Two letters this week, dears. I feel quite overwhelmed! I’m simultaneously glad to be of service and sad that my children have problems.
Do you have a problem for Lib Dem Mum? Email [email protected] or DM @lib_mum on twitter in complete confidentiality – only Lib Dem Mum sees messages to these accounts. No one in the team at LDV has access (and for the avoidance of doubt Lib Dem Mum’s views are her own and not those of the LDV team).
All correspondents will be acknowledged, and if you are published you will be given a pseudonym.
Dear Lib Dem Mum,
I used to date someone in the party and it didn’t end well. I am now nervous about going to party events as that person might be there and they have been quite mean about me over the Internet. How can I go back to party events and feel safe?
Yours, Nervous
Dear Nervous,
I’m sorry to say that given the propensity of humans to date people with similar interests and political views, your problem is quite a common one. It’s understandable to not want to bump into an ex at events where you want to feel comfortable, especially unexpectedly: I can think of some of mine I feel that way about. Relationships end, and not always amicably, and that is just a fact of life, but that doesn’t mean it is easy to deal with the unpleasant feelings that can come from running into someone you don’t feel comfortable being around.
In terms of going to events it can cause real worry, especially if this person is still a member of your local party or is likely to turn up at conferences you attend – this would be the case in any group, not just the party. And perhaps they even feel the same way about you? Most party officers and people who help organise events should be sensitive to this sort of issue – they will have come across it before, believe me – and will try to be supportive and help people to have some space at party events. You could perhaps ask for seating to be arranged such that you are far apart, or for the party to take it in turns to invite one of you to one event and the other to the next event, and so on. Hopefully, if you are both reasonable people, the wounds will heal in time and you will feel able to share spaces in the future.
The problem comes (and I do not wish to make assumptions about your circumstances, Nervous, but this will apply in some cases) if one or both of the parties involved has been genuinely nasty or even abusive. That sort of person will potentially want to cause you more hurt, for whatever reason, and will not be amenable to having a turns arrangement or being seated away from you, and might even actively seek you out to cause trouble. I do not like thinking that any of my children would behave so cruelly, but nevertheless I know that it does happen.
In those circumstances it is best to involve the party disciplinary procedure, which you can access here. Apart from anything else, it makes party events uncomfortable for everyone else if someone is behaving improperly, and the party needs to make sure that sort of behaviour is not quietly accepted with an embarrassed shuffling of feet, but is rooted out. I would hope that every body in the party is alive to these sorts of things, not just in terms of romantic relationships, but other conflicts, and does their best to make party events safe spaces for everyone. A truly abusive person does not belong in the party, and I know that disciplinary procedures have been used to exclude people from events in the past. I really hope this is not your situation, but if it is the party should help.
Love always,
Lib Dem Mum
Dear Lib Dem Mum (this is a fantastic idea, btw, thank you so much!),
My local party is in an affluent area and demographically should be perfect fertile ground for our party. We have historically been pretty successful, but have suffered hugely from attrition over the last few years, and we were hit hard by the effects of Coalition.
We have a decently large membership and are not a poor local party, but we have barely any activists. Repeated efforts to recruit and engage over the last few years have all been fruitless – we’ve tried gold-dust canvassing, letters, events, hiring a staffer for the purpose, ‘knocking-up’ our new joiners – nothing works, and believe us, we’ve tried. The overwhelming response we get is that members would like to help, but can’t due to poor health, or parenting or work commitments. The lack of activists is so demoralising that we struggle to fill our committee, and what events we do have are only ever attended by the dwindling number of ‘usual suspects’. People who have come to help us who have succeeded in these initiatives elsewhere have invariably left, scratching their heads.
What do you recommend? We are at our wits’ end.
Despairing, Home Counties
Dear Despairing,
Firstly, thank you for the compliment, I am genuinely touched.
Now to your problem: you appear to have tried all the usual routes to trying to solve this problem, to no avail. My suspicion is that given your assertion that your party is in an affluent area, and that you are not a poor local party, that the people who are members in your area are cash rich but time poor? This does often cause a dearth of attendance at party events.
In terms of leaflet delivery, this is less of a problem. You can get paid delivery slots, and ask local members to donate the cash to cover it rather than the time they might spend doing their own delivery rounds. In terms of recruitment of good party officers, it does make things slightly more difficult. My suggestion here would be to try something along the lines of a WhatsApp or Facebook group, or a Slack, or some other easily accessible social grouping tool, where people can dip in and out and have discussions about their political priorities. It’s very important to make people recognise that they belong and are valued before asking them to do things for you.
Talk mostly socially, at least initially. Ask people what sort of events they would like, don’t just foist a pizza and politics on lactose intolerant people, or a Liberal Drinks or other pub meeting on teetotallers. Be relentless about asking people what they think, what their opinions are, and what they would like to see. Perhaps run a poll of the day “What do East Wherevershire Lib Dems think about issue x?” Eventually it will become a social group and become more fertile for recruitment to more challenging roles.
I would caution you, though, to be respectful of people’s time and resources. Don’t think of it as an excuse if someone says they can’t do something, tell them it’s ok, and ask them if there is anything they think they would be able to do. Be grateful for any help that is volunteered. Don’t push people to give more than they can, because that is how you get the dreaded burnout. Make sure you are giving people space to contribute what they want to contribute to your local party – perhaps by means of a skills survey – not just looking to fill the gaps you feel need filling. Even if something doesn’t seem like the highest priority to you, don’t try to persuade people that there’s something more important they could be doing right away, let them get more invested in the local party and eventually they may see things more from your point of view.
And just finally, it’s worth considering that another possibility is that people are both cash and time poor, but would like to be more actively involved, in which case you could perhaps use some of your local party resources to provide childcare/respite care, for example?
