5 Things I Learned By Going Politically Renegade In Moreton Pinkney.
For all my travails with Labour, when Theresa May called a snap election it took me about 37 seconds to decide to vote red once more. Better to add strength to the gentle than to kowtow at the feet of the cruel. Yet, living in my Hackney constituency under the socialist wing of Diane Abbott, my plan to vote Labour and hope for the best reminded me of that old definition of insanity: doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. I need to do something different this time.
So I went to a direct action meeting in Islington to consider pre-election tactics. Consensus didn’t quite emerge, but the resulting frustration I felt sparked an idea: why not do something absolutely unrelated to London, where my family live? London has a wealth of campaigners working the doorsteps and planning actions. So I went home, to the village in Northamptonshire where my family have lived since the 1940s. Moreton Pinkney (population ~400 and yes, that is its real name) and the surrounding villages are a haven for Conservative politics. The last time another party won in our South Northamptonshire constituency was 1906. These days, Brexit chancer Andrea Leadsom holds sway, with 60% of the vote in 2015. On 8th June she will be safe as houses.
It sounds…odd…? misguided? to expend progressive energy in a seat that is Conservative to its farmer-heavy core. Still, this new kind of insanity appeals to me. Last year I could have had more conversations about Brexit back at home. As it was, I visited my 91-year-old grandmother the day after polling— only to learn that she’d voted Leave after seeing Leadsom, her local MP, champion the cause. When we speak now, she has her regrets. And I have mine.
So on May 1st I spent the morning door-knocking in Moreton Pinkney. Being a nerdy party-agnostic Vote-Swapper I’d prepared my own Anyone-But-Conversatives (ABC) style flyer, which summarised some key issues that affect people in the area. Farming subsidies and HS2 are relevant concerns; the failing NHS is another. The Tories are making all three worse, and increasing racist street harassment to boot. To tamp down my lone-looniness, I cited rurally-trusted sources in the form of the Daily Telegraph and the BBC. I’ll call this one-village-one-flyer independent approach ‘microcanvassing’. Tactical in tone, this flyer served as an opener for doorstep conversations I had with undecided voters, shy Labour supporters, and the expected (mostly) polite Tory voters.
Five reflections from microcanvassing in a Tory safe seat
1. Politics is not openly discussed between neighbours. Everyone assumes that everyone else in the village is Conservative. Leadsom’s majority supports this idea, but in reality a good number of people are Labour or Liberal Democrat, and will never vote Conservative. But without talking to each other, there’s no sense of progressive solidarity. Or even any possibility of it. None of us would be able to name a leftwing social equivalent of the local hunt’s pub quiz, but it’s sorely needed.
2. Several people mentioned that no-one other than a Conservative had knocked on their door in the last 25 years. It’s likely an exaggeration, but the perception remains: that no-one cares about rural people. Apart from Andrea Leadsom.
3. Microcanvassing as a self-organised independent campaigner was eccentric enough to break down some barriers. I introduced myself and curiosity took things from there. No-one seemed to mind my homemade flyers.
4. Demographically, and given my own high levels of privilege, canvassing this Conservative village feels like a way of showing allyship to those who are marginalised in our increasingly parochial country. London defection aside, I’m not an outsider— a mention of my links to longtime residents like my grandma or my mother instantly contextualises me. As someone from the village, I know about the problems with potholes, or with Young Farmers leaving the pub to vomit on the village green. My whiteness, my straightness, and to some extent my poshness all make sense in the place that I come from, even if my politics don’t.
5. Everyone who opened their door (if trusting) or side-window (if not) was fed up with politics, but only one person out of 50 told me to put my flyer ‘where the sun doesn’t shine,’ so that’s nice.
Whenever I visit Northamptonshire, I feel obliged to shut down a bit. I muffle my politics to avoid either ruffling feathers or provoking mockery. A handful of residents know that I’m lefty (nose-ring, London charity job, my mother takes The Guardian) and enjoy calling me ‘Red’ and the like, but as I say — I close down. I expected talking to my neighbours about politics without the preamble of a drink in the pub would make matters worse. I’m an anxious person. Creating ‘a dynamic’ with someone whose day I’ve just interrupted is not something I do for fun. But whaddya know, a number of the conversations I had were fun — and thought-provoking, and sad, and absurd, and wry. I realised that many of my neighbours were inquisitive and open-minded, when I’ve often been told otherwise. Which led me to wonder, what am I — and loyal party activists- forgetting about winning change when we write off certain groups?
I’m not tribal, but I am progressive. I have hopes of encountering progressive politicians in every constituency, even in Tory heartlands. Moreton Pinkney is tiny, but it was sad to hear that Labour and the Greens, let alone the eternally disappointing Lib Dems, have failed to make an impression on residents in recent decades. Where do public political conversations begin when local politics is so very cloistered?
I will be candid. I don’t expect Andrea Leadsom to suffer any losses as a result of a 3 hour project in one tiny village, and I wouldn’t expect any party activist to put one village at the top of their to-do list. However, I do hope that this idea will create some ripples in an otherwise still pond, and normalise conversations about politics in a place where suspicion of difference is automatic.
It just so happens that Moreton Pinkney tops my to-do list; which place tops yours? If you’re the leftwing child of a rightwing area, there is still time to use this election for an experiment in microcanvassing. Get a bit weird. Make a pixellated ABC flyer. Roam around the streets you grew up in, or the streets a parent lives in now, and chat politics with familiar strangers. Find the common ground, and then — whatever lies beyond that. If only because the Conservative Party will hate it, and really, what more could you want?
Further info
campaigntogether.org — for the tactical voters in the house.
sussexprogressives.com — people who are doing Anything-But-Conservative politics properly.
sukiferguson@gmail.com — for anyone who has questions about making their own half-arsed hyperlocal flyers to canvass with.
