The winning team in Surbiton Hill - From left: Cllr Liz Green (Deputy Leader of the Council), Edward Davey MP, Cllr John Ayles, Cllr Derek Osbourne (Leader of the Council).

What better start could we have had to Federal Conference than our first gain from Labour in a principal council by-election since the formation of the coalition.

The Borough of Gedling covers a number of towns and villages around the edge of Nottingham, and was the scene of a massive swing to Labour in May when they gained 23 seats and took control. One of those 23 gains was Phoenix ward where sitting Lib Dem councillor Andrew Ellwood lost his seat by just four votes. However, just three months later one of the ward’s Labour councillors resigned after deciding to go off and teach in Mexico.

The by-election was an incredibly hard fought campaign on both sides. Labour swamped the ward with huge numbers of helpers and ran a campaign that focused solely on heavily attacking us on national issues. Instead, we ran a very local campaign emphasising the credentials of Andrew Ellwood. This consisted of regular canvassing along with weekly leaflets using lots of photos and articles about how good a councillor he was for the area. This message contrasted sharply with the lack of commitment from the outgoing Labour councillor after quitting so soon. We managed to get lots of help from surrounding areas, but were still vastly outnumbered by Labour on polling day. However, in the end our message was much more effective and it saw Andrew elected back on to the council.

The other significant by-election for the Lib Dems was our defence of the Surbiton Hill ward in the London Borough of Kingston upon Thames. Surbiton Hill had traditionally been safely Conservative but we gained it by just 103 votes in 2010. The circumstances of the by-election were unfortunate when hugely promising Lib Dem councillor Umesh Parekh had to resign when his new employers decided his job should be politically restricted. The Conservatives put up their former councillor who had expected to be council leader until his defeat, but they were no match for a very effective campaign that saw excellent candidate John Ayles win. The big lesson was to keep knocking on doors. Not only did this gather huge amounts of canvass data, but it also helped to reconnect us with those supporters who had become less enthusiastic about voting for us.

Although the latest by-election results saw the sad loss of a Liberal Democrat seat in Purbeck District Council in Dorset, the results in two other wards were quite encouraging.

The by-election in Lytchett Matravers was in Annette Brooke’s Mid Dorset and North Poole constituency, and was gained from the Conservatives for the first time last year. The by-election was caused by the sudden resignation of that same councillor for health reasons, and this (along with the national situation) conspired to help us lose the seat. However, a hard fought campaign with a good candidate and much regional support kept the swing down to just 5%. Sadly, this now means that the Conservatives move to be the largest party on a council where we have minority control.

In Derbyshire, we had an impressive 11% increase in our vote in a vacancy caused by the death of a local Independent. Sawley is a large village on the Nottinghamshire border and was once good territory for the party. This is the first time the local party has managed to run a campaign on this scale which included regular Focuses, surveys, postal vote letters and plenty of canvassing. As in Dorset, it was achieved thanks to lots of help from the surrounding area (a tip for other by-elections contests is to make sure people from outside of your area come and help). Although we didn’t win, the local party are pleased that their hardwork paid off and they got a result well beyond their highest expectations.

Finally, in Peckham in Southwark we ran another intensive campaign capitalising on the compelling life story of our candidate. Peckham born and bred, Jennifer Blake is a former gang member who has now turned her life around and runs a charity helping local young people get out of lives dominated by guns and gangs. Whilst this was a great campaigning opportunity and her personal story was a major part of the campaign, (much more so than the party she represented), our choice of candidate showed that our campaign was genuinely about the community and trying to improve the area. We were rewarded with the highest increase in the Lib Dem vote in a Labour held ward since July last year (the last being in Darlington).

It’s difficult these days to say “where you work you win,” as many councillors found out in May that working hard certainly doesn’t guarantee you victory anymore. However one thing that’s clear from this week’s by-elections is that running an intensive campaign that genuinely engages voters with issues they care about, (and with a candidate who they can relate to), certainly helps get you nearer to winning.

November 11th is, of course, the day on which we all reflect on both the fragility and the price of the freedoms we are lucky enough to enjoy.  It also adds an extra resonance to the act of voting in an election that can often be lost on the other 51 Thursdays of a year.  There were five principal council by-elections that took place on the 11th and ALDC received reports of one election contested out in the towns.  The current political cold snap continues, with very little to cherry pick for Liberal Democrats; of the five elections, we were defending none, we stood candidates in two, and neither of those changed hands.

It was a good day for Independents.  An Independent held the one seat they were defending in the Hunsdon ward of East Hertfordshire District, and another took the Forres seat on Moray Council in Scotland from the Tories, who collapsed into third behind the SNP and the eventual Independent winner on first preferences.  The remaining three seats were all holds for the Conservative Party; a marginal decline in vote-share in the Rushall-Shelfield ward in Walsall wasn’t enough for Labour, who remained 28 votes behind.  The last time the Walsall seat was contested, the local Lib Dem team took a respectable 17.8%, but the absence of a candidate somewhat hampered efforts to build on that this time around.  On the Isle of Wight, Labour’s first attempt to win the Chale, Niton, and Whitwell ward yielded a haul of 76 and our candidate Malcolm Groves kept the Lib Dem vote steady.  Finally, in a three-way thriller in Bury St Edmunds Tower division of Suffolk County Council, the Tories held the second-place Independent off by 55 votes, and the Liberal Democrats placed fifth with a fraction less of the popular vote than in 2009.  There’s a little bit of silver glinting around the November clouds, none of our candidates registered a dramatic decrease in their vote-share and we did pick up a seat in the Pill ward of Saltash Town Council.

As the nights draw in and the air gets brisker, ALDC have rustled up some very fetching Christmas card and calendar templates for those character-building Winter rounds!  They can be accessed at the members-only section of the ALDC site here.  It’s onwards and upwards next week with a further six principal council by-elections, there’s a double election in Croxteth in Liverpool and one of those seats is the week’s only Lib Dem defence.  The very best of luck to all our candidates and campaigners across the country.

Craig Whittall
craig.whittall@aldc.org