An Interview With Lewisham Borough Councilor Hau-Yu Tam

The Activist sat down with Hau-Yu Tam, a councilor from London, to discuss the landscape of the British left and the importance of community work. 

I ran into Hau-Yu, a then-Independent councilor from London, in January at the Chinese Staff and Workers Association — a workers’ centre in downtown Manhattan — and asked for an interview. I hope you find it as interesting as we did. Interview edited for brevity and intent. 

Update 4/1/25: Councilor Tam has joined the Green Party of England and Wales and sits as the only Green Party councilor on the Lewisham Borough Council. 

T: Many reading might not be familiar with British local politics. Who are you? 

HY: My name is Hau-Yu. I’m a community worker, campaigner, and local councilor. London is carved up into 32 boroughs, 32 councils. I’m a councilor for the Borough of Lewisham – elected for a particular ward. Lewisham’s got 300,000 people and Evelyn — the ward that I represent — about 15,000 people. 

I was elected as a Labour councilor in May 2022, but stood down from the Labour Party last July. My decision was motivated by the unforgivable response to the genocide in Palestine by most quarters of the Party. The Party tried (unsuccessfully) to expel me on the basis of engaging in pro-Palestine activities, though I believe it is our moral duty to fight for Palestine.

I also work at a migrant charity. I’ve had 10 years as a community worker and campaigner for anti-racism, migrant rights, and local issues. I was a political ‘late bloomer’. I joined the Party in 2019 during the final push for Corbynist socialism, having door-knocked for some socialist candidates backed by Momentum. I didn’t feel empowered by electoral politics and could only believe the change I saw happening through community development and organising. I was politicized but not at all in an electoral way. 

Representation politics made me more electorally-minded as I wanted to support an MP of my ethnic heritage to get elected. This led me to join ESEA 4 Labour (then Chinese for Labour), which was my entry point. In retrospect, this was deeply problematic on my part. I was not yet astute enough to know what it would be like for colleagues to actively organise against my ideologies and praxis. The Labour Party is traditionally a big-tent left party. Now, I wouldn’t say a lot of it is left at all. 

I also act and write, creatively and non-fiction. My current writing focus is British Chinese working-class histories and experiences; millennial and older generations.

I wanted to be a councilor because I wanted to build socialism locally, and many at the time were really up for the project. Though I didn’t quite feel ready, I threw myself in with that group of people. I think it’s been a mixed bag! But, there’s been lots of learning, stand-out interventions, and changes we’ve made.

T: For about 10 years, you worked as a community worker. What did that entail, and how did that impact your views on electoral politics? 

HY: I did literature at university – a very white curriculum. We studied a whole module on Victorian literature without touching on colonialism. I tried to find literature that spoke to me. I read Frank Chin – a Chinese American playwright – and chose that for my coursework. My dissertation was on Mahmoud Darwish, the national poet of Palestine. I ran projects like the Palestine Humanitarian Awareness Project, which showcased Palestinian stories, art, and struggles to students and the local community to correct the dehumanising narratives of “terrorism” and “antisemitism” which were prevalent in my university community.

After my degree, I felt quite depressed. I stumbled into a South London charity that encouraged young people to use their creativity to be politically active – working with their local council, running in elections, etc. At university, I first became aware of police brutality. I previously thought that the police supported communities. At 19, It was a rude awakening to realize that police hunted, spied on, and killed Black and brown people, migrants, and people battling mental illnesses. I thought that our legal and justice systems were fair, I bought into the model minority myth a lot – it’s how I was raised. 

That began to crack later into my degree. As I worked in Chinese community centers, youth programs, and elder programs, I noticed that these people were being underserved by untrained volunteers. They needed support, but they felt they couldn’t access mainstream public services. So I dedicated more of my life to community work to help these people. Then, I got involved with campaigns to save and spotlight certain community centers or community services. 

Eventually, I met people who were very politically engaged, though I didn’t see myself as very politically engaged. In hindsight, I was, which led me to attend a very political college for my masters (SOAS). I was student union co-president and very involved with activism on campus – a difficult journey. That paved the way towards me organizing a lot against racism and fascism during Covid.

T: You mentioned around the age of 19, you were radicalized into understanding the police as an oppositional force. The 2011 London riots were around that time, was that a really politicizing moment for you?

HY: Not really. I went up to university in 2011. But my school, St. Andrews, was in a small fishing village – pretty elitist, heavily institutionalised/liberal, and non-radical. At the time, I was not astute enough to understand the implications of tuition fees increases beyond thinking they were bad for us young people.

I wasn’t politicized until the end of that year, through acting and the friends I had made through it. Acting, after writing, was my big passion. I went to St. Andrews so that I could do theatre. I think it’s true that the things that you’re very passionate about or people that you love open your eyes. When we started having political conversations, it finally stuck with me.

