Around 8 miles from the sizeable spa town of Buxton in Derbyshire, but in the quaint and tiny village of Great Hucklow, activists from across the country assembled together for Liberal Youth’s Activate/Motivate training weekend at the Foundry Adventure Centre. This was my first time at a Liberal Youth specific event, having only previously attended the Federal Conference in Harrogate as a Liberal Democrat member.
Intensive training from a team of four party campaigners, including one current councillor and a full-time training officer, gave us tuition on a range of skills including: canvassing technique; writing campaign literature; writing short speeches; taking and answering questions; establishing a local party; running effective campaigns. They also gave us raving headaches, or perhaps that was the alcohol the night before.
One of the most important things, and perhaps the easiest to forget, from this weekend was the number of friends and contacts we made for future party events; when we need help in each others’ local campaigns; and for sharing experiences and lessons we’ve learnt from them. It would be great for Liberal Youth to do more events like this, if the budget was there, just so we can work more cohesively and effectively communicate, one of our most pressing difficulties the few years since our relaunch.
But things look promising, and I know I’ll take away from this, amongst all else a greater sense of confidence and organisation of those ideas swirling around in my head. I’ve learnt these new skills, not just for politics but for life in general.
This weekend has reaffirmed what I want to do, to campaign for the rights of individuals and groups in society, to speak up for the views of the people I represent (as both a party member and for any positions that I hold or will in the future).
We’ve improved ourselves as individuals over this weekend, but we’ve also improved Liberal Youth. From the proactive discussions I participated in throughout Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I feel we’ve got to grips on what’s working, what needs to change and how we are going to do that.
Our new executive is sound; we can now get to working on the same page; and whilst there’s work to be done, there’s a sense of great optimism in the air, for some active campaigning I most certainly want to be a part of.
Mark Whiley is a member of Reading University Liberal Democrats
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5 Comments
There needs to be much wider discussion on what Liberal Youth should be doing than simply at Activate. Also, now that the forums have been ‘disappeared’ (and with them the highest-quality discussion of liberalism- and politics- on the internet), I can’t see any proof of Liberal Youth’s existence. We’ve regressed massively.
I assumed that the disappearance of the Forum was linked to the disappearance of the previous website (not a bad thing!) and was hopefully a sign that the new one is about to make an appearance.
As was made clear in an email to all forum users, the forums are temporarily down whilst we move the website and the forums over to a different server.
You’ll receive another email when they’re back up. If you want to discuss what Liberal Youth should be doing, I suggest you come to our Portsmouth conference in November, as conference decides policy and there’ll be chances to influence the direction of the organisation. Conference also attracts many more members than our forums did.
The forums had thousands… I have been at conference with 50 people tops…. Still plenty of room for both, so I look forward to the new website and shiny new forums. I am sure it’s being done as quickly as possible so as not to lose contact with members.
“I am sure it’s being done as quickly as possible so as not to lose contact with members.”
It doesn’t take this long to change servers surely.
“The forums had thousands…”
I don’t think the closed ones ever had that many LDYS/LY members and were often pretty quiet – but it’s been a while since I was in the members only bits to know.