Posts Tagged ‘Margaret McDonagh’

Election 1997 20th anniversary: “Who the hell is Claire Curtis-Tansley?”

01/05/2017, 10:50:22 AM

In a series of pieces, Uncut writers look back at election day 1997. Atul Hatwal was a press officer at Millbank HQ and gives a personal take on the day.

By May 1st, party HQ at Millbank tower was almost empty. Most staff had been shipped out to key seats to knock doors in the last week.

The press desk was silent. The morning dragged by with a couple of international press  queries on timings but other than that I wiled away the time looking out of the window at the glorious blue sky and ringing people I knew in committee rooms in various key seats, bothering them for updates on whether the vote was coming out.

This wasn’t official business mind, just curiosity and something to do.

These were the days when pagers were modern and the internet was still called the information super-highway. The equivalent of Twitter was sitting, staring at Lotus notes (that’s what we had rather than Outlook) on a desktop screen, waiting for an e-mail to appear.

I was rostered to work the morning through to late afternoon; then some time-off before coming in for the evening shift at eight, on duty for results and at the party through to the morning.

The time-off wasn’t really time-off though – all staff working these sorts of shifts were expected to spend their downtime knocking up in a key seat.

Earlier in the week the whole key seat operation had been refocused with canvassers moved out to an entirely new list of seats with much higher Tory majorities.

At the time the decision was announced I had committed a minor heresy.

I asked one of the key seats team why we were shifting at such a late stage? What did we hope to achieve with 4 days of canvassing in seats that hadn’t been touched in years.

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Four women who could make the difference for any Labour leadership campaign

14/05/2015, 04:44:18 PM

by Richard Angell

The race for the Labour leadership is now under way. Much of it, as it has in recent days, will be fought out under the media spotlight. That is entirely right: the ability to perform well before the television cameras is crucial for any would-be leader of the opposition.

Moreover, especially now that the leadership contest will – for the first time – rightly provide an opportunity for those who support Labour, but are not members, to participate, it is vital that the public get to see the men and women who want to be the country’s prime minister in 2020.

But a winning leadership campaign is not just about having a smart media strategy. Organisation – the ability to put in place the infrastructure to engage with the members and supporters who will be choosing Labour’s next leader – is absolutely key.

Many party activists will, no doubt, be signing up in the days and weeks ahead to help elect the person they think best placed to lead Labour to victory in five years’ time. There are, however, four outstanding women who any leadership contender should want at the heart of their campaigns.

Caroline Badley’s role in organising the campaign that helped Gisela Stuart retain Birmingham Edgbaston – one of the Tories’ top target seats in 2010 – is now legendary. Last week, she helped Gisela do it again: doubling Labour’s majority in a seat which, until 1997, was the Conservatives’ Birmingham bastion. At the same time, Caroline was also running the effort to oust Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming from nearby Birmingham Yardley. Despite being up against a millionaire and facing vicious personal abuse, Jess Phillips took the seat on a swing of nearly 12 per cent. Caroline’s experience is, moreover, in no way confined to Birmingham: she’s worked with MPs, including Jon Cruddas in Dagenham and Yvette Cooper in Yorkshire, on their community outreach strategies.

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