When Reform UK took control of Derbyshire county council in May, one small community resisted the surge. KEITH VENABLES describes how unions, activists and anti-hate groups built a grassroots campaign that might just be a model for the rest of the country.
Early in 2025, the Unite Community union set up a forum in Belper, Derbyshire, to organise events and speakers from the broad socialist current. These included talks on economics from a former advisor to Gordon Brown, who lives locally, and on artificial intelligence from an AI expert.
The need to do more than just talk and listen soon became apparent, however, when a local care home, called the Ada Belfield Centre, was threatened with privatisation by the then-Tory county council.
Inspired by the independent left, including the ILP, the group immediately started a campaign, drawing together people from the Labour Party, the Greens, Unite, UNISON and, most importantly, staff, residents and families at the care home.
It quickly became a significant local protest with posters in all the shop windows and a 250-strong demonstration, plus other large rallies and lobbies, and a huge amount of local TV and radio coverage. It’s a struggle that isn’t over yet, as the new Reform-led council continues to push the Tories’ plans to privatise.
In the meantime, however, the campaign has had local political consequences that might just provide lessons for other progressive groups and communities around the country, not least on how to resist the rise of the populist right.
Non-sectarian
Those of us involved have little doubt that by bringing hundreds of people together on a local issue, this campaign was one reason why our corner of Derbyshire stood alone in not electing Reform councillors at May’s local elections. Due partly to our grassroots efforts, this community now looks left not right.
So, how did we do it? First, we took a highly non-sectarian approach to organising, a model Unite Community then used to set up a ‘Reform Watch’ group, which worked closely with Hope not hate, Stand Up to Racism and the Ella Baker School of Organising to challenge far-right rhetoric.
This ‘hope’ group was galvanised partly by EBS training, delivered via Zoom, and has since inspired other local unions, including the NEU, to develop their own responses to Reform and the far right.
The strength of this approach became clear recently when the resignation of a Reform councillor led to a by-election. Guided again by Hope not hate, we distributed a thousand leaflets explaining what’s really behind Reform’s politics, and almost caused a huge upset. Reform retained the seat, but only just – by 23 votes – a dramatic drop in support since May.
Unite Community and its partners will continue to build resistance from the ground up, finding ways to draw everyone together as we campaign, for this is the real antidote to the populist right.
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Keith Venables is a former chair of Health Campaigns Together, chair of East Midlands Unite Community and a coordinator of the Independent Working Class Education Network.
