«So You Think You Can Win an Election?»: переиздание электорального руководства БНП с предисловием Ника Гриффина

So You Think You Can Win an Election?

Источник: https://nickgriffin544956.substack.com/p/so-you-think-you-can-win-an-election

As promised in my article Reform, Restore and Today in Great Yarmouth, here is the complete text of the definitive guide to the British National Party’s best electoral practice. Find it below this brief introduction.

It is necessarily a long, and at times complex, document. Only people planning to be seriously involved in real electioneering need wade through it all; everyone else can just skim-read it. Even such a cursory glance will prove my point about the shockingly primitive ‘election campaigns’ currently run by most Reform branches, and the total cluelessness which is standard these days everywhere to Farage’s right.

(With the honourable exception of those of my former colleagues now plodding along in the British Democratic Party. Hopelessly outmatched as they are in elections in which Reform also stands, they do at least put enough of this into operation to win the occasional town council seat. Fair play, but it’s not the stuff of revolution.)

The fact that Reform - despite their low-grade campaigns - took a stunning number of seats off both Labour and the Tories does not invalidate this analysis. For a year at least now, they have been beaten in far too many seats by the patently insane Greens, including in the ‘red wall’ seat of Gorton & Denton. They lost out to Plaid Cymru in Caerphilly last year, a seat where the large majority of voters know far less Welsh than I do.

Reform win seats not because they do the work with the skills to deserve to, but because they are not Labour or the Tories: while Farage is somewhat mistrusted, Starmer and Badenoch are hated. It makes for easy victories when it comes to protest-votes, but it’s no way to run an electoral insurgency against an entire entrenched political establishment and the non-Labour left.

Continuity Nationalism One of the banes of genuine British nationalism over the years has been the repeated ruptures in organisational and doctrinal continuity, produced by its long history of political ‘boom and bust’. This has prevented experience such as is set out here from being passed down the line.

Part of my mission is to put this right, with this Substack being a stepping stone towards publishing core ideas and skills in physical books and handbooks, and in due course running training course in conjunction with up and coming individuals and organisations.

I’m going to be asking for serious help in due course but, in the meantime, You can lend both practical and moral support by joining my growing band of paid subscribers. It’s only £5 or $8 a month (more if you can afford it!) and your support really is greatly appreciated.

Election Handbook Contents

Foreword by Nick Griffin Deep Community Politics

Strategy

Populating the Segments

Act As If

Case Studies

Case Study 1: Charlene and the Poolway Flats

Case Study 2: The Probation Office in Shard End

Case Study 3: An INN Member Farming for the Community

Conclusion

The Ward Election The Rationale

Surprise

Ward Selection

Talking on the Door

Preparation Finding Out ‘The Issues’

Play The Part

Local Newsletters

The Workhorse of Community Politics

Planning Meeting

The Candidate

The Agent

Electronic Electoral Register and Canvass Sheet Preparation

Maps

Photographs

Campaign Themes

Activist Campaign Guide and Timetable

Mobilisation

Preparing your Canvass Boards

Paperwork and Legal Requirements Nomination Papers

How Many Nomination Signatures Do You Need?

Deposits

Signing the Nomination Form

What Does ‘Description’ Mean on a Nomination Form?

Qualifications for Candidates

Imprint Requirement

The Campaign First Sweep

Second Sweep

Third Sweep

Fourth Sweep

First Re-Knock

Second Re-Knock

Third Re-Knock

Example of a Completed Canvass Sheet

Types of Leaflet

Mail Merge Leaflets

Old People’s Homes

Polling Day Polling Day Paperwork

Polling District Captains

Manning Polling Stations – Telling

Telling Sheets

Polling Agents

Rosettes

‘Good Morning’ Leaflet

Campaign Headquarters

Whipping In

Ballot Boxes

Counting Agents

The Count

Things to Avoid in a Detailed Campaign Stunts and Stalls

Use of Loudspeakers

Posters

Leafleting

Telephone Canvassing

Publicity and News

Postal and Proxy Votes Postal Votes

Proxy Votes

Other Campaigns A Trimmed Down Version

Weaker Campaigns

General Election Campaigns

After The Campaign Thank-You Leaflet

Year Round Work

Addendum Voter Registration

FreePost

Foreword by Nick Griffin

The bulk of this document was first produced in the electoral heyday of the mid-2000s British

National Party. It represented the sum of the party’s collective knowledge at the time. As such it is a document of some significance in political history. More important, however, in making the BNP widely electable in many different areas and beating all three of the old main parties, we learnt a huge amount.

So much so that, nearly twenty years later, this guide still sets out the ‘best practice’ which can possibly be applied by any party or local residents’ campaign. If you are serious about seeking power, or at least local influence, through the ballot box, there’s no political party in Britain today which can teach you more than the old BNP.

