Last night we had our Broadfield branch meeting. It was very informal, with none of that nonsense about reports from officers, matters arising or anything like that but instead just n anything-goes talk about what we want to do in the branch.
So we talked about what are the issues which most concern people in Broadfield, how we retain and engage our members, how we attract new members and so on.
One thing we did was that we set ourselves a very ambitious target for membership – to more than double the number of members in Broadfield. It only occurs to me now that we didn’t set a timescale, which is probably just as well.
Anyway, ninety minutes after the end of the meeting I checked my e-mail and there was something from one of the newer members saying that his mate wants to join and can I make the arrangements. Maybe that target wasn’t so ambitious after all?
I think all branch meetings should be informal discussions about campaigning and encouraging membership.Sadly we are still stuck with the rigid ‘officers reports’ system at branch level and the CLP is modelled on the pre-Gorbachev politburo system.Probably why I rarely go the CLP meetings and don’t actually look forward to branch as much as I should.
That is exactly what I was getting at. We forget that nobody actually told us what any of it means – we picked it all up over years.
We were talking about campaigning and knocking on doors and a newer member asked what we actually do when we knock on doors. It struck me that there is no induction process at all. Also, are we short of volunteers because members are not sure what they may be volunteering for?
I am thinking that a future meeting might be one which explains a lot of the terms and procedure of the party. Maybe get in a guest from Regional HQ to help, and invite new members from other branches, or even throw it open to non-members who are in the Labour Supporters Network or indeed anyone who is interested.
Another future meeting might be training/explanation of campaigning. Have some experienced members act out door-knocking scenarios to demonstrate what we do, and let newbies do some role-playing to experience canvassing in a more friendly, controlled atmosphere to make them more confident about doing it for real.
Anything to escape the relentless boilerplate agenda of apologies/minutes/matters arising/reports/AOB.