Independent progressives have launched their local election campaign to defeat what they call the “Labour-Tory coalition council” in the West Yorkshire borough of Kirklees. They say the “corrupt” council has “bowed the knee” to London’s austerity agenda. And they’re fighting back with a promise to stop destructive cuts and closures once and for all.
The Canary went along to the campaign launch to find out more.
Kirklees independents challenge Labour-Tory coalition
Campaigners, trade unionists, and politicians across Kirklees have been working together for months now to oppose cuts, racism, and war. They form the People’s Alliance for Change and Equality (PACE), and have received the support of Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn of Your Party.
PACE has consistently highlighted the serious issues facing local communities, supporting community campaigns against controversial council decisions. And in October, it showed the power of grassroots organisation with an impressive march through the town of Huddersfield.
On 7 February, PACE held its election campaign launch in Huddersfield. And at the end of the event, the Canary spoke to:
Mohammed Abubakar
Abubakar will be standing as an independent candidate in the Crosland Moor ward, where he grew up. And he’s making it very clear to voters that he’s “not in it for a career or for money”, because he has promised to donate:
at least £200 every month from my personal allowance to local projects.
He stressed that:
Poverty has been on the increase, whereas we’re one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
And in particular, he said:
Young people have been neglected so much in our area.
The underfunding of schools and closure of youth centres has coincided with problems with crime. And as Abubakar asserted:
When you have kids picking up knives or guns and we have teenagers going into this gang culture, they’re not to blame. We are.
He wants to act as “a servant” to local people, listening to them and voicing their concerns. And apart from issues like fly-tipping, potholes, and restoring parks, people have told him about a family becoming homeless following a parent’s death or an employee needing food-bank support despite being in work.
Abubakar’s values have driven him to take action. As he told us:
The best of mankind are those who benefit mankind the most. And so, if I’m not benefiting people, then I’ve just wasted my life.
He already participates in the running of a “young leaders programme” and a food bank — supporting the distribution of hot meals to the community since 2021. Speaking to the Canary, a longstanding member of the community emphasised how:
things have just got worse and worse and worse.
He added:
I think a lot of people have lost hope in politics, and rightly so. But I think the solution, the answer to that isn’t to step away… we still need to carry on fighting and supporting candidates that are there for the community.
Mike Forster
Forster will be standing as a PACE candidate in the Ashbrow ward. And he insisted:
Our priority is twofold in this area. One, we have to stop Reform. That has to be our number one priority. And the second will be that we’ve got to kick out this corrupt Labour council. And for that to happen, there will need to be cooperation between the independents, PACE and any other candidates who we would see as being progressive left, and they hopefully will have the power. We, by our arithmetic, then we think that we will have the majority of the councillors who will be able to form a group within the council who can hopefully run affairs.
On the council, Forster would prioritise opposing attempts to privatise dementia homes, stopping a local property development causing a public health crisis due to the presence of asbestos and other toxic substances, reversing the closure of leisure centres, and preventing ongoing rises to council taxes.
He also clarified what PACE will be pushing for, saying:
We’re advocating what we call the needs budget. That is that the budget should be led by the needs of the people of Kirklees and not by the budget that’s imposed by a centralised government. And that will mean having to stand up to the government and demanding more resources for Kirklees. I’m not afraid to do that.
This Labour council has bowed the knee because it is a Labour government and they’re too afraid to speak out for themselves and for the people of Kirklees, and that’s why they’ve got to go.
A “clique” of around four people run the council today, he said, and “yes people” in the cabinet just “go along with everything that they say”:
And when Labour needs the votes, they reach out to the Tories, who are only too happy to go into coalition with Labour in order to force through cuts.
This is why they “need to go”, he insisted:
They need to fight for the local communities and not for their own party labels or their own careers.
Unity on the left
Many candidates, Forster asserted:
would have stood under the Your Party banner if we’d got our act together.
And it’s “very disappointing” that this didn’t happen on time, he lamented. But PACE isn’t about sitting around and waiting. It’s about getting on with organising on the ground, as:
we’ve demonstrated through PACE over the last year with our demonstration, our founding conference, and all the campaigns that we have supported.
Addressing the topic of unity on the left, he said there have been conversations with the Green Party and, hopefully, “an electoral agreement” will eventually come. He added that current Green councillors have locally “been supportive of what we’ve been doing” and asserted:
we will continue to work with them in whatever way we can.
Regarding progressive independent candidates Abubakar and Naeem, meanwhile, he stressed that they’re:
founding members of PACE and have supported everything that we’ve done, and they will be standing on the programme that PACE stands for as well.
He also asserted:
We’ve already started work in the areas where we’re standing… and the response we’ve already been getting on the doorsteps is encouraging.
Alison Gaughan
Gaughan is a trade unionist and disability rights campaigner, and she has also been active in PACE. She will be supporting the local election campaign in Kirklees against what is:
effectively a Labour-Tory coalition council that is failing the people of Kirklees
The council, she said:
is pushing through cuts, blaming them on the government. But really, they just don’t care about the effect it has on working-class people. There’s a lack of democracy in the council — all the decisions are made in backrooms by a small group of councillors.
She added:
I teach young people from some of the most deprived wards in Kirklees, and really there’s just been let down after let down for these communities.
A key slogan for PACE, she asserted, is:
we’re against cuts and closures
And while collaboration and unity on the left is essential, she said cuts and closures are absolutely “our red line”. So in terms of working with Greens or other progressives:
if they stay the right side of [that line], yeah, we’ll work with them.
Waseem Naeem
Naeem will be standing as an independent in the Greenhead ward. He emphasised his desire for:
Love and peace to everyone
But he also told us:
I’m not afraid of saying what needs to be said… Change is not going to happen by being as nice as pie.
Having grown up on a council estate at a time when it “was a bit of a taboo for Pakistani Asians”, it wasn’t always easy. As he said:
I remember coming home, saying to my mum, why am I this colour? Why am I being called this?
But he added:
I’m very, very thankful that my mum got me the right ethics and values into my mind where she always said ‘we’ve got it bad now, but there are far more good people than bad people’. So my whole life has revolved around knowing that there are far more good people who are quiet than bad people who are loud.
And remembering the nice people around him growing up, he insisted:
We need that community cohesion back. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, what you’ve done, but we need to listen to one another so we can eradicate the fears that people have got and put hope into one another that ‘you know what? That person walking down the street, my next door neighbour, we’re all here to live peacefully at the end of the day and work for one another and we all want everyone to be happy.
For young people in particular, he stressed, many just want hope:
Recently it’s kind of nosedived because they’re thinking ‘well, there’s nothing for us to do’…
Following a “spate of knife crime”, he said:
I helped to set up the Safe Zone Project… [which] has all been about community spirit.
And as he asserted:
If we have somewhere that the youth know they can go to, as a youth club primarily… it will open a floodgate and it will deal with a lot of stuff. Knife crime will go down itself, gang culture will go down itself, and there will be that community cohesion.
If he gets into the council, he insisted, the local people will be the boss.
Featured image via the Canary
By Ed Sykes
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