—analysis—-
SOCIALIST PARTY members stood as candidates in the English local elections and the Greater London Assembly elections and received creditable votes, given the limited resources and lack of media coverage our party has. While the biggest success was undoubtedly winning another council seat in Coventry, all our candidates put in strong performances and increased their votes on previous occasions when we had stood. We outline the results below and give comparison with other votes, where the information has been received.
Northern
Newcastle Byker:
Bill Hopwood (Socialist Party *) 266 votes (16.6%)
Other votes: Labour 910, Liberal 166, Tory 162.
Carlisle Botcheby:
Paul Wilcox (Socialist Party) 305 (24.5%)
Other votes: Labour 484, Tory 456.
Yorkshire
Hull Southcotes: (two seats)
Keith Ellis (Socialist Party) 98 votes (4.2%)
Labour 767/669, Lib Dem 260/202, Tory 210
Doncaster Thorne and Moorends
Mary Jackson (Socialist Party) 147 votes (5%)
Rotherham Aston
Paul Marshall (Socialist Party) 172 votes (7.8%)
Labour 1,244, Tory 456, Lib Dem 326.
Sheffield Manor
Alistair Tice (Socialist Party) 106 votes (7.3%)
Labour 964, Lib Dem 243, Tory 143.
Sheffield Park
Terry Wykes (Socialist Party) 31 votes (1.2%)
Labour 1,030, Lib Dem 1,373, Tory 67.
Sheffield Castle
Rebecca Fryer (Socialist Party) 41 votes (2.4%)
Labour 1,130, Lib Dem 314, Tory 149.
Barnsley Wombwell North
Angie Waller (Socialist Party) 68 votes (2.9%)
Labour 1,079, Independent 384, Lib Dem 258, Tory 166.
Wakefield East Moor
Mick Griffiths (Socialist Party) 220 votes (8%)
Labour 1,503, Tory 716, Lib Dem 392.
Huddersfield Almondsbury
Jo Hayley (Socialist Party) 74 votes.
Bradford University
Sajjad Shah (Socialist Party) 98 votes (2%)
Leeds City and Holdbeck
Dave Jones (Socialist Party)
Merseyside
Sefton Netherton/Orrell
Pete Glover (Socialist Party) 416 ( 30%; compared to last election 218)
West Midlands
Tipton Green
Ian Barton (Socialist Party) 68 votes
Birmingham Erdington
Joe Foster (Socialist Party) 95 votes
Birmingham Longbridge
Clive Walder (Socialist Party) 89 votes
Coventry St Michael’s
Rob Windsor (Socialist Party) 1.182 votes – elected
Labour 1,071
Coventry Willenhall
Becky Tustain (Socialist Party) 380 votes
Coventry Longford
Martin Reynolds (Socialist Party) 242 votes
Coventry Westwood
Ella Manley (Socialist Party) 292 votes
Coventry Waverly
Mark Power (Socialist Party) 262 votes
Coventry Upper Stoke
Sam Ashby (Socialist Party) 144 votes
Coventry Henley
Martha Young (Socialist Alliance) 438 votes
Stoke
Jim Cessford(Socialist Party) 112 votes (5%)
Tory 793, Labour 707, Labour 694 (Independents won nine seats in Stoke)
Eastern
Stevenage
Mark Pickersgill (Socialist Party) 32 (3%)
Basildon Langdon Hills
Dave Murray (Socialist Party) 37
In 1999 the governmentís electoral registration officer, backed up by a parliamentary committee, ruled that the Socialist Party could not use its own name in elections because of the existence of a smaller party of the same name that rarely stood in elections. After campaigning against the decision the Socialist Party reluctantly registered as Socialist Alternative for elections.
In Coventry the party registered as Socialist Alternative (Nellist). Despite the ban on us using our own name all our election literature goes out as Socialist Party material.
Greater London Assembly (GLA) elections.
In Greenwich and Lewisham, Socialist Party councillor Ian Page, standing for the Socialist Alliance got 3,981 votes (4.2%) the third highest vote of any London Socialist Alliance candidate.
In the constituency section of the GLA elections the London Socialist Alliance received 46,530 votes (3.14%). In the top-up vote for the party lists the LSA got 27,073 (1.63%). The Campaign against Tube Privatisation received 17,041 votes (1.02%).
If the there had been a joint list between the two campaigns (as the Socialist party argued inside the LSA) then they would have received at least over 3% and possibly more given that a joint campaign could have been more effective.
As things stood if all the votes of campaigns to the left of Labour were added together (excluding the Green) then that comes to 88,515 votes or 5.3%, enough to have got a member of the GLA elected.
