Author Archives: Rich Wilson

Dissension is both an admirable and problematic trait. It’s admirable, as often you find yourself on the side of right, but it’s problematic as you rarely end up being protrayed that way. I consider what I’m doing now dissension, and what it is is to consider what a youth organisation should do and what it’s doing now.

For those who know me in Liberal Youth, I try hard to occupy the neutral ground and to compromise rather than confront, but sometimes a punch in the nose resonates more than a pat on the back. A lot of people believe Liberal Youth to be primarily a campaigning organisation and a recruiting organisation. It is, and it isn’t.

The upcoming Activate training weekend will be the first Liberal Youth weekend specifically organised for training for a long time. The fact is that campaiging tactics and training have been neglected. Equally, with the failure of the current website, and delays in getting a newer version, the campaigning abilities of the organisation have been blunted by the inability to find a medium on which to put it across.

In addition, it has been left without a Vice-Chair (Campaigns) for the past three months, meaning that the lead up to the freshers fairs (traditionally a Liberal Youth forte, where more members are recruited for the party than at any other time) has been led, almost solely by the Chair, Elaine Bagshaw. While I cannot comment on the potential competence (or lack of) in this campaign, running campaigns without the person normally in charge is rarely an effective tactic.

This then impacts on the other thing Liberal Youth is perceived to be – a recruiting organisation. While specific university branches can run very successful campaigns and freshers fairs locally, if the material lets them down then fewer people come to the stand and fewer people sign up. Getting people to look twice is the big battle and this can be easily done without central help – a bit of craft and creativity, combined with creating a welcoming atmosphere, is the reason people who would normally walk past, look in.

We are projecting an image to our target audience – young, generally liberally minded, people – but recognising that they can’t be taken for granted. Presenting ourselves as a university society that is politically active, as opposed to a political society that happens to be at a university, would reach outside our target audience and bring in more people.

The larger problem with Liberal Youth is embedded in problems in how the organisation is run and leads to the spectacular occasions of disunity we all saw at the previous Chair election. This problem is that of organisation and how the organisation sees itself.

Liberal Youth is peculiar in that it is a national organisation campaigning on national issues that is full of people expected to campaign and gain experience on local issues.