The mood is infectious!

posted by: Nick Lowles | on: Thursday, 2 April 2009, 07:30

I’ve been saying for a while that we are building something really special. Of course, I would say that, you might say. But I have been in this game long enough to know when there is a mood out there and this year there certainly is. And, of course, there needs to be. We are facing the most crucial elections in terms of a far right threat and significant success for them here will change the British political landscape for years.

But now it is not just me who feels the mood. Over the last couple of days I’ve reported on the HOPE not hate presence at NUS conference. We made the opening speech, the conference was shown a five minute HnH video and every delegate was given a Student Sunday campaign pack.

At 4am this morning I received this email from Sam, our Student co-ordinator. “People are really up for this! Am worried we will not have the capacity - its gotta be done!! I've never had so many people coming to me with enthusiasm to get a campaign off the ground where they are. I think we could have something very special and it’s exciting. Let's see how many we can nail down to do something and build a truly national campaign with more simultaneous student actions then ever before.”

And he is not wrong. We’ve had promises of action from over 60 Universities and colleges.

Yesterday I rushed between meetings, though strangely not all of them connected to these elections. I even managed to squeeze in a pint with the Rev Paul Butler, where we were able to discuss the BNP’s ‘Jesus’ stunt. He agreed that the BNP had handed us a gift.

We will shortly be entering a new phase of our campaign. Over the last two months we have been building the network, putting in place the infrastructure we need to help turn out our vote. Over 26,000 people have signed in to our campaign in the past two months. We have dozens of new HOPE not hate groups springing up all over the country and we have been collating stories with which to attack the BNP during the campaign. Shortly, the campaign proper will begin. And then things are going to get really exciting!