An Electoral Strategy Meeting was held at the Town Hall at 7.30pm on Tuesday 2nd March with 9
people present.
The arguments of last time (5th February)were repeated a little but despite continuing
differences of opinion about the role of Respect in relation to AAS (eileen: I think this must mean Anti Andrew Smith!) we were
able to take some decisions which we felt were useful at this time.
We decided to use AAS as a temporary name which we can use for our
convenience until the way forward for a movement to contest the General
Election becomes clearer.
We will need a new name after June so please let us know if you think of a
good one. We still
believe that in this constituency we have a real chance of winning if we
co-operate and organise effectively.
We heard that Respect may be thinking about a change in its
approach to the EU elections. As things are so fluid and confusing we
decided that AAS would not have any further meetings to plan for the General
Election until after the EU elections in June. This will leave people free
to canvass and work for whichever candidate they choose to.
Donna Veluti encouraged as many people as possible to join Oxford Respect -
the launch meeting is on 9th March 7.30 at the Asian Cultural Centre, Manzil Way - in
order to be able to influence the selection of a candidate in the South East
region. The selection will take place on 14th March in Brighton. Hopefully it will be
possible to enable Caroline Lucas to keep her seat as a very able and
inspiring, strongly anti-war, MEP.
Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 22 June at 7.30 in the Town Hall. We
will need this to be a big meeting so please encourage everyone who has been
interested in the project to put this in their diary and come along in
June. By that time we hope it will be possible to see if we can find a way
forward that we can all support.
We are all united in the aim of having a candidate who can represent us
better than our present MP !
Sarah Lasenby
e-mail:
Comments
Hide the following 3 comments
respect standing in euros could actually help the greens
05.03.2004 12:51
As long as RESPECT gets less votes than the greens (a safe bet!), and takes some votes from Labour and the Lib Dems then is likely to help the Greens retain their seat when it comes to the final round of vote allocation.
This is worth saying because there has been some concern about RESPECT standing against the greens in the Euro and GLA elections. (for example George Monbiot).
Ironically, in purely electoral terms a slightly improved performance of the BNP may also help the greens if they take votes of UKIP. (Obviously in the real world if the BNP get even one vote it is one vote too many)
nerdy psephologist
But what are Monbiot's politics? Left or right?
07.03.2004 00:05
As far as I am aware George is conservative, capitalist, and in favour of the Monarchy and the Lords. I can see why Respect stand against him. He may be strong on the countryside, and protecting the hedgehogs, but what about poor people? Certainly he's not an example of someone who fights for equality.
Does anyone really believe filling the benches of Parliament with Oxbridge (esp. Balliol College) graduates will make a blind bit of difference. He might be green, but he's green old school....
Big Foot
Ummm..
07.03.2004 16:07
I think you're a bit confused?
Firstly, as far as I know Monbiot doesn't support the Monarchy or the Lords (although
it is worth noting that the RESPECT coalition explicitly isn't republican; it voted
against the abolition of the monarchy at its founding convention).
Secondly, Monbiot wrote the Unity Statement of Principles that kicked off the founding
of RESPECT, so I don't think that you can really counterpose RESPECT as a force with an
opposing ideology to him...he wrote a lot of their founding statement!
Thirdly, I don't think Monbiot has any interest in standing for Parliament anyway,
so it's not an issue...
Matt
Matt S