Hornchurch: Vying for the grey vote
Towns and villages with ageing populations rarely make the headlines. Not for them the attention lavished on the young urban professionals driving Manchester’s urban renaissance, or the burgeoning gay scene in Brighton. But they exist just the same, dotted around the country, often on the outskirts of major cities.
One such area is Hornchurch, which sits right at the eastern end of London’s District Line. The boroughs in Hornchurch have some of the highest concentrations of pensioners anywhere in London, and the candidates acknowledge the importance of appealing to the ‘grey vote’.
Not all the population is ageing, of course, and local employers such as the Ford motor factory remain important. Benefiting from what is colloquially known as the ‘District Line migration’, it also attracts young couples leaving central London for a better place to raise children and families moving out of the East End.
In 2001, the election was a closely fought battle between the sitting Labour MP John Cryer – who in the end won with around 16,500 votes – and the Conservative candidate Robin Squire, in second place with 15,000 votes. The Liberal Democrats were a distant third on 3,000.
This time around, Cryer is defending his seat against a new Conservative challenger, solicitor James Brokenshire. Cryer, a left-leaning MP who voted against the Government on the war in Iraq and other issues, says the pensioners in his seat are “not thrilled” about recent rises in council tax in what has traditionally been a low-spending borough.
Labour’s plans to help pensioners – the most recent of which was the £200 council tax rebate announced in the Budget – are fairer to the majority of pensioners than are the Conservatives’, he adds.
“When you get into an election campaign, people start looking more at the detail, and the Tory proposals – there are a lot of people who are going to fall way short of getting the full amount. It’s only the wealthiest who will get the full discount – they will benefit enormously from this.”
The Conservatives suffer from a lack of trust on this issue, Cryer claims, because they broke the link between pensions and earnings in 1981. Labour has not reversed that decision, but doing so is “absolutely crucial”, he says.
For the Conservatives, Brokenshire says people over 65 are often very reluctant to claim the means-tested benefits that are a core part of Labour’s approach to pensions. And he rejects claims that his party’s plans target the wealthiest pensioners.
“[They are aimed at] those who are most in need who have fallen through the net, who are not getting the benefits and help that perhaps they should be. This is a very targeted benefit to those who have worked hard all their lives, saved [money], but have found it quite difficult over the last few years in the terms of the squeeze that they have felt between their pension and the council tax bills that have been coming in.”
Another issue of particular concern to the elderly is the closure of local post offices, four of which have gone in the past year, and against which both Cryer and Brokenshire have campaigned.
Cryer accuses national Post Office management of running the service as if it were a big supermarket such as Asda.
“The Post Office isn’t about that,” he says. “The Post Office is a public service. And when you’ve got lots of pensioners, it should be run as a [public] service and not according to the balance sheet.
Brokenshire says the closures have occurred because the Post Offices have less custom now that many benefits are paid directly into people’s accounts – but they should remain open nonetheless.
“Those who are most in need or actually use Post Offices more tend to be older people, the more vulnerable, and therefore having to travel quite large distances [to get to a Post Office] is a real worry.”
Also worrying the elderly is the possibility that some of the services at the local St George’s Hospital could be moved to Harold Wood in the north of the area, leaving those needing treatment facing a long journey or isolation from their friends and families.
These are what Brokenshire says are a number of issues that “lie underneath the surface” of an apparently prosperous and untroubled electorate. Overdevelopment is another concern, especially for those living in the area to the south of the constituency that is designated as part of the Thames Gateway region.
There are fears that the Government’s proposals to build 120,000 new homes may not be sustainable or provide the regeneration the area needs, and mixed feelings about the possibility that one of the new regional casinos might be built in the area.
Anti-social behaviour is a major concern, the candidates agree. Like most people, Hornchurch residents are not much affected by high-level organised crime; instead, they are worried about low-level problems such as graffiti, street crime and so-called “neighbours from hell”.
Cryer says Labour’s neighbourhood policing teams – which are up and running in two of the six wards already and will soon be operating in two more – are tackling anti-social behaviour.
The introduction of the teams – which combine regular police with community support officers – is a reversal of 40 years of policing policy that saw police become less and less visible on the streets, he claims. And although they may not solve thousands of crimes, they will have an effect.
“[If you’re] putting people out on the street again … you won’t have more crimes being solved, you’ll prevent crimes from happening in the first place.”
Cryer also claims to have helped deal with recent problems with intimidation and violence on the District Line by getting a dispersal order for parts of the line and an increase in transport police officers in the area.
Brokenshire says local police are being “sucked away” to nearby Romford to deal with the crime stemming from its high concentration of nightclubs, and that paperwork is taking up too much police time.
Although welcoming the neighbourhood policing teams, he says still more police are needed, especially because the neighbourhood teams lack the resources and numbers to cover all the shifts. In addition, police programmes to tackle anti-social behaviour should be streamlined to reduce the time between an offender being identified and action being taken against them.
On the campaign trail, Brokenshire expects law and order will be one of the national themes that plays best in Hornchurch, along with pensions, immigration and healthcare.
He acknowledges Cryer has been a hard-working constituency MP, but claims that his opponent’s reputation for being a Labour “rebel” who often votes against the Government may make his life harder.
“I think he tries to have it both ways,” Brokenshire says. “He tries to argue that he’s independent [of the Government] at the same time as also being the Labour MP when it suits him.
“And I think that so many people do see him as Tony Blair’s person here in Hornchurch that, as much as he may try to argue that he’s independent, he’s still a Labour MP, and I think that people will hold him to account for the Government’s record on that side of things.”
It is true that Cryer’s opposition to war and his support for renationalising the railways and other industries have marked him out from the Government and led to his being rated the 31st most rebellious MP by the Public Whip monitoring website.
However, he says he has made it “fairly clear” when campaigning locally that he is a Labour MP.
“There’s a fair awareness that I’ve been independent of the Government on various issues,” he adds. “[But] you’ve got to go people and say, ‘That’s my record, and if you th
