The Canary went to Southport in the wake of the tragic murders at the end of July. There, we met up with independent councillor Sean Halsall, whom Collective endorsed in the 2024 general election. He welcomed us to the town, showing us round and introducing us to some people living and working there. The Canary will be publishing an on-the-ground report where we met members and leaders of the local community.
We also sat down with Sean to discuss recent events and much more. You can see the conversation and video below, but we’ll have more on our Southport visit later this week.
Southport: the challenges and the hope
From the wide-ranging interview, it was clear that Halsall has a firm idea of what the town and the country need in order to recover from the scourge of austerity and combat the far-right threat arising from the rubble. We spoke about the recent events, about diagnosing our problems properly, and about the mission to build a brighter future. He insisted that “the people coming in from all over to riot wasn’t Southport. That isn’t us and doesn’t represent us.”
He also criticised Keir Starmer’s government, saying “they’re lying to us or… they are economically illiterate”. Without meaningful resistance, he lamented, it looks like we’re “about to enter another five to 10 years of austerity”. Additionally, he stressed that “Starmer has absolutely given the space for fascists to capitalise on working-class communities who don’t feel they’re being delivered for”.
His overall message is one of hope for the country, though. As he emphasised:
People forget that, post-1945, coming out of World War 2, the country was in ruins and in the most debt it had ever been in, and we managed to build the NHS, we managed to build hundreds of thousands, millions of council houses, we managed to build a welfare state that worked for people and gave people security. If we could do that then, there’s no reason we could not have similar ambition now.
The local assemblies that he and others have been involved in, meanwhile, are “about collectivising our communities again” after decades of Thatcherite division. “When the collective comes together”, he stated, “we can achieve incredible things”:
1) Recent events in Southport
“They were just dying to kick off and start problems”
Speaking about the far-right attempts to exploit the horrific murder of three young children to sow division and hate, Halsall said:
These people, the far right, the people who were organising this sort of stuff, would have found a reason whatever. They were just dying to kick off and start problems. And whether that be latching on to the death of three innocent little girls or any other reason why they decided to riot across the country, it’s always gonna be based on falsehood.
He added:
until we start seeing the people who lead these groups arrested and treated properly and see these organisations proscribed, we’re gonna see this happen again and again every time a flash point happens. People will organise around it and descend.
He called people like Nigel Farage “the legitimate face of fascism in this country”, saying:
If they’re given space and oxygen to breathe, people will follow them – people who aren’t properly diagnosing the cause of their problems. Because let’s face it, it’s not easy to find the time to educate yourself on economic ideas and most working-class people are already drowning under bills, so you’re gonna switch on your phone and have a look and see whatever the figures you follow are saying… Nigel Farage and other figures, Richard Tice and the rest of the GB News lot, all have their part to play in this.
Starmer became “part of this problem long before”
Commenting on the response to the far-right race riots from people like Keir Starmer, Halsall insisted that:
when people talk about ‘genuine concerns’ or using the word ‘protesters’ rather than ‘rioters’, that’s gonna be a problem… It masks what’s going on under the surface.
I think Keir Starmer started being part of this problem long before, not through directly influencing it, but not actually talking about people’s material needs and what we can do and what socialism could deliver for people. I think, by not having them arguments properly, it’s given a lot of space to the far right to capitalise on what should be left-wing talking points.
You saw the Reform policies, a lot of them wouldn’t have looked out of place with a far-left party in the manifesto. So they’re clearly trying to appeal to a space to the left of Labour that currently isn’t filled at the moment. Hopefully it will be relatively soon. But yeah, I think Keir Starmer has absolutely given the space for fascists to capitalise on working-class communities who don’t feel they’re being delivered for.
He added:
people’s material conditions being met [is] important. I think people feeling secure is important. If they don’t, then they can very quickly jump to far-right parties and right-wing rhetoric. It’s worrying.
People in Southport pulled together, opposing division
Going around the town, you could see pink ribbons everywhere to mark the mourning of the three girls – especially in the area where the murder occurred. The message was clear – solidarity after the horrific tragedy was the priority. And Halsall described the refreshing community spirit after the far-right riot:
It makes me proud to be from this town that we didn’t allow what happened the night after to overshadow what this should have always been about, which is mourning them three little girls.
The damage the rioters caused didn’t last long. As he said:
The morning after the riots, myself and my wife went down about half eight in the morning expecting to help with the clear up. It already was pretty much spotless by half eight in the morning, with local builders and local businesses coming out to help with rebuilding the wall [of the mosque], clearing things up, sweeping everything up. The community came together very, very quickly. A local cafe sending people down with cups of coffee and stuff for people helping clear up, and cakes and things like that. A local sandwich shop sending out sandwiches to people… that demonstrates what Southport’s about…
It’s an amazing place and I think people have pride in the town… We’re very quick to make sure that what happened with the people coming in from all over to riot wasn’t Southport. That isn’t us and doesn’t represent us.
