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New members?

September 21st, 2005 · Posted by Skuds in Politics · No Comments · Politics

After quite a few sessions of leafletting and canvassing in different parts of town this summer, we finally got round to some door-knocking in Broadfield itself.

There were five of us, not a bad turnout really. Jim McGough, our newly-elected county councillor was there, Brian Quinn, one of our borough councillors from the other half of Broadfield, and Robert Hull, a borough councillor from West Green and member of the council executive, plus Keith from the South East office.

The pessimistic view would be that 16 borough and 5 county councillors didn’t turn up, along with scores of members, but it was enough to do the job, and councillors do have a lot of other demands on their time. In our recent campaigning there have been quite high turnouts of elected members which was not always the case. Its an encouraging trend.

A lot of the people I called on were ones who said that they never vote. I find it hard to just put a Z on the sheet and move on, especially when we are not in an election campaign and not so pressed for time, so I like to find out why people don’t vote. The answer is often “I’m not interested in politics” or “it doesn’t make any difference” and I try to explain why it can make a difference, and how politics does affect you whether you are interested or not. I try to stop myself when their eyes glaze over.

It does help that, being married to her, I know exactly what our candidate for next year is interested in and what she is and will be campaigning to achieve. I hope she gets in – I’ve never slept with a councillor before.

I actually enjoy that sort of evangelising more than just box-ticking. Broadfield traditionally has an extremely poor turnout, barely into double figures most years, so there is obviously a need to address the apathy. Any number of leaflets and newsletters will not do that. If the only way is to actually speak personally, one-to-one with every single non-voter we won’t manage it, but we can have a go.

Having said that, I didn’t meet a single person who supported the Tories, whether they vote or not, and quite a few were positive Labour supporters. At one house the resident and a friend visiting from Southgate were very enthusiastic about Labour. It was a bit disconcerting in a way, to see someone spontaneously cheer Labour and Tony Blair. They were both interested in joining the party, so I gave them the necessary forms, and arranged for someone in the local Southgate party to call and help make sure the visitor, who is new to town, is properly registered to vote.

With a current majority of 3 votes in Southgate, every one counts.

The only problem was finding that the calling cards the party had printed up had the wrong telephone number for Jayne – it was the old number I used to have for my ISDN line before I got broadband, but I have sorted that out too.

I think I will now go and play Van Morrison’s “Days Like This” to reinforce my positive state of mind.

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