Gorton and Denton: Where will anger at Labour go?

Stand Up To Racism campaigners in Gorton and Denton (Picture: X/Manchester_SUTR)

Only a few years ago, Labour would have walked a by-election in Gorton and Denton, Greater Manchester.  

Today, the election there sums up the disintegration of mainstream politics, the death of the two-party system—and the battle over what comes next.

Polls put far right party Reform UK in first place at 30.6 percent, Labour second at 28 percent and the Greens not far behind at 21.7 percent.

On the streets of Gorton and Denton, there is a palpable anger at Keir Starmer’s Labour. Susan, a pensioner, blasted the Starmer government as “crap”. “He seems to not have a care in the world—all he thinks about is himself,” she told Socialist Worker.

“Pensioners who worked all of our lives are getting hit now. It makes you very angry. You only have a certain amount of money to live on. We still have to pay rent, council tax, TV licence.” 

She added, “I thought Labour were going to do more, it used to be for the working class.”

The Labour Party won Gorton and Denton with 51 percent of the vote and a majority of over 13,400 votes as part of its landslide in the general election of 2024. Less than two years later, Labour is in freefall and the knives are out for Starmer.

In a desperate bid to save his own skin for a few more months, he blocked Andy Burnham from standing as the Labour candidate in Gorton and Denton. As Mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham positioned himself as a “soft left” politician promising working class voters some social democratic reforms.

For some, disillusionment has become apathy. As one man walking down a street in Gorton told Socialist Worker, “I’m not voting for any of them. They are a bunch of rich fucks. It never changes anything no matter who it is.”

He pointed to Liz Truss’s brief time as prime minister and the £115,000 a year allowance she gets because of her short stint in the role.

“She was in for a few weeks and now lives off a massive wage. Who is paying for that? We are.”

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK preys on this deep well of anger and disillusionment and poses as an “anti-establishment” force. 

Carol said that both her and her husband were planning on voting for Reform UK because it “has better policies” and “Starmer is a waste of time”. She called the prime minister “horrible”.

“Labour isn’t improving anything,” she told Socialist Worker. “I used to vote Labour all of my life until Starmer.”

“Reform UK seem to be telling the truth while others just say what you want to hear.”

Reform UK taps into the sense that Britain is broken. But racism is the glue that binds together the political story it sells, with immigration and ­multiculturalism behind “national decline”. 

“I’ve lived here for 30 years and it has gone to the dogs,” said Carol. “It is all the immigrants. It used to be nice and now they throw anyone here.  You have more Asians and blacks than whites. They are all just laughing at us.”

In Reform UK’s election leaflets, it calls a vote for Labour a vote for “broken borders, more houses for illegal immigrants, high taxes, surging energy bills and the rest”.

It attacks a vote for the Greens as a vote “for open-border chaos, legalised drugs and more woke nonsense like men in women’s changing rooms”.

Margaret, who has lived in Gorton for decades, told Socialist Worker she was “upset about the direction of the country”. “It used to be nice around here and now we are letting all and sundry in,” she said.

“I don’t know how Reform UK will manage on its own as this is a Labour area but I will be voting for Reform UK.

“We were promised that Brexit would mean sending all of these people back but that is still not happening.

“Say anything and you are called a racist. I just want my country back,” she added.

These remarks show that taking on the lies about immigration is key to stopping Reform UK’s rise. It’s not enough, as many on the left argue, to focus on Reform’s corporate agenda.

Reform UK’s victory is not inevitable—and many people in the constituency are determined to stop it.

Stand Up To Racism (SUTR) launched a mass campaign to stop Reform UK at the beginning of the month. It plans to give out tens of thousands of leaflets, put up posters and talk to people across the constituency.  

Speakers at the launch rally included Green Party candidate Hannah Spencer, Labour councillor Zahid Hussain and Tony Wilson, branch secretary of Greater Manchester Transport Unison union.

After speeches, anti-racists went into the local streets to leaflet. Claire, a part time carer, is one of those who volunteered to be a ward coordinator for SUTR’s campaign.

“As I was growing up, I thought racism was dying out and I woke up and went, ‘No, it is not’,” she told Socialist Worker.

“All it takes is a few good people to look away. That kept coming into my head and so I thought I need to do something.”

Claire said that Reform UK’s racist scapegoating of migrants and refugees “is the same old story” with rich people “using people who aren’t rich to blame each other and fight each other”.

