So, we’d got all of these new members, and they were still flooding in. It was just what we had wanted over the years, a whole new bunch of enthusiastic Liberal Democrats keen to do things. And yet, there was a nagging doubt in my mind, a memory of new, keen people in the past who had come, been confronted with a tradition of doing things a certain way, or given a pile of leaflets, and who had then drifted away. This time, it was going to be different.
But, in Suffolk, where distances are greater and members rather more spread out, it wasn’t enough for the Local Parties to be left to run their own events, we wanted something that would bring people together, old and new, from across the county, but which would help all of our members to engage in all of the work of the Party, and to allow us to tap their skills and enthusiasm.