The tactics described in the original handbook were often used in areas where we were standing unknown candidates in new areas. We had to make up for this by working harder (and smarter) than our opposition and by direct personal contact with the electorate. One of the greatest compliments to our election-fighting capability was paid in an internal LibDem document about our challenge in which they warned their councillors and activists that “when the BNP hit a ward, they hit it hard, and fast”.

The Deep Community Politics (DCP) approach described in Chapter 1 of this more recent version of this handbook was in its pioneering phase at that stage. Using DCP tactics, registering voters

and then applying the BNP’s proven ‘best practice’ is thus the ideal.

It may, under certain rare circumstances, be possible to win seats without doing these things. The BNP’s best council seat showing in Burnley, for example, came on the back of a high visibility but much more primitive campaign, basically because we were in the right place at the right time, voters were looking to punish the old parties, and their local councillors were lazy and complacent. They quickly wised up, however, and every subsequent contest was fought tooth- and-nail.

Remember, the big party councillors aren’t there primarily for ideological reasons. They’re not even really there for the basic salary; they’re there because being in power in local government gives them access to a whole clutch of financial benefits, some legitimate, others involving bribery and corruption, especially around planning deals and council contracts. When you show up and threaten their seats, you’re not just upsetting them politically, you are treading on the turf of a low-grade local mafia. You’re threatening their business model, their opportunities with the bit-on-the-side secretary, and their status.

So they are going to fight dirty, and the only way you can seriously hope to beat them, and then to hold the seat the next time around, is if you do EVERYTHING in this guide, and preferably improve it some more as you gain in experience.

One lesson which several local ‘survivors’ of the BNP’s electoral challenge have taken from this

and applied since is the value of working to get on the very lowest rung of the electoral ladder. This is Parish, Community and Town councils. To be blunt, they have very little power, but that isn’t why the big parties often ignored them – it’s because councillors on this bottom rung don’t get paid.

That’s why seats are often left vacant or filled by local independents. Without the money and the power to give lucrative deals or contracts, they just aren’t of interest to ‘normal’ politicians or parties, who are all in it for themselves.

But if you are interested in strengthening communities, making your own area better and sinking real local roots, then Parish, Community and Town council seats are many times easier to win and to hold than any higher, salaried level of local government. Furthermore, they do have some very limited but useful powers. Most important of all, getting onto the bottom rung of the ladder, and becoming known as someone – or as a group – who really cares about the local community, is the best start you can have for moving further up the electoral ladder.

The second chapter in this handbook is also new and, although short, is also very important. Indeed, the popular disillusionment with the entire political process since the betrayal of the Brexit mandate has made its message one of the most timely and important sections of this updated version.

That said, every word in this booklet matters. It doesn’t matter which organisation you are in, if it says that there is a role for electioneering but doesn’t attempt to apply the lessons of this

document to its circumstances and aims, then it simply isn’t serious. And, as I’m sure you already know, it’s time to get serious.

There are many – myself included – who believe that the ‘parliamentary road’ to state power is now closed to real nationalists in most of the West. If you think that is too pessimistic, and that you can be part of something that can outstrip the BNP in electoral success by about the same multiple that we outstripped those who went before us, then good luck to you. But do be sure to

study this guide and to put it into practice, because you’ll not find another starting point which is a

fraction as serious as this one.

If, on the other hand, you are one of the growing number of nationalists who share the view of the team who have put this guide together: That the ‘parliamentary road back’ theory is naïve and fatally flawed, then this document could still play a very important role in your way ahead.

Because, whether nationalists establish and maintain a presence only on the unsalaried rung of local government, or climb higher as the BNP did in so many places, fighting and winning elections is highly likely to play a role in the future preservation and advancement of our communities and our people.

The first signs of the Balkanisation of Western politics are at present coming primarily among Muslim communities. But the closer the indigenous majority come to becoming the largest minority, the more possible it becomes that they too will seek – and need – electoral representation which is based on ethnic, cultural and religious identities, rather than on the old class divide of the now vanishing homogeneous society.

The bottom line, is this: Whatever reason nationalists and patriots find to take part in elections, this handbook will prevent them wasting years reinventing the wheel. Changing regulations and circumstances are sure to provide fresh opportunities and to make some details of this booklet outdated. But you will not find a better starting point than this. Because we didn’t just talk the talk, we also walked the walk.

Nick Griffin

Shropshire, England. June 2024.

Deep Community Politics

Deep Community Politics is an idea that originated in the mid noughties within the BNP and was developed in its branches and groups, including the East Birmingham group of which I was a member. The East Birmingham group were so successful in this field that I had the privilege of delivering a training session on this subject during the 2008 annual conference, the first day of which was dedicated to training. Before I was due to go on stage I was in the foyer of the venue chatting with Nick Griffin about this very subject. During this conversation Nick told me that if he had his time again he would forget electioneering for a couple of years and send his activists out into their neighborhoods to work, build bridges and become integral parts of their local communities.

