At the last local elections in Lewes many people voted Green, Lib-dem or Independent, seeing those candidates as progressive alternatives.  All this did was allowed the Lib-dems and their friends the Tories to continue to control the District Council. Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats promised us all a new approach to politics  but less than a year into the coalition government, the Lib Dems have broken nearly all of their election pledges on tuition fees, VAT and protecting local services.

Since then we have seen Lewes lose its way, and the Lib-dems support the Tories.  Now we face unprecedented cuts to services from the Tory Lib-dem government and their partners on Lewes District Council.

Our Town and District cannot afford a Lib-dem council. We are asking voters to come home to Labour

Labour will challenge the cuts programme. We have amongst our candidates people with a depth of knowledge and a wide professional experience to run a complex District like ours.  We say to friends who voted Lib-dem or Green in the past, come back to us. You share our values, you share our concerns, yes we are Labour people, with Labour values but most of all we value our independence of mind.

If you are serious about changing things, for the better, locally, if you want to give Lewes a stronger voice on a wide range of issues, if you want local government to really listen and put local residents at the heart of policy, then you need to vote Labour

David Cameron is hoping you will vote Lib-dem or Green because this will strengthen his hand

On May 5th there is an opportunity to send a message to Cameron and Clegg, there is an opportunity to make a difference in Lewes, the difference is Labour.

We have had a lot of people asking for a poster to display in their window, and if you can’t get down to the North Streeet Offices in Lewes you can always use our downloadable vote labour poster

The poster is A4 and the classic style like the one in this article and can be downloaded by clicking in the download box below

Once downloaded it easy to print out and then display it clearly in your window.  If you live in Lewes and want a larger poster or are willing to take a poster on a stake for your garden, get in contact on 01273 474312 or use the contact button on this site to email us.

Thank you for supporting Labour.

download: Vote_Labour_Poster (200.38KB) added: 10/04/2011 clicks: 162 description: A Vote Labour Poster for you to download, print and display in your window.

I beleive Lewes needs a stronger voice in these tough times. I realise that there are issues that need tackling; speeding traffic in Malling street or Friars walk,  getting village green status for Malling recreation ground, protecting areas from overzealous developers who are given carte blanche by our local councils, trying to get an equitable parking system that benefits residents and local businesses rather than punishing them, being a voice against the massive cuts, price rises, attacks on pensions and livelihoods.

Jonathan Spencer runs his own small business in Lewes with his wife Elaine. He has three children aged 17, 15 and 4; all his children have gone or are about to go to local schools.

As someone who lives in Lewes, brings up my family in Lewes and runs a small business from Lewes, I can see clearly that the local councils are tired, ineffective and have really stopped listening.

Jonathan says: “I beleive we deserve better.  Its time for a fresh new appraoch to local politics. Local services are under threat and we must stand up to the Tory Lib-dem government. Only Labour has the local and national power to do this.”

UPDATE: Recently when Louis Blair and I were out canvassing we met a hard working single mum in Lewes, who whilst trying to bring up her family, work and pay the rent, receives some housing benefit to support her through a tough time.  Yet Her housing benefit has been reduced by around £100 per month. This is someone working hard to support her family and yet she is being penalised, isn’t it time she had a stronger voice and someone to speak up for her.  The Lib-dems and the tories lied when they said ‘we are all in this together’.

“I have a real concern for our environment that is focused on the building blocks rather than fanciful ideas: too much litter, bad pavements, introducing cycle lanes and slowing speeding cars are all things we need to work on in Lewes.”

“The town has been badly managed by our two Lib-dem run local councils, and is time for something different. Not enough has been done to create a good economic basis for local business and maintaining local jobs. The parking policy, the increase in speeding traffic, the lack of involvement of local residents have all had an impact. Labour wants to put local residents at the heart of its policy.”

“Whilst our town and economy relies greatly on tourism but we need to maintain our own independent character. The Tourist office has been redecorated more times than I care to remember but still isn’t open when it is needed the most all-day on a Saturday and Sunday. This is typical of the Lib-dem mis-management and the lottery for local services.”

The Lewes Labour team will bring fresh ideas to local politics.  They would create a different  kind of council, one where councillors are accessible, approachable and open to suggestions. One which puts residents at the heart of policy decisions.

