Cllr Peter Golds is a councillor in Tower Hamlets. He has served as a London councillor for 26 years. He is a former Treasurer of the Conservative Councillor’s Association.
The Conservative Party has a long and convoluted history. Rather like the unwritten British Constitution, it is a product of evolution over a long period of time and has survived by adapting to the circumstances of the time. In contrast, both the Liberal and Labour Parties were established at formal meetings which established political organisations in which the Parliamentary Party was one part; as opposed to the Conservatives which was a Parliamentary Party that included a political party.
In the nineteenth century, following the great divide over the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, the party was out of effective power until Disraeli’s administration of 1874-1880. Disraeli had supported the extension of the franchise, in 1867. He also established the National Union of Conservative Associations and the Party Conference. In 1886 the party now led by Lord Salisbury, won again, partly due to a further widening of the franchise, also the redistribution of constituencies into single members seats which bought in representation for the “Villa Tory” voting suburbs – and most importantly, a major split in the Liberals over Irish Home Rule which resulted in Joseph Chamberlain establishing the Liberal Unionist Party which supported the Conservative and Unionist Party in Parliament. The result was that in fourteen general elections between 1886 and 1945 the Conservatives, alone, or allied with smaller parties topped the poll, if not always winning a majority of seats. The single exception was 1906 when the Liberals won a landslide victory (the Conservatives had split over tariff reform); this was the last occasion in which the Liberal Party would win the most seats and votes.
Following the 1886 election victory, the Liberal Unionists sought to reform local government by introducing Shire County Councils to the historic counties whilst making the major towns and cities into County Boroughs, separate from the shire counties. The problem was London and its local government. The City of London had always resisted any expansion from its historic boundaries yet opposed the setting up of competing boroughs. The growth of population in the Metropolis during the nineteenth century was enormous and local government was primitive, based on a mixture of boards and vestries, some wealthy, some poor, some well-managed, and some corrupt. In 1856 the government created the Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) to manage infrastructure, open spaces, parks, and most of all, build the sewerage system befitting a capital City.
The MBW was not directly elected but consisted of members appointed from the various boards in the Metropolis. The boundaries were fixed to coincide with the Statutes of Mortality of 1726 which even in 1856 covered nothing like the built-up area of London. The MBW had, by 1888, become a byword for dubious practices and was nicknamed the Metropolitan Board of Perks. It was therefore proposed in 1888 to incorporate the MBW into Charles Ritchies County Council Act as a London County Council. This covers what is today the twelve inner London Boroughs.
The LCC was first elected in 1889, and immediately took over from the MBW, not least to avoid a corruption scandal. Two members were elected from each of the Parliamentary constituencies in the Metropolitan area with the exception of the City which was granted four members. From the start elections were competitive, although the Liberals stood as Progressives and Conservatives, Moderates. In the six elections between 1889 and 1904 the Progressives won a majority and gradually took as much power as they could. In 1900 the Government swept away the vestries and boards replacing them with 28 Municipal Boroughs, which they hoped would be a counterweight to the LCC.
After the landslide defeat in the election of 1906 the Conservatives, renamed Municipal Reform, organised an LCC election in 1907 that was on a scale beyond anything seen previously. They campaigned on the Rates, and the extravagant expenditure of the Progressive controlled LCC, and gained 44 seats in the election. MR produced some 16 million copies of 69 different leaflets, 369,000 posters were displayed and in the seven months prior to the poll, over 2,500 public meetings were held. On the week before election day a huge rally was held in Trafalgar Square which became known as the largest and most disorderly in decades. The Conservative Party used London to regroup for future elections. Municipal Reform were to retain control of the LCC without a break until 1934, when Labour under Herbert Morrison gained control.
