craig murray to stand in norwich - help needed

[luke]

craig murray is going to stand in norwich and is looking for help;

'We are going to need volunteers. The election will be in July or September , with July looking more likely. Either way we need to start now. Stevie has volunteered to coordinate.

We need office workers, canvassers, leafletters, drivers, media handlers, IT campaign organisers, graphic artists, printers, fundraisers, volunteer coordinators, diary keepers, candidate cheerer uppers, accommodation providers. There is something everybody can do, of whatever age, however mobile, wherever they are.

If you would like to help, please start by sending an initial email to

putanhonestman@hotmail.co.uk

giving full contact details, stating what time or resource you might make available, if you live in Norwich or if you can come when you might come, any relevant experience (not that this is required) and anything else that might help. We will work out shortly how to make donations - the offers are greatly appreciated. Accommodation will be available in Norwich for volunteers.'

from http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/06/norwich_north_f.html

more at Norwich North Urgent Help Needed - We Have To Formally Constitute

heres the first idea of a poster ... i can't say i think its great ...

[luke]

Appalling BBC Bias

The reason the political parties retain their iron grip on power, even when exposed to all as corrupt self-seekers, is that they have the ability, brutally, to grind down all opposition. Trying to stand against it is soul-destroying. I got two hours sleep last night. The Tories are bringing in over a hundred full time workers to the constituency. So far I have eight local part time volunteers, and myself.

BBC Newsnight last night ran a profile of all the candidates - but excluded me. I am truly shocked about it. We have delivered twelve thousand leaflets so far, taken two full page adverts in the local press, and announced and advertised in the media a series of six public meetings for which the halls are booked. Yesterday we had sent a press release specifically to Newsnight. And Michael Crick, who did the Newsnight report, certainly knows I am standing:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/michaelcrick/2009/06/no_independent_day_for_norwich.html#comments

So do the bookies, where I am ahead of the Lib Dems and the Greens in the odds - but still very worth a flutter.

Martin Bell has commented "It is very wrong that Craig Murray was not featured on Newsnight. He is a serious candidate, and serious independents must be given fair coverage by the media alongside the major political parties."

I truly think that Newsnight's behaviour is outrageous.

--

so the bbc are cool giving the bnp loads of coverage, but nothing for craig murray. figures ...

[luke]

the tories have won the byelection, craig got 900 something votes

the bnp candidate was a vicar or bishop or something! the monster raving loony party candidate has the big rosette you've ever seen

edit - heres the figures

Chloe Smith (Conservative) - 13,591
Chirs Ostrowski (Labour) - 6,243
Glenn Tingle (UKIP) - 4,068
April Pond (Lib Dem) - 4,803
Rupert Read (Green) - 3,350
Craig Murray (Honest Man) - 953
Robert West (BNP) - 941
Bill Holden (Ind) - 166
Alan "Howling Laud" Hope (Loony) - 144
Anne Fryatt (NOTA) - 59
Thomas Burridge (Libertarian) - 36
Peter Baggs (Ind) - 23

[someguy]

[luke]

heres a picture of the rosette!

[faceless]

It seems that Craig Murray did surprisingly well really - the highest vote for a candidate not linked to the main parties, and beating the BNP too.

And yeah, that's a cracker of a rosette! Are those his boy-scout badges he's wearing too? haha

[luke]

I might be the worst by-election candidate in history - but after that result we are all losers

I am probably the worst by-election candidate in history. The 953 votes I garnered in Norwich North last week - just 12 ahead of the BNP - in a campaign totalling £46,000 cost me nearly £50 each.

It would have been much more effective to stand in Norwich market and accost passers-by with the line: 'Vote for me and I'll give you 25 quid.' I might have ended up in jail - but I'd have doubled my vote.

My campaign had started with such high hopes. When I heard Dr Ian Gibson, Norwich North's MP, had resigned over the expenses scandal, I sprang into action.

I was born and brought up in Norfolk. I reasoned the public anger at MPs was so intense they would be in a mood to punish the political parties. I felt I could give the public a credible, qualified and experienced alternative candidate to vote for.

If I could get a good result, perhaps Esther Rantzen, Martin Bell and all would come charging in for the General Election, and we could give Parliament a real leavening of independent MPs, who were genuinely not in it for a lucrative career but to serve the public good.

