When I was canvassing for Charlie Maynard, the Lib Dem candidate in Witney and West Oxfordshire, I asked a lady who has traditionally voted Conservative but is voting Lib Dem if she’d put a sign in front of her house.
“I’d rather not,” she said. “There’s a man across the street who takes down signs he doesn’t like, and I don’t want to get into a fight with him.”
“How about a small sign that you can stick to the inside of your front window?” I asked. “Surely he wouldn’t put a rock through it?”
She declined, looking like she thought he just might. A couple of days later, the Lib Dem sign in front of my house disappeared. Her neighbour is getting ambitious! I thought, and What’sApped the canvassing group to request two replacement signs to make a point. It’s happened at my house and all over, the newly elected Lib Dem local councillor replied, and brought two signs right away. He showed me CCTV footage of a person in a white shirt on a bike pulling away from his house with his sign. Does that lady’s neighbour ride a bike? I thought. Does he have a white shirt?
But who the person in a white shirt on the bike is, and if he or she is acting alone – based on the number of signs disappearing, she or he would have to have a very fast bike – isn’t really what matters, although it would of course be good if she or he or they are caught for attacking the right to express one’s views.
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