Euroelections 2014: South East Region

December 2024 Forums World Socialist Movement Euroelections 2014: South East Region

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  • #99620
    Anonymous
    Inactive
    ALB wrote:
    alanjjohnstone wrote:
    Can i ask how much we spent – the cost of standing, the leaflets and video and how much each individual vote cost us. (exclude the candidates travelling expenses to hustings etc).

    We spent about £15,000 in the campaign in the SE Region (£10,000 for 984,000 leaflets + £5000 deposit) and about £11,600 In Wales (£2750 for the election video, £3850 for 342,000 leaflets + £5000 deposit).Standing entitled us to free postal distribution of our election leaflet and, in Wales, to an election broadcast on BBC and ITV (on different days).

    So, just under £4 per vote.  Cheap at the price… not to mention the publicity.    

    #99621
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Just checked and see we also did relatively well in Portsmouth (7th out of 67 for us in terms of percentage, after Oxford, Brighton, Hastings, Canterbury, Lewes and Southampton). Maybe this had something to do with the comrade who put and defended our position in the comments section of the local newspaper (as well as Royal Mail's delivery of our manifesto to half the households there). Scroll down to the comments section here to see the comrade's two contributions:http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/local/european-elections-the-full-rundown-1-6070283

    #99622
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    We even did surprisingly well in Tunbridge Wells  And as already mentioned even better in Medway and Canterbury…http://www.yourtunbridgewells.co.uk/news/european_election_results_by_district_ukip_top_in_all_but_one_1_3616632

    #99623
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Members and others have got to buy this week's Private Eye (out today) to see the cartoon report of West London's Euroelection meeting. It's accurate and quite funny.

    #99624
    jondwhite
    Participant
    Mike Foster wrote:
    I think that we should be grateful to the CCS for their efforts, which have surely contributed to our relatively favourable result in Oxford. On the issue of clause 7, the CCS is not a party, it's a discussion group, and therefore even less deserving of hostility.

    Neither is the CPGB-PCC as they state (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/about-the-cpgb/faq) 'It has to be said again that we do not consider ourselves a party. We are not such an organisation.'although admitting 'The word party comes from the Latin pars, meaning ‘part of’.'The CPGB-PCC urged support for the SPGB too.

    #99625
    ALB
    Keymaster
    jondwhite wrote:
    The CPGB-PCC urged support for the SPGB too.

    But they didn't argue our case and in fact urged people to support other parties in other places and other elections. Of course we should thank the Oxford Corresponding Society for distributing our leaflets and arguing our case and maintain friendly contact with them. End of.

    #99626
    robert.cox
    Participant

    Alan is right we must follow up these local successes and not lose momentum.  If we want to start organising activties/meetings in Oxford, Brighton or elsewhere that may mean coordinating groups of members to visit and taking advantage of the Summer weather conditions.I hope the Outreach Department could be meeting to discuss these results before the next EC and making some recommenations for activties that could kick off petty quickly.

    #99627
    alanjjohnstone
    Keymaster

    Outreach Department ?This is something that has passed me by. A problem of not being on the ground.What is it and what does it do and who is on it? As an early action  i would suggest is lit/book stall. A joint venture with two tables, there's and ours. The CCS has already said they rather enjoyed such activity and Kent/Sussex branch has been experienced conducting quite a few and should have acquired an impressive selection of pamphlets and books to sell plus the posters and banners to draw attention to its presence.And as you say such action is suitable for the good Summer weather.Also perhaps an agreed hostelry to cement relations with us and CCS with a bar-meal and a few jars of ale. And invite any interested visitor to the stall  to talk and discuss further.  I keep saying we are a SOCIALISING Party, too. Our activities shouldn't be a drudge but activity to be enjoyed. Once we know the situation with local members and sympathisers, we can arrange guest speakers on a series of topics. Subsidise the hiring of halls, pay for local press advert, print eye-catching flyers. As good businessmen always say…speculate to accumulate.Cherwell a weekly student newspaper has a circulation of 15,000 (its website 50,000) and takes adverts.A full page to comprehensively present our view and depict logo £450 and we could also place a rotating box on their website for another hundred quid. http://ospl.org/advertising/Rate%20card%20local%20and%20charity.pdfOxford Mail for wider non student audience £145.80 inc VAT (5cm x 2col)http://adbooker.oxfordmail.co.uk/entertainment/style/I dare say Brighton and elsewhere can be approached similarly. I know many will require a well-earned break from the election campaign but by announcing our intentions for the future will help demonstrate our commitment . 

