A Canvasser Calls
Monday, April 11, 2005

I had planned to describe the first week of the election campaign in Hove as lacklustre. There has been little else to report other than a leaflet each from both New Labour and Tories and a rash of new posters - 1 for New Labour (another one of those WARNING: THE ELECTORATE ARE GULLIBLE ones) and 4 Tory ones, including the last in the set of the 11 Nicholas Boles ones. The Tories are docked one because one of the Nicholas Boles ones in Portslade has ben plastered over with one for T-Mobile. The count currently stands at:

Conservatives: 14 (up 1, down 1)
New Labour: 5 (up 1)

And there I would have left it had there not been a ring at the door yesterday. When I opened I found a local activist accompanied by none other than Celia Barlow, the New labour candidate for Hove.

Now, this just after my posting the piece labasting Peter Hain (see below), picture the scene: Me swelling to my full height and blowing poor Celia across the road with the force of my righteous fury and razor-sharp invective. Are picturing it? Good, now forget it.

My mind went completely blank and I folded like a house of cards. Celia is very charming and I found myself unable to be blunt with her. I guess I should go easier on Prince Charles - not that I'm comparing Celia Barlow to Robert Mugabe.

So, it turns out that I'm a passive-aggressive confrontation-shy milquetoast with a classic working class deference to power. Who'd a thunk it?

She did give me the usual, "Hove is a straight fight between Labour and Tories" and the "don't let the Tories back in" bit. A couple of interesting nuggets did come out: The Liberal Democrat candidate, Paul Elgood, isn't bothering to campaign in Hove, so little chance does he have of being elected. The second piece of information was of a darker hue. The Tory "It's not racist to impose limits on immigration" poster in Portslade is directly opposite the entrance to the Hindu Temple we have here. I hadn't made the connection. Intentional or not, it's a pretty ugly conflation. I nearly gave my vote to New Labour on the spot.

I managed to salvage a little dignity. She did seem honest on the matters my partner and I raised (my partner proving a much more sophisticated and less biddable interrogator than me). The leadership contest to replace Tony will begin in around two year's time apparently. PFI isn't going to go away under a new New Labour government. Celia was against the war and would vote against any future conflict, having informed Peter Hain but not the Prime Minister of her intentions.

And this was where she made her only slip.

(If she remembers the door where she had this conversation, then Hove Labour now know the whereabouts of Chicken Yoghurt headquarters. Please don't push dogshit through my letterbox - the baby's just learned crawl.)

I asked after the support she'd had from visits to Hove by Ruth Kelly, Peter Hain and Tony Blair, would she feel able to defy a three line whip on a future vote for war.

At this she said:

"The vote for the war wasn't on a three line whip, it was a free vote."

I was too busy tugging my forelock to pull her up on it, I really hate being rude to nice people. But she was wrong:

Guardian, Feb 27 2003: Yesterday in parliament
Tony Blair suffered the biggest backbench revolt of his premiership as 121 Labour MPs voted against his hardline stance on Iraq. In what many MPs believed would be their last chance to voice concerns before the start of military action, a record number defied a three-line whip.

(My emphasis). At the parliamentary debate on March 18 2003 on whether to give the Government authority for war, John McDonnell, MP for Hayes and Harlington, said:

The Prime Minister said that he wants people to vote not out of loyalty but on the basis of understanding and supporting the argument. I respect him for that. I would respect him even more if he gave us a free vote instead of a three-line Whip, and if the Whips were called off from trying to persuade people in their normal manner.

(My emphasis). Now, it might seem a small argument over a minor, obscure piece of parliamentary procedure. But there is a world of difference between a free vote, where MPs vote according to conscience, and a three-line whip where MPs are compelled to vote along party lines.

I'm not suggesting that Celia Barlow deliberately tried to mislead me, it's just that her version of events softens, for the Government, the action of going to war: that MPs voted willingly for war with their consciences rather than being compelled by a three-line whip and the implications for defying it as John McDonnell darkly hints.

Celia and her companion stayed a talked to us for quite a while which you have to admire that considering we, particularly my partner, came across as not going to vote for New Labour. She promised to send another leaflet, "50 good things New Labour have done" or somesuch. I'll be interested to see if it comes.

I just hope it now doesn't arrive through the living room window tied around a brick. Only joking.


12 Comments:

On April 11, 2005 12:44 PM, Blogger BB said...

Hey, I thought we were going to play friendly. The dogshit reference is totally out of order so please expunge it. The final brick quip might be acceptable with a smiley appended.

http://www.hovelabour.org/  


On April 11, 2005 12:48 PM, Blogger BB said...