2) Diagnosing Southport’s problems properly
“Proper investment” sorely needed
Halsall insisted that Southport needs:
like most towns in the country, investment – proper investment, especially in the North. I think since Thatcher – deindustrialisation, a lot of the good-quality jobs which would’ve seen people follow their parents’ footsteps had gone. We relied, we’re relying, on moving to big cities and entering the finance and services sector. I think that leads to precarious work – a lot of precarious work that isn’t gonna give people the security they need. I think, in places like Southport, we see a lot of younger people go to university and never come back
Speaking about the challenge of the off season for hospitality workers, and the real-term pay cuts for public-sector workers, he said:
once you remove that money from the economy as well, it hurts every single part of the economy. It isn’t just those people doing them jobs firsthand. It’s the places they spend their money… That’s where you see the decimation of the High Street.
High streets in Europe aren’t suffering like they are in the UK
Having spent time in European countries as part of the European Trade Union Confederation committee, he insisted:
there’s not really anywhere that compares to Britain. You don’t see boarded up shops when you’re wandering around Berlin or Brussels or Gdynia in northern Poland.
He explained:
we look around Europe and the high streets there aren’t suffering anywhere near like they are in the UK. So this argument that ‘it’s just online retail that’s crippled the High Street’ is kind of farcical…
what is different in the UK is the average working person has got less money in their pockets. The cost of living is crippling us much more than most other countries. What they’ve got is: nationalised energy systems, which keeps their energy prices down; nationalised transport systems, which means you can get from A to B much, much cheaper; proper affordable housing and rent controls and other things that mean you’re not gonna be gouged by a landlord. I think they’re the sort of things we need to be looking at. It’s not necessarily about the end product. It’s about making sure work pays properly and the things we need to keep ourselves alive are affordable for us all.
Then, he insisted:
you’ve got more money in your pocket to spend on luxury items and businesses and socialising.
To sum up, he argued:
this is a story of neoliberalism crippling economies
Are we “about to enter another five to 10 years of austerity”?
Starmer’s lot don’t give him much cause for hope, either. As he explained:
They’re already signalling that there’s no money, which to me means either they’re lying to us or that they are economically illiterate. There is money. We have a central bank. There was plenty of money in COVID to print money off to do what we needed to do. There are things we need to do now which they can finance and borrow or quantitatively ease or whatever you want to do to deliver them things that need delivering. But I can’t see them doing it. They’re tying themselves in knots with the fiscal rules Rachel Reeves has talked about. That’s only gonna hurt working-class people. I can see us about to enter another five to 10 years of austerity.
He added:
With the mandate they’ve got, with the seats they’ve got, they could do some really interesting and creative things and fix some of the real foundational problems with Britain. People forget that, post-1945, coming out of World War 2, the country was in ruins and in the most debt it had ever been in, and we managed to build the NHS, we managed to build hundreds of thousands, millions of council houses, we managed to build a welfare state that worked for people and gave people security. If we could do that then, there’s no reason we could not have similar ambition now.
Blame Westminster and big corporations, not immigrants
Speaking about the possible formation of a new left-wing party in Britain, he emphasised the importance of it boldy opposing the far right’s racist focus on immigration. He said:
it needs to be anti-austerity, but it also needs to be standing on being open and telling people the truth. I think we’ve lost that in politics. People tell people what they wanna hear. I think actually diagnosing the problems in society is important, and diagnosing the actual causes of them problems. I think we’ve seen far too often political parties of every persuasion blame immigrants and people coming on boats – some of the most marginalised groups of people in the world.
They’re not the issues. They’ve got no power. How can they be the people responsible for all our problems if they have no power or authority or responsibility? It’s the people who fill the seats in Westminster who are to blame for the issues we’ve got in this country. It’s the people who fill the boardrooms of the FTSE 100 companies, spiriting the wealth away from workers, that are the cause of these issues. It’s not someone fleeing a war zone.
Opposing landlordism to support independent shops
Speaking about the positive things in Southport, Halsall mentioned the “independent stores”, but also pointed out that:
half of them are empty at the moment because of landlordism with greedy landlords… not reducing the rents on on Lord Street, a lot of them owned by hedge funds based down in London. And that’s an issue. But again, I think the answer to all these is local people owning their local area.
He applies this to hotels too, saying:
A big issue in Southport is the Britannia Group of hotels bought a load of the big, old, historical hotels in Southport that were amazing hotels back when I was growing up and have just completely run them down.
To fix that situation, he suggested community or cooperative ownership that “people could take pride in”.
Another area that needs to improve is awareness raising about what there is to offer. As he said:
The coastline is stunning. I think most people don’t realise how beautiful our beaches [are]… There’s also a load of nature reserves around there.
3) A positive vision for Southport’s future
The community can work to solve its own problems
Halsall has already helped to arrange local assemblies in Southport, in collaboration with Assemble. And he has found great hope in the experience. He insisted:
what came out of it was really inspiring… most people in the room were disagreeing with each other at first, but people were able to have them conversations respectfully, and not screaming at each other like we often see in council chambers and Westminster, and actually come out with answers that made sense to everyone.
