Local Election 2003- We Did Even Better!

Branch Secretary and Webmaster John Gillatt, he of beer in hand and corks on hat fame, was once again selected as the gallant champion to fight the good fight for Socialism (careful, laddy!) in Deane-cum-Heaton. Last year's result weren't bad but we did a bit better this year, gaining from both the Tories and Lib-Dems when all around were losing theirs!

Overall we had lost four seats - Blackrod, Burnden, Central and Little Lever, three to the Tories and one to the Lib-Dems.

In Deane-cum-Heaton we didn't do too badly:

The actual number of votes cast was 6,779 - 50% turnout. However, there were 780 "spoiled" votes and the question of "spoiled votes" is probably one of the main controversial aspects of the election in Bolton. These were mainly as a result of people not including the signed declarations in the envelope with their vote.

In Bolton generally we lost:

Why did we do so badly? John put forward a number of reasons that could have had an influence on the result:

The latest news seems to be that there will be an enquiry into the postal voting fiasco and there are discussions going on between the parties as to who will run the Council as we have lost overall control.

John recorded his very sincere thanks to all those who had helped in the campaign. We delivered more than 20,000 leaflets and got a small swing to us when Labour was generally faring badly in Bolton. He especially thanked Pat and Craig, Joyce, John M., Pauline and Anne C. Thanks also to Graham for being an "ever dependable" agent.

Pauline suggested another reason for our poor performance was that not enough work was put into the constituency by some candidates. Anne said that more people had voted and that maybe it was just that the increase in turnout had been greatest amongst Tory voters.

Eve concurred with Pauline. She agreed that not enough work had been put in. There had not even been any window posters from the Constituency Party. She pointed out that the percentage of the Conservative vote had gone down in Deane-cum-Heaton. She added that the Bolton Evening News today reported that the postal voting system had been more complicated in Bolton than in some other areas of Greater Manchester and wondered why this had been the case.

George said that he thought Bolton people had been discriminated against because they had had to include a signed form with their vote whereas this had not been necessary in other areas such as Trafford. There, less than 500 spoiled votes had been counted compared with about 10,000 in Bolton.

There was a discussion as to whether or not it should have been necessary for a signature to be sent back with the ballot paper, since it had not been a requirement in other areas and there is a number on each ballot paper anyway. Eve admitted that she had omitted to send back her signed declaration and had phoned the Town Hall to inform them when she had realised. She had been told that she could sign the declaration, send it in and they would match it up with the ballot paper. But she was dubious as to whether or not that had actually been done.

In view of all the spoilt ballot papers it was suggested that the Branch should write to the Council to ask for more details of how they were spoilt, e.g. what proportion were declared spoilt because they did not include the signed declaration.

Eve also thought that we had lost some votes because of the general unpopularity of the war in Iraq and Pat agreed.

In general, however, the meeting thought that the postal voting system was a good idea and had increased turnout. George would have liked to have had the option to going to a polling station and voting in the traditional way.

Return to our Talks and Discussions page.