    #99628
    maxhess
    Participant

    Letter in today's Folkestone & Hythe Express thanking South East voters. They missed out the last sentence of the letter sent in ("5,454 chose a much better future with real socialism. I hope others join them soon."), but better than nowt.YfS, Max Hess

    #99629
    Anonymous
    Inactive
    ALB wrote:
    Of course we should thank the Oxford Corresponding Society for distributing our leaflets and arguing our case and maintain friendly contact with them. End of.

    Well, not quite.  The Campaigns Committee will be getting in touch with the Oxford CCS to see what areas of disagreement there are (if any) between them and us with a view to arranging some kind of informal meeting.  It would be good to re-establish a real presence in Oxford once again as we had in the past.

    #99630
    alanjjohnstone
    Keymaster

    "The Campaigns Committee will be getting in touch with the Oxford CCS to see what areas of disagreement there are (if any) between them and us with a view to arranging some kind of informal meeting. "I'd just like to say that we all converge on our socialist positions by travelling different paths…which means we sometimes bring along with us different baggage and sometimes we keep hold on to those for a bit longer than we should.Even between members there are areas of disagreement of approach and emphasis. A more positive approach is to see what areas of agreement exists (and i am sure there will be many such as nationalism, racism, ecology etc) and work from these to arrange possible joint activity. Settling our slight differences can be done once comradely relations have been established. The CCS website is here for those who wish some advance dissecting of its politics http://communistcorrespondingsociety.org/#Can i ask for an elaboration on what separates an informal meeting and a formal meeting? Is it who buys the pints?

    #99631
    ALB
    Keymaster
    gnome wrote:
    We even did surprisingly well in Tunbridge Wells  And as already mentioned even better in Medway and Canterbury…http://www.yourtunbridgewells.co.uk/news/european_election_results_by_district_ukip_top_in_all_but_one_1_3616632

    The Regional Returning Officer has supplied a spreadsheet giving the full results for all 67 "local counting areas", which were the local councils in the area. They confirm that in all but three of the councils covering the 20 Westminister parliament constituencies we targetted with free postal distribution we did better than average.(The three where we didn't were the Kent constituencies of Folkestone, Maidstone & the Weald and Sittingbourne & Sheppey).One curiosity is why we should have received a higher percentage in Eastbourne, Worthing, Runnymede, Surrey Heath, Cherwell (Banbury) were none of our leaflets were distributed except 200 in Banbury.  We also did better in Basingstoke, Ashford and Thanet where members and sympathisers only distributed a few thousand. In general we did best in Oxfordshire and worst in the rural parts of Surrey and Hamphshire.So receiving our election manifesto does make a difference to the number of votes we get, but of course we were not in it for the votes but for the contacts and the general publicity. The TV, radio and press contacts have been recorded here (though there will be some press publicity we are unaware of). Our standing was also discussed on the internet discussion forums RevLeft, Urban 75 and Libcom.As to contacts, these are still being collated, in fact still coming in, but  the count so far is:50 telephone requests for more information35 email requests15 letter requestsThis means that we are now sending out an extra 100 copies of the Socialist Standard each month. Applications to join are also up.There were also 20 or so other email replies and 10 letters, some of which we were hostile or abusive (one nutcase sending us a tile to our Freepost address) but most we were genuine disagreements. These are being replied to by the Enquiries Committee.We also know that we received 150 or so hits on our website from the South East leaflet, 150 from our election video (though mostly from Youtube rather than the broadcast itself) and 25 from the Wales leaflet. Some of these will also have emailed, but we will have missed some because our website was slow or down during the key period just after out leaflets had handed on people's doormats.

    #99632
    ALB
    Keymaster

    This from this week's Private Eye is probably a breach of copyright but too good to be missed. Click here to enlarge:Four Party members are identifiable and they actually said the words attributed to them.

    #99633
    alanjjohnstone
    Keymaster

    I see just three …whats the 4th?

    #99634
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Private Eye sells 230,000 copies a fortnight (well in 2012 it was),http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/feb/16/private-eye-circulation-25-yearsDid we get a mention on 'Have I got news for you' ? Elections have definately raised the Party's profile, and perhaps more than we imagine  :)  

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