So what are you hearing on the doorstep?
Posted on Wednesday 21 April, 2010
Filed Under Politics
I HAVE spent the last two Sundays canvassing for John McDonnell in Hayes and Harlington, and will be devoting myself to the campaign full time from this weekend on. Sorry to disappoint Tory hopeful Scott Seaman-Digby, but my money is on a Labour hold, in a seat that was Conservative from 1983 to 1997.
OK, it is fair to say that backing for Labour is softer than last time round, if the Voter ID is anything to go by. But the switch is to ‘undecided’ rather than any other political party. If John’s majority is reduced, that will be a reflection of the unpopularity of Labour nationally. Hand on heart, I can say that I have never worked for a candidate with a stronger personal base of support.
Top hot potato issue is immigration, with surprisingly few even mentioning the economy. By way of a footnote, the Lib Dems are nowhere to be seen; I have yet to clock a single window poster backing their guy.
By the way, if SSD reads this post – and he might do, as I gather that he is an inveterate self-googler – perhaps he could tell us more about his membership of the United Grand Charity, which he has entirely properly declared as an interest in his capacity as a Hillingdon councillor? It’s just’s that, curiously enough, entering that title in the online search facility provided on the Charity Commission website returns no exact match.
There is, however, a registered charity called the Grand Charity, which is linked to the United Grand Lodge of England, the governing body of freemasonry in England and Wales. I understand that to be a member, you have to be a master mason entered into the third (and highest) degree of the craft.
Let me stress at once that any participation in any charitable effort whatsoever is in my estimation an entirely honourable pursuit, and Mr Seaman-Digby’s kindly, selfless and generous endeavours in this direction are worthy of nothing but unstinting praise of the most heartfelt and fulsome kind. But perhaps our Tory friend could clarify this instance of doubtlessly inadvertent lack of precision in nomenclature?
Still, this is just a viewpoint from one particular place. I’m sure readers will have been out on the doorstep for a range of parties in a range of towns and cities up and down the UK. Let’s have your feedback. What are the electorate saying to you?
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21 Responses to “So what are you hearing on the doorstep?”
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Hand on heart, I can say that I have never worked for a candidate with a strong personal base of support.
Really? Is there something missing from this sentence?
Duh. Stronger, I meant.
I got fairly positive vibes from the canvassing I did for John McD on Sunday, though plenty of undecideds and the odd “I’m not voting for Gordon Brown, I don’t like him”, which will always be a problem with a popular local candidate whose party leader is rubbish.
But in other constituencies, “undecideds” have probably almost been in the lead among those I’ve knocked up.
Dave,
More by way of clarification than correction but being a member of the Grand Charity is not really dependent on attaining the third degree. As every Freemason, of any level, contributes to the charity by virtue of his Lodge dues and other contributions, in a sense all Masons are members – holding office in the charity, though, might well (indeed almost certainly will) require a minimum degree of superiority.
I can assure you that from the very moment an Entered Apprentice is initiated he will be mercilessly pursued to contribute, lol!
As a final point, all money raised is raised *solely* by the membership, not the public, again, reinforcing the point that membership is not really about a matter of degree, if you’ll pardon the pun.
Best Wishes, H.
I’m canvassing for Labour in Hall Green in Birmingham. The response on the doorstep has been much more positive than I thought it would be, most people are appreciative of the positives achieved by labour. There are a fair few who do not like the local candidate and a number who have been thinking about switching to the lib dems but are as yet undecided. Of all those who fall into this category only one to ahom I have spoken would be happy with a Tory government or a Liberal tory coalition. What I have not heard a lot of is support for Respect. A few people have said they’ve heard good things about Selma Yaqoob, but don’t want to vote for the motley crew who back her
The people of Glesga are going about their normal business. The Tories are not to be seen. Probably afraid of being given charity by a good people. Even scum like them are given sympathy.
This is the very same John McDonnell who was so full of very lavish praise for the selfless courage of the Provisional IRA murderers, kneecappers and torturers?
On carefully-chosen doorstepps he leans over confidentially and whispers, “Dey haven’t gone away, ye know…”
Can’t some of the Muammar Gadjaffi Cumann help with the doorstepping?
Is Commandant McDonnell’s election campaign enlivened by MPACUK, as here :
http://www.mpacuk.org/story/210410/dont-wool-ass-join-us-oldham-today.html#comments
What fun this all sounds!
