We don’t have to accept UKIP making inroads into our vote – here’s how we beat them in Oxford

On Thursday I was thrilled to be elected in a by-election to Oxford City Council for Blackbird Leys Ward. Although the turnout was a disappointing 15.7% the result was one of the best for Labour this year:

Lab 509 (75.7%, +8.4)

UKIP 91 (13.5%, -7)

Con 27 (4%, -1.6)

Green 21 (3.1%, -1.4)

TUSC 13 (1.9%, +1.9)

LD 11 (1.6%, -0.4)

That’s a swing of 7.7% from UKIP to Labour since this May’s council elections.

In two simultaneous by-elections for neighbouring Northfield Brook Ward and the Leys County Council Division which covers both the wards, my Oxford Labour colleagues Sian Taylor and Steve Curran also took over 70% of the vote.

Before you dismiss this as just a good result in an always safe seat, it’s worth understanding the history and context of the Blackbird Leys Ward:

• On the surface demographics it ought to be Labour: the whole ward is a council estate on the south east edge of Oxford, with the largest employer being the neighbouring Cowley BMW Mini car plant. But peripheral council estates, with a mainly white population and lots of pensioners, are exactly the kind of areas that UKIP have been making big inroads into.
• UKIP are Labour’s main challengers in the ward, in fact it is the only part of Oxford where they present the main threat. In May they got 196 votes.
• The ward has been lost by Labour within recent memory to exactly the kind of populist challenge UKIP represents, albeit a leftwing one, the Independent Working Class Association (IWCA). They won Blackbird Leys in 2004 and were a strong second as recently as 2008.
• The IWCA history and the radical trade union tradition at the Cowley works meant that TUSC (Trade Union & Socialist Coalition) actually thought they would poll well. They ended up getting 13 votes in my ward.
• The Greens announced in October that Oxford East was one of their dozen target seats in the General Election. On Thursday they got just 21 votes in Blackbird Leys and their vote went down by 1.4% there and by 2.5% in Northfield Brook. This is hardly the performance of a party that is seriously challenging to unseat Andrew Smith as MP.
• Oxford East was a Lib Dem target seat in the 2005 and 2010 General Elections. They reduced Labour’s majority to under a thousand in 2005 and got over 17,000 votes in 2010. Their vote appears to have vaporised – 11 votes in my ward and 18 in Northfield Brook.

Getting 75.7% of the vote was not an accident. Here’s how it happened:

• Oxford Labour has one of the highest voter contact rates of any local party in the country, achieved by year round door-knocking, which is turned into something attractive to be part of by regular Super Sundays when double canvassing sessions are broken up by a pub lunch. There are strong links with the university Labour clubs and students are fully integrated into local campaigning. We went into the by-election already having an 80% contact rate in my ward, and then re-contacted a large proportion of the voters in the last month.
• But Oxford Labour’s canvassing culture is about quality as well as quantity of conversations with voters. Canvassers are encouraged to pick up casework and get problems solved for people. I reckon 50 of my votes were down to longer conversations where I got to know voters properly, listened to their concerns and convinced them to vote for me to address them.
• We decided to focus on direct mail rather than leaflets, knowing that addressed letters are far more likely to be read.
• Our direct mail was deliberately detailed and wordy. We didn’t want glib slogans we wanted to give those voters who did have an appetite to read our material a really thorough account of the difference Labour makes locally.
• We have a strong local brand that trumps any national problems. People in Blackbird Leys wanted to talk about the direction and leadership of our party and we listened – but we also made sure they knew we are the people renewing housing on the estate and building a brand new sports centre.
• Voters also repeatedly raised the EU and immigration, particularly in relation to access to council housing. Thanks to helpful policy announcements from Shadow Work & Pensions Secretary Rachel Reeves we were able to gain voters trust on this issue while anchoring a positive case for EU membership around the presence of the BMW factory on their doorstep.
• A central component of our local brand is Andrew Smith’s reputation and incumbency as MP.  He gave up being a cabinet minister to focus on being a dedicated constituency MP. People across the constituency know him, talk about him and have been helped by him. He actually lives on the Blackbird Leys estate so people in my ward feel they have an MP who is really part of their community. My predecessor as councillor was Andrew’s wife Val, who has sadly had to stand down due to illness. Val’s reputation as a ward councillor is amazing – I met person after person she had helped. Many voters when canvassed don’t say “I vote Labour” they say “I always support Andrew and Val’s party”.
• Professionalism by definition includes having a professional organiser to pull things together and ensure regular communication to mobilise members. Oxford Labour’s Organiser Tom Adams is a complete star. Whilst it may be beyond the means of other pairs of CLPs to fund an organiser like Oxford does, all CLPs ought to be part of a cluster, maybe at county level, to employ an organiser.

We don’t have to accept, anywhere in the country, that UKIP or any other populist challenge should be making inroads into traditional Labour areas. Hard work, all year round, building real relationships with voters and not taking them for granted, delivers the kind of thumping victories that Oxford Labour achieved on Thursday.

Linda Smith is the newly elected councillor for Blackbird Leys ward in her home town of Oxford. She previously served twelve years as a Councillor in the London Borough of Hackney.