FOCUS WORLD Dr Pritam Singh
An election I contested in UK was politically and socially a very enriching experience
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One evening, I had a phone call from the leader of the Oxford Green Party asking me if I would agree to be a paper candidate for the party for the local council elections. I showed reluctance because my academic job was quite demanding. The Green party leader told me that he himself was an academic and taught psychology…
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As the results of the 2015 UK General Elections have poured in, I have been reflecting on my experience 14 years ago to contest election as a Green party candidate from the Oxford East constituency to the British Parliament. That was a first-hand experience of getting to know the political culture of parliamentary election politics in the country.
I had joined the Green Party many years ago without knowing anyone in the party. I read a leaflet thrown into the porch of my house, which explained that the party was the only British party that had an economic programme, which placed protecting the natural environment from destruction at the centre of its politics, and the leaflet asked for financial support to the party if one agreed with the programme. It also had an option that if one agreed with the ideas of the party, one could apply for membership of the party by paying the membership fee.
My main objective at that time was to give the party some money and I decided that paying a membership fee would be a good way of fulfilling that objective along with securing the provision of getting the regular updates on the party’s activities. Every year, I would renew my membership. One evening, I had a phone call from the leader of the Oxford Green Party asking me if I would agree to be a paper candidate for the party for the local council elections. I showed reluctance because my academic job was quite demanding. The Green party leader told me that he himself was an academic and taught psychology. I enquired as to what he meant by being a paper candidate. He explained that this meant I did not have to do anything such as canvassing. The party would do all the paperwork and my name would be on the ballot paper, which would enable Green party sympathisers to vote for the party. Another advantage, I was told, of getting more Green candidates to contest was that the party gets more allocated time for broadcasting party manifesto on the public television network. I agreed, the election was held and I forgot about it.
After another few years, in 2001, the party asked its members to nominate members who would be good party candidates for the Parliament seat from Oxford East. Three names were nominated including that of mine. There was going to be an election to choose one from the three. But a day before the election, I got a phone call from one of the other nominated candidates that they had both discussed between themselves and had decided that it would be good for the party if I were a candidate. They therefore withdrew and I was chosen unanimously. What was interesting was that the decision was entirely of the local party unit. The central leadership had no role. More or less, this is the practice in all parties. In one particular election, when a candidate elected by a local Labour party unit, who was of strong socialist leanings and disliked by Tony Blair — one of the most right-wing Labour leaders in recent history — was deselected by the central leadership, there was a huge media uproar.
My selection as a Green party candidate was important from another historical angle. We found out that it was the first time in the history of Oxford that a non-white had been selected by any political party as its candidate. The hard task started soon after this selection. The Oxford East constituency is a very strong Labour seat. The Labour party had won this seat even when the Margaret Thatcher-led Conservative Party had won almost every seat in the whole of South-East England. There was no chance of Green Party winning the seat but the party wanted a vigorous campaign and not a mere paper candidate involvement as in the local elections. The party produced the entire leaflet literature and my task was to choose every opportunity to disseminate the party programme. I was generally assisted by another experienced party member while canvassing from house to house.
It was a quite a contrast with India. I had contested and won elections in India to the students union in Panjab University, Chandigarh and Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi and later to the university teachers union PUTA (Punjab University Teachers Association, Chandigarh) but had a reasonably good idea even of canvassing for assembly and parliamentary elections where money and muscle power mattered a lot. One big contrast here was the complete absence of show of money and muscle power. Another contrast was the honesty of voters in letting us know their preferences when we knocked at their door to ask for votes.
I remember that we knocked at one house; a middle-aged man opened the door. We introduced ourselves as from the Green Party. He politely told us that he was a Labour party supporter. We knocked at the next house, an old lady opened the door and told us that she had always voted Labour in the past but she was thinking of voting Green this time and asked for more party literature to read. The next householder told us that he was a Green Party supporter and that we should not waste time in talking to him. In the next house, a young woman opened the door and, seeing us, said she would vote Green. We asked her if there were other family members we could talk to. She laughed and said, “Yes, my mother, but she is a blood Tory. No need to waste even a minute on her.” We also laughed, thanked her and walked over to the next house.
The other interesting contrast with India was the institution of hustings. This involved all party candidates being invited by a religious organisation, charity, trade union, development organisation etc to talk to their members. This involved having to read extensively in a very short time about various subjects related to different religions, international relations and economic policies. On top of that, some individual voters would write letters seeking clarification of my views on a range of topics, some of them quite technical such as nuclear energy, genetically modified seeds and fox hunting. One had to be ready for debates on the radio and TV too. I rarely slept more than 4 hours each day for over a month of the canvassing period.
We did not win the seat as expected but the profile of the party was raised and eventually for the first time in 2010, Green Party candidate Caroline Lucas won the seat from Brighton and she has won this time again with an increased majority. One day, hopefully some Green will win from Oxford too. The Green vote in Oxford East has increased significantly this time. Greens were hoping to win another seat, Bristol West, this time but lost narrowly. Overall in the country, the party polled 1,104,505 votes, which is 3.2 per cent of the national vote and is up 2.8 per cent over the 2010 vote.
It was a tiring and exhausting experience. My family and friends too worked very hard for me. My wife Dr Meena Dhanda, an academic philosopher, sacrificed her academic work for one whole month to support me day and night – helping in every husting, leafleting etc. She even cooked food for over 50 persons, which a friendly café, appropriately named Magic Café, allowed us to be sold to Green sympathisers to raise funds for the party. The fund-raising dinner was further used to spread the message of the party.
But due to the exhaustion caused by this one-month of intensive electioneering and the sacrifice of the academic work that it entailed for us, I vowed to never contest an election again and have managed to keep to that vow partly because the academic jobs in Britain have become hugely demanding in terms of time and effort commitment. However, it was politically and socially a very enriching experience.
One understands a society truly by being active, in some way, in the politics of the country. Contesting an election is certainly a high form of active engagement though not necessarily the best one.
The writer is a Professor of Economics at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK. [email protected]
