost their seat, in contrast to the comprehensive routing they saw up here.

But there were similarities as well. Since being selected, my Mom has campaigned with Fred Westley, the councillor elected at Bloxwich West’s July by-election (in which Walsall’s Tories inadvertently drew attention to the scrapping of Building Schools for the Future by re-using some of their general election leaflets). Fred, my Mom said, is one of those people who knows everyone in the ward, and can’t walk down the street without being stopped by someone. It reminded me a lot of the three Fallowfield councillors I’d been campaigning with myself, the retiring Peter Morrison and my now ward colleagues David Royle and Mike Amesbury: people who are visible in their ward, who do their best to help people promptly and whose electoral chances, whatever the national or council-wide picture, are greatly buoyed up by their personal reputation for being hardworking, committed and local.

A Manchester Labour councillor mused on Saturday that it would be interesting to find out what happened in a parallel universe where the Lib Dems had still sold out a generation but where Manchester Labour hadn’t put the work into our campaign. Sure, the majority in my own Labour-held (and student-heavy) ward would have gone up; sure, the Lib Dems would have been embarrassed across the city. But would we have taken the city centre without the campaigning frenzy that is Kev Peel? Would we have got a thousand-plus majority in Levenshulme without the hard work of former councillor and local campaigner Emily Lomax? Would we have decapitated the Manchester Lib Dems by ousting Simon Ashley without the unstoppable campaign machine that is Peter Cookson?

It’s hard to say. Last week saw a number of people elected to Manchester City Council who did not expect to be elected. But Manchester Labour does not put up paper candidates. There was a campaign in every ward. Running strong local campaigns is, as Gordon Brown might have put it, in our DNA.

And speaking of DNA: my Mom was elected, in the end, with a majority of 78 and a slightly shaking daughter. It’s hard work that wins you a seat like that – but the hard work has, of course, only begun. I’m off to start being a councillor today. I’ll be back next week to let you know how I’m getting on.

* – before anyone accuses me of watching too much American TV: I’m originally from the Black Country. It’s spelt ‘Mom’ there, unless you’re posh.