West Midlands begins to organise

posted by: Nick Lowles | on: Sunday, 12 July 2009, 10:55

The power of our online campaign was evident against yesterday when 35 people attended a West Midlands organising meeting. Drawn from 14 different local authority areas these people included 20 new activists who had become involved through our internet and email campaign.

The meeting looked back at the Euro campaign and more importantly began the discussion about the future. It was also an opportunity for us to thank local activists for all their hard work.

There was general acceptance that next year’s campaign will have to be quite different. While this year was about turning out ‘our’ vote, next year we will need to be more targeted, with a more sophisticated understanding of the electorate necessary. Different leaflets were needed for different groups within the ward and a more extensive voter ID operation was required so we focused on turning out the anti-BNP vote in the final week rather than reminding BNP voters about the election.

A number of new HOPE not hate groups are likely to emerge out of the meeting, including Birmingham, Kidderminster, South Derbyshire and Leicester, and each of these groups are drawing up campaign plans to draw in activists from our email lists over the next couple of months. Next month will also see the formal launch of Sandwell HOPE not hate, and other events in Nuneaton and Worcester.

Today I have to draft up our ‘Sink the Boats’ Leaflet. Over 400 people have already donated over £5,000 towards the cost of this leaflet, 273 donating for the very first time. Almost 3,000 people have donated to the HOPE not hate campaign since the beginning of the year, a truly fantastic effort. Quite apart from giving us valuable funds, without which we would have not been able to produce as much material as we do, it gives people a direct input into our campaign. By investing in the campaign people take a personal stake in ensuring it is a success. And hopefully, with the launch of our Organisers’ Academy, we can create a structure whereby our activists can drive the campaign forward at a local level – developing their own campaign strategies and priorities and self-organising.

In the short-term our priority is to get the Sink the Boats leaflets out. As I explained yesterday, this is the perfect activity to begin to mobilise our huge network of supporters. Later this week we shall be announcing forthcoming activities all over the country.