This struck a chord with me as I realised that the success of an election campaign relies heavily on the foundations that you have built within that local area. This really is the crux of what I am saying, Deep Community Politics (or DCP as we shall call it), is the foundation that you will need to invest time in building before any attempt at the ballot box is undertaken. This is not a short process and will usually take at least a couple of years. Given the nature of this type of work it is also strongly advised that you should seek to stand in your local ward or constituency as the day- to-day rigours of DCP are much more readily undertaken when on your own doorstep.

Whilst it is possible to fight and win an election without carrying out DCP, for small party candidates and independents it is a far more difficult route. Also very important is the fact that DCP has a long-term role independent of electioneering – it’s also about helping our people to develop real community spirit, and about conscious nationalists becoming real leaders in our community.

Strategy We all have existing networks within our own communities, such as family members, friends and neighbours. The key is to grow these networks within your area by becoming an active member of your community, essentially expanding your contact base and gaining community influence by your works - eventually becoming a leader within your local area.

This is your square on the board in this game of politics you have chosen to enter and you need to “own” this territory and work tirelessly to position yourself as the representative of the people of this locality. It is vital that you know your “square” on the board inside out. Spend time walking around the area, get to know every road, every green space and every shopping area. Approach it the same way that London cabbies approach “the knowledge” and learn it off by heart.

Divide your ward into smaller segments, keep it logical. I tend to divide my area into segments of around 200 to 400 houses. Depending on the size of the ward, this could mean anything from 10 to 15 segments. It is vital to know exactly how many households are in each segment.

The idea is to fill each segment in your area with people who are supportive and will most likely

vote for you when the time comes. I tend to evaluate people using a traffic light system for ease of assessment. Green stands for people who are on your wavelength and are highly likely to support your campaign. Amber stands for people with whom who you have areas of commonality and may be persuaded to support you. Red stands for people who are not on the same wavelength and are unlikely to support your campaign. During the DCP period people will change from one designation to another as you develop relationships and get to know them better.

Populating the Segments How do you populate the segments? It’s basically about getting involved in the area. Check out local groups and all possible areas where people assemble and talk. These might include a local gym, churches, pubs, social and sports club and community centres.

Check the notice boards of local libraries and shops where groups and clubs often advertise, such as local history groups, walking groups and amateur dramatic societies. Look at local voluntary groups. Volunteering in the local area will definitely be both rewarding and useful for populating your square on the board. If you are keen on growing vegetables, have a look if there are any allotments in the area or maybe start a group for home growing. Start attending any ward or other meetings that are run by the local councilors - this is a great way of finding out what the big issues are within the ward.

Keep your ear to the ground for political opportunities and make sure you act to put yourself front and centre of any campaign groups that form around the issues of concern.

Act As If To get yourself into the right frame of mind it is important to see yourself as the local ‘councillor in waiting’ and act accordingly. Dress smartly and always have a well kept appearance. For people to put their faith in you, your appearance matters. It’s the first impression they may have of you so make it count.

Act the part, always be friendly and polite, even to those who may not be supportive because they will talk, and if you give a negative impression they will repeat their impressions to others. Make yourself likeable, good humoured and respectable. Don’t force conversations on people. When initially engaging someone, I find it best to let them decide the subject matter and go with that.

Trying to shoe horn in your points at every opportunity will become tiresome and could lead to people avoiding contact with you. Remember the DCP is a marathon, not a sprint. The sprint finish is the election campaign proper, take your time and develop relationships slowly.

People will listen to others that they consider friends even if they don’t agree on every issue. The

key is to make friends, and friendships take time to build.

Case Studies I will give three important examples to illustrate DCP in action. The first shows the importance of

keeping your ear to the ground and following up on the opportunities presented. The second is an example of how getting it wrong can cost you dearly. The third is a fantastic example of taking the initiative in your local community and building relationships with local residents and authorities.

Case Study 1: Charlene and the Poolway Flats Whilst with the BNP in 2006 we received a call from a distraught grandmother asking for help. Her granddaughter, Charlene, had moved out of her parents’ house and managed to get a flat in the Bordesley Green area of Birmingham.

At first things were okay and she ended up settling down and getting a boyfriend who was a

Muslim of Pakistani origins. It was when the relationship ended that Charlene’s problems began. The boy would not accept that the affair had ended and began, along with his friends, a persistent campaign of intimidation. Eventually Charlene, fearing for her safety, had to move back to her

parents’ house. The grandparents used to go and fetch her mail from the flat and were regularly

subjected to a barrage of verbal abuse and threatening behaviour.

