Campaigning is an all year round slog and most intensive for the staff and full-time campaigners who do this every day, every week. In that context many of you will have fond memories of Cllr Neil Trafford, Federal Campaigns Officer for the north west of England. Neil tragically died in an accident last year, but a group of us have used that sad occasion to institute a new award within the party.

This award will be for the outstanding member of campaigns staff – be they employed by a Local Party, constituency, MP, MSP, AM, MEP or indeed the federal party. It will recognise their outstanding campaign ability and judgement.

The award would be to enable an internship to the Democrat Party in the USA for a period of one-month. The objective would be to give the lucky person travel costs and arrange the details of the placement.

In short this means we need to secure donations equalling £500 a year and so a total sum of about £3,000. I’m delighted to say that we have sufficient funds for this year already and working with Hilary Stephenson, Director of Campaigns (and of course Neil’s line manager and close friend), we will be making the first award at Party Conference this year.

This however, is to ask if you might make a donation to this fund so it can continue on an ongoing basis. If you could support this we’d be personally very grateful – Neil, as you will know, was a great believer in training and development and self improvement, he would have loved the glamour of a placement in America and with a Democrat President in place – well, enough said really.

If you can help please make cheques payable to ‘Liberal Democrats’ and send to me at Ed Fordham, Local Government House, 6th Floor, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HZ. I should add that the Federal Party has agreed to act as treasurer for all of the monies collected so we don’t need to set up separate accounts etc, which is great news. Every contribution will help – please be as generous as you can.