On the Cambridge Campaign Trail '05

Our hard work is beginning to show. We went to the mosque yesterday lunchtime, where we received an excellent reception. One guy came and gave us money for the campaign and lots of others signed up on or contacts list. There is a small section of people who are not going to vote, but we had a good chat with them and thrashed out a few issues, We then went to a local primary school and lots of people knew that I was the candidate and gave us a warm reception. Plenty of people took window posters and wanted to get involved. We went with our battle bike, into the town centre and gave out postcards and stickers. Quite a few people came and wanted to know how they could be more involved. Some had heard about us from people we had canvassed. I think the key aim for our campaign is to get quality contacts, people who will be active in building the movement in their part of town as well as letting people know who we are. We have really gone a long way to achieve this!

I went and visited a boxing gym in early evening. We discussed the lack of sporting facilities and had photos taken. Following that we went into the town centre and spoke to people out for the evening. This was varying in is success; depending on the amount the voter had had to drink.

We had local stalls today and spent time in some key areas and again it proved much easier to engage with the growing number of people who now know who we are!

Sorry about the short gap in transition, my feet have not touched the ground since Sunday! I have been at six hustings, addressed two other meetings and still been holding down my teaching job! Anne Campbell finally turned up to sit on a panel at Anglia Polytechnic University. She and David Howarth (Lib Dem) almost threw their toys out of the pram arguing over the small reactionary policies the council had Labour or Lib Dem council had made. They both sounded like they were better suited to the village council. It is a disgrace that the Labour party could not get are representative to the Make Poverty History hustings at which those protecting liberal market economies found it very difficult to justify their position. It was a frustrating event as most of the debate kept being drawn away from the economy that produces poverty and war. The Lib Dem has found it more and more difficult to balance his argument as the week has gone on. He has had to talk up foe left credentials, whilst not agreeing to much with everything that Martin from the Green party and I say! I hope our productive dialogue with the Greens can continue after the election as although we don’t agree on everything our outlook is to similar to continue apart!

Yesterday was manic. The students are back from Easter and I had a good interview with both student papers as well as a slot on Cambridge Community Radio. We have a good team of activists in the university and they are now managing to cover the campuses.

The contacts we have in the FBU are being supportive and the pensions action group I have been involved in building through the trades council held a packed hustings last night. The Lib Dem, when pressed on the retirement age, exposed himself to be pretty much in line with the government.
We are ahead in the pole on the Cambridge Muslims online website and are receiving a lot of encouraging support from a wide range of different communities. We feel we could decide be the deciding factor in who wins this seat and although this is not our long term political goal it is a helpful reminder to the many voters whom are not going to vote or willl be holding their noses. The contacts we have in the FBU are being supportive and the pensions action group I have been involved in building through the trades council held a packed hustings last night. The Lib Dem, when pressed on the retirement age, exposed himself to be pretty much in line with the government.

Our postal leaflet is getting out and we have had good feedback about it. We have also received more coverage in the local paper. We are now gearing up for the final push! Several Cambridge members have been through East London or live or have relatives their and the positive reports are keeping us inspired. Good luck to all of those working on the other campaigns!

Its been another busy weekend. Saturday morning was local stalls, Unite against fascism and more leafleting and door knocking. The afternoon we got a very good response at the football. We distributed a special leaflet. Cambridge drew, which saw us relegated. The fans staged a sit in and I ended up having a discussion with the chairman and sky TV and lots of upset and messed about football supporters.

