In a precursor to next month’s Oldham West parliamentary by-election, voters in the working- class ward of Aylesford Green in Ashford, Kent, today have a council by-election of their own.

In last May’s election, Labour polled 725 votes to the Tories’ 592 on a 54 per cent turnout. The arithmetic and the class composition of the ward point to another Labour win, but this time round the two major parties are also competing for votes with Ukip, the Greens, the Lib Dems and an independent.

With a crowded field and turnout expected to be south of 30 per cent, Labour candidate Gordon Miller is taking nothing for granted.

Born into a working-class family in Motherwell (his father worked at the Ravenscraig steelworks and his mother was a teaching assistant), 30-year old Miller moved from Scotland to Kent six years ago. Since his arrival he has immersed himself in community programmes and, in a nod to his church upbringing, the Salvation Army.

“I grew up on a council estate similar to the ones round here,” he says. “I understand local people because I lived just like them.”

With his pledge to be the borough’s hardest working councillor and a promise to freeze rents and build council houses, Miller is hoping to reconnect Labour with its traditional voters.

He works for a wildlife charity, and fittingly, Wikipedia describes Aylesford Green as an “important habitat for invertebrates... and long tailed tits.”

Looking around the ward, it’s hard to resist seeing this as a metaphor for New Labour’s capitulation to market forces and Tory Bullingdon boy spite.

The faded monochrome council blocks, the potholed roads, the poverty that is obvious even to the casual observer — all add to the sense that Aylesford Green, like so many other predominantly working-class areas, has been deliberately neglected and conveniently forgotten. What endures, says Miller, is a sense of community solidarity.  

On the doorstep, disillusion with Labour is apparent but outright hostility is muted, possibly because with just three seats on the council, voters have given up holding them responsible for anything.

Aylesford Green is almost entirely white and Ukip — despite having weak roots in the community and little or no organisational base — are expected to do well.

In a three-way contest, it is not inconceivable that either they or the Tories could come through the middle and take the seat.
But Miller rejects the idea that the way to win back Labour’s lost millions is to pander to racism and prejudice. His approach is to talk about social justice and the issues that unite, rather than divide people.

He points out that half of all local families are receiving tax credits, just 10 per cent of units in the new private housing development are reserved for social housing and the local bus service is facing the chop.   

Historically, canvassing has been a box-ticking exercise designed to get out the vote and not an opportunity to engage with the voters. In a break with this tradition, Miller takes time to talk and listen to everyone and especially to non-Labour voters.

Subjects raised on the doorstep have included Jeremy Corbyn, tax credits, drunks in the local park, disputes with neighbours and the flooded footbridge near the Asda supermarket.

Miller spent a heartbreaking 20 minutes with an 85-year old man whose only meal that day had been a bowl of porridge. “I just want to go to sleep and die,” the elderly gentleman said, adding that his only contact with human beings was a monthly visit from an overworked nurse.

During one afternoon on the knocker, Miller’s team of canvassers managed to turn a family of probable Ukip voters into probable Labour voters, a Tory into a floating voter and a non-voter into a Labour voter.

These are baby steps, but important nonetheless. Winning back disillusioned Labour voters is a long-term project that requires the transformation of the party into a social movement capable of providing effective representation and combatting media distortions.  
 
Miller is quietly confident of victory, but whether he wins or loses today, his methodology is correct. There is no other way.