Reflecting on the local elections

At our latest quarterly network meeting on 14th May, the Community Savers leadership and CLASS staff team spent some time considering the latest local election results in Manchester, Stockport, and Sheffield; reflecting together on what the results mean for Community Savers own community action.

We should preface this post by saying that neither Community Savers nor CLASS have any party political affiliation as organisations with charitable objectives organising directly for public and community benefit and not for the benefit of any political parties.

Our discussion took us into three key areas for ongoing reflection and review:

1. Non-partisan voter mobilisation?

One leader recalled seeing people queuing up at the polling stations on election day in days gone by and we all reflected on the widespread disillusionment people feel in communities that have experienced long-term entrenched and intersecting inequalities with poor quality political representation. The local political system is broken when three ward councillors can make or break a community’s priorities for their area (not the case everywhere or in all areas); and when a local councillor is elected with only 9% of the vote of the eligible electorate (as was the case for Miles Platting and Newton Heath ward).

Voter turn out was low in some Community Savers areas but higher than usual in others where there was a sense that Reform had been very organised and mobilised large numbers of their supporters while other parties such as Labour and the Greens had not been able to leverage the same motivation with voters that may have once all voted Labour now split between Labour and the Green party.

Leaders with new Reform councillors felt that people had voted Reform as a protest vote because they were so tired of being let down by their existing councillors and their either continuously broken promises, or worse, complete lack of engagement with the community. Others highlighted low voter turnout in their area is not only about disillusionment but also how many people don’t know how to vote as well as many not having the right ID. Young people leave school with no understanding of the voting system or how to register to vote. Education around this could be a role for Community Savers in future. This could be even more important come the next General Election with the potential for a change in voting age to 16.

Community Savers are looking ahead to the next elections in May 2027 to consider whether there is a role for the movement in non-partisan voter moblisation to re-ignite their community’s passion to represent their interests through the voting system and have reflected that an important route towards that is to increase engagement with community action and the civic life of their area.

2. Youth and family mobilisation

Mobilising more people into community action – making people feel included and creating mutually supportive communities – must include young people and young families, and this has long been part of Community Savers strategic direction including after our interactions with the Youth Federation and Know Your City TV crew in Nairobi. The largest age cohort of our current membership are Over-50s which brings wisdom, experience, and long term knowledge of our communities. However, it is key to engage young people and families in our community action and we are proud of Women in Community Action in Arbourthorne who have managed to do this through the organising they have done over time around Arbourthorne Primary School, from which we have much to learn.

We are therefore really excited to be in the final stages of partnership development with two new projects focused on training up and mobilising young people and women:

Power in Balance is a national youth organising programme for gender equity led by the Advocacy Academy through which we hope to recruit twenty young people aged 18-30 to participate in a programme of community organising training (ten from Manchester and ten from Sheffield) in order to then support them to take action on the issues they care about in Community Savers neighbourhoods.

The Womens Power Project led by the Civic Power Fund aims to address the structural inequalities faced by low income women and the women’s sector by providing capacity building support to key grassroots organisations to enhance their strategic advocacy, campaigning, and governance capacity with a focus on developing their practice as community organisers able to sustain momentum for change by bringing women together and building power from the ground up.

We have applied to participate in both programmes and hope to receive confirmation soon. These have the potential to provide us with new routes through which to engage wider and more diverse groups in community action across our local populations which in turn will lead to a renewed sense of agency to effect change.

3. Political competition is healthy for local democracy

Many leaders reflected that the new political landscape – particularly in Manchester that has long been held almost entirely by Labour – has the potential to bring new opportunities for influence and leverage to communities that have fought hard for many years for their voices to be heard only to be stymied by the party line and Executive directives preventing local flexibility and collaboration.

There is hope that a more diverse mix of representation across the city will trigger a more responsive politics in Manchester and across the UK.

There is also fear that division and polarisation will continue to create conflict and tension within our communities and Community Savers have recently completed a three day programme of workshops with Birmingham Race Action Partnership to deepen and explore our own internal understanding on intersecting inequalities, race, migration, sex and gender identity; and to develop skills for holding conflict, tension, and difficult conversations in our local areas. The Leadership are currently exploring where to take this learning next and how to continue our work together.

One thing is clear: these results must not result in the further stigmatisation of multiply disadvantaged communities. It is the system that is broken, not the people.