Together we beat the far right at the ballot box

With your help, the far right had a terrible time at the local elections! Thanks to the backing of HOPE not hate supporters around the country we made sure we defeated the far-right this time out.

During the campaign, we had two aims, prevent far right success at the ballot box and make sure young people were aware of the changes to the way we vote. And, we smashed it!

Our team worked tirelessly throughout the campaign to beat the far-right, here’s what they got up to:

• We targeted the far-right parties Britain First and British Democrats in Salford, Dartford and Epping Forest. We ran several days of action in each ward, with Britain First losing in Salford and Dartford, and former BNP man Julian Leppert losing his seat in Epping Forest. Result!

• Elsewhere, as part of our commitment to raising awareness to the changes to the way we vote, we built this fantastic interactive map through which supporters could draw their MP’s attention to the level of local disenfranchisement. This tool was a trial ahead of the General Election and was a big success!

• We also wrote and produced two Voter ID awareness videos, which we carefully targeted at young people between the ages of 18-34 living in the North West to let them know about the changes to the way we vote. They were seen over a whopping 1.5 million times during the campaign!

• Our researchers trawled the candidate nomination papers to pull together a blog on all the notable candidates from across the far-right and radical right. This formed the backbone of our campaigning work, and was a useful reference point for our supporters. You can check that out here.

• HNH researchers painstakingly pieced together a dossier on what we believe to be electoral fraud committed by the leader of Britain First, Paul Golding, which was then sent to the authorities. You can read a summary of the evidence we collected here.

• Finally, we worked with The Guardian on a story about five Conservative councillors who stood for election this time out, but who had previously been suspended for alleged racism and Islamophobia. We will be doing much more on the mainstreaming of hate in the coming weeks and months.

We have a plan to go much further at the 2024 General Election, but we need help us get there. Will you help?