Friday, October 17, 2008

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.

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