Quality | 2009.12.20
My first election as a Green party candidate
Just a few months after joining a political party for the first time, I was standing in the Queen\'s Park Westminster by-election
Looking back, I can\'t help wondering if standing for the council was my hidden intention all along. When I went to my first Green party meeting just over a month ago, I thought it was because I was curious to see who the Greens were planning to put up against Karen Buck, my Labour MP , in next year\'s general election.
I was doubtful whether they ought to put up anyone at all. Buck is a good MP who faces a serious Tory challenge, and sick though I am of the government, I would hate her to lose.
But at the branch meeting in west London it emerged that another selection process was under way. I had read in the local paper that Mushtaq Qureshi, one of my three local councillors, had died. What I hadn\'t realised – unless in some recess of my mind reserved for schemes so private even I didn\'t know about them yet - was that a byelection was imminent. When someone asked if I was going to "stand in the byelection" I had to stop myself from correcting him: I assumed he meant the local elections next May.
Two days and several phone calls later, a local activist went door-to-door collecting the 10 signatures needed to nominate me as the Green candidate in the Queen\'s Park Westminster by-election on 10 December. I hurriedly printed off and read last year\'s European election manifesto, I checked with my boss and talked to my family. Just a few months after joining a political party for the first time, I was running for office.
I had four weeks. The Greens had never stood a candidate in my ward before, so expectations were modest. Just by allowing my name to appear on the ballot, I would help raise their profile and further the aim of fielding candidates whenever possible. Plus, I could treat the whole thing as a rehearsal for next year, when they hoped that I, along with hundreds of other London members, would stand in the local elections.
The council I would be standing for, Westminster, is a Conservative flagship. Despite its ignominious history under Shirley Porter, whose illegal housing policy designed to alter the population of marginal wards was exposed when 100 families were rehoused in asbestos-ridden tower blocks, Conservative councillors in rich wards such as Knightsbridge and Belgravia still guard huge majorities.
The Labour minority group has its power base in the four poor wards in the north of the borough, one of which is mine, Queen\'s Park Westminster. In the 2006 local elections Greens stood in only two out of 20 wards. But there was room for hope: a breakdown of last year\'s GLA election results showed that the Greens had won more votes than the Lib Dems in my ward, with 11.35%. I decided this must be my aim: to beat the Lib Dems.
On Friday night after work I sat down with my husband to compose my first political leaflet. I had two easy targets, or three, if I counted politicians in general. I could attack the Labour government, its wars, its bank bailout, its record on inequality. And I could attack Westminster council, which recently spent £20,000 on posters crowing about its low council tax yet presides over acute child poverty and health inequality: there is a 15-year gap in life expectancy between the borough\'s richest and poorest areas.
When I first imagined becoming a Green candidate I pictured myself standing against a Tory: perhaps Colin Barrow, the council leader , who refused to apologise for losing £17m of council tax payers\' money in Iceland and recently escaped prosecution after altering a £2.7m listed building in Suffolk.
But standing in my own area, asking my neighbours to vote for me, was a different and alarming prospect. Was I green enough? Might I be spotted bundling my daughters into the car, and heckled? Initial drafts of the leaflet looked ridiculous, as I lurched from microscopic local details – the social landlord who doesn\'t weed the pavements near my childminder\'s house, the horribly overcrowded bendy buses – to Afghanistan and MPs\' expenses. But I happily latched on to fairness, a key theme of leader Caroline Lucas\'s autumn conference speech , and made it my headline: vote Green for a fairer Westminster.
When I joined the Green party back in June, it had been out of desperation. Talk of parliamentary reform had once again died away following the expenses scandal, and I could hardly believe the cynicism. How could the main parties continue to defend the first-past-the-post system, when they had so blatantly failed to hold themselves to account? When 1.3 million people (8.6%) voted Green in the European elections in June , yet the party has not a single representative in the UK parliament, how could anyone claim that the current system works? With turnout at 61% at the last general election and membership of the three main parties down to 1.3% of the electorate, how could anyone who cares about democracy deny that change is overdue?
So I didn\'t care that I thought the Greens were probably wrong about nuclear power or that I wasn\'t sure about GM food. It didn\'t matter that they seemed to care too much about animal welfare. So what if they hadn\'t costed their spending promises properly – as the Guardian pointed out in a report from the party conference . I am convinced we need a more pluralist system, with a greater range of opinions represented – and with the world still deep in denial about global warming, the Green party seemed the best place to start.
Once I had joined I felt better. I liked getting the emails and newsletters, feeling I was part of an organisation that had at least got the most important thing right, in choosing to face up to the climate change emergency before everyone else. When the letter welcoming me to the party said I was one of 1,000 new members, I was thrilled. If the Greens could build up their membership to close to that of the main parties (another 400 will take them to 10,000, admittedly still a long way behind the Lib Dems\' 60,000), then surely the case for constitutional reform would be unanswerable?
