Student Life update from Clare Hilley
Clare currently has three main roles in the Conservative Party; working as a Councillor in Croydon, as Chair of London Conservative Future and serving as Vice Chair of Student Life:
2009 has been a year of numerous campaign days, meetings and social action projects and 2010 is going to be busier!
London CF is campaigning every week across London, providing strong support in crucial target seats in the run up to the general election. We also plan and coordinate weekly telephone canvassing sessions at CCHQ’s state of the art GenEVA canvassing studio, securing hundreds of new pledges for Conservative candidates. The demand for these sessions has been huge, and the activist turnout is always very high which shows how committed our hardworking activists are. For the last three sessions we have had too many people attending and there was a queue to get onto a phone!
The GenEVA sessions demonstrate London CF’s commitment to good quality professional campaigning. At each session we begin by a short briefing given by the candidate discussing their constituency and local issues and then hit the phones after pizza and drinks, which provide an attractive incentive for activists to get involved.
With freshers’ week just around the corner for many young people, it’s essential that our activists dedicate their efforts to making the on-campus recruitment drive a huge success.
This year’s freshers’ packs have been excellent and a lot of new members really like the new retro ‘Party for Change’ logo. So far we’ve attended dozens of freshers’ fairs across the UK but two in London really stand out to me.
Firstly we had a presence at the fair, for first time ever in Birbeck, which is a major London University offering older people a part time degree course. We had lots of teachers, lawyers and engineers that were over the age of 30 telling us that they were going to vote Conservative for the first time due to the state of the country. We managed to weed out the under 30s and had about a dozen new members sign up which we were very pleased with.
The second freshers’ fair that stands out is one that happened this week at the London Art College – an institution that we have not recruited at before. Our stand was next to the Socialist Workers and Communist ones and at first we thought that we might not attract any new members. The first flood of students headed straight to the communist stands but after the first burst the second and third wave of students came over to us and signed up to Conservative Future.
My first experience of managing a freshers’ recruitment drive was over eight years ago and since then I have helped out year after year as a National Executive member and Area Chairman in different regions. This year has been the most positive ever as young students want to get involved like never before.
I am very excited about the future for Student Life as we’ve got some student life tours coming up, training weekends and we’ve also got some general election briefings with the main party! We’re currently setting up some branches in schools from the outcome of the mock elections where a Conservative Candidate in a school in Croydon came first with 70% of the vote!
It is vital that we offer young students the chance to join us and make a difference, as history shows that these people go on to be some of our brightest stars. I am pleased with the progress that Conservative Future is doing nationally but we need to do more. We all need to work together as one in order to win as many seats as we can in the local and general elections.
A big thank you to the Student Life and the London CF Committees, who have helped, worked and campaigned tirelessly for change. Let’s keep continuing to work hard and together that will make this year the most positive and successful recruitment drive in the history of Conservative Future.
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