With more members and sustainable finances, we can strengthen Green Party local and regional branches so we are fit to fight and win seats in the next two years. With so many elections in a short period, it would be very easy for the Green Party to overspend in 2009 and 2010. Yet, not every local party has gains at every level in its sights so contesting each election can be used to support our chances at the other to help gain Green seats at the most achievable level.
In the West Midlands region, we have a pragmatic European Election strategy. We knew that on its own, one leaflet to every house in the region was not going to do the job to elect Felicity Norman as our next Green MEP. We looked at the scale of what needed to be done and realised that the best way to achieve it was to build the grass roots strength of the Green Party across the region so that we mobilise all local parties to fight the best grassroots campaign we can. Crucially, it was decided to ensure the money we spend during the campaign did not just get spent on vote-gathering, for example through leaflets, but instead ensure that the money spent had benefits for both the European Election Campaign and sustainable benefits for the party in the years to come. It’s essential to build up the party to better our chances in local election campaigns in 2010 and the big year for local elections, 2011. West Midlands Green Party employed me to start up new local parties, increase skills of local party activists, strengthen the regional organisation, put us in a better situation financially and gain serious coverage in the media that we wouldn’t otherwise have with volunteers.
We have a bright campaign office in central Birmingham where volunteers generously come to increase the impact of my work. This way, it means that the Green Party benefits from more than one person’s full time labour. From this base, working with local parties across the whole region, we are focussing on:
ELECTIONS
• Gaining more influence on more Councils. Crucially, we are ensuring that ‘target to win’ strategies are in place wherever possible to win local Council seats in 2010 and 2011.
• County Council Elections. Ensuring that we have as large as possible a slate of candidates at the County Council elections. Many voters are more interested in the local elections than the European election so by showing that we exist at the local election, where they give more thought to their vote, we hope that this increases our vote in the European election. Let’s not forget there is likely to be a higher turnout in areas with local elections on the same day.
• General Election. We know that one of the best ways to improve the Green Party’s electoral fortunes in the West Midlands is to elect Caroline Lucas, Darren Johnson and Adrian Ramsey in Brighton, Lewisham and Norwich. By having a large number of General Election candidates around the country, we can demonstrate progress and the media are more likely to talk up our chances.
COMMUNICATION
• Media coverage. We know that by ensuring we have something in every local newspaper several times during the campaign as well as TV and radio coverage, this will massively increase the overall amount of communication that we can have with the public. In many cases, journalists themselves are not aware of what we stand for. Through regular press releases and telephone calls to journalists on issues that are not about “the environment”, journalists are increasingly aware of what the Green Party stands for. We’ve got most of the environmentalist votes and we get coverage on the environmentalist issues. We need our limited resources to be flagging up issues in social justice and public services.
LOCAL PARTIES
• Setting up new local parties in areas such as Dudley, Nuneaton, Telford and Lichfield.
• Building the skills among local activists. There is almost never a need within the Green Party to reinvent the wheel. When resources are scarce, it’s always beneficial to use best practice from other local areas that is known to have been effective.
FINANCES
• Building up our regular monthly income through standing orders to allow us to budget better and to reduce the limiting effect lack of financial resources currently has on the Green Party in the region.
By June 4, we fully expect to have more candidates in County Council elections than ever before, more local parties, a financial grounding that allows us to build for the future, local parties closer knit with the regional level of organisation and, most importantly of all, clear routes to make progress in the next two years. The seeds have been planted in the West Midlands.
Chris Williams is Campaign Manager for the West Midlands Green Party westmidlands.greenparty.org.uk