She tore into the lies about “small boats” and refugees coming to Britain to claim benefits.

“There is no way people fleeing wars are trying to do anything other than stay alive and keep safe, which is exactly what we would do if our lives were under threat,” she said.

Mike is also involved in the SUTR campaign. He explained that “Gorton and east Manchester was a big industrial area in the 1970s, 80s and 90s but that has gone”.

“Gorton is not a well off area,” he told Socialist Worker. “There are plenty of people struggling to get by. Denton is mainly white and that is where Reform UK is strongest.”

He said that “the south west of the constituency” around Levenshulme “has got a large student body”.

“There will be people who come out to stop Reform UK—that is where the bigger part of the constituency’s population is.”

Many people are turning left to find answers to Labour’s failures. “This area has been neglected and not looked at for a while,” a resident of Levenshulme in the constituency told Socialist Worker.

“The schools around here need investment, the whole place needs money injected into it. The NHS needs sorting out, we need more doctors and nurses in the hospital.”

She thought that “Starmer is a waste of time” and that “it should have been someone else in Labour to become prime minister”.

“I have always voted Labour but it isn’t the party it used to be,” she said.

“I won’t vote Reform UK, the Liberals are arsing around and the Greens won’t do much—but I would maybe vote Green.”

The Greens are not the socialist and working class alternative that Your Party promised to become when it was launched.

But under Zack Polanski the Greens have become the main force to the left of Labour in British politics—and attracted many of those who were initially drawn to Your Party.

The Green candidate in Gorton and Denton, Hannah Spencer, is a principled anti-racist.

On the edge of Levenshulme, a Green Party supporter was busy putting up a “Vote Green” sign in her front garden. She told Socialist Worker that the Greens have “policies that are working and the people of Gorton and Denton are seeing that”.

“They realise that what Reform UK is saying in the media is a pipe dream by millionaires supported by paedophiles.  People want real change.”

The anger at the mainstream parties has led some to be torn between the Greens and Reform UK.  “It is between those two,” Bill from Gorton told Socialist Worker.

“I’ve got grandkids growing up and I hate to think about what world they are growing up in. My opinion is that you can’t trust politicians. They say this and that but when they get in it changes.

“Politicians don’t come and see how things work. They are out of touch in so many ways. All they are bothered about is their own pay day.”

For decades, those very same politicians have pushed the lie that immigration is a “drain” on resources or a “problem” to be managed.

In reality, there is no evidence that immigration causes low pay, ­unemployment or broken public services.

For instance, migrants on average pay more in taxes than they use in public services or benefits. And it’s Tory austerity—continued by Labour—that has devastated schools, the NHS and town centres.

But that’s precisely why politicians go after migrants—as a scapegoat for problems caused by their rich mates and a system that puts profit before people.

Their narrative filters down into a “common sense”. But the common sense can crash against people’s own experiences of working and living alongside migrants.

So Bill says, “We have a lot of foreigners around here, but we would be lost without half of them. Many of them are doctors and nurses.”

Anti-racist campaigning can give ­confidence to our side and pull the mood leftwards.

Mike said, “We need to get leaflets through as many doors as possible. There is now a calendar of activities over the next few weeks.”

Campaigning can expose the racism of Reform UK and encourage the many left wing and progressive voters to come out. And taking on the myths of immigration can win people who are angry at the system.

The message, “Blame the rich and bosses, not migrants,” can cut through.

Fascist Steve Bannon and Matthew Goodwin

Matthew Goodwin, Reform UK

Goodwin keeps the company of fascists such as Steve Bannon.

He’s dismissed Islamophobia as “the flavour of the month amongst the elite class” and previously suggested a tax for those who don’t have children.

His supposedly “strong links” to Gorton and Denton include delivering pizzas in the constituency while he was a student at the University of Salford.

Angeliki Stogia, Labour Party

After mayor Andy Burnham was banned from standing, Labour councillor Stogia won the selection.

When she was a parliamentary candidate in the general election, the New Statesman magazine revealed her as a corporate lobbyist. She leads the “stakeholder engagement” service at multinational Arup.

Hannah Spencer, Green Party

Leader of the Green Party Group on Trafford council, Spencer is a local plumber.

She’s framed the election as “hope vs hate”. “Reform UK has chosen a candidate that will divide our community—I will bring the people of Gorton and Denton together,” she said.