On the “Dog and Bone” for Steve Brayshaw in Royal Docks By-Election

Just back from a useful and productive evening at the West Ham Labour Party phone bank in its headquarters in Stratford.

There is still no real alternative to knocking on doors and talking to people face to face in elections. However, with many modern residential blocks it is difficult to gain entry so telecanvassing is important.

Remarkably, the people I rang tonight were all very polite and on the whole quite happy to discuss their voting intentions. Our candidate Steve Brayshaw is pretty well known and gets support even from those who don’t usually vote Labour. He is recognised as being a true community activist. We took some hits but I think that is inevitable in the current economic climate but relatively very few.

The community in Royal Docks is diverse and it was interesting to speak to a number of Commonwealth and European Union residents about the elections. Most had never voted in UK elections but many have voted for left of centre and Socialist parties in their homelands in the past and were pleased that the Labour Party was calling them about this election.

The main photo is of Cllr Ron Manley calling Royal Docks voters with Cllr Jon Knott, member Alan Griffiths and Cllr Kay Scoresby.

While 2nd photo is from Monday night with member Ahmed Noor and Cllrs Jo and Ian Corbett.

It's a big day tomorrow – London UNISON AGM!

It will in one way be a relief to do battle with the trots as opposed to the amateur, paranoid and frankly completely batty Tories I have come across so far on this blog over the Royal Docks by-election.

“Easy meat” they may be to ridicule and defeat politically but at least with the trots you know while they are completely bonkers and very dangerous in the trade union movement. You can at least dismiss them as having no influence whatsoever in the real wider world.

What is really alarming is that these Tories are members of the main opposition Party in this country and they think they can form the next government...

Such a thought just simply doesn’t bear thinking about.

On the "dog and bone" for Labour in Mile End

“Of course we will all vote Labour in the election. Tony Blair, when he was Prime minister did wonderful, wonderful things for our country. We will always support the Labour Party”. This is something that Labour Party canvassers don’t hear all that often I suppose.

However, this is what I heard last night from the first person I was able to actually speak to last night during a Labour Party telephone canvass session.

We were phoning electors from the Mile End East ward in our sister CLP (Constituency Labour Party) in Tower Hamlets. There is a Council election on 20th November 2008. Rachel Saunders is the ace Labour Party candidate for the election.

We were physically at the West Ham Labour Party headquarters in Stratford where we have a useful tele-canvass bank. This was set up with the help of our MP Lyn Brown, West Ham CLP and London UNISON Labour Link.

Picture is of West Ham CLP secretary and UNISON Labour Link officer for Walthamstow Local Government, Alan Griffiths, fighting the good fight by asking Mile End electors to support Rachel. Tele-canvassing is not as bad as you might think. In the majority of calls that you manage to speak to someone, there is some sort of positive outcome. I don’t think you can replace "door to door" canvassing (on the knocker) but telephone canvassing is very important if properly done.

The canvass went really well. I will make a very minor admission that the lady I was first able to speak to was Lithuanian and this was the “country” she was referring to when she was talking about the “great things” that Tony Blair had done. I’m not that sure what Tony did to please Lithuanian voters but I am sure it was something very positive.

We will continue with the tele-canvass for the rest of the campaign. If you want to help out check this post.