In recent years, Lewes has had an admirable reputation for doing politics differently. Sussex Bylines covered the story of the so-called Rainbow Alliance of Lib Dems, Greens and Labour which ran the District Council after 2019. This was followed by a period where Greens and Labour jointly ran the show. The Labour Party in Lewes also hosts widely appreciated innovative and delightfully pluralist day-long discussion events on topical subjects of the day, with participants from several traditions present and a friendly constructive attitude all round. This is also, should it be forgotten, the place where Tom Paine, key thinker on democracy, human rights, and freedom lived and wrote his early work.
But now Lewes is in the news for less edifying reasons. Indeed the trials of the Lewes Two have now reached the national press.
Pluralist campaigning upsetting the applecart
The story begins in the feverish mood before the election, when progressives nationwide began to realise they had a good chance of finally getting the Tories out. They also realised Lewes was a significant battleground for the campaign to come. It had once been a LibDem seat and the polls said Lib Dems were the best bet to win again.
There was a particularly annoying Tory incumbent. The Greens, the obvious competition, were anxious about their only seat in Parliament, in neighbouring Brighton Pavilion, and were minded to concentrate their limited resources there. This was obviously a seat where pluralist campaigning could upset the applecart. Labour had no chance of winning.
At the same time, all around the country, millions of people, just as sick of the status quo as voters in Lewes, were, on their own initiative, developing tactical voting strategies. The Labour Party, sniffing victory but apprehensive about the shallowness of their support, were happy to acquiesce. They perfectly well understood that every seat the Lib Dems took was one less for the Tories.
In the event, Labour gained up to 100 extra seats and the Lib Dems gained their biggest ever seat tally. It was wipeout for the Tories and progressives everywhere celebrated. One of the most satisfying results was in Lewes where the incumbent was given her marching orders.
Victory but some celebrations were brief
However, for some, the satisfaction was short-lived. In particular, two Lewes campaigners, Tony Dowmunt and Paul Wafer, both activists with the cross-party group Compass and its ‘Win As One’ Campaign, were about to get a rude shock. Far from any reward for successfully ‘doing politics differently’, as Paul put it to me, the pair each received letters in September 2024 from the Labour Party alleging that they had supported the Liberal Democrats.
Specifically, for Paul, it was alleged that he sent an email asking people to join Compass’s campaign and, further, that he had interviewed Steve Coogan about the campaign and had then posted “ahaaaaa! Thanks @Lewes_Lib_Dems for letting us join you!” Inflammatory stuff it would have to be conceded and, worse, someone had spotted him “featured in a photograph campaigning with and for the Liberal Democrats”.
Paul assembled a detailed rebuttal of these allegations, which, if they weren’t so nasty, would have you laughing in your tea. His reply concluded: “The email attached to your allegation provides no evidence at all that as an individual Labour Party member, I have supported the Liberal Democrats … If you watch the video you will see that I don’t actually speak, other than to ask the initial question of Coogan.”
Notwithstanding his point-by-point refutation, Paul was not surprised when, after a month, another letter arrived informing of the termination of his membership of the Labour Party subsequent to the conclusion of the “investigation into the allegation that you had committed a Prohibited Act”. The letter wasn’t signed, merely stamped by the “Disputes Team”.
So hard to resist the anonymous processes
Over the weeks that this story unfolded, our protagonists have not been able to speak to a human being on the matter. They know that an anonymous informant made a complaint and that, Lewes being a small town, everybody seems to know who it is.
It’s probably a bit of a cheap shot mocking institutions for enforcing their own rules but you could be forgiven for seeing echoes of Kafka here: two good guys get anonymously dobbed into a shadowy department in the far-away capital and the sentence is passed down and carried out heartlessly and without demur.
The whole story reeks of hypocrisy, of course, as well as the absurd tribalism that we hoped we were leaving behind. Paul and Tony believed themselves to be pursuing the greater good of getting the Tories out, as did most of the campaigners in Lewes, and probably the party leadership itself, even if they’re keeping their heads down now.
Paul and Tony are “no longer entitled to attend any party meetings or to exercise any other rights associated with membership of the party” so it is very difficult to pursue the already opaque complaints procedure.
We need to do politics differently
The depressing thing here is that Sussex has been something of a success story as regards promoting pluralist politics. Compass has had real success in organising local cross-party groups and it canvassed against the Tories, and for the most plausible progressive candidate, in Horsham, Worthing West, and Brighton Pavilion as well as in Lewes and, in all these seats, the hoped-for results were achieved. The strategy was perfectly straightforward and transparent.
It would drive you to despair, or to running away to a monastery, if the consequences of all this were not so serious.
We are in a climate emergency, we are in a defence crisis, we are in a legitimacy crisis where more than 60% of seats in the election were won on a third of the vote, the public finances are in tatters, the hard right is pounding on the door, mental health is falling off a cliff etc etc.
We need all hands on deck. We need all the people of goodwill we can muster. We need to be developing ways to do politics differently, at the very least a little more calmly, constructively, and creatively. We don’t want to be exiling people.
Surely there can’t be any sense in that?
CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO OUR CROWDFUNDER
HELP US BECOME STRONGER SO THAT WE CAN CONTINUE TO DELIVER POWERFUL CITIZEN JOURNALISM!
