Labour in Hackney has increased its number of councillors from 29 out of 60 and a hung council in 1998, to 50 out of 57 in May 2010. This 12-year trend started with a series of remarkable by-election wins on swings of nearly 20%, and was then reinforced in three consecutive borough elections. Along the way a Directly Elected Mayor model was adopted, and Labour’s Jules Pipe has now won a third term by a margin of over 32,000. At the same time as Labour gained a further six council seats on 6 May, Diane Abbott won Hackney North with a majority doubled to over 14,000 and Meg Hillier won Hackney South with again a 14,000 majority, up by nearly 5,000, despite the Lib Dems attacking both seats harder than in any previous election. Turnout has risen over two elections from the lowest in the country at under 50% in both seats to 63% in the North and 59% in the South, respectable numbers in an inner city area with rapid population churn.

How has the Hackney Labour Party achieved this? Obviously part of it is that we start with the advantage of a large number of natural Labour voters from BME communities, social groups D and E and living in social housing. But politics in Hackney is very far from one sided – the elections we have won have been very hard fought, not a foregone conclusion. We had to overcome an entrenched 20-year tradition of council estates in Shoreditch and South Hackney electing Lib Dem councillors. In Stoke Newington and Clapton, and increasingly in other parts of the borough too, rapid demographic change means that gentrifying streets of Victorian houses are now full of white middle-class voters who look to the Greens and Lib Dems as a radical alternative to Labour – in the run up to 2010 two of the Greens’ top target wards in the whole of London were in Stoke Newington. In Stamford Hill both the Muslim and Chassidic Jewish communities have long voted on communal lines for Lib Dem and Tory councillors.

In 2010 we were helped by Gordon Brown’s wise decision to hold the General Election on the same day as the local elections. This maximised the number of activists with a direct interest in getting involved, and meant that we got a General Election style turnout for the borough elections, mobilising the “reserve army” of low turnout Labour supporters. But this doesn’t explain our success in far tougher circumstances in 2002 and 2006.

And we have got the politics right – we kicked out a hung council which was nationally notorious for cuts, political infighting, electoral fraud (a Lib Dem and a Tory councillor were both jailed in 2001 for the UK’s largest ever proxy vote and ghost elector fraud) and failing services. Since taking back control nine years ago, Jules Pipe’s Labour team have won national recognition for improving services and frozen the Council Tax for five years with no service cuts. This makes canvassing in Hackney a pleasant contrast to the ordeal it was a decade ago – people recognise Labour’s local achievements and praise them on the doorstep.

A large part of Hackney Labour’s success though has been because of cultural and organisational factors. When I went to Hackney in 1998 to be Labour Political Assistant I remember an MP saying to me “it’s nice you are trying to sort out Hackney but you are wasting your time. That has been a dysfunctional Labour Party since the 1950s. It will never change.” It did but it has taken a lot of hard work by a lot of people.

Key measures have included:

• A cultural change inside the local party so that whilst there remain vigorous political debates, they are focussed on legitimate left-right differences rather than personality politics or communalism, and those debates are conducted in a comradely and good-humoured way so that people feel relaxed about campaigning together on the things we agree about.
• Inclusive and enjoyable social events such as an annual BBQ and annual dinner that help create a team spirit.
• A well-funded local party thanks to councillors paying a levy towards campaign funds.
• Carefully planned campaigning – we write a war book two years out from each local election which details every aspect of the campaign, day by day.
• A “command and control” model where the borough campaign manager can make fast decisions about allocating resources but one where this is based on trust from all the candidates and a plan signed off democratically by the Local Government Committee.
• Highly professional literature. We try to innovate and always do something new with leaflets in each election – shamelessly stealing good concepts from other London boroughs. Everything we put out is very locally branded as “Hackney Labour” – we paid a branding company to develop an “identity” for us – logo, design standards etc.
• Ruthless targeting of key wards, but with the flexibility to switch resources very rapidly if the opposition suddenly go after an unexpected target.
• Leadership by example – we expect councillors and candidates to set the pace on voter ID. When a team in one ward lagged behind on canvassing numbers they were threatened with deselection by the Local Government Committee and put on a weekly reporting regime.
• League-tabling. Every ward knows how much every other ward is doing. This appeals to people’s natural competitiveness!
• “Big team” working pre-election – everyone in the borough goes out campaigning together, not in penny packets, which is best for morale, impact and post-canvassing socialising.
• Increasing devolution to and empowerment of individual wards. We recognised that fighting Lib Dems on estates in Hoxton is very different to fighting Greens in streets in Stoke Newington, so each team of ward candidates was given the freedom to tailor their campaign materials to the type of electors and opponents they had.
• Micro-issues campaigning: we fought and won Clissold Ward from the Greens based more on tackling dog poo on the Milton Gardens Estate than on the national or even borough issues. All our direct mail and leaflets try to show voters what electing a Labour councillor in their ward means for public services and the environment in their specific street or block.
• Treating voters as grown-ups. We have a highly articulate, well-informed electorate. Lots of Guardian and Independent readers. So we delivered 40,000 copies of our entire borough manifesto so they could read exactly what we planned if they wanted to – and reported back on how we had implemented almost every policy in the previous, equally costed, detailed and widely distributed manifesto.

by Luke Akehurst, Hackney Labour Borough Campaign Manager for the 2002, 2006 and 2010 local elections (www.lukeakehurst.blogspot.com)