I went up to Peterborough with a translator on Saturday night to talk to several Turkish Kurdish families who are experiencing appalling conditions. Part of the work we are doing in Cambridge is o try and build Respect in areas were we have not got a strong active base. Peterborough needs Respect so much and although we have some excellent people there (like Adrian Clarke who has been a voice of clarity inside and out of the FBU) and got an excellent vote in the european elections, we are short of organisers. Please get in contact if you can help. The translator works at the immigration reception centre and I am not easily shocked but we spent most of the journey back in silence, upset by how let down so many are by the systems we have in place (or don’t). We were cooked for and made so welcome. We listened as a catalogue of events from harassment and abuse, threats and fear were relayed to us. Many asylum seekers are dumped in Peterborough in inadequate housing and with very little support, they are almost prisoners in their own homes. The police don’t or won’t get translators, the government fails to keep them informed about their cases or status and their mental and physical health is in constant jeopardy through stress and inactivity. We are trying to set up a support group and I have already managed to make some good contact in the area through people in Cambridge and from the team of Unite Against Fascism activists who spent the Saturday morning in Peterborough town centre.

We showed ‘The Yes Men’ documentary this morning as a fundraiser, which is an excellent film and is a must see in the run up to the G8 summit. We worked one of the ward this afternoon that has been a strong Labour seat for a long time. We bumped in to the councilor there who is up for re-election. He is a good, old Labour, man and still has some support. He is obviously uncomfortable with the state of the party and it is clear that it is people like him who are holding up a rapidly declining party. This evening I attended a hustings put on by the combined churches. It was a funny affair as the questions were set in advance. The candidate from the three main parties gave a superb display of how to spit lies through there teeth of which bare no resemblance to their party line or their actions in the house. I challenged Anne Campbell on her lack of willingness to attend proper hustings, where questions could be put from the audience, to which I got a hearty round of applause! She claimed she was free, although we know full well she has been asked and declined to attend. I know several of long time Labour party members who were there, some have handed their card back and many were openly shaking their heads in disgust as she spoke. The Green Candidate is genuinely a good bloke. I hope he does well as I will be counting the vote left of the main parties as Im sure they will. British politics has started I transition, I hope we can make it a speedy one!

We made Anne Campbell's day again yesterday. We dropped by another school at home time and low and behold she was there with her minders. I was very polite and joked we should have co-coordinated on our timetables! She arrogantly thought we had heard the radio and were stalking her. we are far to busy talking to people about their real concerns like housing and transport to worry about where she is going, especially because the people I have spoken to are not to happy to see her anyway. Keep up the good work Anne!

Since I last blogged on I have been extremely busy. The response on the doorstep is very promising, people are so willing to talk to us that it is hard to keep dragging ourselves away from people who feel, like we do, so betrayed by the present system of government. I keep having to turn down cups of tea. Whole families are coming to the door and showing how well informed and concerned they are about the mess British politics is in. I have yet to meet someone who feels the ‘democratic’ system we have is working for them.

I am at work and although they are being flexible with my time it is hard to balance everything we have to do. Seeing the students and other staff is really rewarding because so many are so supportive. Every day more people say they have received the tabloid and that mum or dad or they are going to vote Respect or that they have seen us in the paper or seen our battle bike. The staff at my old school raffled a cake for me and other donations are coming in. The feeling is that if only we had more time to visit people we would really be able to make a massive break through.

We are buoyant because we know that after the elections we have lots of excellent opportunities to build on the feeling and contacts we are making.

I was in London on Monday to take part in a gimmick that newsnight are running on Thursday. It was a speed dating/voting thing were 14 different party candidates had 3 minutes each with 14 undecided voters. It was a bit like being at a parents evening. The voters, although supposedly undecided had been picked to represent a range of concerns and most knew exactly what they wanted to find out. After looking at the coverage put out by the BBC website on Bethnal Green and Bow I feel soiled by having had anything to do with them. It must have been a stupid or very sick editor to run a piece on the ward without noticing Respect!

Tonight I took time out from pounding the streets further the work a pensions action group we set up in February and then a trades council meeting were the support is growing well. We had been building new links across the trade union movement in Cambridge in order to keep solidarity during the pensions campaign. It was a timely reminder of just one of many issues that will return after the election. A husting on pensions has been called for next week and all of the candidates will be there, again with the exception of the Labour MP. This is such a theme. ITV were running a question time program for the east and although, despite trying hard, they would not let John Tipple, Mohamed Ilyas or I on the platform, or even in the audience, we did manage to get some people in the studio and Respect was brought up! The Libs/Dems an Tories fielded sitting MP’s but Labour had to rely on Richard Howitt MEP. Charles Clarke was at the football!?

