Words Dept.: entry

My memory of the General Election this year is going to be dominated by Salford. As previously mentioned, I’ve been making a documentary about the local campaign in Salford and Eccles, focusing mainly on the anti-Hazel Blears candidate. As a result, I managed to get into the count on Thursday night/Friday morning and witnessed, at around 5am, Blears win through a glorious combination of steadfast political apathy and the fear of a Tory government.

Salford (the Eccles bit was recently bolted on to the constituency) is Labour through and through but during the time I’ve spent there during the last few weeks, it’s become obvious that there is little real backing for the party or its candidate. On polling day, I witnessed a Labour canvasser bawling in favour of the pint-sized MP through a megaphone and an old lady on the pavement mutter, quick as a flash, “I’d rather vote for Adolf ‘Itler”. Nonetheless, many people were happy to admit that they will vote for Blears anyway because they don’t want to open the door to anyone else.

On the night, Blears’ share of the vote fell by 15%, off a 55% turnout. Out of a constituency of around 75,000, just 16,655 people actually voted for the victorious MP, who singled out the Conservative candidate, Matthew Sephton, in her thank you speech.

Despite Blears’ declining share of the vote, the traditional left doesn’t seem to be winning the argument in Salford. David Henry, whose Hazel Must Go ticket was backed by the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition, did manage a respectable 730 votes. But that was less than a third of the total achieved by the BNP candidate, Nick Griffin’s PA Tina Wingfield, who racked up 2,632 votes. Blears has promised to listen to her constituents as never before and her most pressing task now is surely to win back support from those whose disillusionment with her brand of politics and house-flipping antics has resulted in a rise in support for the far right. Unless the issue of immigration is properly discussed and debated by the main parties, I really fear for places like Salford, where anti-immigrant sentiment on the doorstep is regularly fairly shocking.

As for what happens now, it would be nice to see some form of proportional representation come out of the situation. In Salford, the votes of 60% of those who voted counted for nothing, which simply can’t be right. I have a feeling, though, that despite honourable intentions, Nick Clegg and the massed ranks of the Liberal Democrats will be no match whatsoever for the entrenched political elites who want to preserve the power base afforded by first past the post.

I finally escaped Buile Hill Visual Arts College, where the count was held, at 5.43am. Towards the end, under the fluorescent lights, the atmosphere got very unusual indeed. Although the only chemical about the place was adrenaline, there was this really odd feeling of a bizarre all-nighter populated by wide-eyed, rosette-wearing geeks.