For the rights of local people! - message from our local party chairman (North Thanet Liberal Democrats)

North Thanet Liberal Democrats <info@north-thanetlibdems.org.uk>

For the rights of local people! - message from our local party chairman

March 20, 2006 12:54 PM

A new leader, as always, is an occasion to be savoured and to be exploited. A time now to put the infighting of the past behind us and this must surely apply locally as well as nationally.

As newly elected chairperson for Thanet North, I feel that we must start to move forward. For too long now we have lived on the coattails of past successes. It is now time for fresh thinking, for some new initiatives, ideas that will keep us in the forefront of local politics, and moreover ideas that will hit home with the electorate so that they feel that their natural vote is

Liberal Democrat. Not a protest vote but a natural vote.

As regards Thanet we have to take the bull by the horns and actively try to recruit and re-activate our branch . How do we do this? I would like us to book the Winter Gardens in Margate, get hold of our new leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, to come and address a public meeting, and spend as much money as we can to publicise this meeting and at the meeting deploy every member we have to hand out recruitment materials for follow-up.

We have to get a PPC selected as soon as possible with his main aim to attack in Thanet on the recruitment and organisation front.

We need to throw off apathy and start getting our councillors into the papers with our ideas & policies, they need to start writing letters on issues to the local papers, we need to start getting ourselves talked about for the right reasons, Lib Dem reasons.

It is long overdue that we started taking the fight back to the Tories, attacking the cuts made to local charity funding, attacking their tax on death in increasing burial charges. Their attempts to take away democracy from local people.

This is our fight - a Liberal Democrat fight for the rights of local people!

Brian Silk