As for police brutality, I think it really started with me listening to my best friend who believed that racism is in everything, and has shaped everything. I previously thought racism was interpersonal, but conversations with him taught me how structural racism is. 

So I think that changed my way of seeing things, and that led me to critical theory. I also went to a conference on spy cops in Conway Hall about police spying on families and communities in the UK. Then, I came back to St. Andrews, and I had a community that was interested in exploring these problems. At the time, there was a man who was asphyxiated to death by police officers in a Scottish village next to where we were in Kirkcaldy. His name was Sheku Bayoh, and I followed that case a lot. I went to his funeral, and I spoke to his family. I always felt I needed to have done more, but I think that case galvanized other friends and I. 

T: Let’s jump to your first campaign for council. How did it go with the Labour Party then? There was Keir Starmer as the new leader. Was there any inter-Labour Party opposition to your run? How did the campaign go?

HY: It seems a completely different time now, because even though this was post-Corbyn, the left-wing purges and aping of Tory/Reform policies wouldn’t happen until a bit later. I was surprised to be tapped on the shoulder by Labour local activists – I felt I hadn’t distinguished myself. I just turned up to Labour Party stuff while thinking, “This is not as rich as community work”. 

I was enthusiastic, but there was not a lot of political discussion in my local Constituency Labour Party (Lewisham East CLP, almost like a local Democratic Party Club) which was more right-wing. Actually, the person that rang me up was the Mayor of Lewisham at the time (now MP), Damien Egan. He is a big Zionist, and he’s married to an IDF veteran. He’s also a chair of Labour friends for Israel. He’s gone to Israel since the onslaught on Gaza. 

I think they were thinking, “you’re Chinese, you’re a woman, you’re young, you do anti-racism stuff, you’re not someone who the Labour Party can’t work with”. When I got elected to the council, many of us were new and young. It was 55% women and quite a few of us were queer. It felt weirdly positive back in the 2022 election. I didn’t face any intra-party obstacles – apart from Momentum, ironically!

There was a bit of drama because we have women’s quotas. In my seat there was just one reserved woman’s seat. There was internal politics there getting that selection. After that point, it was super easy because Lewisham is a Labour stronghold. It won’t be in the next election, because there will be more Greens and right-wing politicians fighting for those spaces. 

The election campaign itself was fairly straightforward. My biggest enemy was myself – thinking it would be too difficult. I had actually dropped out altogether, before being persuaded back. But it wasn’t like other campaigns where people actually work against you because I was running for Labour. It was a different time.

T: Did you find that over time, in the local council, your job became harder? You described your election as this weirdly optimistic moment. but there were obviously a few snags along the way.

HY: It has become so much harder. I’ve only been a backbencher during my tenure. When you’re on the backbench without any posts, and you’re in the political minority – it’s hard. Then I quit Labour, and became a minority of one. I’ve been told many times I’m too nice and an idealist.

Lewisham Labour was factional, like every Labour Group. As a socialist, I worked with other socialists. We would discuss budget cuts, because every year, on a local government level, we have to keep balanced budgets, meaning passing budget cuts. You can’t be a councilor for Labour unless you agree to do that no matter what.

I did first-year things – made my maiden speech on Lewisham being a Borough of sanctuary. But in my second and third year, I was vice chair of Safer Stronger Communities, which scrutinises equalities, policing, libraries, communities. We did some really great scrutiny work on the Public Space Protection Order, Live Facial Recognition, and on workforce equalities. We had a strong link with local unions, which were then in a healthier state, and would compare workers’ testimonies to the Council leadership’s.

Despite our good work, if you don’t have proper left representation in the cabinet, a lot that you do from the scrutiny and the backbench side can be overruled. So we began to understand that you have to really capture positions of power in order to make change. Some of us were blacklisted from running and some of us (usually the more compromising) were encouraged to run. The socialist left councilors that can actually get ahead in this system are already people that are more predisposed to compromising, which split us in two – soft and hardline. 

The left in Lewisham’s local government context were quite divided. We all had different positionalities and trajectories. Some would be “allowed” or “empowered” to stand for certain senior positions, but others wouldn’t. There was all kinds of disagreement about how we’d get to those places. 

I joined to build socialism locally, which became harder. I wanted to lean into my activist side and do something where I could organize more openly, even if I lose power in other ways. I was never happy with the amount that we did. It reached the point where they tried to expel me with allegations of organizing a Palestine protest against the very council that I’m a member of. This was all cooked up because I was talking to activists in Lewisham. 

