Campaigning in Bracknell

I spent a few hours on Saturday in Bracknell town centre campaigning with members of my local party. We were selling jumble on the Bandstand and myself and two other members (including Ray, the PPC) walked all around the centre handling out leaflets and talking to people.

I was very encouraged by how many people were willing to take leaflets and only one person ostentatiously screwed it up and dropped it on the floor! I was also pleasantly surprised to see how willing many people were to listen to what we had to say. Bracknell and Bracknell Forest Council are Tory fiefdoms with little other representation and lots of people were saying to me that this is not right and that some decent opposition was needed. They took the words right out of my mouth!

There was a BNP stand right next to our stall in the centre with a few volunteers and they seemed to attract a reasonable amount of interest. That should just make us all the more determined to campaign hard ourselves and make sure we counter their arguments. There was an interesting point where who I assume was a BNP member started shouting questions about the EU at us where he seemed to be blaming us for the fact that Peter Mandelson got paid one million pounds when he ceased to be an EU commissioner. I am not sure why he thought we were responsible for this! He also had a bee in his bonnet about the EU accounts and the fact that they have never passed an audit. I have written about this before myself and am as concerned as anyone that the EU structures are reformed to root out corruption and problems of this nature. Again, I am not sure why he thought we were responsible for this.

Still, all in all it was a very good day and I enjoyed pounding the pavements in the traditional style.