Jonathan Spencer is standing for Lewes – Bridge ward for Lewes District and Lewes Town Council

Vote for Jonathan and all the Labour team on May 5th

Vote Labour on May 5th…to see other labour candidates go here>>

By now you will have all seen the result in Barnsley, yes it was an expected Labour win. But additionally it was a very bad night for the coalition.

The Lib-dems not only fell to 6th place, but fell below even the independent candidate who had hardly two pennies to ryb together.  They also lost their deposit. £500 not well spent in these times of all in it together austerity!

The Lib-dems managed to poll 1,012 votes.  As one commentator has said “Shock of the night was that 1,012 people still prepared to vote Lib Dem at all” . In terms of vote share (of who did vote) Labour’s was up 13.5% and the Lib-Dems down 13.1%, Tory’s down 9% and UKIP up 7%.  The reality may be that the Lib-dem vote just didn’t come out, and this may happen locally.  It does mean that Lewes Labour must ensure good voter contact and work hard to get our own vote out. If you want to help contact us or come to the next branch Meeting or one of our Saturday drop ins at 3 North street, Lewes.

There is something else here too which is the Tories also slumped but the parties of the Right like UkIP did well.  The likelihood is that the Tory faithful may be disillusioned with Camerons Liberal Toryism as much as they Lib-dems are unhappy about Tory Liberalism.  And to think they did it all for ‘POWER’…oopps sorry I mean the national interest and all being in it together.  The result also shows us something else ….that the left wing vote who previously supported the Lib-dems last year are deserting them and that this vote may be hard for them to claw back.

I understand from a BBC article by Michael Crick that there is no time since 1945 in England that a party has gone from 2nd in a seat to 6th in one election. But it could mean nothing in the scheme of things.

So can we take anything from this by-election?  Well it shows the mood of the country at the moment but thats about it…. The coalition is making is playing dice  with our economy and public services, in order to gain advantage at the next election.

They think if they can get the pain and public services anguish over as quickly as possible regardless of the horror it causes, hoping the economy picks up by the time the election comes around and with additional revenue brought in by an improving bank sector (there will be budget goodies to be handed out)   The Tory’s wrote the book on this one, and even though the policy machine has spat out a few spanners in the last 2 months, David Cameron and Nick Clegg have 4 years to grease the necessary palms and re-oil Camerons hair.

Britain is perhaps suffering more because our banking industry, which made some extraordinarily bad mistakes.  But our finance industry is more important to our economy than in, say, France or Germany, and needed much more support. The Last Labour government had no other recourse than to save and bail out the banks.  Brown may not have been popular here, but his tactics and direction were seen as the leading light in saving the system and our well being.  We were about 2 steps away from nothing appearing on the supermarket shelves

What is the lie the Lib-Con Government is saying at every opportunity? Its that Labour created the problems rather than their friends in Banking. But the truth is that all developed countries were hit hard by the credit crunch. This however is no reason to make you and I pay through the nose for the bad management of the Banking Sector.

In the real world if you do your job well you get your wages, not an enormous bonus and if you don’t do your job well you get fired.

But now the world’s turned upside down. If you work for a public service, no matter how well you have done your job, likelihood is your job may be on the line and if you work for a city bank, even though you contributed to this mess, its back to bonus payouts. And if you mess up Lewes with poor decisions, bad development and a post code lottery for services, 2 out of every 10 people will vote you back in again.

The reason for voting Labour is simple: everywhere you look in national and local government in our area it’s the Lib-Cons who are in charge. They need an opposition to hold them to account. May 2011 when the Town and District council seats are up for election wil be the the first chance we have to create this opposition.

George Osbornes Budget has been greeted warmly in some quarters by business. But it’s a Budget that puts an unfair burden on the poorest and weakest. VAT is a much greater proportion of a poor family’s weekly and yearly spend than for better-off people. The Liberals have always talked about being fair, Is an increase of to 20%, that hits the poorest hardest, fair? Child tax credits will be withdrawn from families with annual incomes of £30,000, which George Osborne was afraid to reveal in his budget speech. Is it fair to bring in cuts at that level?

None of these decisions could happen without Lib Dem support.

It would begin to make them think twice about supporting measures like these if more people cam out to vote and voted for something different. The difference is Labour.

At every election the Liberals produce literature that contains a graph, the graph is usually underlined by words similar to ‘only the liberal democrats can win here’.  The graph shows a vast amount of people voting Liberal Democrat (LD) and a few voting for other Parties.

