Jayne spent the day in the Labour office today, helping out with various bits & pieces and learning how to access the membership system.  She must have picked it up well enough as she has brought me back a list of all the members in Broadfield Labour Party.

I am impressed, because Charlie shows up on the list.  I only phoned head office yesterday to ask about getting him enrolled, and already he is officially a member.  That is just so different to Putney Labour Party in the 80s where joining was so difficult I gave up.

The strange thing is that we are not pushing Charlie into this at all. He has been looking forward to his 15th birthday and being old enough to join the party, and is now looking forward to going to his first branch meeting.  I’m not so sure of his grasp of all the issues in modern politics, but he understands the main point of the Labour movement: the only question he asked about our involvement was “is it all about helping the community?”

Much of the credit for this attitude actually goes to his school, who are doing a brilliant job of encouraging community involvement.

At 15 and a couple of weeks, he must now be the youngest member in Crawley.

There was another new member on the list too, so I must try and pay him a visit over the weekend.