Wigan Left Unity candidate Stephen Hall reflects on their local election results

Well done to all seven of our Left Unity candidates in Wigan. In the space of a few short months since Left Unity was founded, we have taken on Labour in one of its strongest heartlands in the country, and, in the face of an insurgent UKIP and heightened right-wing xenophobic views towards Europe and migrant workers, averaged 4.1% in the wards we stood in, on the basis of an anti-racist, left of Labour platform.

We got 796 votes in total, which is 392 more than the Lib Dems got in the entire borough and 662 more than the BNP. We also beat the Tories in the Wigan West ward where our candidate, Hazel Duffy, got 252 votes and a creditable 8.8% of the ballot.

These are very modest beginnings. We need to learn from any mistakes we made, of which there were likely many, and build on this foundation in the coming months and years. To do that we will need to root ourselves in our respective communities, and get stuck into the hard graft of day to day grassroots work that goes along with that. Our future success will depend on it.

More Left Unity local election results

Other parties’ results in Wigan