Elections are ideally a summer sport

Last night in Royal Docks it was wet and very windy. Not ideal circumstances for canvassers of any political persuasion. As soon as we started off I lost the voter ID sheets for that street in the wind and had to chase after them. I managed to find them under a car.

They were very soggy but still thankfully in one piece. Stupidly, despite the weather I didn’t make sure before setting out from the campaign HQ that we had housing blocks with cover to canvass were we could shelter from Mother Nature.

I was with a trio of Newham Councillors – Andrew Baikie (Executive member for Housing and Little Ilford ward), James Butler (Deputy Executive advisor and Custom House ward) and Clive Furness (Executive member for Health and Canning Town North). On the way out we bumped into Newham Mayor, Sir Robin Wales, on his way out with another canvass team.

It was a bloody miserable night – the only positive thing was that residents were so astonished that we out and about in such weather that we earned brownie points for Steve because of it. I saw no other canvassers from any other party. We had one of us in the car shouting out of the car window addresses to call out at and then take back voter ID reports while the wet ones scurried to and fro. You had to have somewhere dry with a light to read and record information. Outside in the rain your canvass sheets just disintegrated. This went on for a while. It was just about ok since the rain was blustery rather than constant.

Then joy of joys, James found a tower block in the pack which we could canvass. So we finished off canvassing in the dry at least. This block had not been modernised recently. So there were problems which Andrew was taking up the next day. However, I was pleased to see there was a fairly effective security service since the communal stairs and landing were in a very good condition.

After we had dropped off the canvass returns Andrew and I had to have a serious political canvass debrief in the local “So Bar”.

My camera batteries ran out so no pictures – what a shame.

Fighting the Good Fight in Shadwell – Home of diss-Respect

Went off today with Newham Labour Party comrades to help out in the Shadwell By-Election, Tower Hamlets. One of the Respect Councillors for the ward resigned suddenly a few weeks ago claiming that Respect was “bickering, immature, self serving and militant”. No surprise there then. See action photo of Labour Party activists outside Limehouse DLR station planning campaign activities (middle Denise Jones the current leader of the Council, right is the Candiate, former Labour leader of Council, Michael Keith ).

It was an interesting afternoon. At first we tried to canvass the wealthy blocks near the Limehouse basin. It was really difficult to get in and even once in, many residents were either out or not registered. One particularly nasty Tory supporter threw a right wobbler about us daring to “canvass” his private block and was running around trying to get the site security to get us arrested! I tried to point out that we had been invited in by a resident, but he clearly was off his head. He wasn’t impressed when I then asked him if I could put him down as a Labour "possible". Nearly everyone else we called upon were perfectly okay and polite even if they did not support Labour.

Later we went to more traditional Tower Hamlets estates. See left with Newham Councillor James Butler.
We even met up with the opposition in the form of former Labour councillor and advisor to Ken Livingston turned Bethnal Green and Bow, Respect Parliamentary candidate hopeful Kumar Murshid (big mate of Gorgeous George). Busy like us trying to infiltrate the Shadwell yuppie blocks.

It was quite uneventful, compared to previous recent campaigns; it seems that the gangs of Respect thugs intimidating opposition canvassers were not about. I hear that the price of a wrap is pretty low at the moment, so they must have their work cut out elsewhere.

There was no sign of any Tory or Lib Dem leaflets or canvassers?

Lovely dramatic Shadwell picture.