Scottish Campaigns Weekend
On Friday 29th August the Young Fabians campaigned in Scotland in East Dunbartonshire. The group was hosted by Labour PPC and former Young Fabian Amanjit Jhund.
The group campaigned on the doorstep with five sessions over the weekend focused around Bishopbriggs and Milngavie, and enjoyed a night out in Glasgow on Saturday.
YF Campaign in Wirral West
On the weekend of the Saturday 5th April the Young Fabians participated in the National Campaign Weekend in partnership with Young Labour and Labour Students in support of local and European candidates in the upcoming election. The delegation and subsequent social was led by Campaigns Officer Alvin Carpio and involved Young Fabians from the region and across the country.
Please visit the campaigns website for more information on the programme.
Campaigning with the Young Fabians
On the weekend of March 22, I had my first experience of door-to-door campaigning for the local government elections. We were supporting John Howard, an excellent local council candidate in Aldborough Ward, Redbridge. Winning a council seat for John at this year’s local elections would be a first step towards winning back the crucial marginal constituency, Ilford North, in 2015. At present the Conservatives have a 5,000 strong majority here.
Read moreMy first time campaigning
Last Saturday saw the Young Fabians begin in earnest our campaigns programme, as we headed to Ilford North for some canvassing on behalf of Wes Streeting, the Labour candidate. For some of us, including myself, this was effectively an introduction to canvassing and an opportunity to experience the kind of door to door campaigning that is so crucial in winning votes and seats.
Read moreYoung 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.
YF Campaigns Meeting
Young Fabians campaigning team led by Alvin Carpio launched last night with a meeting to define this member-driven programme for the year ahead. There was a great turn out with members with a wide range of campaigning background. If you were not able to make the meeting and would like to take part please get in touch with Alvin.