From Yorkshire’s South Elmsall, a former mining village steeped in working class struggle, life-long local activist Jim Nightingale outlines Labour’s woes in the run up to the local elections

I was stuck in a queue at the Home Bargains store in South Elmsall a few days ago. There were about ten waiting for the till. I was about fourth in line. I could hear the woman at the front complaining as she paid: “Every time I come in here I hand over a tenner and seem to get hardly any change.” 

The woman  behind the till: “Yeah, that’s what everybody is complaining about.” 

The woman in front of me: “It’s getting ridiculous. I tell you what. I won’t be voting Labour again.”

The woman behind the till: “Me neither.”

The woman behind me: “Nor me. Labour are finished round here.”

Everybody right to the back of the queue is muttering about this, and nodding in agreement. And for some reason I kind of knew what was coming next. It was the woman behind me, again, who said it: “Aye. All the prices are going up, but you can bet they’ll look after all the immigrants. Have you heard? They are giving them all £20,000 each! And we’ll get nowt!”

This about the £20,000 was a new one on me. I had been expecting some kind of resentment towards immigrants because, for the previous couple of days, the headline stories on the BBC News app had been about asylum seekers falsely claiming to being gay, or having being sexually abused, so as to remain in the country. I knew racists would have steam coming out of their ears over this. 

I had to say summat: “So you lot are blaming immigrants for the prices going up. But not one of you has said owt about it being caused by Donald Trump deciding to bomb the hell out of Iran.” There was a sudden silence. All the muttering stopped. We all paid up and went our way. 

Of course this appears to be more evidence that Labour seems finished round here. And it looks like the far-right Reform UK Party will be the winners. But what people often forget is that Labour had to fight to get working-class voters on their side. Working class people have always been bombarded with a ruling class, pro-capitalism view of the world. The newspapers and right wing parties, such as the Conservatives, have always appealed to deferential and patriotic working class voters who valued established institutions such as the monarchy. 

Legacy of Empire – and struggle

We can see this alignment with the elite if we look at the names of social clubs in South Elmsall and South Kirkby. There’s the Tank club, named in honour of the British invention of the armoured vehicle. The United Services Club (aka as the Soldiers). The British Legion. The Pretoria, named after victory in a battle during the Boer War. There’s the Moorthorpe Empire and the Coronation Club. There used to be the Jubilee, and the RAF club. There’s a history of loyalism and flagshagging here. 

But, there is also a history of strikes and riots in this same locality, most notably in 1926 and 1984, that have made it very much a proud participant in the labour movement. There was an organic link whereby the NUM branches at Frickley and South Kirkby collieries each would send ten delegates to Hemsworth constituency meetings. This goes some way to explain why Hemsworth Labour MPs, for many years, would receive the highest Labour majority in the country.

I remember how deep the left-wing mood was around here when I first started going out drinking in the local clubs in the early 1970s. There would be bingo in most of the clubs at the weekends. When the number 10 was pulled, the caller would declare “Heath’s den, Number 10”. To which there would be an almighty response from all the clubbers of “Heath Out. Heath Out.” And many of those in that queue the other day would have been amongst the chorus. 

Labour in government has a problem that the Tories don’t have: they claim they are going to make things better, to reform the system. Rachel Reeves has continued this tradition through talking about improvement through ‘growth’. But Labour governments don’t control the economy. They are dealing with capitalism, a cut throat competitive system that constantly demands workers work harder to keep up with the competitors. They can’t stop speculation. They can’t stop businesses moving, shutting up shop, or becoming bankrupt. Unless the system is booming, they fail in government and lose support when they are forced to attack their own supporters. 

This doesn’t just apply to Labour governments, but councils as well. I was employed by Wakefield Council for 24 years. It was a Labour run authority. In the social care sector we constantly faced reorganisations and cutbacks. The members of the public, such as those in the queue at Home Bargains will have noticed this. A generation ago, you would expect your elderly relatives to have the opportunity to go into a council-run care home if necessary. Now, like my mother did, they’ll be cared for in the profit-making private sector, with services cut to the bone to reduce costs. This was all happening even before the crash of 2008. After Labour bailed out the banks, the Tories came back in and introduced austerity to recoup the lost billions to the cost of the remaining public sector. Things got even worse. 

Cultural shift

The ideology of the Tories, Thatcherite neoliberalism, wasn’t just about selling off public assets and de-industrialisation. It was also about changing the ideas in people’s heads, moving them away from a collectivist culture of solidarity to one of rampant individualism. In the old days, if you faced a vicious supervisor or manager you might receive support from your workmates. In the new working environment, everybody keeps their heads down and do as they are told. In the old days, if there was inflation, you could demand a pay rise. Now you are on your own. You don’t look to Arthur Scargill, you look to Martin Lewis. You shop around. You ditch Tesco for Home Bargains or Aldi. This has been a big cultural shift. It has all been done in the name of freedom and choice, as opposed to the supposed oppression of state control that Labour was once associated with. The proponents of the argument stated that employers were no longer entities that exploited you. They were expressions of initiative and enterprise that gave you a job. You should work to keep the firm in business, and not undermine it by demanding better pay and conditions which could bankrupt it. 

Labour did nothing to challenge all of this. Indeed, apart from during the Corbyn years, it positively embraced the new norms. Starmer’s government attacked its own voter base from the start – winter fuel payments were stopped, then it went for people on benefits. It licks the boots of the bosses and the right wing press. It grovels to Trump. It refuses to renationalise the utilities that have been at the root of excessive bills for ordinary working class people. It attacks the Left. And so on and so on. There is nothing there that should attract working class voters. In the past Labour MPs were ordinary workers, now they are from a layer of lawyers and special advisors who are well clothed and paid and don’t feel the pain from Trump’s war. 

Labour are finished, but it’s up to the socialists out there to point out that it isn’t the immigrants to blame for their problems. We need a revival of the old culture.