The basic premise here is a lie, and it is a lie to keep voters who will not vote LD at home.  They dont want you to vote, because your vote would keep the fat cats from the cream.

In Local elections in Lewes around only around 3 or 4 out of every 10 people vote

Of these 4:

• 1.5 to 2 vote Liberal Democrat
• The others are divided between Green, Labour and Tory.
• 6 or 7  out every 10 voters just don’t vote.

The reality is Liberal Democrats can only win here, can only run the council so badly, can only hand on the cuts, from the their friends the Tories, because……. The people in Lewes do not come out to vote.

The areas that the so called ‘marked register (this is an electoral register that lists those who bothered to turn up and vote.)  shows as low turnout  are the areas where:

the least resources and money are allocated because…

• If you dont vote no one has to appeal to you.
• If you don’t vote no one cares and no one give you anything.
• If you don’t vote, your area is the first to feel the cuts,
• If you don’t vote , yours is the postcode that isn’t picked in the lottery

Your vote:

• Can change things,
• Can stop things and start things,
• Can make a difference.

We know now what voting Liberal Democrat really gets you, you can see it in the smiling face of David Cameron.

The difference locally would be Labour.

Labour People • Labour Ideals • Independent Thinking

Next Branch Meeting

8.00pm on November 24th 2010 at 3 North street, Lewes.

There should be plenty of discussion on local issues and on campaigning

Local elections will be next May

Please come along. All supporters and members are welcome

Any queries use the contact page button at the top of the page to get in touch with the chair jonathan spencer or Secretary Louis Blair

I stand corrected since I have said I thought it was  40 years since Labour held power in Lewes.   The Liberals like to put themselves forward as ever present and Labour could never win here. Then a local member emailed me and told me:

“If we go back the 40 years to 1970, Frank Hayward for Labour  was the last mayor in the LewesBorough Council, 1973-74, and Bill Fuller was mayor in the first Lewes Town Council after the formation of the District and Town councils in April 1974. John Jacobs says he was a Borough and then District Councillor from 1972/73 until 1982/83. There were 6 Labour councillors from Lewes on the District Council at this time, but they weren’t in the majority. For at least some, if not all of that time, we had the majority on the Town Council. Lewes Town voted Labour at that time until there was a split in the Party and 3 of the Labour Councillors stood as independents. I think this must have been in about 1983.They were well known and Labour lost some or even all their seats. However there were still many Labour Party activists and a lot of campaigning locally. Also in 1984/5 many in the Party supported the Welsh miners, money and food etc was taken to Wales and 2 miners came and spoke to the monthly Labour Party meeting. …but as you say we must move on now and get organised, for next year’s council elections.” So it is not so long ago when Labour was a force to be reckoned with locally and people obviously think we are worth supporting again as we have had a massive increase in membership and people expressing their support. Jonathan Spencer – Chairman – Lewes Branch Labour Par

Those that have rushed to defend the issues of race and creed pointedly written about in a national newspaper  all seem to be on one side of

the argument.  It might be a better idea rather than getting the opinions of middle class white men to actually ask people of other colours, races, ethnic groups and creeds in Lewes what their experience has been.
As an ardent supporter and participant in Bonfire with South Street Bonfire Society, I had never thought too much about its negative impact, my older children even went to St Pancras Catholic School and still marched on the 5th.  It was not until I was at large gathering of the Irish side of my wife’s family all asking where we lived and stepping back in horror when we mentioned Lewes, that I realised that for some, things we take for granted as important or harmless fun actually have a negative impact. The bonfire societies to their credit, have over the years done an enormous amount to counter this; emphasising the social, charitable and family side as well as the general commemoration of the celebrations on the 5th.
However we cannot avoid the fact that Lewes is a changing town with a changing population and is becoming more ethnically diverse.  My experience of Lewes, is it is a friendly place which has a great many positive things to commend it and we should of course promote these but if there is a hidden underside we should bring it in the open and deal with it swiftly.  The issue of race and discrimination is, as we have found from both sides, a very sensitive one. Asking the opinions of people who are not part of the white majority would either put the matter to rest, to some extent, as an anomaly that has adversely effected one family or present something that Lewesians needed to examine much more closely.

Jonathan Spencer

Chair of Lewes Branch Labour Party

Success in life is determined by your ability to go from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
~ Winston Churchill