Midterm elections are traditionally a chance for voters to cast protest votes. But when the people of Rochdale go to the polls on Thursday there will be hardly anyone to protest.
Labor and the Greens withdrew their candidates. The Conservative Party was abroad on a long-planned family holiday the week before election day. He remained a Liberal Democrat but withdrew from the local BBC radio debate, the highest-profile political event.
The most energetic campaigns last week instead came from the political scene: George Galloway, founder of the British Labor Party, who won consecutive by-elections, and Simon Danczuk, the town’s former Labor MP who was sacked by the party for sexting a woman of 17 years. old girl and currently represents Reform UK.
“We don’t deserve this,” said Margaret King, standing outside Marks & Spencer. “This town does not deserve to be so lacking in a decent person who can vote.” This time he’s voting for one of the local independents.
“We were Liberal Democrats for a long time until Cyril Smith, but looking back I can’t believe I voted for him. “There’s a lot of shadow in this town.”
It’s true that Rochdale’s shadows are long: Smith’s decades of child abuse and grooming rings whose young victims were let down by the police are the most obvious. But the town on the edge of Greater Manchester, notable as the birthplace of the modern co-operative movement and once one of the world’s leading cotton processing centres, has other problems too. The Wheatsheaf shopping center was closed and pawn shops and people sleeping rough proliferated outside the city centre.
There’s also a shiny new shopping district called Riverside and a newly renovated city hall; An imposing neo-Gothic building that Rochdalians remind visitors was so impressed by Hitler that he wanted it dismantled and rebuilt in Bavaria.
A little further south is Milkstone Road, which thrives with South Asian restaurants, halal butchers and sweet shops selling laddoo, burfee and other treats popular with the 30% of Muslim Rochdale residents, many of whom are of Pakistani, Kashmiri or Bangladeshi origin. Galloway has spent much of his campaigning there, touring mosques on Friday to talk to worshipers who spilled onto the sidewalks after prayers. The 69-year-old has made Gaza a focal point to appeal to Muslims who are horrified by events there and are dismayed that Keir Starmer has not taken a stronger stance on the issue.
“My father supported the Labor Party, my mother, my uncle, my sisters, my brothers,” said Maqsood Ahmad, who lives in a branch of Chaiiwala, who heard Galloway’s speech. “But they don’t listen to us. You can’t tell the difference between them and the government.
“George Galloway may not be able to do anything about it, but the message we’re sending is: ‘Don’t take our vote for granted.’”
Only 60 per cent of British Muslims who voted Labor in 2019 plan to do the same this year. Galloway hopes those in Rochdale will be more motivated and therefore more important if attendance is low. He is a veteran of by-election campaigns, having defeated Labor at the polls in Bradford West and Bethnal Green and Bow, but losing a bid to win Batley and Spen in 2021 amid accusations of homophobia and dirty tricks.
There was a minor altercation in Rochdale on Thursday; Galloway was invited to speak to a community meeting with other candidates, except for Danczuk, who was initially banned from the building and later offered a two-minute slot, which Danczuk declined. Eventually several other candidates emerged, apart from Galloway and Liberal Democrat Iain Donaldson.
Danczuk appears to have spent more time than Galloway in villages such as Littleborough and Milnrow on the edge of the Pennines, but on Friday he was also trying to appeal to voters by handing out Reform UK leaflets on Milkstone Road. “I think Gaza is an issue for a vocal minority,” he said, adding that the main issue was illegal immigration, with Rochdale receiving “a disproportionate number of refugees over the years”.
Back in the town centre, people in Regal Moon were surprised to learn that the Wetherspoons bar was the official headquarters of the Monster Raving Loony party candidate. Some drinkers there raised immigration as an issue, but none saw Reform UK as an option. “Danczuk had been here before and didn’t do anything then,” said David Brierley, after complaining about how much the ethnic makeup of the town had changed.
People here haven’t heard from Azhar Ali since Labor withdrew its support, but his name will remain on the ballot paper along with former Greens candidate Guy Otten.
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“I think he’ll still get in,” said one of the drinkers, referring to Ali. “People think everything will be okay later.”
But overall there are few people interested in the by-election and they are closer to Margaret King’s disappointment with the candidates presented by the main parties.
Between showers, a queue has formed outside one of Rochdale’s soup kitchens on Drake Street, and Muhammad Aziz gets into a shopping trolley to deliver food he has collected from local businesses and families, offering people bread, muffins and muffins. “I do this every day,” he said. “There is a lot of deprivation and a lot of poverty in Rochdale. We’re trying to make Rochdale better again, to help people get back on their feet.” So how will he vote? “I’m a Conservative,” he says. “Tories are people who can bring money in from London.”