Young Fabians Campaigns Launch
On Wednesday the Young Fabians held the launch event to kick off their exciting campaigns programme for the year. They were joined by the Rt Hon David Lammy MP and Chair of the Fabian Society Jessica Asato, top campaigner Kirsty McNeill and Deputy General Secretary Marcus Roberts. The panel discussion explored how the Young Fabians can build a culture of campaigning and offered a number of practical tips to aspiring and seasoned campaigners.
The panel agreed that the campaigning techniques of the Obama campaign had a profound impact on their approach to campaigning. Jessica Asato explained that campaigning is about making politics real and relevant. However it is also about the personal experience. Campaigning binds people together - you go to places you haven’t been to before and make friends forever.
Kirsty McNeill asked the audience to check out the Progress website Frontline 40 (http://labourmajority.org.uk/where/frontline-40/#.UyIl3Pl_uBI) to gain an understanding Labour’s target seats. Campaigners should understand the strategy behind campaigning and dig into the polling to understand what voters care about.
Marcus Roberts explained that field organising is finally taking its rightful place at the top table of electioneering, having been neglected for too long.
David Lammy highlighted the hard work that was lying ahead of Labour over the next year. But he emphasised that if we do get this right, we won’t be going back to the US to learn about their campaigning but we’ll be talking about our experiences here in the UK.
The panel also recommended a number of publications that campaigners should consult including Drew Weston’s ‘The Political Brain’ and the Yale University website http://gotv.research.yale.edu/, which compiles results from a wide array of voter mobilization field experiments.
Young Fabians' Campaigns Officer Alvin Carpio, who organised the event with the Campaigns Programme Leadership Team, said: "it was fantastic to see so many Young Fabians wanting to campaign and help Labour win. The challenge for us is to build a culture of campaigning in the lead up to the local elections and General Election next year and the launch has got us off to good start." He went on to say, "Our first campaigns session is in Ilford North where we will be supporting Wes Streeting and his team in one of the key battleground seats in the country - with only 10 Saturdays left until the local elections, the hard work begins now."
To join us for our first campaigning session in Ilford North on 22 March.