We Had very bad news this week as the National Front are standing a candidate in Peterborough. We are going to split are activities over the weekend and spend some time there giving out literature and showing a presence in some of the communities that they will try and spread their filth.

People have started hooting horns to wish us luck. News of the campaign in East London has reached the voter in Cambridge and is really helping us out. Those who were part of the Socialist Alliance in 2001 are saying that this campaign is gaining much more momentum. Many People who we are meeting on the doorstep know who we are even the few last Labour devotees seem glad we are standing.

The feeling is strong amongst many voters that the Labour MP has seriously let them down on a range of issues other than the war. One woman told me that her husband has spent nine years trying to claim asylum, causing a lot of stress and cost to his health. Anne Campbell had told them they had no chance of a claim and did not give them any help. However she had claimed at a refugee support group meeting that she was working hard on the case. So many people in the constituency are doing this sort of work on borrowed time and out of the goodness of their hearts. She has angered me so much because she claimed in a press release to the local paper that taking up constituents' cases is her strong point!

The Lib Dem candidate e-mailed me, saying he had a couple of quibblesÂ?. It was very funny. We have lumped them in with New Labour over PFI and ASBOs. He carefully explained how they didn't "shamelessly" support these initiatives. He wittered something about good and bad PFI and preffering ABC's. Basically that they were shamelessly sitting on the fence on both issues. I told him so but he didn't get back to me!

Some witty Labour supporter has adapted the no hawkers sign for the purpose of the election. They are now probably laughing on the other side of their New Labour face.

It’s been a busy week. We’ve been featured in the local paper, our Campaign tabloid has begun distribution across Cambridge. The Respect message is well and truly getting out there. Lots of people are showing their support. There is an excitement amongst our team because the response to our message is so positive.

Ed and Steve had a chance encounter with Labour MP, Anne Campbell, outside a local primary school and managed to quickly distribute literature to parents who were far more pleased to see us than she was! The teller in the bank recognized me and clenched his fist in support. I was stopped by the cleaner on the way into work, he expressed the sentiments of many people we are speaking to. He said, like many others, that he had always voted Labour but was completely disillusioned and was glad he now had a new party to vote for.

I spoke at a hustings last night set up by Cam-peace on the issue of War and civil liberties. Anne Campbell, the sitting MP, declined to attend. She thinks her best chances are to keep her head down, hoping the whole thing will blow over. The Liberal Democratic candidate only spoke about the war in the past tense, he seemed so remote from the suffering of the Iraqi people. At the expense of morality and humanity he quoted the laws and legal babble which got us into this mess, I can’t see how they are going to get us out of it!

Have a look at it here!

It so nice to read Lindsey's Blog. I spent three years living in Upton Park and Stratford and know the area very well. I could not think of a better person to represent such a wonderful community. West Ham needs RESPECT!

I remember Interviewing a guy called John for a film we were making about homelessness. He was looking across the river to the millennium dome, Tony Blair had just been elected as prime minister, John had lost his job and his house and had throat cancer, he was struggling to speak but said "first John Major wanted to build the dome and now John Blair is going to finish it, you could house all of us in there but he's not going to". I had hopes for the Labour government but was not stupid, neither was John. He did not think he had long to live and I just wonder how many others have suffered because Blair has not done what the people asked him to.

Here in Cambridge homelessness is a massive issue. Rough sleepers and those in hostels are at the sharp end of both the Liberal Democrat council's and the Labour MP's championing of Anti Social Behavior Orders. They are constantly bragging about what a good job they are doing "cleaning up our streets". These people find it so easy to dismiss the homeless without any thought or understanding of the bigger picture. One councilor, in a meeting on ASBO's that we attended recently, said "these people can not function in a complex society". I joked after that 'this society did not function for complex people' but it is not a laughing matter. It is estimated that one in four homeless people in the UK have seen military service and there are between a 250,000 and half a million homeless veterans in the US. How many Gulf war II veterans will be forgotten about when they return this time! These long term problems are not thought about by the like of Blair when he gives just 40 minutes of debating time in the house in order to send British troops to Iraq and even then he does not have the decency to listen to the whole discussion.