But when it came to pushing leaflets with my face on them through letterboxes, I cringed. In the park I realised, with mounting dread, that I ought to be chatting people up by the swings. The ballot paper would list the street I lived on – the other Greens thought the fact that I lived in the ward was a great asset, but I felt exposed.
I began alone, one weekday afternoon, flinching from the NO JUNK MAIL stickers emblazoned across letterboxes. As it got dark my husband came out to help. We did about an hour, getting quicker as we worked. Though one or two people wagged a finger when they saw our flyers, once we explained we were leafleting for the Green party no one sent us away or said they didn\'t care.
I visited the office of Paddington Development Trust and discussed their plan to turn our neighbourhood into a low-carbon zone. My parents went leafleting. So did two local Greens. My next-door neighbour promised me her vote, her husband\'s, and those of her mother and sister. Our map of the ward showed more and more streets marked with highlighter pen.
The Saturday before the election I missed the big climate march and went instead to a Christmas bazaar in the hall that would be my polling station. I bought three mince pies and six tickets on the tombola before being challenged about how long I\'d lived in the area and my knowledge of local parking rules. On the way home I bumped into one of my daughter\'s friends, whose mum had seen my photo in the local paper: "Should I call you councillor?" she said laughing.
Election day was an unreal prospect. I phoned Shahrar Ali , my ad-hoc campaign manager, and asked what to do. Go to work, he said. Act normal. But I didn\'t feel very normal. I had an odd but quite enjoyable feeling of nervous expectation and exhilaration, familiar from other election days. Only, of course, no one else in the office was feeling this at all. I kept picturing my local area, imagining people on their way to vote.
What if you win, friends had asked all along. I knew I wouldn\'t, but in any case it was only six months until the full local elections: I didn\'t need a four-year plan. I\'d been told I\'d do well to get 100 votes. Turnout would be low, and in a byelection the main parties can afford to channel their resources. For some reason, 67 was the number that bothered me. What if I only got 67 votes?
And what to wear to the count? The last time I had been in the reception room at Westminster City Hall had been in my wedding dress. The bright-green cardigan I had worn for my campaign photograph – inherited from my nana, it could hardly be greener – was dirty. No one had given me a rosette. I found a green scarf.
On the way I replied to good-luck texts, touched at how many people had remembered the date. These were my friends, being supportive, but I felt too that they were pleased to have a window – however tiny – on democracy in action. We arrived at 10pm, and were given our name tags. Eight women sat behind a long table ready to start counting. As the papers were tipped out on to the table, the counters flipped through them like bank tellers, clipping them together in bundles of 25.
They began sorting the papers into brightly coloured plastic boxes with our names on: AHAD, MCALLISTER, BLACKBURN, RUSTIN and DOUBTFUL. I began to count too. In some bundles I seemed to have just one or two votes out of 25 – less than 10% – in others, four or five. As my election agent hadn\'t arrived I was called over to adjudicate on the "doubtful" ballots. Several had been left completely blank, which seemed remarkable: I had never really bothered to imagine why someone would take the trouble to go to a polling station, give their name and address, take their ballot paper, and post it into the ballot box without making any mark on it. Later on I was given the official turnout: 16.46%, or 1,313 voters out of an electorate of 7,978.
It was a man with a red rosette who told me how many votes I\'d got: 152. A few minutes later came the official announcement. Loud cheers greeted news of Labour\'s victory, with 814 votes. The Tory had 211, the Lib Dem 123. When the Green vote was read out there was a low whistle. I had won 11.7% of the vote, and with just 60 more votes would have beaten the Conservatives and been runner-up.
The Greens were delighted. Just a few weeks before I had never met any of these people. Now I felt I was part of their gang. We had proved people were willing to vote for a party other than the big three, and register their concern about the environment. Rather than despairing at the 84% who hadn\'t turned out, I felt impressed by those who had: what a leap of faith.
The big story of the Queen\'s Park byelection was the 11% swing to Labour. I had imagined the Conservatives would put up a strong fight, given their stranglehold on the council and the fact that Westminster North is a target seat in the general election. But their candidate, an extremely young-looking ex-pupil of the local community school , did not appear to be flanked by heavyweights on the night.
On the way home, as I basked in my triumph, my husband kept regretting that we hadn\'t leafleted the whole ward. But I was pleased I now had an obvious goal: beat the Tories next May. At my local Green branch\'s Christmas party last week I found I had a completely new line in small talk. "Hello, what\'s your name, and have you thought about standing for the council?"
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/[...]election-green-party-candidate
