The local party – in their wisdom – asked me to become the new Convenor when the AGM took place at the end of November 2009.
I’ve sought advice from some people outside the local party on this. One said “no, don’t do it”; another “at least you know where you will have a problem and can compensate”; and another “only do it if you can have a positive agenda to implement otherwise don’t bother”.
So, I decided to “give it a go” for 1 year with an “Agenda for Change”. Below are my thought’s on this.
This local party used to have a reputation for campaigning. Since the 2007 elections that’s gone, for a variety of reasons we’ve stopped doing what we were good at. With 3 elections taking place over the next 3 years there is a need to get back to being a campaigning organisation.
The Committee of the Local Party (Executive) only needs to meet once per quarter and thats what will happen. It does not need to have sub-committees which just take up people’s time with extra meetings anyway. This free’s everyone up to campaign. What we need is small groups of people to do different activities. 2/3 people to do literature; 2/3 people to do canvassing; 2/3 for data input; 2/3 to organise delivery; 2/3 for media (including social) and so on. By using email and, more especially a group email list so that discussions can be conducted that way and everyone sees what others are doing, planning, talking about etc. People can work across these little groups as and when they want/need to. They can come together to discuss things in person over coffee or a pint – depends on time of day. The Committee will meet quarterly and review everything that’s going on.
Campaigning
We don’t have the people to deliver every ward. We can only deliver patches so that’s what we do, just print enough leaflets for areas where we have deliverers and nowhere else. Of course we want to increase the amount we can put out and that’s why we need to campaign – to increase our delivery networks over the course of the next year and get our message across.
Example, we have no deliverers in Aberlady so what we do is get our canvassers to deliver a survey and get the results back that night. Pass these on for data input and anlysis. Any survey where the person indicates they might vote for us is then passed to the councillor/candidate for a visit the following week. That visit is to confirm voting intention and ask if that person can help – deliver, poster, helper donate, become member. The intention is to get a couple of deliverers for that area. Meantime the literature team are putting together a leaflet providing feedback on the survey which is then delivered in week 4. If we’ve got a couple of deliverers they can be immediately roped in just to deliver Aberlady. If no-one is found, we still deliver the feedback leaflet anyway and forget about delivering there again for a couple of years. Remember, we’ve still got data from the excercise, for target letters during an election, email addresses to put our on mailing system and mobile numbers to send reminders to. It’s not been wasted. Meantime the team moves on to somewhere else and repeats the excercise. And we keep going on like that month by month, working different patches in different areas.
By next year’s AGM
Having completed about 9 or10 months of this, we should be able to produce a draft “Activities Plan” for discussion at next year’s AGM. That will indicate when canvassing is being done, leaflets going out, social events and fund-raisers during 2011. Leaflets will hopefully have bigger print runs by then as we’ll have more deliverers. There should be 6 fund-raising events throughout the year – one in each ward (Musselburgh counts as one). There could be 5 or 6 social events planned as well.
Candidates
We need to find 2 candidates for Holyrood next year. We can’t fight just East Lothian, we need to fight North Midlothian & Musselburgh too even if it’s only the Musselburgh area! We have to think of the Council elections in 2012. If we agree that Council is more important, any Holyrood candidate has to realise this and the Holyrood elections in 2011 will not be about them but how they can help get 14 councillors elected the following year so that we can run the council on our own with no coalition.
To that end we need to find candidates for those elections too by the end of 2010. Why? They need to spend the following year putting a manifesto together with the existing councillors. To that end if anyone is thinking of standing for council get involved in activities now, learn how to canvass, write leaflets, etc. Potential candidates will go through an “application process” during next summer – that’s to help you and the local party. Existing councillors will also go through a similar process – the questions will be different – but it gives them a chance to say if they’re standing again.
Finally, none of this will be easy, mistakes will be made, some of what’s suggested might not work and there’s things I’ve left out. The next couple of meetings are for discussion and setting this up. There will be no agenda for these meetings. It’s about change, doing things differently, doing away with rigid committee structures to see if that helps us all become campaigners again.
