Why the UK’s young people are taking to the streets in support of the Labour Party

I’m in a packed out Trade Union head office in Battersea, South West London, and there are people bustling about in all directions. It’s blustery outside but hot in here, the warmth and noise of at least a hundred people flooding into the lobby, smacking stacks of clipboards together and shuffling leaflets. It’s a Sunday, and I’m lurking in a small group of other young people, as we make smalltalk about where we were out clubbing last night, and what was said in the BBC leaders’ debate on Friday. 

Such is the double-life of being a young person during this general election campaign. Many of us have become deeply immersed in party politics over the last five weeks of a sustained, streamlined campaign to kick out the current Conservative government. Youth engagement stats raised eyebrows and crossed fingers just a fortnight ago, showing that 875,000 more people have registered to vote in this election than the last, and two thirds of that group are under 35. It also seems more and more young people are taking their engagement to the next level—going out to canvass for the party, knocking on doors and talking to constituents about Labour’s manifesto.

“It’s been exhausting, but incredibly uplifting—there’s a real sense of purpose to it,” says Samuel, 25, who works for the Labour party, and is on his 23rd consecutive day of canvassing. Most canvasses take a couple of hours, but on many days Samuel has been doing multiple canvasses in multiple constituencies. I ask how he keeps up the momentum. 

“I can’t stand the idea of not doing everything I could have done to stop a Conservative government, in terms of the pain that they have already brought to this country,” he says. The Conservative party devised a policy of austerity, a severe regime of cuts to public services and benefits, which has seen not only 130,000 deaths, but rising homelessness too. 

Labour’s manifesto, which Samuel describes as “unapologetically socialist”, positions itself as the antithesis to this, a fully costed alternative that says it will spend 83 billion pounds, end austerity in 100 days, nationalise the railways, start a green industrial revolution, axe tuition fees and reverse benefit cuts, among reams of other positive policies. Right-wing critics argue Labour is promising too much “free stuff”, but many young people feel differently.

“It seems like Labour leadership have travelled across the country and fully absorbed the issues, and the deprivation that is existing around the country, and they’ve come back with serious plans,” Samuel says. “They’ve been to, for example, northern towns that are completely cut off from the railways, and have terrible WiFi, and come up with answers to that.”

Tara, a 27-year-old journalist, says she wanted to hit the streets to feel more proactive about changing the state of the country. “Being online quite a lot, it’s easy to spiral and feel kind of helpless about what is going on. This is a nice way of getting on the ground and having conversations about the issues that matter to them.”

Today, in Battersea, this is exactly what we will do. In the last general election, the constituency’s Labour candidate Marsha de Cordova won by just over 2000 votes, so these final days are especially crucial in making sure Marsha will be comfortably reelected. We gather for a briefing in the car park, put on our red stickers, red scarves and red lipstick, and begin to wind round Battersea’s backstreets in the rain.

This is when I chat to Osetta, a 19-year-old student, who says increased NHS funding is just one reason she’s committed to Labour this year. “I’m not comfortable with the state of the country in terms of social care and healthcare.” Osetta tells me her brother has sickle cell anemia, and that his treatment has been delayed for months.

“If the NHS continues like this I can’t really see how the family would cope.” This sentiment is rife across the country—Boris Johnson, the Conservative leader, has been confronted a number of times in the last year and on the campaign trail by medics, nurses, patients and their friends and family. Just a day after we canvass, an image of a boy with suspected pneumonia, forced to sleep on a hospital floor due to lack of beds, makes the front page of the Daily Mirror. 

There’s also the issue of race. Many young people of colour are hurt and outraged at the Conservatives’ track record of racism and anti-immigrant policy. Last year, the Windrush scandal revealed that Caribbeans and other former commonwealth citizens were being deported and denied access to resources like NHS treatment and their bank accounts; showing the impact of Theresa May’s “hostile environment”. When Osetta and I knock on one man’s door, he starts shouting about immigrants, and saying asylum seekers are stealing resources. He lunges in my face, tears up the leaflet I’m holding and slams the door. We quietly walk away, and knock the next door.

While people of colour are more likely to vote Labour, Radhika, a 29-year-old campaigner explains how the Conservatives are targeting communities of colour in unique, and globally significant ways. “The political climate in India has affected the way that middle class Hindu Indian voters are voting in this election,” she says, referring to far right Hindu nationalist prime minister Narendra Modi. “It’s becoming an actual problem. I’ve seen WhatsApp messages circulating saying Labour is anti-Hindu and anti-India.” 

For this reason, Radhika thinks it’s important that she’s on the doorstep to represent, and has taken the whole week off of work to keep campaigning. “I don’t see that many brown faces going out to do this,” she says.

It’s that determination in the face of inequality, injustice, and misinformation that really characterises this campaign, especially among young people. Despite how bleak and sometimes frightening some confrontations can be, there are also heartening conversations, with families, migrants, disabled voters, and those in precarious work. 

The spirit of the day is overwhelmingly positive. The darkness and pessimism of the polls, which still largely predict a Tory majority, of course still looms. But perhaps holding onto this optimism is the only way we can really carry on, a mechanism for survival in the face of great national adversity. 

Everything is ramping up. Samuel says: “What I love about the final two weeks of an election is that it gets popular. People bring mates, who bring mates, who bring mates, and it becomes a bit of a movement.” 

It’s true, young people will keep spreading the message in any way they can—whether that’s on the doorstep, on social media, or having conversations with family and friends. “I want Labour voters to become Labour campaigners for this last week,” Samuel says. “We are all taking responsibility for this.”

Micha Frazer-Carroll is Opinions Editor at Gal-Dem.

All photography by Myah Jeffers.