Despite several attempts by Charlene, her parents and her grandparents to approach the council in an attempt to get Charlene officially moved, on every occasion the council refused to help.

Even the police showed no interest in the threatening behaviour and intimidation. We were the final hope. We immediately rolled into action and during a constituency meeting a couple of days later we met the local Bordesley Green councillors and arranged a further meeting with them and a representative of the housing department.

We turned up at the meeting with Charlene and her grandparents and managed to persuade those present to find Charlene new accommodation closer to her parents’ home. Within a few days of the meeting Charlene was offered a flat at the Poolway in Stechford, just down the road from her family. At this point we patted ourselves on the back for a job well done and believed this problem to be solved. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. On going round to visit Charlene in her new property to see how she was getting on, we were shocked at the conditions of the

flats. There were spent needles everywhere, human faeces made the lifts unusable, litter and graffiti, it was appalling.

Dismayed that we had helped to put Charlene into this hell scape we decided to act. We designed a leaflet and printed it off on our group printer on bright yellow paper as this was the only paper we had to hand. Over the next couple of weeks we leafleted the flats, letting the residents know that the local councillors were holding a residents meeting in a nearby hall and encouraging them to turn up and inform them of the conditions they were living in.

On the night of the residents meeting the hall was filled to capacity, with each person clutching a yellow piece of paper. As you can imagine it was a lively meeting. We were there and had managed to get the residents to allow us to film the conditions in the flats. We put together a film entitled “Slum House” and copied it onto DVD (I know, but it was 2006 after all) producing around a hundred copies. We formed the residents into a local action group and continued to offer material help, such as printing, as well as advice and support.

Here is an exert from the Birmingham BNP Blog written by Rob Purcell:

“‘Slum House’ is a six-minute documentary produced by East Birmingham BNP that exposes the depths to which our people are mistreated in their own country by their own councils. The story began when local activists took up the case of Charlene, a white girl housed in Bordesley Green who was enduring a lengthy hate campaign by local Muslims who clearly didn’t want her living in ‘their’ area. Thanks to the hard work undertaken by the BNP she was moved into a predominantly white area late last year. However, despite having escaped the abuse she suffered in occupied Brum, the living conditions in the Poolway flats at Stechford were worse. It was these five decrepit tower blocks that featured in the shocking six-minute documentary produced by the BNP.

‘Slum House’ will be uploaded to YouTube shortly, but as you can see from the stills here it is not a pretty sight for the residents, many of whom have young children. They have to contend with faeces, urine and syringes in the walkways and lifts, severe damp in every room, critically unsafe landings and repairs that are never seen to. Residents have even been without running water for 24-hour periods – would this happen to those ‘guests’ in our country who can be found in double- glazed fully furnished accommodation elsewhere in Brum?

The reaction of Cllr Neil Eustace (Lib-Dem) was to accuse the BNP of attempting to make political gain out of the issue in time for the local elections. However, the elections have come and gone and the same BNP activists were at the latest Stechford s Yardley committee meeting to follow the progress made (or lack of it) on behalf of the residents. Cllr Eustace told residents at this meeting that the City Council cabinet will make a decision on the future of the flats in June.

Let’s just hope that they are demolished sooner rather than later and those afflicted by the appalling third world conditions can be moved to surroundings less reminiscent of Iraq. This is not Baghdad, this is Birmingham in the 21st century and these poor white folk have to pay council tax like everyone else – give them a home they deserve.”

On one occasion I managed to collar one of the councilors. Thrusting a copy of the DVD into his hands, I bade him to watch it and tell me if he would be happy if his daughter was living in those conditions. I also explained to him it was our intention to post one of these DVDs through every letterbox in the ward - a bluff as we could not have afforded it.

Very soon the pressure being exerted paid off and Birmingham City Council announced that the flats were to be demolished and all the residents rehoused. This was a massive success for us and it all came about from a single phone call from a concerned grandmother! This demonstrates the need to seize any opportunity and capitalise on it.

We harnessed the power of the people by galvanising the residents into action. This power, along with the politicians’ fear of giving the BNP any foothold in the area, became the twin force that moved mountains - well five blocks of flats anyway. It’s worth noting that this was achieved by

just five activists. It’s not always about large numbers, a lot can be done by a few if you apply the

right pressure in the right places at the right time.

Case Study 2: The Probation Office in Shard End This was an issue that arose during the year prior to the May local election in 2007. It is a perfect illustration of how to bungle an opportunity, which in turn cost us an election victory. Below is the account retold by Rob Purcell on the Birmingham BNP blog:

“The intended use for the building has been known for almost a year and was brought up by concerned residents at an emergency meeting in Tile Cross back in October 2006. Cllr Ian Ward, deputy Labour leader on Birmingham City Council and senior party figure in Shard End ward, belittled their concerns and downplayed their fears. He would continue to do so for several months and residents questioned him again at the ward committee meeting held in Kitts Green in January. It was here that the Labour councillor denied that the office would have paedophiles or serious sex offenders referred to it. Within weeks he was proven to have lied by the probation service.