Oh, and if the "50 achievements" sheet doesn't come (we have plenty, though few stamps), visit HoveLabour.org and stare at the yellow line under the main heading: we loop through them all, updating every couple of seconds.  


On April 11, 2005 12:52 PM, Anonymous William said...

Should Celia call on my door, I'm now geared up to be as intransigent and truculent as possible as a defence mechanism against her New Labour charm.

A question: in rather recklessly attacking Respect, Hove Laboour 2005 says that one of the falsehoods they're peddling is that they: "Perpetuate the lie that Hove MP, Ivor Caplin, returned to his career after 10 years because he feared losing his seat."

I must admit, it was the assumption I'd made when he resigned. He was fairly unpopular round my neck of the woods for being an ineffectual constituency MP before the war. Isn't why he threw in the towel?  


On April 11, 2005 12:58 PM, Blogger Justin said...

Fair enough, sorry. Both comments were meant in fun. I've expressed a personal regard for you elsewhere and expressed similar for Celia in this post. I don't consider anyone at Hove Labour as capable of brick-hurling or similar. I just wanted to make a couple of self-regarding jokes about me possibly being outed.  


On April 11, 2005 1:20 PM, Blogger BB said...

Is it possible to be reckless when criticising Respect?

All I can say, re. Caplin is that he says it isn't true and nobody I've spoken to believes it's true. He explained on Saturday that the job is changing and that he doesn't expect people to stay MPs as long as people have in the past, which is quite plausible. Also, if he thought he'd lose, why didn't he do a "chicken run"? And finally, if he was so unpopular, how did he secure such a huge swing in '97 and suffer only a -0.3% swing in '01?  


On April 11, 2005 2:34 PM, Blogger Meaders said...

"Is it possible to be reckless when attacking Respect?"

Ask Oona King. It's certainly possible to be reckless when attacking Respect's candidates.  


On April 11, 2005 3:45 PM, Blogger BB said...

Well, in the sense that it's reckless to tackle escaped criminals in the street.  


On April 11, 2005 4:12 PM, Blogger Meaders said...

An interesting parallel, though I suspect your example would be more appropriate if we were to say it is reckless for escaped criminals to avoid hanging around street corners and lying about the policemen pursuing them.

(You can only stretch these things so far, obviously.)  


On April 12, 2005 11:03 AM, Anonymous William said...

Reckless? OK, so dear old Gorgeous G may only be worth contempt - but a lot of Labour sympathisers are going to be drawn that way even so because they're so pissed off with New Labour.

And one of the major grievances is they hold against NL is that they are arrogant, entrenched in a bunker mentality, and unable to accept any deviation from what has reduced itself to a pretty narrow way of thinking. Launching a sneery attack on Respect only seems to demonstrate how true that is. (Just as Hain's attack on Shiraz drinkers like myself really endears me to the dear party). I that tone supposed to make people who were considering voting for Respect as a protest think how silly they're being?

Labour's tactic for this election seemed at first to be an based partially on a sort of mea culpa tactic. OK, so we messed up a big, but we'll fight to win your trust back. But when it comes down to it, a lot of Labour supporters seem to find that apologetic tone quite hard to get their tongues around.  


On April 12, 2005 11:17 AM, Anonymous William said...

"Caplin is that he says it isn't true and nobody I've spoken to believes it's true. "

OK, but I find it pretty hard to believe, myself. Could be wrong... sure, but after all, he is one of the very few backbenchers from the 97 intake to have received preferrement. You ask, reasonably, why hasn't he done a "chicken run"? You sure he hasn't put out the feelers and come up thinking it's going to be hard for someone who helped enforce that three line whip Chicken Yoghurt was talking about to shift?

You see, you're calling it "a lie" but I think there's reasonable room for doubt at least. In the last term his personaly popularity has clearly slumped.  


On April 13, 2005 11:55 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The comments from Celia are completely untrue. We are working in Hove & Portslade and are going for every vote. I've only just met her, so I don't know how she can speak for me. I would hope for a decent and clean campaign. This just motivates us to work harder!

Thanks for drawing this to my attention, I've already taken it up with her!

Rgds, Paul Elgood  


On April 13, 2005 1:31 PM, Blogger BB said...

The situation with Respect is that they are clearly not the "left of Labour" party they would have us believe, let alone a socialist one. So I think it's legitimate to point out their incoherent and dangerous side, and repeat the observation that you don't get a 'better' Labour govt by supporting another party, least of all them.

I don't know how you can say that the things I write (of my own volition, not under any instruction whatsoever) conform to some kind of New Labour approach. Narrow way of thinking? Charmed, I'm sure. There's a great deal of variety if you look at the posts on Bloggers4Labour.  


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