And I think by the end of it, everyone was in agreement on what the issues were and ranking them issues in order of importance, but also what some of them solutions to the issues were. So it was the community self-organising to address the problems created by other people for the community.
Key local and national issues that came up were wealth redistribution, education and housing. It was also “completely unanimous that there should be some sort of solidarity with Gaza shown – maybe arms embargoes, maybe looking at sanctions”.
The solution to Thatcherite and far-right division
He now sees assemblies as:
the remedy to the damage Thatcher did and the damage neoliberalism has done to our society and communities, breaking the trade union movement and communities along the way. I think this is the answer to fixing that. It brings people back together, brings people on an equal footing. There’s no hierarchies involved. People are just there to express their opinion and come up with the answers together…
it’s about collectivising our communities again… Thatcher, with her ‘no such thing as society’, did more damage to the fabric of society than I think anyone could imagine in this country. I think these assemblies are a way to rebuild that fabric and bring people back together in a respectful way. It’s fine to disagree in these places. But it seems like we will always come to a respectful disagreement or the answer, and work out ways to address these issues together.
The nature of the collective is so powerful once it’s unleashed. And we’ve seen that in the trade union movement but I think just in society in general. When the collective comes together, we can achieve incredible things. And I think Thatcher and that ilk realised that and did everything they could to break it.
“Listening to each other is a positive thing”
He continued by stressing that:
us as a species have only got to where we are because of the collective nature of how we do things… A good expression I’ve heard is ‘there’s no such thing as a conservative baby, because you don’t last very long if you’re an individualist as a baby’. You need and rely on people to support and look after you to get to an age where you can look after yourself.
‘Human nature’ – I hear all the time – ‘is greed and stuff like that’. It isn’t. It’s looking after each other. It’s supporting each other. Again, we don’t get very far as a species if we aren’t taking care of each other. It’s only through cooperation, working together, that we get to where we are.
So yeah, absolutely. I think assemblies and any other model of just bringing communities back together and working with each other and listening to each other is a positive thing. I don’t have such an issue with people on their phones and stuff. I have an issue with the people who control what the apps are on the phones and your Elon Musks and people like that, who are very clearly using those platforms to generate division.
Speaking of social media in particular, he argued:
if there was some sort of collectively owned social media platform, that could be a pretty amazing thing that would do pretty amazing stuff… I think it would be a great space to organise ourselves and it would probably take a lot of power away from big corporations. If they haven’t got control over things, then they can’t pump nonsense into us all day and convince us we need things that we don’t need.
The Southport community needs to own the projects of the future
One clear commitment Halsall has is to the empowerment of communities themselves. He explained:
In the election, I talked a lot about worker-owned businesses. I think that that gives that good quality work where people can be proud to go and actually see the fruits of their labour born out.
It’s important, he insisted, to have:
businesses that, during the peak season, are making loads of money and that money’s staying in the town and not being spirited away to the Cayman Islands or any other multinational’s offshore account.
That way, he said:
it’s gonna be more resilient – the economy – and it will be able to tick over in them times when it isn’t as busy.
In terms of the types of businesses, he stressed:
it’s up to the people involved. I’m very much a big believer in people making democratic decisions for themselves and deciding what they wanna do. I don’t think it’s mine or anyone else’s place to step in and say what we should do or what we need. I’m one person in the community here.
At the same time, he highlighted the key role of empowering unions again, saying:
For proper justice to be delivered, we need a reset of the trade union legislation back to pre-Thatcher. We need to give unions the power to organise themselves and take the shackles off workers to win things…
Trade unions will address the balance, not just in organised workplaces but the other workplaces without organised labour are competing for that labour with those organised workplaces, so that drags up everyone’s terms, conditions and pay.
Economic justice and environmental justice should go hand in hand
Halsall also argued that:
The funds are there to do all sorts of weird and wonderful projects. I think a good place to put some of that money would be in community projects, whether that’s community energy… or worker-owned shops. I think these sort of industries will pay dividends for the town and the local economy and keeping the money here and making our economy thrive.
And he pointed out that “there are many countries that own their own energy, also own most of our energy networks”. He added:
We’re a coastal seaside town. One thing we’ve not got any shortage of is wind. So let’s look at getting some wind turbines built… There’s groups already in existence that have been trying to get wind turbines into Southport, owned by the community generating energy for the community.
These sorts of projects, I think will pay dividends, cause… as well as actually… lowering people’s bills, addressing the climate emergency to some extent…, we’ll also play a part in changing how people think of these things – think about ownership models, and think about the climate. These are as educational tools as they are actually productive tools.
He concluded:
I don’t think there’d be any issue with us looking at doing something that both addressed the climate emergency, brought a little bit of economic justice to people in this country, and just improved the local area.
Featured image via the Canary
