The London borough of Haringey — a Labour stronghold since the 70s and David Lammy’s political base — looks increasingly vulnerable to Green Party and independent socialist challengers. Ahead of this week’s local election, the Canary has been speaking with candidates pushing back against Lammy’s local Labour Party.

Here’s a little background context about Lammy to set the scene. The deputy prime minister, justice secretary, and Lord Chancellor, has been a key figure in Keir Starmer’s increasingly authoritarian right-wing project. Lammy has received significant financial support from the highly controversial Labour Together think-tank, instrumental to the rise of Starmer and Corbyn’s ousting from the party. As the former foreign minister, Lammy has repeatedly denied Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

It is also worth noting that in the 2024 general election, candidates to the left of Lammy took a big chunk out of his vote share.

Haringey Greens challenge “David Lammy’s heartland”

Local Green Party co-chair and Noel Park candidate Erin Wolson told the Canary that Haringey Greens have had a strong campaign — which polling reflects.

She contends that, the Greens are:

a force right now in Haringey. And Labour just can’t meet those numbers… We will definitely be taking votes away from Labour in Tottenham, in David Lammy’s heartland… We want David Lammy to sit up on election day and see that Tottenham is turning Green.

A key reason for this, she stressed, is that:

Labour hasn’t been showing up in Tottenham. Lammy hasn’t been around. It’s palpable how much people are angry at him for not being around… Labour has been complacent. They’ve been in power in Haringey for the past 55 years. And they’ve never really been challenged in the way that we’re challenging them in the East and the Lib Dems are challenging them in the West.

And they’ve completely taken people’s votes for granted. You feel that on the doorstep. People don’t know who their councillors are, they don’t know when their surgeries are, they don’t know how to interact with the council. They do petitions, they email, but they don’t get responses from the council.

Haringey [Council] has actively made it difficult for residents to participate in any kind of local government. And that’s what people keep saying to us. What we hear from residents regularly is that they do consultations in neighbourhoods and then they don’t actually listen to the inputs of residents. And this is a repeated trend that we’ve heard across Haringey.

With all this in mind, she asserted that:

Everyone would benefit if someone was actually holding Labour to account… If we even take 10 or 15 seats, I think that’s a huge blow to Labour’s control in Haringey.

How did the local Green pact with independent socialists come about?

Wolson also stressed the importance of personal relationships in ensuring cooperation between Greens and independent socialists, saying:

We’ve got a non-aggression pact with the Haringey Socialist Alliance [HSA]. We’re not in a formal alliance with them, but we’ve been talking to them for months.

We’ve really spent a lot of time in Haringey establishing democratic processes with our membership, so everything that we’re doing, our election strategy, our non-aggression pact with the HSA, that has all come from agreement with our membership.

They have directed us in this entire thing, and that was something that we were really focused on establishing in Haringey. Because for us, this isn’t just about electoral politics. This is a political project that could go on for the next 10 or 15 years. And we have to start it in the right way.

So with the Haringey Socialist Alliance, which at one point was a proto-branch for Your Party, we’ve been speaking to them since I became the co-chair of the [local Green] party, which would have been September. And what we agreed is that they have 3 areas that they’re focusing on, and in those 3 areas, we’re only running one candidate, and we only put one person because they only have two people. So we’re not contesting against each other.

I think a lot of the stuff with Your Party and the proto-branches really comes down to the personal relationships and the time you’ve spent and put into those. I think it’s good for the left. It’s something we wanted to do. We were really adamant that we could work with them. We go for food with them. They’re our friends.

Green councillor on dumping Labour and changing Haringey

Mark Blake is standing in Tottenham Central ward. He’s a councillor who left Labour over its stance on Gaza for the Greens. And speaking about the difference between the two parties, he said:

The big thing for me is political culture. It’s a very different political culture, and I quite like it. It’s a lot more democratic […] There’s a lot less of the kind of factionalism and scheming that you get within the Labour Party.