I posted an internet call to arms, recalling the spirit of Robert Kett, who led the great Norfolk rebellion against the enclosure of common lands. I wanted to follow his lead in defying an overmighty London Government.

Perhaps I should have recalled that Kett ended up hung, drawn and quartered.

I arrived in Norwich in the last week of June. A putative team of three had started to form by internet as I was travelling back from a trip abroad, and we had arranged to meet in the Coach and Horses pub.

Adam had just flown in from Brisbane to stay throughout the campaign. I had never met him, but he professed to be a great admirer of my writings and had an impressive CV as an organiser of musical events.

Stuart was an entrepreneur from New Zealand who had now settled in Norwich. He gave me an office to use above his insurance business.

Ingo was a German stonemason who had married locally and lived in Norfolk for 30 years. He had previously been the local Press officer for the Greens, and so he became my agent.

We devised some initial campaign strategies but Stuart was leaving for Spain the next day for more or less the rest of the Election. Adam and I moved into a hotel. Tall and in his early 20s, Adam had long dark hair swept back into a ponytail and described himself as a 'neo-hippy'.

Ingo was to contradict every notion of Teutonic efficiency. On the day my nomination papers had to be lodged with the Returning Officer, he left them on a bus, causing us to scamper to get last-minute nominators on the street. But he had the heart of a lion and a brilliant line in abusing the opposition.

After a few days I found a beautiful house to rent for the summer. It has eight bedrooms, four bathrooms and four receptions, so it was perfect for housing volunteers. Fifty seven people were to stay there -31 on one single night.

Once we had settled in, my wife Nadira arrived with our seven-week-old son Cameron.

Nadira was amazing, turning out endless pots of stew and pasta sauce to feed any number of volunteers at all hours of day and night. Thirty wine bottles were hitting the recycling bin every day.

I was amazed as streams of volunteers pounded the streets for me, delivering leaflets. They included people from Ireland, Ghana, New Zealand, Australia, Uzbekistan, Iran, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Sweden, France and Poland.

And our solid band of Norwich activists also grew exponentially as the campaign progressed.

Media access was our biggest problem. A week into the campaign it became clear that we were not being covered. During the month-long build-up, on both local and national BBC TV, a Norwich viewer could see a total of about one-and-a-half hours on each main party candidate, and a total of about two-and-a-quarter minutes on me.

ITN gave me under one minute, while Sky News never featured me at all.

The local Press mentioned me four times - on the first three occasions describing me helpfullyas, 'The diplomat who left his wife and two children for a dancer he met in a nightclub'.

This led to a fateful decision. I decided the only way I could get into the media would be to put myself on people's TV screens by sending a DVD to every voter in the constituency.

It consisted of me talking at various Norfolk venues which had influenced my life, and commenting on the local and national policies which affected them.

I was extremely pleased with the result. We went through printing, editing and production of 80,000 copies in just six days. Unfortunately, the vast majority went straight into the bin.

As a group of individuals, we thought we had done brilliantly to get the DVDs and three leaflets delivered. But we were simply crushed by the party machines.

When Stuart eventually got back from holiday, he found 27 separate Tory leaflets waiting for him. They had brought in 120 full-time staff and buses of activists from all over England. The others were not far behind. One lady found she had 76 different Election items delivered.

The public were in no mood to view anybody's material. But it was worse for us because, with the media blocking us, we now had no means of explaining ourselves to the electorate. We knew we faced a disastrous result.

We were right. While Tory candidate Chloe Smith won the seat with 39 per cent of the vote, we got less than three per cent. After so much work many of my supporters were in tears, although the only time I cried was when old Tom Watson missed that putt on the 18th to lose the Open. A sense of perspective is important.

Now let us apply that perspective to the result. The Conservatives may feel they won a famous victory, but the hard truth is that they got 2,000 votes less than they did in the 2005 General Election.

New Labour's collapse verged on the incredible - they lost 70 per cent of those who voted for them the last time, while the Lib Dems lost a third.

The hard facts are that the combined vote of the three main parties fell from 42,000 to 23,000. That is the astonishing fact about Norwich North that no political commentator seems to have noticed. Anybody who believes the party politicians are out of the woods could not be more wrong.

And while my own efforts to contribute to the process were pretty rubbish, that decline in public support is what the more acute analysts should be thinking over next week.