The Conservative defeat in the general election of 1945 saw Municipal Reform drop to holding just five of the Metropolitan Boroughs in November 1945 borough elections and in the LCC election of 1946, just 30 out of 120 seats. Again the Party revitalised itself under the leadership of perhaps the greatest Party Chairman, Lord Woolton. By 1950 the Party claimed three million members, with over 400 professional agents in constituencies nationwide. The Birmingham Conservative Party had a paid staff of 75 and there were regional offices across the country with departments covering local government, trade unions, party organisation, the Conservative Political Centre and even a residential college. By the time of the 1949 borough and LCC elections the Conservative Party stood under its own name.
The LCC leader was Henry Brooke, a former MP, serving councillor, and experienced LCC member. Money was raised for a major campaign, local candidates were recruited, and in April 1949 the Party outpolled Labour, but won the same number of seats, 64 each. Labour were able to make use of the Aldermanic system to secure a majority. In the borough elections, six councils were gained giving the party control of 11 of the 28 Metropolitan Boroughs. Eight months later in February 1950, Labour’s huge majority was reduced to just five seats. Then in October 1951, The Conservatives regained government and were to hold it until 1964. There is no doubt the local government successes of the 1940s, not least in London, helped to change the political environment.
In 1957, Henry Brooke, then Minister for Local Government established a Royal Commission under Sir Dennis Herbert, into London Government which recommended extending the boundaries of the Metropolis roughly to what is now the M25 and establishing a Greater London Council with 32 powerful London Boroughs. The LCC, Middlesex County Council, and numerous other authorities would be replaced by this structure.
Unsurprisingly, the proposals were controversial, but the Act was passed and in the last days of the Conservative Government in April 1964, Labour won the GLC with a substantial majority of 64 to 36 seats and nineteen of the 32 new London Boroughs.
The second GLC elections were due in April 1967, a year after Harold Wilson secured a 94 seat majority. The Conservatives had been planning well ahead, but polls suggested Labour would retain control and then, as today, few disputed polls. When the election was held, Labour were routed in a landslide, retaining just 18 of their 64 seats, the Labour leader being defeated by a 28-year-old called Jeffrey Archer. As in 1949 the party across London worked hard to win, they stayed focussed on their campaign, ignored polls and newspaper opinion pieces, emphasised a new and controversial policy of selling council houses and got out the vote – by the shed load! Desmond Plummer, was to lead the council for the Conservatives for the next six years.
Labour regained the GLC in 1973 but in 1977 during the Callaghan government a brilliant campaign saw Horace Cutler lead the party to another big victory, taking 52 per cent of the vote and winning 64 seats on the council. Cutler was a natural campaigner, leader and administrator – he had previously led Harrow Borough Council and the Middlesex County Council. He sought re-election in 1981, during the depths of the unpopularity of the first Thatcher Government and very narrowly lost, correctly predicting that the moderate Labour leader would be replaced after the election by Ken Livingstone.
Five years later the GLC was abolished by the Conservative government and London was without city wide administration until the end of the Century. The problem of the GLC had been its remoteness as much immediate power was exercised by the Boroughs, and it had difficulty in establishing its own strategic role, which is what the Herbert Commission had proposed. Following the election of the Blair government, with a manifesto commitment to reintroduce a form of London wide government, there was a substantial consultation exercise into what form of regional administration would be appropriate. A return to a GLC type authority was unpopular and a mayoral system was proposed which was endorsed by a referendum in 1998.
As the legislation was passing through Parliament the Blair government were faced with the prospect of a Ken Livingstone candidature and victory. As a result Livingstone, having been denied the Labour nomination, won the first election as an Independent, with Conservative Steve Norris in second place. It is fair to say that both parties had problems in selecting a candidate. Livingstone campaigned as a” London cheeky chappie outsider.” Norris as an experienced administrator and former Minister. After the election, Livingstone was re-admitted to Labour winning the 2004 election, again against Norris. Both elections showed how experienced candidates with name identification could engage the electorate.
In both of these campaigns the Conservatives, fought a positive campaign, engaging with the electorate and, for the record, did better than polls suggested.
