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For public services, equality and solidarity

3 July 2009

Make Your Vote Count national co-ordinator Sarah Kavanagh reports back on our campaign and looks ahead to the future.

Over the last six months we saw our Make Your Vote Count campaign grow in strength and we would like to thank the many reps and members for rising to the challenge and working hard to make it a success.

We took our concerns about pay, job cuts, public services and equality directly to candidates in the European and local elections.

We challenged candidates from across the political spectrum, excluding the far right, by writing letters and organising candidates’ question time events.

While we did not recommend voting for any party or candidate, we used the campaign to increase awareness and understanding about the elections so everyone could make an informed choice.

From the start we warned of the risk of further electoral gains for the far right. We identified at least four regions at risk and unfortunately we were right.

The BNP gained seats in Yorkshire and the Humber, and the north west but they were kept out of the midlands and London.

The European Union includes 27 countries and there are 736 members of the European parliament with 492 million potential voters. This time round, less than half of the people eligible to vote actually did so.

Shift to the right

The Conservative party has announced it has formed a new political group with other ‘anti federalist’ parties in the European Parliament. The Conservatives are the largest party in this new group with 26 MEPs.

Others who have signed up include 15 MEPs from Poland’s Law and Justice party, which in the past has tried to ban gay marches in Poland.

There are nine from the Czech Republic’s Civic Democratic party and one each from the Dutch ChristenUnie, Latvian Independence Movement, members of whom honour Latvia’s Waffen SS veterans, Hungarian Democratic Forum and the Belgian Lijst Dedecker.

Far right parties won 37 MEP seats in the 19 countries that took part in the Euro elections, gaining eight more seats than 2004.

Countries with far right MEPs include Austria, the Netherlands, Hungary, Denmark, Finland, Romania, Greece, Italy, France, Belgium, Poland, Bulgaria, Latvia and Slovakia.

But the BNP’s efforts to form a grouping with other extremists, which would attract seats on committees and extra funding, has so far ended in failure.

Look to the future

Our MYVC campaign enshrines the idea of solidarity and harnesses the many talents of the members and activists who agree to take part.

While people have understandably reacted with horror and disgust at the electoral gains of the BNP we must not fall into despair. We now have to advance onto the next stage of the campaign.

As agreed at annual conference, our national executive will meet in July to decide arrangements to consult members over the coming year about the possibility of standing and supporting certain trade union candidates in elections where candidates from the main parties all agree on issues like job cuts and privatisation. A final decision on this will be taken by annual conference in 2010.

With this, and a general election less than 12 months away, it will be a critical time for trade unionists and others who believe in public services, equality and solidarity.

Stats and facts: MYVC in numbers

  • We had more than 1,000 volunteers and co-ordinators for the campaign
  • There were 4,282 visits to our MYVC web pages and 2,865 visits to the candidates’ responses pages
  • We had 117 responses to the online EU candidates' questionnaire and 412 people sent 6,003 emails to candidates
  • We hosted 34 candidates’ question time events across the UK
  • On national days of action, we helped leaflet communities, with Unite Against Fascism and Hope not Hate
  • The UK delegation to the Euro parliament now includes 25 Conservatives, 13 Labour, 13 UKIP and 11 Liberal Democrats.

For more about Make Your Vote Count visit our campaign web pages.

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