The uphill struggle to try and get the UAF established in Crawley continued last night at a hastily-convened meeting which was organised by someone from the local SWP/Respect party.

Attendance was poor, but the meeting clashed with the council’s executive meeting and the England/Andorra game, was only notified to a few people, and only with a week’s notice. I know 3 or 4 people personally who wanted to go but already had other plans.

But it was not a total waste of time. A small group from Horsham district came along, so the idea of thinking about a combined Crawley & Horsham UAF is a possibility, and we generated a couple of concrete plans.

One plan is to try and get a Love Music Hate Racism event organised (or rather two events: one in Crawley and one in Horsham) although that is not necessarily aimed at this election campaign.

Another plan is to hold another meeting and hope for a better attendance by having more notice and more publicity. I think we are looking at Wednesday 11th April, so if anyone is interested, get in touch and I will let you know when its confirmed. I will get the word out to the local Labour party over the weekend, and try to encourage the Tories and Lib-Dems to get someone along as well.

Even in the middle of important local elections I think we have to put our inherent tribalism aside for a common cause.

The real challenge is to try and involve younger people, and those who are not affiliated to any political party at all. Any suggestions will be welcome!

It was a good meeting though. Despite the rivalries between Labour and SWP/Respect it was one of the friendliest political meetings I have ever been to.