He also wants a cultural change at the council level, particularly in terms of communication and engagement. With Haringey Council having serious financial issues, for example, he thinks honesty is key. But he wants that to translate into a clear action plan too, which centres communication with residents.

He also emphasised that community engagement and organising is “crucial” to empower communities to support themselves and demand better from institutions. He also highlighted just where the council has been getting its priorities wrong in recent years.

Challenging disastrous privatisation decisions

The financial problems, Blake said, relate directly to the council putting too much faith and power in the private sector:

The issue is that 80% of the council’s money goes on three things. One is temporary accommodation, two is adult social care, and the other one is children’s social care. And across all three of those, I think Zack Polanski’s analysis in terms of rigged markets applies to all of them. Because in all of them, you’ve got private actors that are making a lot of money.

Children’s homes have basically been bought up by private equity – kind of beggars belief, really. That’s happened over the last decade and a half or so, and similar things have been going on in adult social care…

Is that 80% happening due to privatisation and outsourcing? Yes, absolutely.

As he asked:

If you’ve got 80% of your budget going on three things, you’ve got to focus on: how can we change things with those three things?

The council previously thought it was a good idea:

to privatise all the council housing in the borough through a joint venture with an international developer.

Demanding more council housing

Developers, however, profit from housing scarcity. And Haringey has suffered as a result. For Blake, there needs to be an insistence on council house building:

What percentage of council housing are we getting for overall development in the borough? With a big development in Tottenham Hale, I think the return in terms of council housing has only been 18% from 3,500 properties, and that was on land that was 70% owned by public sector organisations… So lots of questions need to be asked in terms of, are we kind of squeezing enough out of developers?

He added:

Families [are] looking at all of these incredible buildings flying up all over the place and wondering ‘who lives there? Certainly not people from where we live.’

In his own lifetime, he’s seen the change. As he said:

I am 60 this year. I went to a working-class school in North West London in Wembley, [with] mixed ethnicity. We had a reunion, I think, about 15 years ago, and I was one of only four in a room of 30-plus who’d been at a university or polytechnic. Everybody in a room owned their own house. In less than a generation, that was totally evaporated. And I think the damage that has done to communities, to families, is immeasurable.

The state has to build [housing]. You’re not going to have a big council house building programme without state building.

In the meantime, though he says there are:

lots of ways that we could raise additional money, and where the state could curb costs. I mean, let’s mention rent controls, but another one would be an empty property tax.

Haringey socialists: Labour is running the council “like a business”

Meryem Ulger is standing for Haringey Socialist Alliance (HSA) in the West Green Ward. And she told us:

Politically, I’m a socialist, so what I like about HSA is that it’s a group with lots of grassroots community activists. They very much know what they’re talking about because they’ve been campaigning in the community, from Haringey housing situations to Occupy, they’ve got so much experience in running local campaigns in our community.

Speaking about HSA’s pact with the Greens, she said:

To be honest, I think it’s great. And I’m one of the people who’ve been vigorously engaging with the other candidates, because it’s really important. We’re here to represent a community, so we’re not here for our own benefits…

With the Greens and the mutual understanding, it’s great because we don’t want anything too far from what they want, and we should be able to have that open dialogue and engagement… We need a change. And we need to do politics in a different way than having polarising people and not having that dialogue.

In terms of the Labour council in Haringey, she thinks:

They’re running it like a business. Not for the people or public services, but as a business.

She explained that:

When I look at the changes that have happened in our borough, it’s very clear they’ve put profit first rather than public services. They’ve sold our homes, they’ve sold the land. They’ve closed down loads of the council offices, housing offices.

The schools are in deficit. Every Friday, we have to do a cake bake to raise money for the school so that we can have some equipment in the playgrounds. The library staff have gone because schools can’t afford extra staff. The experienced teachers have gone because they’re much more expensive because they’re on a higher pay scale.

It’s just a case of priorities, though. As she insisted:

Money is always an issue. It will always be an issue. But I think there is a right way of doing things, and it depends who we put first. So my thing is always ‘put people first, profit last’.

Featured image via the Canary

By Ed Sykes

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