Neither a voting conference rep nor a suited lobbyist need you be to go to Liberal Democrat Party conference, yet amongst party members there is often an implicit assumption that federal party is something for other people rather than something for them.
This is particularly unfortunate when, as with this autumn, the conference venue (Brighton) is within easy travel distance of a large portion of the party’s membership. People can register to go to conference for just one day for £35 (£17 claimants) and get to sample the debates, the fringe and the atmosphere – and if you are within commuting distance all that without having to pay Brighton accommodation prices.
For a forward-thinking local party, this offers up a great opportunity to get people more involved in the party, to get trained, to get enthused and to get informed. In other words, not simply to think conference is for conference reps.
Your local party is of course a forward-thinking one too… so if it too is one within reasonable travel distance of Brighton and it hasn’t done so yet, why not make sure that all local party members are given an extra message encouraging them to register for a day?
In fact, why not get a group together to travel there and back on the same day, making the event more fun and helping to make newer people feel that more comfortable about going off to a new event full of strangers?
* Mark Pack is Party President and is the editor of Liberal Democrat Newswire.
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7 Comments
As a full time carer i cannot attend conference.
I did register for the weekend last year but the condition of the person i look after worsened between my registering and the actual conference itself.
My local authority is not great when it comes to arranging respite so it presents a real barrier.
I have raised this issue at various levels of the party with very little success.
How does someone in my position participate fully in the internal democracy of the Liberal Democrats?
Great idea to involve more people at national level but it kind of smacks of desperation and sounds as though the conference is going to be half empty (which wouldn’t honestly surprise me if the activists I talk to are anything to go by)
Olly: The slight flaw in your theory is that I’ve said this in various forms repeatedly over the years. If you’d bet in previous years on the conference being half-empty because I’d said it, you’d have lost an awful lot of bets 🙂
I was so pleased to have a conference within reach that I rushed to sign up on line as a day visitor,
But I haven’t been ABLE to register.
I filled in the on line registration form, which takes several minutes to complete.
I then tried to pay for my day out; but all I could find was some advertising data for credit payment.
I thought I must be missing something, so worked round and round the site, but couldn’t find a pay form.
So finally went to the “contact us” slot and wrote a note about it.
In sending the note, to which I have had no reply, I lost the application.
I also left a note on the main party website “contact us” about this and about changing my DD. No reply there either.
Come back Cowley Street, all is forgiven!!
I’ll take your word for it – perhaps you would be good enough to publish the number of registered delegates after the conference, with maybe the previous 3 years to give us something to compare it to
The conference can’t be that under supported given the amount of accomodation still available in Brighton. I booked my accomodation last October, but decided last week to change to another Hotel. The one I wanted to change to was already booked up and only about five hotels with accomodation left. Tip – Book up quick if you haven’t already.
@Olly
I’m under the impression we are actually having very large conferences at the moment?
Anyone have any knowledge on how big we are expecting Brighton to be?