Going for a third term, in the Gordon Brown era, Livingstone lost to Boris Johnson, giving the party the first win in votes in the capital since 1992. Johnson then stood (against Livingstone) for re-election in 2012 and won, during a period of Conservative Government.
In all four of these elections the two candidates fought a London campaign, but at the same time had specific messages for each area. The messages were upbeat, positive, and showed their interest in London and all its citizens, which Livingstone increasingly had difficulty in demonstrating.
The 2016 election was an open contest. The Conservatives chose Zac Goldsmith, independent minded, and a candidate who had much appeal across London. Labour selected Sadiq Khan, the ultimate machine politician. In the event the Conservative campaign was derailed by allegations of personal attacks on Khan.
Khan ran again firstly in 2021 where Shaun Bailey had been selected to fight a campaign originally in 2020. The campaign lacked the positivity of previous occasions. The opinion polls were badly out of kilter. In the election, Bailey was 4.7 per cent behind Khan in the first round and 10.4 per cent in the second.
In 2024 the Conservative campaign, once again against Khan, appeared to go wrong from the start. The candidate selection was, politely, difficult, the campaign underfunded, and literature was bad. The first rule in advertising is do not publicise your opposition, yet Conservative canvassers were handed leaflets with a red background and picture of the Labour candidate. Electors actually thought it was Labour literature. This was the third occasion in which the London Conservative Party had faced Sadiq Khan, we should by then, have worked out exactly how he and his campaign team operate. Labour spent a great deal of time researching every aspect of social media to construct a hostile narrative against Susan Hall. Anything they could construe was then turned over to The Guardian and the Evening Standard. Khan is a man who is well known to bear grudges and Susan Hall had done an excellent job in taking him on at the London Assembly.
For over a century the Conservative Party has shown that it can come from behind in London and win after adversity. The message has previously been and should be again: we can win in London and we will win nationwide.
There are London elections in 2026. We need to focus on taking back control of Wandsworth, Westminster, Barnet and Enfield, and holding on to the Croydon mayoralty as well as the other boroughs that we control. We need to target every other council to secure representation.
We must demonstrate that we are Londoners and we value our city. Londoners will respect us for that. We cannot just fight on Ulez and hope that will swing enough votes to win. We need to work on a London and borough based sustainable housing programme. We need to build affordable homes to buy and to rent. We need to make London safe for all residents. We need to understand the aspirations of our younger people.
We must promote a night-time economy that brings revenue to the City, whilst ensuring that this is not an excuse for ASB – and ensure there is a transport infrastructure. London cannot be as it was half a century ago, wet, cold and closed. We need council candidates who will get out, meet voters and ultimately show that they have an interest in them and their wards and boroughs. Local associations must have as much leeway as possible to select local candidates for local wards. Finally we must understand that the electorate are bored witless of the Conservative Party seemingly discussing internal party issues and not those that concern them, the voters.
It is vital that we prepare for the next Mayoral contest. It is essential that the party has the widest choice of the best possible candidates. The candidate must be chosen with plenty of time to get around London and get known across the area. The closure of the Evening Standard as a daily paper means that there are virtually no local news outlets. Therefore the candidate must get to know London’s social media.
One thing Ken Livingstone, Steve Norris and Boris Johnson have in common is that they know how to smile, how to look happy and how to enjoy being amongst Londoners. We need a candidate who will do that. Think of Ronald Reagan, there was never a campaign stop in his decades of campaigning that he failed to persuade the locals that he enjoyed being with them.
In the early Mayoral elections, votes were tallied by ward as a result of the electronic counting. In 2008 Boris Johnson convincingly won South Bermondsey ward as well as Barkingside and Coulsdon South.
That was achieved by hard work across London, enthusiasm, and showing that we were interested across all of London.
Let us do it again in 2028 and help the party on the road to a General Election victory.