A week in Politics
Created | Updated May 8, 2003
As any of you who read my brackets last week know, I was taking a week off for political reasons. On my return on Monday I'm not sure if all of you fully understood what those reasons were so I have decided to explain and give some background insights.
A week in Politics
Thursday 1st May this year was a big day for politics in Scotland. There were the second elections to the Scottish Parliament as well as elections to all the local authorities in Scotland. I'm on the local exec of one of the political parties in West Lothian so we had a number of goals in our region.
- To elect a member of our party into West Lothian Council. In 1999 we
lost out in one ward by 21 votes. - To gather enough votes locally to ensure that the party performed well enough on the list to get a representative through the Alternative Transfer Vote system.
- And of little importance to us in West Lothian; to hold onto Edinburgh West and possibly take Edinburgh South.
To help out as much as possible in what I was sure was going to be a
tough week, I took the whole week off work, and therefore lost access to
h2g2, to enable me to help and recover.
About a month to go
In West Lothian most of the work is going to be focussed in just one ward - Preston. However there is to be a little activity at the other end of West Lothian in Murieston. Preston comprises the South West section of Linlithgow as well as the outlying villages of Torphichen and Westfield, plus all the farms in between; in size it is immense. Murieston is the South East segment of Livingston. This is another problem we face in our area - we have a local party which covers two constituencies.
Having been putting out local newsletters every two months in the Preston ward, these intensify as the election draws closer. We are running a positive campaign and highlighting what we would do if elected. This is harder to do as we have no councillors in this area for local residents to see in action as examples. We so need this break through.
We also are putting up as many names on the ballot as possible to give people the choice of voting for the party on all three ballots. We aren't doing badly as, out of the 32 wards, we field candidates in 24. This is a record number since the redistribution of the Local Authorities.
A Week to Go
Things are starting to heat up. Canvassing continues from door to door and by telephone trying to contact as many of the voters as possible. We are also starting to prepare target letters to encourage those we have canvassed to vote on Thursday.
The weekend also sees the start of the heavy labour. So, with ladders
fitted, we head off to put up posters at all the polling places in the
Linlithgow constituency. As we are small in number this means that we only have two teams doing the whole council area and another team is covering the Livingston polling places. This being said, though, there are still a large number to do and a lot of ground to be covered. I start on Saturday when we cover most of the Linlithgow one. Then on Sunday we do a lot of the northern villages Philipstoun, Newton, Bridgend, Winchburgh, Torphichen, Westfield and Blackridge along with Fauldhouse and Longridge on the southern western boundary, before calling it a day.
Monday we are left with the four main urban areas Blackburn,
Bathgate1, Armadale and Whitburn. However it decides to rain on Monday - not just a little but from when we start at about 9 am until we have finished at 5 pm. At least we finish just around the corner from my house so a hot shower is not too far away.
Posters are supposed to be only on lamp posts and not be on any traffic warning signs or on any central reservations or traffic islands. However, on our way around, we realise that only we are obeying these rules at every port of call and the big two Scottish parties are the main offenders. The Scottish Socialists, however, were doing very well until near the end of our rounds, not bad for a newish party.
Days to Go
Things are really hotting up. We are still canvassing. Target letters
have gone out as well as a personal letter to all voters. The results are looking good but we have only done about 40% of the canvass and know that we have deliberately not done some of our opponents hot spots. Then, on the eve of the poll, both us and them are putting out an eve of poll message reminding people that the election is going to be tight and that their vote will, in fact, count. Sadly we are not just competing against another party but also apathy.
Election Day
Get up early and go to my local polling station, where yet again I am the first to vote. Only this time I am also able to vote for myself for the first time ever. So that is two to me as Fashion Cat has already cast a postal vote for me.
Then I drive over the hill later in the morning to stand outside the
polling places in the target ward. This is actually a pretty wet day and
huddled under our umbrellas all the parties representatives share anecdotes about the weather which is being unkind and the electorate who, we hope, are being kind. During the day on the polling places I actually get to talk to the Scottish Nationalist, Labour and Conservative candidates. I'd already met the Scottish Socialist candidate in the rain on Monday while putting up posters and the Liberal Democrat candidate I've meet numerous times.
In the afternoon we realise that our main rival is already knocking up possibles and definites so I get a call on my mobile to head back to HQ to pick up a list of ours to start doing the same. This we do in the wet from 4pm until just after 9pm less than an hour before the polls close. So there is time to head home and get a shower before heading off to the count.
The Parliamentary Count
Because of the different elections that are going on there are two
separate counting days and three separate counts going to happen. As soon as the polls close all the ballot boxes head to the counting centre and the Constituency and List counts will take place tonight. We come back in the morning at 10am for the council counts.
Our counting hall is divided into two halves. One half for Linlithgow the other for Livingston. The first count of these is done by ballot box so we do a quick tally and try to see how we have done in the target ward, from the votes we received for our Parliamentary candidate. Unfortunately we are going to need a lot of the Labour and Conservative voters to vote tactically in tomorrows count for us to take the seat. It is nerve racking stuff.
The rest of the count carries on. We are not expecting to win either seat but want to have a good showing. Unfortunately we are fourth twice but one of them by about 100 votes - very close indeed. Then the long peach papers start to form piles and we can see that the Greens and Margo McDonald are polling well having not stood in the constituencies and the Scottish Socialists are also polling well. A quick look at the large TV in the foyer confirms that this is happening elsewhere so we are hoping to at least get two representatives from the Lothian region.
Finally at around 5 am a good result in Edinburgh South as Mike Pringle takes it from one of Labour's young stars in the last parliament. However with that result we know that we will not get anyone off the list as we are polling too little to compensate for winning two of the 10 seats contested as first past the post.
>The Council Count
After a few hours sleep we are off to the second count. Unfortunately
within a few minutes of the 10 am start our worst fears are realised. Despite all the hard work the team has put in, the Scottish Nationalists look set to retain the seat by a far larger margin than previously. We are all shell-shocked as the tallies mount up against us. The declarations start coming thick and fast. Our target ward is one of the last to declare with a large turnout, in comparison to many which failed to achieve 50% of the electorate. By then, however, we all know the result is not in our favour. We only have taking down the posters to look forward to and four more years in the wilderness of West Lothian politics.
On a personal note, Demon Drawer polled 77 votes in his ward which, seeing he did no work in the area and was a first time candidate, was reasonable. The make up of the Scottish Parliament ended up with Labour 50 seats, Scottish Nationalists 27, Conservatives 18, Liberal Democrats 17, Green 7, Scottish Socialists 6 with four others (Dennis Canavan in Falkirk West, Dr Jean Harper who won in Strathkelvin and Bearsden to save Stobhill Hospital, Margo McDonald off the Lothian list and John Swinburne for the Pensioners Party of the Central Scotland list).
Miles.
