LABOUR bucked the national trend in the Euro Elections in London’s East End when they won more than 16,000 votes in Tower Hamlets at last night’s count. They were nearly 6,000 ahead of the Conservatives’ 10,400 votes

By Else Kvist

LABOUR bucked the national trend in the Euro Elections in London’s East End when they won more than 16,000 votes in Tower Hamlets at last night’s count.

They were nearly 6,000 ahead of the Conservatives’ 10,400 votes.

Labour’s Graham Taylor admitted: “It’s better than we were expecting. We thought around 30 per cent of the vote and anything better than that is a good result for us.”

TOUGH CHALLENGE

But Tories reckon Labour will need a bigger percentage of the poll at the General Election of Jim Fitzpatrick is to beat off a tough challenge from Respect’s George Galloway at Poplar & Limehouse, to retain Labour’s one MP in Tower Hamlets.

Greens were in third place with 5,406 and the Liberal Democrats fourth with 5,080 at the count at Mile End leisure centre. The UK Independence Party with 2,781 knocked the BNP into fifth place with 2,158.

Jim Lawrie from the Socialist Party of Great Britain remained at the count to the end despite his party scoring just 127 votes.

The turnout was just over 30 per cent, with a total of 46,016 votes.

LONDON VOTE

But it wasn’t enough to push Labour into the Lead when the Tower Hamlets poll was added to the London count at City Hall.

Conservatives won three of London’s eight Euro seats with 479,037 votes, just over 27.4 per cent of the poll. Labour was pipped into second place with 372,590, just over 21 per cent which gives them two seats.

One seat each went to Liberal Democrats with 240,156 votes at 13.7 per cent, Greens with 190,589 at 10.9 per cent and UK Independence with 188,440 at 10.8 per cent.

A team of 60 Tower Hamlets council staff worked through the late afternoon and evening to count the votes from Thursday’s voting at the East End’s 30 polling stations.

They started counting the ballot papers at 5pm and the final checks were finished before 11pm which was declared by returning officer Martin Smith at 11.15pm.

TOWER HAMLETS VOTES

The parties:

Labour 16,138

Conservative 10,393

Green 5,406

Liberal Democrat 5,080

UK Independence 2,781

BNP 2,158

Christian 756

No2EU 626

Socialist Labour 456

Jury Team 341

English Democrat 437

Pro Democracy 192

Socialist Party of GB 127

Yes 2 Europe 77

The independents:

Steven Cheung 211

Sohale Rahman 179

Jan Jananayagam 109

Haroon Saad 93

Gene Alcantara 31