God almight billy Corr is here, mouthing off again, I’m sure this bloke is BNP.
In my area in Wales my MP is going to to have a fight, she was a Blairite, then a brownite, then old labour all within a year, and people tend to see through people like this, one look at her voting record is enough.
No, Robert …
Yet again [sigh] let me state that there are several reasons I am not BNP.
The awful clothes, the ghastly Sergeants’ Mess music, the dull ignorant provincialism – one of the Deep Thinkers in the BNP publicly expressed surprise that Georgia is a wine-producing country – and also the fact that my views on adolescent sexuality and the legal status of cannabis are at variance with those of the BNP.
On mass Third World immigration they’re sound, though.
I wish John McDonnell well – one of the good eggs in the Labour Party.
Will those supporting Commandant McDonnell kneecap those who fail to vote for him?
What are you on about?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/jun/03/northernireland.labour
Boilermaker, please accept that I know at least as much about Norn Iron as you do, having several first cousins and unnumerable more distant relations there …
Also accept that I am fully convinced that most people in the 26 Counties, including my son, my daughter and my grandson, plus people in England, in Wales, in Scotland and probably in Vanuatu and in Botswana would be wholly unmoved by the news that the ‘Occupied Six Counties’ had been towed out to deep water in mid-Atlantic overnight and sunk with all hands.
The activities of PIRA, the various other scummy Republican gangsters and the UDA / UFF / UVF and the tartan gangs and so on simply degenerated into psychopathic cruelty and the search for self-enrichment.
Ask anyone with a brain in Belfast, Enniskillen, Derry or Newry.
Look at the gangster chieftains’ houses and the shiny new SUVs their families drive.
Research and write a few paragraphs on the life of Slab Murphy and his crew.
For McDonnell to praise the PIRA is the act of a shameless poltroon.
I repeat – what are you on about?
Which bit specifically do you factually disagree with McDonnell for there?
Well, put as simply as it can be put, here is my point of view:
The NICRA was an Official IRA front from the get-go. It seized the issue of a manifestly unfair council house allocation to start squealing that the poor wee Taigs were dreadfully oppressed by the cruel Prods.
The agitation got badly out of hand, as anyone with knowledge of Norn Iron could have foreseen. [I was in Belfast in 1969, as it happens but was not - at that age - gifted with foresight, sad to say.]
The more literate sections of the Great British Public, insofar as we can use the term with a straight face, sympathised with the poor oppressed Taigs suffering from RUC / B-Special cruelty.
At this point, passive resistance and endless yapping about Civil Rights [despite the fact that the term greatly puzzled people like the South Boston Irish, who detested the inhabitants of Roxbury with a bitter passion] would have won the day.
Instead, the PIRA came into being and an ocean of blood was spilled and hideous suffering ensued.
McDonnell is a tribalist, that’s all that need be said about him.
A hagiography of Slab Murphy and his loyal acolytes is needed.
And, while on the subject of Irish Republican heroes, has anyone yet got to the bottom of the strange tale about the remnants of the Official IRA and the US $100 bills supposedly printed in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea?
On the DPRK and the Officials:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/3822005.stm
But there are those who doubt the truth of the whole strange tale.
Sean Garland vehemently denied everything, but – as Mandy Rice-Davies once so memorably said, “he would, wouldn’t he?”
At this point, passive resistance and endless yapping about Civil Rights [despite the fact that the term greatly puzzled people like the South Boston Irish, who detested the inhabitants of Roxbury with a bitter passion] would have won the day.
You are a naive idiot at best. That’s all that need be said about you.
Naive idiot I might be, but the Officials’ strategy was right.
The spectacle of those Falls Roads people sitting in the road and attempting to sing “We shall Overcome” was, admittedly, a grotesque one but it would have paid off within a decade at the outside.
Instead, there were over three decades of murder, maiming and hatred and the end result is that Brownie the Barman and Martin the Butcherboy strut around in suits playing at being Responsible Elder Statesmen whose lives are dedicated to the Peace Process.
Of course, we can blame the Norn Iron electorate for their willingness to vote for tribalist fanatics and not the Alliance Party, the SDLP and the saner Unionists.
Big swing to Labour in West Ham.
disRespect is only running 6 Council candidates in two wards, same as in East Ham.