Saturday, November 16, 2019

West Ham plays at home then away at Thurrock and also Westminster #GE2019

This morning I went to a joint West Ham & East Ham Labour stall in Green Street to join our Labour Party Candidates, Lyn Brown and Stephen Timms. This was supposed to be a meeting point for our members to then go off and campaign in our marginal seats. I must admit to have been just a little frustrated at the constant calls for photo after photo rather than going out to the marginals but such is life. But if we don't go out and win our marginal seats in this general election, then we might as well just tell Boris to keep the keys to Number 10.

Happily, many members then went off to campaign in the marginal seats. I went with Lyn (and Cara our Labour attack dog, see picture of her and Lyn in Woolf Street) to Thurrock to support local Labour candidate, John Kent, who is seeking to overturn a 345 Tory majority. While other activists went with our Newham Mayor, Rokhsana Fiaz, to support Gordon Nardell in the Cities & Westminster marginal.

I was very impressed with the Thurrock Labour Party campaign headquarters (Tilbury office, 10 Commonwealth House, Montreal Rd, RM18 7QX, there is nearby parking and they will pick you up from the station if you ring beforehand 07434 446148) they were very well organised, had food and drink and were very welcoming!

We went door knocking with a mostly West Ham team. We had a local Cllr, Lynn Worrall, with us. I was running the board (I had the list of addresses that the team had to call on and recorded the results). I gave both Lyns the difficult addresses, where it was known that these residents were opposed to Labour, It was a really good canvass and John Kent is obviously well respected as a real local candidate.

There was a little fuss and bother over #CaraGate, when one resident objected to Lyn Brown bringing Cara onto her property since they had cats. Cara was on a lead and there was no sign of said cats but Cara did unfortunately decide at that moment to have a little "sprinkle" in the garden, which as you can imagine, did not go down that well.

I should have sent Lynn W to that address since she later said that she went to school with that resident's father.

Apart from that it was a remarkably good canvass with lots of residents being supportive of John Kent who recognised that we need to get him elected as their MP.

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