I gave my evidence and made my plea to stay. I was mostly exonerated in the end. At that point, I continued as a Labour councilor for a while, but I’d stopped believing in it. I’d already started affiliating myself with independent MP candidates across London and that’s why I eventually stood down. But I still want to be a councilor, that’s why I’m an independent councilor in Lewisham. 

T: How did you use those rights and responsibilities to push your politics?

HY: With Lewisham being a borough sanctuary, I try to push for more anti-hostile environment and pro-migration work. Every councilor focuses on a few themes as well as being an all-rounder in terms of casework. My thematic focuses were migrant rights, migrant justice, anti-racism and community development, and also equalities, which includes scrutinizing police work.

As the vice chair of Safer Stronger Communities, we would push certain arguments, such as Public Space Protection Orders criminalizing marginalized people – the homeless, migrants, and people in destitution. Because PSPOs, depending on how they’re enforced, are about finding people who engage in antisocial behaviors. We believe PSPOs represent a deepening in the criminalization of poor people, so we scrutinized it. We brought in evidence from different bodies and gave a robust set of recommendations. That’s a way in which we use the committee. 

But again, this speaks to how centralized local politics is, because that was eventually overruled. We delayed it by about a year, and we forced them to properly review it and make recommendations. But they did a really shit report and didn’t answer our questions.

T: You mentioned towards the end of your term that you were affiliated with independent candidates across London? One of the most famous independent candidates that cycle was Jeremy Corbyn, and I’m a very big fan. Were there any specific stories of him you’d like to share?

HY: A really moving personal moment for me was during the 2024 general election, when I secretly went out door knocking for Jeremy, Leanne Mohammed, and Andrew Feinstein.  Particularly for Jeremy, everytime I would knock on someone’s door, they had some sort of story: “Jeremy’s got me the place that I’m in now”, “Jeremy solved my immigration case as my MP”, “I always see Jeremy”.

I think we were really worried that he would not be re-elected, but in the end, he returned with a 7,000 or 8,000 majority.

He exemplifies strong community work values, strong left values. Someone who really loves the community that he serves. It’s not about him. And I think we need to build people like him.

T: In a talk of ours, you described the Labour Party as “so yesterday” because of its shift to the center. Many would argue that Left-Independents can’t provide the same party-policy coherence needed to fight the organized far-right, Reform UK, and the Tories. Do you think that the non-Labour left can defeat the far-right nationally as Independents? Should there be a united front of Left-Independents?

HY: Left-independents alone cannot do this. Everyone recognizes we need to unite. But, some left-Independents think we should stick to ourselves as an independent force. Some are even more local-focused. Some say “just build in that specific constituency”. And when we’ve secured that, we think about the wider movement. 

There are semi-pluralists like me – third parties (Plaid Cymru, Greens, Left-independents) uniting (even with the socialists in Labour) on the basis of shared common values: anti-racism, anti-facism, anti-capitalism, pro-LGBT rights, pro-community. 

We can see the Labour Party as “yesterday” – a weirdly American, Lizzie Mcguire-ish thing for me to say – while recognizing the right is very good at coalescing and organizing, and building off lowest common denominators while we perpetually split. We’re in such a bad state to be so purist. That doesn’t mean we’re not disciplined. It doesn’t mean that we don’t reserve the right of criticism, but too much energy is dissipated splitting. 

T:  Your seat’s up for re-election in 2026. You’ve gone from completely anti-electoral to finding some value in it. So what’s next for you and UK Left-Independent politics at-large?

HY: In politics, there’s little you can control. An important part of our organizing must be focused on winning elections. The Global Left needs to be more strategic and communicative with each other. 

I was correct to be cynical, but I can see the purchase in incorporating electoral strategy into whatever I’m doing. I’ve had a change in my journey— from being someone who was anti-political and inherited powerlessness, to a weird hybrid of radical, soft-left, and unfortunately, liberal politics. 

I’m now comfortable describing myself as a democratic socialist— not a Socialist Democrat —who would do more direct action. 

I want to take some of my understanding of policy making and infuse that with the campaigns I’m doing. It’s important to see that even though we didn’t do what we wanted to, we shouldn’t become demoralized, and should have hopes of building up independent parties in Lewisham. 

What’s next for me is working closely with independents across London on certain projects. Housing is probably a number one issue, along with climate justice, which I feel I need to do more, whether as a councilor or an activist.

I hope I’ve contributed to a legacy of more accountability or more Independent candidates in Lewisham. I want to drill a lot more civic engagement into the community work I do in a way where we’re making gains from the state but not being Reformist. Things like nationalizing community centers, working to create community land trusts, and more progressive planning. I’ve yet to change the dial as a councilor. But even if you change it only a little bit, you’ve got to keep pushing.