I hope that helps
Love always
Lib Dem Mum
* Do you have a problem for Lib Dem Mum? Email [email protected] or DM @lib_mum on twitter in complete confidentiality - only Lib Dem Mum sees messages to these accounts. No one in the team at LDV has access (and for the avoidance of doubt Lib Dem Mum’s views are her own and not those of the LDV team).
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
The mysterious mole men of New York caught on video
Doing better? The goal must be Sufficeincy
Michael Meadowcroft (1942-2026) - A Liberal to His Core
Labour deputy claims that Farage is a threat to democracy
Jason Connor
Mick Taylor
Chloe
theakes
Kira Collins
11 Comments
Poor Nervous.
I hope their ex is dealt with properly and not dealt with as a missing stair…
This might be a bit of a mean thing to say to Despairing but if you’re doing all the right things that have worked for everyone else and they aren’t working for you, perhaps you have done something to upset people and maybe getting someone else to front things might help? I say this as a person who regularly inadvertently upsets people… :/
I do hope Nervous will soon recover from this acrimonious break-up, and that they will feel able to continue being actively involved in the party. I also hope the local party will be supportive.
Hopefully Nervous’s ex will behave in a civilized way if they do meet at party events. But I’m afraid the fact that the ex has been unpleasant about Nervous online does not bode well for how they may behave in person.
If the ex was really abusive about Nervous online, then it would be a good idea to report these posts to the relevant social media platform – Facebook, Twitter or whatever. Other members of Nervous’s local party could help by reporting these posts too, and hopefully getting the posts removed.
It would be very sad if Nervous felt driven away from their local party by their ex’s behaviour. But if necessary, the party should allow Nervous to join a different local party – a local party of an area near to them, but not the area in which they actually live. I’m not sure what exactly the party’s rules are about this. But it should be allowed, just as people often attend a church which is not their local parish church.
I have huge sympathies with Despairing as we have a similar situation in our local party (although less cash rich! And we may also have tried slightly less hard with the activities to get people engaged). I don’t *think* that it’s that I or anyone on the Exec has (hacked) people off though.
What I do think is that the party (and probably all political parties tbh) need to be finding new ways of engaging people and getting them involved. I don’t have the answers or I’d have implemented them already and be bragging about it but I’d really love to see some sort of focused effort on solving what seems to me to be a common problem.
It’s especially difficult in smaller, less successful/established parties where there isn’t a lot of local activity and there doesn’t feel to be a high chance of local success so its hard to be massively motivated. And sadly that’s an increasing proportion of our local parties and finding ways to tackle this is surely one of the key planks in a Lib Dem recovery.
Dear Lib Dem Mum,
Is it time for us to admit, we are now out of time and should wind up?
Lib Dem Mum gives some great suggestions for Despairing. Could I just add the suggestion that it might be a good idea to continue holding some meetings by Zoom, even when the Coronavirus outbreak is over. This would make it much easier for the people who said they would like to become involved, but are unable to due to poor health or parenting commitments. And perhaps social events could be made more family friendly, so that parents could bring their children if necessary?
My understanding is that you can be a member of a local party that isn’t your own, but the local party you want to be a member of (i.e. it’s exec, at any rate) has to approve you.
I find the only thing that motivates me is our ghastly local Conservatives.
I agree with most of LibDemMums answer to despairing but PLEASE NO SKILLS SURVEY
They don’t work. They are highly unlikely to get responses from anyone but the usual suspects. And they take time to set up.
I know you’ve said you’ve called people, but what did you ask them? One of the things that puts off most people is a fear of not being able to fulfil what they are agreeing to. So whilst I know how much needs to be done- set your sights lower when asking for help. Small, obtainable targets. Get people to do one tiny thing, and feel the success of doing that, and they’ll be more likely to come back and do more
Enlist all your core team to be on board with a single event- pick a ward and print a leaflet/survey and get everyone to come and help complete that delivery. And then thank them all for doing so and feedback some positive results (number of emails gathered/casework done) and make the people who didn’t come feel they missed out by not being involved and desperate to come again.
Invigorating a local party is a Task equivalent to eating an elephant. It’s a huge and overwhelming endeavour and many people will baulk at getting started. But it’s possible – it just has to be done in small bites. Make those bites really small and exquisitely seasoned and you’ll give people a taste for it and get them to come back for more
@Mary Regnier-Wilson – I do disagree with you about skills surveys. They have been our most fruitful way of finding new activists and candidates. We send them out to new members (not the whole membership list) every year or so and we always hear back from a good clutch of people who we haven’t heard from before – up to 30 or so each time. The forms are deliberately quite long so people will only complete them if they are keen. Every person who responds is then phoned up and in normal times taken out for coffee and a chat.
We also find a new members evening is useful as well. Again everyone who turns up is treated as gold dust and warmly drawn into activities. It’s the follow up which is so important.
And of course the Membership Development Officer and ward reps make sure they welcome new members and find out how they want to get involved.
@Andy Hinton
Re being a member of another local party – you are correct.
You have a membership of 1,200 though Mary and a very active local party with 2 MP’s. Yours is one of the few places where the time investment may be worth it- a equivalent return for an average sized local party would be 3. Which is why for most local parties the time spent constructing an online survey would be better spent calling members and recording the results.
I also think something that appeals to the most keen is one of the reasons we have a diversity problem (obv your local party does a huge amount of other stuff which increases your diversity brilliantly). But in smaller areas, the “most keen” tend to be people who look like the people we already have – women, young people, and BAME people are less likely to put themselves forward for stuff. People of working age or who have caring responsibilities are less likely to feel they have enough time to offer to be keen. Actively telling people the small ways they can get involved and the valuable contributions they can make without having to devote massive amounts of time to the party is a more effective way to get people who aren’t semi retired or independently wealthy involved.