Labour in Stamford Hill

Since the 4 May elections the Hackney Gazette has carried letters from Myrna Shaw (8 June) and Peter Sutton (25 May) that have asserted that Labour did not campaign hard enough in the four wards won by other parties in Stamford Hill.

This is nonsense. I was the Hackney Labour Party's Campaign Manager for the 4 May elections and I can assure you that we fought to win in all 19 wards across the borough. There are no "no-go" areas for Labour in Hackney. It is particularly insulting to the defeated Labour candidates in those wards who gave up hours of their spare time to deliver leaflets and canvass voters.

Although we did not win in those four wards, the votes for our leading candidates went up by 167 in Cazenove (where we very nearly beat the Lib Dems), and by 77 in New River, and in Springfield the Tory majority was slashed, with a 6.4% swing from Tory to Labour. One of the reasons why the Tories and Lib Dems failed to make gains elsewhere in Hackney was that they were too busy fending off the strong Labour challenge in their Stamford Hill heartland.

The re-elected Labour Council will be working hard to improve services and respond to residents' needs in every ward in Hackney, whatever councillors they elected on 4 May.