The campaigning is going well, we are getting an excellent response on the door step. I visited some retirement bungalows yesterday, they were set back from the road. The problem was there was no proper path to get across the 20 meters of rough grass to the street. One woman opened the door and we both had a laugh because she did not have her teeth in and she could not talk properly. She had sellotaped her letter box up. When I asked her how she got the post, she said that she only did it on Sundays because the kids put things through her doors. I told her that I knew some of are activists were young! She was not angry and just chuckled that they had nothing else to do at the weekend. So many people are so very tolerant even though the government makes living pretty challanging, but you would not think it the way the spin doctors are putting things across. Last year the council tenants in Cambridge voted by 80% not to privatize or go for ALMO. Even though the ballot paper was phrased like a bribe, with a host of improvements that would be made possible if they sold out. Most people have still got high principle even though they just get them thrown back in their faces.

Needless to say there is not a lot of support for politicians, particularly Labour ones, quite a few people took RESPECT posters but like Lindsey it is so apparent that the biggest task is getting people to vote at all.

We want our stadium, We want our Stadium!

My beloved Cambridge United are holding up the football league, but that’s the least of our worries. We won today but it still looks bleak, six points a drift with only four games to play. A crunch game against third from bottom Rushden in three weeks will be our last hope of maintaining league status and that’s if all the results go for us between now and then. Its not in our hands!

For those who have been out pounding the streets getting their fingers bitten by dogs on door steps, I have not been slacking off at the football, I was campaigning there as well. We spent the morning launching our campaign (the pictures should soon be on the web site). It was an excellent day, lots of new faces turned up and people were generally interested in our message, I even picked up votes for Lindsey from two market traders from Stratford and a couple from Yorkshire asked how they could get involved in the campaign there. We gave out postcard at Cambridge United and I am hoping I will be able to address the fans at one of their forums as football has become a political issue in Cambridge. Thanks to the comrade who thoughtfully wrote the policy on Sport and recreation.


The banter and chanting on the terraces today was not about football! Finance, insider trading, the problems with capitalists and their betrayal of the people who matter were mirrored in the collective voice of football songs, the beautiful part of the live game! The only other time I’ve heard the whole of the home crowd sing in unity is on the occasions we have won promotion or at away games in the midst of our famous cup runs!

Cambridge United's ground sits on a very large plot of prime real estate. The club is in financial difficulties (largely due to poor decisions by the board) and in December director John Howard, in an inspired piece of dodgy dealing, brought the stadium for £1.9 million. The Stadium as a going concern was valued the previous year at over £3m and the site rid of the football club is worth at least four times that! Howard's aptly named property development firm, Bideawhile Ltd, is now renting the stadium back to the club for £500,00 a year. In a George Bush on the Iraqi people type moment, Howard said "From the heart I am not here to see this company and this football club suffer". Meanwhile the fans have been trying to raise enough money to gain more of a say in their club. What other business needs their customers to bail them out. Er, railtrack, MG Rover, the numerous other sell offs . . . .

The club is, needless to say, back in financial trouble. Another 'loyal' director, Johnny Hon, who happens to own a chain of betting shops, has now offered to buy the stadium on behalf of the club, for £2.2m. It is rumored that Howard, who now won't sell, wants to build unaffordable houses and Hon wants to put a casino on the site. Neither is allowed to develop whilst football is being played at the ground, but low and behold they are both backing a move to a out of town venue. The last thing the most deprived ward in Cambridge need s Yuppie flats of a gambling den. Some of my earliest and fondest memories are of going to the football with my dad, I wouldn’t want that taken from me or deprived to anyone else. Please sign the petition to stop the developers.