As the election approached and it appeared that the BNP might remove Cllr Ward and his fat salary, the Labour man changed tack completely and said he had been opposed to the probation office all along. He subsequently hijacked the residents’ campaign and saved his job, although needless to say little has been seen from him since then as his position is safe for another four years. Such is the contempt with which Labour hold the voters that they opened the probation office two weeks after the election, having mysteriously postponed its original opening from

before the election.”

We had attended the initial meeting in October of 2006 and made contact with the residents there. So far so good, but we did not push ourselves forward in the same way as we had with the Poolway flats. Instead we decided to run a leafleting campaign across the entire ward, highlighting the issue and our opposition to it.

This tactic soon backfired giving Cllr Ward a chance to have his change of heart and completely hoodwink the residents. He arranged a trip to London for the local residents protest group to meet the Home Secretary (the local MP Liam Byrne was a junior minister in the Home Office). He also secured a postponement on the opening of the centre, claiming it was the first step to stopping it opening altogether. This was a lie as insiders informed us of the plan to open the office immediately after the election in May 2007.

We hit the ward with leaflets pointing out this deception but it was too little too late, as Cllr Ward had put himself front and centre of the protest and won the residents trust. The 2007 election saw us finish second in a seat we should have won. Cllr Ward went on to become the leader of Birmingham City Council. Tactically our priority should have been to put ourselves at the front of the protest in October 2006, thereby not allowing Cllr Ward to move in on it and take it over.

Case Study 3: An INN Member Farming for the Community This case study demonstrates the positive impact one motivated individual can have within their local community. In his own words:

“The project all began in the summer of 2021 when, whilst looking for locations to do some wild camping with my sons, I remembered an area we used to go to as youngsters. I decided to check it out and see if it was suitable.

Much to my dismay the area was forlorn and had effectively turned into a wasteland of twelve feet high brambles layered with rubbish.

I dismissed it as a potential campsite as in its current state it was simply not an option. However, over the coming weeks I began to wonder if that land could be used for something better? To give it a purpose?

Food shortages were starting to become a real prospect in the UK so I was already taking an interest in regenerative agriculture and many aspects of self sufficiency. The notion that this beautiful, green, arable nation cannot feed its people seems ridiculous to me! There are swathes of unused fertile land - I’ve just concluded that it is the drive to develop these areas that is lacking. If local communities pooled their effort into a small farm they could be eating far better for less and reduce dependance on the system entirely. Perhaps more important still, it could create a well-motivated group at the very heart of the community.

I began spending more and more time there, clearing a path, then cutting and pulling at the brambles bit by bit until a manageable area was cleared of litter and debris. I rebuilt the fence, overcame the lack of water with a rain catchment system and ponds, began to cardboard the entire growing area, built compost bins and transferred tons of organic material from surrounding areas to build the soil health. I planted apple trees, sapling plum and sapling pear trees. The first crop of vegetables was good considering it was a little rushed, getting Christmas dinner veg for me and another family nearby.

About 18 months later I was at the plot working away and had a visit from a council executive. He explained that he was having complaints about what I was doing and that I was blocking a footpath (that I was unaware of and which hadn’t been walked for over 20 years).

At this point I thought it was all over. Time to pack up. But after about an hour of talking, with me explaining my motives to him, he started to come around. He went away and said he would get back to me with a decision on what to do.

After a week we spoke again and I beat him to the punch by offering to clear the old pathway as true to the original ordinance as possible.

A few days and a lot of hard work later and it was nearly complete. Whilst working on the final touches of freeing the walk way and making a bit of an adventure trail for the young ones I hear a voice shout “What are you doing?”.

It was a local resident. He seemed pretty annoyed so I explained what I was doing and why. He seemed sceptical, but a few days later he turned up at the plot so I invited him in and showed him

around.

This seemed to crack his shell. He began to tell me stories of his childhood on his Dad’s market garden and how much he loved it and started giving advice, it was such a turn. He’s now fully on board, leaving me materials he finds at the gate and popping up when I’m there.

It turns out he was the one putting in complaints, yet here we are in 2024 working together on a

project that benefits us all.”

This is a true story with a very tangible moral lesson - if we want something we have to build it ourselves, no one is coming to save us. This is going to take monumental effort and we will face challenges, but we need to see it in these simple terms - if we don’t learn to feed ourselves we will learn to starve. If we don’t learn to stand together, we will be beaten down separately. If we don’t learn to change the way things currently are we will cease to exist.

