Shan Oakes on the local Beverley by-election

19 AUG 2009

Thank you to all who voted for us or who helped in any way. Unfortunately, our excellent young candidate, Charlie Jones-Lewis, didn't win the seat, but, after leafleting every house and visiting almost every house in the ward, we came second. Labour didn't stand. Greens have stood in this ward only once before, we believe, in 2007. Voter turnout was only 24%.

Con 331

Green 199

Ind 144

Lib 128

We felt we set a good democratic pace as we were apparently the only ones doing systematic door-knocking. The response we received from residents was positive. Most people seemed to appreciate us calling at their homes, many saying they’d never been visited by a politician – in 30 years in some cases!

We had some good discussions along the way on issues including climate change, weapons and war, renewable energy, genetic modification, supermarket ‘takeover’, traffic, waste, flooding. A recurrent and consistent view of residents was the ‘arrogance’ of the Conservative-run East Riding Council (ERYC) who ‘do not listen’ to Beverley residents. People said they want a town council who will ‘stand up to ERYC’ on behalf of Beverley.

An extremely worrying feature was the attitude of a significant number of young voters we met who seemed bewildered at the very idea of voting: 'I'm not voting as I don't know anything about it,' and so on. If the ‘dinosaur’ party followers always vote and the people with the future don’t vote, its obvious we're going to get dinosaur politics which spells disaster for people and planet (whether at local or national level). As H. G. Wells said, 'Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe'.