So back to the terrace and some inspired singing of "sack the board, sack the board, Sack the board" and "stand up if you hate John Howard" then "sit down if you hate John Howard". It is just like an anti war demonstrations. All of us, the people, can't be wrong, and of course - we are not! In fact its no different at all. The more we sang, the more it was apparant that we might be stripped of decades of memories and of our vibrant community. The crown was good natured, but militancy was in the air!

10 fans went to meet
went to meet John Howard
10 fans, 9 fans, 8 fans, 7 fans, 6 fans, 5 fans, 4 fans, 3 fans ....
and a baseball bat went to meet John Howard!

All in jest, but probably not out of the ASBO remit. Low and behold the police made them selves visible.

The people versus profit and the class war is live and well in Cambridge.

This is perhaps a little paranoid but check it out!

http://www.aclu.org/pizza/

I was in the staffroom about a month ago, we were doing quite a bit on the pensions campaign and I hadn’t decided to stand yet. A very hard working head of department, who I have a lot of time for, approached me a little sheepishly.

“Here Tom, this pensions thing, I don’t want to sound selfish but does it effect me”

We had a laugh because for the first time he was glad to be that little bit older as it means his pension would be honored. However, being a good sort, he stopped laughing pretty quick when I told him that if I lived to an average age I stood loose nearly £60,000 and that Blair’s pension was going to be £175,000 a year. We had now been joined by several other hard working colleagues and a ripple of abuse moved down the staff room.

“What’s the point in voting for any of them, that’s it, I’m not f****g voting”

was the response from the committed and politically aware head of department who has already spent more than 25 years teaching. He certainly does not agree with Blair when he says education is one of the governments successes.

A recent poll said that 68% of teachers voted Labour in 1997, 42% in 2001 and it is predicted that only 29% will this year. What is most interesting is that only 1% more teachers are predicted to vote Tory and 2% Liberal Democrat. Staff rooms up and down the country must be full disenfranchised people. Teachers, like so many others, are not apathetic they are just apoplectic.

I decided then that it was only right to stand. Support for Respect, already strong amoungst colleagues, is rapidly growing amoungst the staffroom cynics.

The election campaign in Cambridge is one part of a much larger socially progressive movement. We are growing in numbers and confidence all the time and we are all looking beyond may the 5th. Defending pensions, exposing the phony war on terror and protesting about inequality, the environment and Make Poverty History at the G8 summit are going to follow on from the work we do in the next month.

Our campaign differs from the three main parties. Like tacky TV producers fighting for a diminishing audience they are trying to outdo each other with poor imitations of bad ideas. It would be funny if it was not so very dangerous. In both cases you end up with shallow TV gimmicks that hide terrible lies. Our campaign is about exposing lies and standing up to the Daily Mail agenda. The changes that we all know are so necessary for our society we hope will follow!

Hardly any one I have spoken to so far denies that there is a massive problem with the political system we have in Britain. Too many people still seem to be waiting around for someone else to do something about. Perhaps the euphoria of knocking the Tories from Government lasted a little longer than I though for most people. Blair so explicitly aligning himself with the right wing following 9/11 could mean that some people are still suffering shell shock!

Like everywhere, there is absolute disgust with the New Labour Government in Cambridge. Some people are genuinely quite depressed about it and there is much despair at the mess we are in. This really encourages me! Given how Tory minded the Tony Blair/Gordon Brown team is, and what a great big protection racket they are running, I would be a bit concerned if people weren’t annoyed and upset.

Promoting the July G8 and Make Poverty History demonstrations in Edinburgh and Gleneagles is one the most important parts of this campaign. Lots of people in Cambridge do their political activity through single issue campaigns. As elsewhere, Respect members and supporters are very involved in these campaigns and we have also spent the last year building new links across groups and trade unions. The G8 offers us a rare opportunity to unite many of these struggles and provide a massive show of solidarity to others across the globe who are living under the corruption of global capitalism and the G8 mafia.

Hope to see you there!