Conclusion I cannot stress enough the importance of laying the foundations for your electoral campaign using DCP. Whilst it is possible for a candidate to “come off the bench” and win an election, it will be extremely unusual and would be down to a number of factors particular to that ward or due to the party (if a member of a party) being on the rise, allowing the candidate to ride the popularity wave. This is rare and party affiliation can be a double edged sword. Whilst a candidate can benefit from a party whose star is rising, they can be easily thwarted by any bad press associated with the party.

It only takes one party member, in another part of the country, to post something inappropriate and it can negatively impact on all candidates associated with that party. DCP can alleviate this, as the personal ties you build up in your community can offset any negative publicity generated elsewhere.

Take your time with the DCP element, this is the marathon, the sprint finish is the election campaign itself. Most of all enjoy it, after all you are making friends within your local area, making a difference and, even if your election campaign is unsuccessful, the friendships will last, and a strong community can withstand things which could wreck a weaker one. You will have put yourself into a position of influence, who knows where this could lead?

The Ward Election

This part of the guide describes how to conduct a ward election, or by-election, in the most thorough manner possible – we will go through the ideal, or perfect, campaign. Where time or manpower constraints do not allow for this, you must trim it down to the most essential items.

Rationale The obvious aim of any election campaign is to maximise our vote. But how do we achieve this?

With most of us being relatively unknown, the best way of getting the electorate’s attention is to get out and actually speak to individual voters, listen to and acknowledge their concerns, and then convince them to vote for us. This recognises the fact that most people feel over-looked and unheard by the existing parties. By speaking directly to the electorate we achieve multiple vital objectives:

We demonstrate that we are willing to listen, and in most cases, we are the ones most likely to closely share and represent their opinions;

We become a tangible presence in the community; and

We counter the idea that we are a wasted vote as we can be seen out and about, energetically engaging with our potential constituents – our enthusiasm becomes alluring.

This is not as fanciful as it may at first seem. No matter where you are in the country, an ever increasing percentage of the population are not only apathetic, but actively resent and despise the current political establishment. Through being seen in the community, and by listening to and engaging with peoples concerns, you will find you encounter very little hostility. A large number of people are feeling dejected, by presenting yourself honestly and openly you will gain a great deal of respect and create a significant pool of potential voters.

However, whilst most people will be receptive to you, some inevitably will not. It is best to prepare yourself mentally for such encounters, and to realise when you are faced with a lost cause.

Taking the above factors into consideration, how should we conduct the campaign?

We must aim to speak to as many people as possible by canvassing the maximum number of households. To do this we must knock on their doors. If they are out, then we knock again… and again… and again… at different times of the day.

As election campaigns usually last about four weeks, you may have had positive

interactions with some people early on and wish to keep them interested and ‘immune’ from the propaganda of our opponents. Therefore, these individuals should be leafleted

as you continue to knock on their neighbours’ doors. By continuing to leaflet already interested supporters you enhance the impression that you are campaigning seriously and minimise the potential of a wasted, or lost, vote.

At the same time, once you have identified someone that is hostile towards you and will not give you their vote, then you do not want to disturb them again. We do not want to ‘rattle their cage’. Ideally we don’t want them to even remember that there is an election on – the least we can do is to refrain from contributing to the overall electoral noise that is generated by the other candidates and parties with their random leafleting, occasional canvassing and any news items in the local papers.

The first part of the campaign, which takes up about three quarters of the allocated time, is spent working through the electorate, identifying potential supporters and keeping their interest. This phase is called the ‘sweeps’. There are ideally four sweeps, in other words, four attempts to catch the elector at home.

The second phase is where you start to focus the campaign onto those previously identified as potential votes. The aim is to re-visit all those who expressed an interest in voting for you, to impress upon them how important it is that they do vote, and to make sure that they have not forgotten. This phase is called the ‘re-knocks’ and takes up the last week of the campaign – it is when the electorate start to think seriously about the election. During the re-knocks you would also continue trying to make contact with the people who were always out during the sweep phase.

The last phase is polling day itself. Here we focus our energies onto an even more specific part of the electorate – those identified as definite voters, that is, those that we consider definite as long as they remember or can be bothered. It is now our job to motivate them or to jog their memory. We identify who has not voted by ‘telling’ at the polling station and then we ‘whip in’ those who have not yet voted.

From this it can be seen that we begin the campaign amongst the whole electorate. As the campaign progresses and polling day approaches, we distil the electorate down to those who we think are likely to vote for us and focus all of our energies onto them.

More detail on the various phases of a campaign, certain things we should not do, and other issues such as the use of posters, postal voting, validating the poll, etc., will be discussed later in the manual.

Surprise Fighting an election can be thought of in the same terms as fighting a real battle in a war. If you can utilise the element of surprise then it is easier to outmanoeuvre and outperform the enemy.

