What do you get when you take a young Subudian Muslim, with neo-Cromwellian ideological leanings, mix in a third major party, and then simmer with a helping of the 2006 British Local Council Elections?

Yours truly had joined the Liberal Democrat party early in 2005, prior to the general election. The process of delivering leaflets in the run up to a general election can be quite rousing – from house to house, one imagines the reception one’s propaganda will get. It is a combination of a valiant crusade to inform the populace of the choices available to them, to remind them of their civic duty, to tell them of your party’s heroism and the dastardly deeds of your opponents, to empower the people with information so they can shape our world!

The election came and went, and batches of news leaflets periodically arrived on your correspondent's door for him to put through nearby letter boxes. Sometimes he was invited to a social function, which once or twice he attended. His tardy enthusiasm appeared to attract the attention of the local party Brahmins, since a few months ago he received a phone call, offering him the opportunity to contest a seat in the 2006 local elections, with the suggestion of a ward in which a Liberal Democrat candidate would not have a realistic probability of success, but would rather stand to hold the flag, and give the locals the opportunity to vote for the party so they do not feel neglected.

On this basis he accepted, comfortable with the prospect of avoiding excessive responsibility. But the appetite of the party Brahmins had been inflamed, and a week had not passed before the telephone rang again, and he was asked if he would stand as a candidate in Goldington Ward, in which Liberal Democrats almost invariably achieve success! The promise of office caused his eyes to widen and his mouth to water. He accepted.

This opportunity arose in March, around a year after I joined the party. With precious little knowledge of the political geography of the area I was to represent, the prospect was fairly daunting, but the opportunities it presented were irresistible. I was sent to a regional training day with other Lib Dem candidates, in which we were told of the IT systems used to coordinate campaigns, the approval processes we had to go through, and various ways of garnering support, and then sent out on to the streets to canvass. Luckily I was taken under the wing of a local party stalwart, who gave me on-the-job training in the art of door knocking, at the same time as filling me in on the fiery political history of the ward over the past decade. She devotedly hauled me out to canvass two hours an evening, five days a week for the month leading up to the election – my only reprieve being Mondays and Thursdays for group Latihan, when I negotiated pardon. I was given box-loads of leaflets each week to farm out to the army of loyal deliverers in my ward, without whom we were powerless.

Untold hundreds of knocked doors and tens of thousands of leaflets later came Election Day! Armies of energised campaigners fell upon the defenceless electorate, and all the information painstakingly gathered from canvassing put to use, as hour after hour the party bosses sent their minions to harass those voters they believed to be their supporters, to drag them kicking and screaming to the ballot boxes, and even to offer them a lift, if necessary. It was a long day fraught with worry. News came from distant wards of the comings and goings of the Mayor’s loudspeaker van, and of the local MP out on the streets, knocking on doors late into the evening, to squeeze out the last possible votes! Commands came from our central headquarters: activists were driven miles between wards to knock on doors where the race was tightest!

Then the sunset and the streets went silent. But the fire of partisan conflict had not yet been extinguished, merely taken indoors as the counting began. Boxes of ballot papers were brought in as the candidates and their agents monitored the counting. Early estimates showed your commentator to be ahead, but there could be no rest for the wicked, as seasoned party workers instructed the new recruit never to let his guard down, lest the counters slip and allocate ballots favouring him to the tally of his opponents!

As the night went on, news came from the loudspeakers! Some successes; some disappointments. One of our candidates achieved victory, taking a hostile ward, another missed the target. The hours went by, and your correspondent scrutinised the officials counting for his ward with eagle eyes, the conclusion became clear – the pile of ballot papers with an X opposite his name was over twice the height of those favouring his opponents! Shortly before one o'clock the announcement was made, Mahmud Henry Rogers was chosen to be Borough Councillor for the Ward of Goldington.

http://www.bedfordlibdems.org/news/258.html

(Link inserted by Admin)