The about turn
The local party – in their wisdom – asked me to become the new Convenor when the AGM took place at the end of November 2009.
I’ve sought advice from some people outside the local party on this. One said “no, don’t do it”; another “at least you know where you will have a problem and can compensate”; and another “only do it if you can have a positive agenda to implement otherwise don’t bother”.
So, I decided to “give it a go” for 1 year with an “Agenda for Change”. Below are my thought’s on this.
This local party used to have a reputation for campaigning. Since the 2007 elections that’s gone, for a variety of reasons we’ve stopped doing what we were good at. With 3 elections taking place over the next 3 years there is a need to get back to being a campaigning organisation.
The Committee of the Local Party (Executive) only needs to meet once per quarter and thats what will happen. It does not need to have sub-committees which just take up people’s time with extra meetings anyway. This free’s everyone up to campaign. What we need is small groups of people to do different activities. 2/3 people to do literature; 2/3 people to do canvassing; 2/3 for data input; 2/3 to organise delivery; 2/3 for media (including social) and so on. By using email and, more especially a group email list so that discussions can be conducted that way and everyone sees what others are doing, planning, talking about etc. People can work across these little groups as and when they want/need to. They can come together to discuss things in person over coffee or a pint – depends on time of day. The Committee will meet quarterly and review everything that’s going on.
Campaigning
We don’t have the people to deliver every ward. We can only deliver patches so that’s what we do, just print enough leaflets for areas where we have deliverers and nowhere else. Of course we want to increase the amount we can put out and that’s why we need to campaign – to increase our delivery networks over the course of the next year and get our message across.
Example, we have no deliverers in Aberlady so what we do is get our canvassers to deliver a survey and get the results back that night. Pass these on for data input and anlysis. Any survey where the person indicates they might vote for us is then passed to the councillor/candidate for a visit the following week. That visit is to confirm voting intention and ask if that person can help – deliver, poster, helper donate, become member. The intention is to get a couple of deliverers for that area. Meantime the literature team are putting together a leaflet providing feedback on the survey which is then delivered in week 4. If we’ve got a couple of deliverers they can be immediately roped in just to deliver Aberlady. If no-one is found, we still deliver the feedback leaflet anyway and forget about delivering there again for a couple of years. Remember, we’ve still got data from the excercise, for target letters during an election, email addresses to put our on mailing system and mobile numbers to send reminders to. It’s not been wasted. Meantime the team moves on to somewhere else and repeats the excercise. And we keep going on like that month by month, working different patches in different areas.
By next year’s AGM
Having completed about 9 or10 months of this, we should be able to produce a draft “Activities Plan” for discussion at next year’s AGM. That will indicate when canvassing is being done, leaflets going out, social events and fund-raisers during 2011. Leaflets will hopefully have bigger print runs by then as we’ll have more deliverers. There should be 6 fund-raising events throughout the year – one in each ward (Musselburgh counts as one). There could be 5 or 6 social events planned as well.
Candidates
We need to find 2 candidates for Holyrood next year. We can’t fight just East Lothian, we need to fight North Midlothian & Musselburgh too even if it’s only the Musselburgh area! We have to think of the Council elections in 2012. If we agree that Council is more important, any Holyrood candidate has to realise this and the Holyrood elections in 2011 will not be about them but how they can help get 14 councillors elected the following year so that we can run the council on our own with no coalition.
To that end we need to find candidates for those elections too by the end of 2010. Why? They need to spend the following year putting a manifesto together with the existing councillors. To that end if anyone is thinking of standing for council get involved in activities now, learn how to canvass, write leaflets, etc. Potential candidates will go through an “application process” during next summer – that’s to help you and the local party. Existing councillors will also go through a similar process – the questions will be different – but it gives them a chance to say if they’re standing again.
Finally, none of this will be easy, mistakes will be made, some of what’s suggested might not work and there’s things I’ve left out. The next couple of meetings are for discussion and setting this up. There will be no agenda for these meetings. It’s about change, doing things differently, doing away with rigid committee structures to see if that helps us all become campaigners again.