The big parties regularly fight by-elections, although they rarely fight a full-on detailed campaign as outlined here. A campaign such as this is very demanding and is often just

not possible, therefore we must take stock of our resources and, if necessary, adapt the full campaign to make it more achievable.

A full-on campaign appears to start slowly. The first couple of sweeps take a long time to complete and are relatively inconspicuous, it is designed to build and reach a crescendo over the last week, by which time it would be too late for our opposition to react. As a result of this they will not be able to tell until quite late whether we are fighting all out or not. They will find it difficult to judge how seriously to take us as a ‘threat’. With a large number of small-party and independent candidates fighting professional and comprehensive campaigns simultaneously throughout the country, our opposition will find themselves over-whelmed and unable to tackle us everywhere at once. They have to rely on a limited pool of activists, much like ourselves.

By taking a co-ordinated approach, we can achieve surprise. The apparent slow-build of our campaigns means we go largely unnoticed by our enemies until it is too late.

Ward Selection The following factors should be taken into consideration when selecting a target ward:

Ideally the ward should be compact, without trunk roads, open spaces and railway lines dividing it up. This is because once you stir an interest within an area people speak to each other and reinforce your campaign through peer group pressure. If the ward is split up, it inhibits this process.

You do not want there to be too many entry phone blocks. It is difficult to access the electors in these blocks and our style of campaigning is heavily dependant on personal contact. The turn out in entry phone blocks tends to be much lower as the people that live there have lower community feeling and feel less involved. This is true of both private dormitory blocks inhabited typically by single commuters and public sector housing.

You do not want there to be too many old people’s homes and sheltered housing units. The electors in these residences are even more difficult to access than those in normal entry phone blocks. A relatively high proportion tend to have postal votes and these can be heavily manipulated by other parties. Labour sympathisers often control access as wardens and regularly manipulate the vulnerable people to vote for them.

The ward should be accessible – ideally in the centre of a district with good communications and public transport so that activists can get there easily. However, town centre wards with lots of people living above shops should be avoided as the people who live above shops tend to be inaccessible and more transient.

If possible you should avoid wards with heavy numbers of ethnic minority voters (e.g. over 20%) as these groups often vote as a block at the direction of community ‘elders’. In areas such as these you will be reliant on getting an exceptionally high percentage of the remainder of the population to vote for you.

If you are working in conjunction with other members of your party, or other independents, and are preparing more than one target ward, then, all things being equal, it is sensible to have them contiguous with each other and within the same County Council division. County Council divisions consist of several district wards joined together and it makes sense to think ahead to the County Council elections. Having target wards next to each other also allows greater economies of scale in leaflet production (for members of the same party) and for resource management and co-ordination.

The ward shouldn’t be too posh or too poor. Independents and small parties are more likely to attract support from middle income earners.

Often a ward that is marginal between two or more main parties is a prudent choice as it provides the opportunity for an outsider to come through the middle and win on a lower percentage.

In a safe Labour or Conservative seat, you would necessarily need a high percentage to win. However, safe seats often do not have a history of being heavily contested. The incumbent party often takes the electorate for granted and will not have a recent canvass return of known supporters. This can give you an edge. You will have to weigh up the pros and cons on this.

If you live in area where the wards vary greatly in size then it would be advisable to pick a smaller ward that is easier to cover in detail. A good resource for gathering data on wards is

http://neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk

Canvassing Whether or not we achieve the element of surprise, our main weapons in a full-on campaign are attention to detail, hard work and the remorseless application of the ‘plan’. This campaign doctrine is almost entirely based around canvassing. It is essential that you and your fellow activists become comfortable with canvassing.

Some people mistakenly think canvassing is going leafleting and talking to voters they happen to see in their front gardens. Others think that a ward has been canvassed if the doors in a few streets are haphazardly knocked on. Be very clear – you can only consider that a ward has been canvassed if the streets have been systematically knocked several times and you have spoken to the vast majority of the electorate.

You must organise your canvassing so that the same street is canvassed at different times. It is pointless canvassing the same streets at the same time, such as weekday evenings, as shift workers or the elderly will not open their doors in the evening and you will never speak to these people.

As a rule of thumb, an average street is canvassed in the following manner:

1st Sweep – evening canvass ~ 50% of people in

2nd Sweep – daytime canvass ~ 25% people in (that is ~ 12.5% of electorate as you would only be knocking on half the doors)

3rd Sweep – weekend canvass ~ 40% people in (that is 19.4% of electorate as you would only be knocking the remaining outs)

4th Sweep – evening canvass ~ 50% of people in (that is 9.1% of the electorate)

In this example, after the 4th sweep you should have canvassed over 90% of the electorate. The percentages given are a realistic estimate of the number of people you will find in at the given times.

During the re-knock stage when we re-visit the people we have already seen, we also continue knocking the residual ‘outs’, so you should always speak to well over 90% of the electorate – in a thorough canvass maybe 95%. The remaining 5% are generally people who don’t answer their doors for any reason!

