Today I want us to think about a rather unusual chap called Ian Stuart – he was the "area manager" or whatever it was called of the Liberal Party in the Home Counties in the 1980s. On our rare meetings I found him to be a rather genial cove, although I gather he was not always popular with the party hierarchy. Anyway, it was his lot to be the Liberal Party candidate in the long-forgotten Uxbridge by election of 1972.
Long forgotten because, on the very same day (7 December) the Liberal Party won a Famous Victory in Sutton and Cheam. Graham Tope triumphed, Liberal hearts were gladdened, and progress suddenly seemed a little bit more inevitable.
Ian Stuart told me that the only instructions he received from party HQ regarding his campaign were given to him by Jeremy Thorpe himself:
"Go to Uxbridge and make a nuisance of yourself. You are going to fight a futile campaign, but in a good cause. You are a diversionary tactic from the main battle in Sutton & Cheam. If you don’t come back with at least two writs issued against you, then you haven’t been doing your job!"
I don’t think any writs were issued, but Ian certainly did his job. As he was the Convenor of Shop Stewards at Heathrow Airport at the time he was fully acquainted with the intricacies of the largest employer in the area, and was indeed able to stir up mischief. He certainly generated enough press releases, silly stunts and outrageous quotes to distract from Sutton and Cheam and keep Conservative and Labour activists away from the target seat. And he went down to a heroic defeat.
Bit here’s the thing – at least he tried. He knew what was needed of him – to fight as good a good campaign as he possibly could, with no money, half a dozen members, and no prospect of any external help.
Now compare that with the situation today. The Liberal Democrats are infinitely richer in terms of money, activists, experience, MPs and councillors – but the national party seems to have given up on the idea of fighting elections, even as diversionary tactics.
Why has the national party made so little effort recently, in Rochdale, Gorton, Makerfield, South Aberdeen? No doubt we could name others as well. I have no doubt that the candidates and local parties were doing their best, but where was the support for those campaigns? There wasn’t even an email asking for money.
My local party is amazing. There’s perhaps only a dozen or so of them, but they are always coaxing me to deliver a few more leaflets, come out canvassing, give them some idea for Focuses etc. Their enthusiasm is infectious, and I am happy to help them – so much so that I probably don’t even qualify as an armchair member anymore. They deserve all the support I can give them.
But why do I continue to pay my subscriptions to the national party (index-linked since the merger!) when I see so little bang for my buck? Why doesn’t the national party seem to want to put up a fight any more? I wouldn’t want to join a football club that wasn’t particularly interested in playing (or winning) football matches. As a member of a political party, I want to see it – and help it - fight elections.
I heard the explanation given that the party doesn’t want to spend £50,000 just to save a £500 deposit. That might make economic sense, but it doesn’t make political sense anymore. Getting 2 per cent in a parliamentary by election is actively harming us. It makes us look irrelevant, even to voters in places where we are successful.
The current political environment needs us to spend the £50,000 just to make sure that we retain some sort of credibility – not just in the relevant constituency, but nationally as well. We might at least try to come third, assuming that the first two places are out of reach – that might get us an honourable mention in news broadcasts.
If that’s too much to ask, at least we might try to save our deposit. We cannot choose where by elections will fall, so we just have to make the best of a bad job. At least when they do happen, we should fight the good fight, and do the best we can.
Ian Stuart's other great observation to me was that every member of the Liberal Party, with the obvious exception of the two of us, was too bloody clever by half – always overanalysing problems and reinventing the wheel, rather than just getting on with the basics. Perhaps that’s the problem we have in the Liberal Democrats at the moment.
Augustus Carp is the pen name of someone who has been a member of the Liberal Party and then the Liberal Democrats since 1976.
I agree! I don't know how we'll expand our appeal across current pockets of support if we don't take these opportunities to make our case. And there is plenty of space between running a campaign to win at one end of the spectrum, and doing absolutely nothing at the other end.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely spot on Jonathan. Another example was the Chesterfield by-election in 1984 a lost cause on the face of it but was fought extremely hard and we got a credible second place to tony benn which was the start of building support and organisation in the constituency to the point where we eventually gained the seat 17 years later. I sometimes wonder what the point of the liberal democrats is anymore when we poll little more than 100 votes. Also sad if market harborough now has only a dozen or so members there was a time when it had nearly 200
ReplyDeleteI agree with you and it, but this post isn't by me. It's by Augustus Carp.
DeleteIf we do not start putting our neck out, who will listen to us?
ReplyDeleteRecent by-elections have not been in our ‘fluffy’ seats area, to whit south of the Trent/Severn line. Where most of our seats in England happen to be. And most of our ‘winnable’ seats too boot.
ReplyDeleteAs one of the troublemakers alongside Ian Stuart, we had a lot of fun in Uxbridge in 1973. We gave Manuella Sykes, the Liberal turned Labour candidate a really hard time, including using her coat turning on a Liberal defector on her. Ian refused to use Focus and we had instead thousands of leaflets headed Impact. I remember, it rained a lot and both the workers and the leaflets were regularly sodden. We threw a great deal of energy at the campaign although it seemed a certainty that we wouldn't win. In the end, as most of us had predicted, the Tory won and Ms Sykes never did get into Parliament. At the count, Ian made a fighting speech, mentioning Sutton. If we had had more resources, we would have done better. I think we did save our deposit, 12.5% of the vote then, not 5% as now. I agree with our anonymous writer, but would add that election campaigns should be much more fun than they are now. I have a recollection that the NF candidate was locked in a cupboard by an antipodean Liberal activist. Not sure how long it was before he got out.
ReplyDeleteAre we to be a protest party only strong in the South or ,eventually, a National party with more seats in the North ?
ReplyDeleteThe new rule in the 'Party of Middle England' is only to march towards the sound of the gunfire in the more genteel parts of the UK - and don't damage the Merc or the BMW in the driveway.
ReplyDelete"I heard the explanation given that the party doesn’t want to spend £50,000 just to save a £500 deposit."
ReplyDeleteAs an Agent in a seat in the last General Election, I spent £1600 on Freepost leaflets and ended up saving our deposit by 0.3%. I was criticised for this by a leading activist in London Lib Dems, but as it was my own money and the candidate a personal friend of mine, I considered it entirely justified. There are too many people in the Party who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. This post should be more widely shared.