Bolsover: Labour’s Natalie Fleet on death threats, Dennis Skinner and class today

The defeat of the “Beast of Bolsover” Dennis Skinner in 2019, after almost half a century representing the seat, was one of the most high-profile symbolic low points in Labour’s worst defeat since 1935.

The constituency elected a Tory for the first time in its history last time round, and it is one of the key battlegrounds Labour needs to win back to gain a majority at this election.

LabourList caught up recently with the candidate leading the fight, Natalie Fleet, who told us the Derbyshire constituency was “the epitome of the fall of the Red Wall” – and so just the place for activists “who want to help rebuild it” to be in the final push of the campaign.

‘Gloria de Piero showed people like me can be MPs’

The 40-year-old said one of her earliest political memories is of Tony Blair becoming Prime Minister in her early teens. “Things were really tough at home, and you’ve got people on the telly saying they were going to make things better and prioritise my education. I remember being sat in my English class, thinking if they can pull it off it’d be massive, and I want to be part of that.”

She credits the last Labour government with helping her get a “good education”, childcare support and bursary that enabled her to go to university. But she said she never thought when she was young that “people like me” would ever become MPs. That only changed when she met former Ashfield MP Gloria de Piero, who became a friend.

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“She showed me you can stand in that free school meals queue, have an accent and go to represent local people in a palace. Dennis Skinner also made me realise what value there is in being a local person, who gets it.”

She said the best moments of her campaign had been when she met voters who said politics didn’t matter or politicians were all the same. That’s when “the magic happens”: she tells them her own story ,and that “I’m one of them that wants to go down to Westminster and fight for them, backed up by a Labour government”.

“By the end of the conversation, they’re not only voting, they’re excited –nothing is as good as that.”

The pits are ‘a really important part of who we are’

Fleet said Skinner also understood “what happened after we lost the mining industry” in areas like Bolsover.

She is particularly passionate about the latter point. “I’ve never been down a pit apart from in a museum. But it’s like a trauma we’ve gone through losing the pits. I grew up with all my family down the pit; after that you’d raise the pigeons, you’d go on holiday to Skegness – every part of your life was dicated around being a mining community.

“I see the poverty, desperation, crime, drug use, the lack of secure employment – I see people struggle and I know back in the day they’d have been down a pit. It’s not the only thing that matters, but my God it’s a really important part of who we are.”

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Fleet said it was important to challenge the idea “to be working-class you’ve got to come home with dirty hands like my dad did”.

She said she had been told she was not working-class herself, and that “people struggle to see women as working-class”. While she said standing had opened her eyes to the challenges of being a woman in politics, she also said many women on the doorstep were excited by her being Bolsover’s best chance yet of having a first woman as its MP.

‘Poverty scars you – people overlook the fact we’ll ensure no child learns hungry’

Tackling child poverty is a priority for Fleet if she is elected on Thursday, shaped by her own experiences.

“Growing up in poverty is a huge deal. It scars you, it leaves scars on individuals and communities, and has lifelong consequences,” she said, saying she’d felt scarred herself by being in the free school meals queue.

“I’m knocking on multiple doors, but somebody still knocks on my door and I don’t know who they are, I still won’t answer it. There’s fear that the bailiff’s coming. I feel that I am the exception. Not everybody that was homeless as a child is as fortunate as I was.

“How many children haven’t got secure housing now, have got debt collectors knocking at their doors, are shopping having to put food back, and their earliest memories are of being in that food bank queue?

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“I’ve worked in the voluntary sector, and then went into a trade union working with teachers, and I’ve seen how much worse things have got.

“On the doorstep, the amount of times I’ve been in tears over the heartbreak that I hear. What gives me hope is the difference the next Labour government will make.”

“I believe in the power of politics to help. Some people say that we don’t go far enough, that we’re not radical enough. The chance that we have to shape lives and make a difference to working people and families – why are people overlooking the fact we’re going to make sure no child is going to learn hungry because they’re going to have a free breakfast club?

“They’re just the first steps – we’re going to be able to make transformational change. And I’m so excited for that.”

‘I’ve had to explain to my children death threats are inevitable’

Fleet is from the neighbouring constituency, Ashfield. She stood there in 2019, and still lives there under a mile from the Bolsover seat, though says the latter is still “home”. But she said she made the difficult decision not to stand in Ashfield again for the safety of her family, after receiving threats and an attack on the party’s office during the last campaign.

“I’m a mum of four, and I had to tell my daughter to play away from the windows in case they went through.”

She said she still expects standing to come at an “inevitable” cost in terms of safety risks, calling it the toughest part of being a politician,but says “we’ve just got to be vigilant”.

“I’ve had to explain to my children that death threats to them are inevitable, and I will do everything to protect them from it, but I do this because of the lives I can change. I’ve had to explain that the last Labour government helped me, and that means my children will be alright, and it’s other people’s children that I fight for now.”

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