An individual canvasser should be able to cover at least thirty doors in an hour on the first sweep (when every door will be knocked). This increases as the campaign progresses, as less and less doors down each street will have to be knocked (even though other doors will be leafleted as detailed below).

The canvasser should be smartly dressed – although not overdressed as it can look like the bailiffs are in town! A decent pair of trousers and a clean shirt is all that’s required.

Talking on the Door Canvassing is a skill, but it is not a difficult skill to master. Many activists are frightened by the prospect of knocking on a stranger’s door and convincing them of giving you their vote. But this ‘fear’ is completely misplaced. You should not be daunted by coming face to face with the great British electorate. You will rarely, if ever, meet hostility on the doorstep.

Every canvasser should be given a brief guide on what they should say on the door for that particular campaign – this is commonly known as the spiel. It would include details such as the name of the candidate, the date of the election, the reason for the vacancy, (if a by-election) and a range of the key local issues. It is important that canvassers get into the swing of a campaign and learn to talk about the issues in a neighbourhood as if they actually lived there themselves (which some of them probably won’t).

So what should you say to the person who answers the door? This is an example of typical spiel:

Knock-knock – door opens…

‘Hello, sorry to disturb you.’ Some canvassers like to add ‘Mrs Jones’, taking the name from the canvass sheet. This has the advantage of ensuring that the person who answers is a voter and not someone who only moved in the week before. Always start like this and be polite. Stand up straight, smile and give off a friendly air.

‘I am calling about the by-election due to be held on 23rd March.’ Obviously substitute the date your election is being held on, or say this year’s local elections. This breaks the ice and allows the householder to adjust to who you are. Don’t forget that you have called unannounced and taken them by surprise. They will only half take in the first words you say as they will be visually weighing you up.

‘I am standing as an independent candidate’, or ‘I am calling on behalf of John Smith, he is your (insert party name) candidate.’ ‘We are campaigning on…’

This is where you list the best two or three local issues. You should hopefully be adroit enough to tailor your spiel to the elector. For example, if they are elderly, it does not make much sense to be talking about the local schools! You should talk in the way a normal person would talk about these issues, not as a political drone.

‘The other parties/the council/the government needs a good kick up the backside so that they/it looks after ordinary peoples concerns for a change.’ This is effectively an appeal for a protest vote against the main parties. People understand this. This approach nearly always raises a wry smile on the face of the elector and creates an instant ‘bond’ between you and them. At this stage hold out the canvass aid leaflet and they should take it – push it towards their hand. When they take the leaflet, this also effectively creates a bond. Leaflets handed out this way are much more likely to be read than one just pushed through a letter box. So even a poor canvasser is doing a lot more good than a person sent out just leafleting.

‘The only way to protest against these things is by voting. If you do not vote you cannot complain about these things. Everyone is complaining and the only way to hurt them/the council/the government is at the ballot box. Would you consider voting for me/us?’ Ideally at several times during the spiel the voter will join in the conversation. However, nearly everyone won’t. British people can be very passive.

Many canvassers just go immediately in without any of the ‘persuasion’ spiel (the middle part) and ask straight off whether the person will give them their vote. This is what the established parties do – they have established support. They use canvassing as a means to identify their established support. We will have to rely much more on persuasion. Our ‘yes’ rate goes up dramatically with persuasion canvassing – by articulating our concerns in the same way that they think about an issue, we create common ground. The persuasion stage is designed to create common ground, so that people identify with us on the big issues and realise that we, and only we, are the ones to address their concerns, and that we do so in the way that they talk to their friends about the issue.

Do not spend too long talking to a voter. You will be delaying the other people in your team, who will either lose you or be left hanging about for you. In particular, do not spend ages having a political discussion with an opponent. You are not there to engage in debates, you are there to find supporters.

Preparation

Remember: ‘If you fail to prepare, then be prepared to fail’; and ‘Poor preparation and planning leads to piss poor performance’.

Ensure your campaign is well stocked with pens, clipboards, elastic bands, highlighter pens, rosettes and leaflets.

Finding Out ‘The Issues’ Local elections always see big parties punished for the failings of their national leaderships and policies, but that doesn’t alter the fact that – especially for independents – local politics are about local issues.

Sometimes these are issues which affect the whole ward, but they may equally be things which affect only one street or a single block of flats. The LibDems have built their status as the alternative opposition party on the basis of their relentless local work. They know what they are doing, and they are quite blunt when they explain what wins local seats to their would-be candidates: They call it “Dog Shit Politics”, and it wins votes.

So the very first thing to do if you have decided to tread the electoral road is to find out what those local issues are.

If you have done your DCP work seriously and consistently, you should already know, but if there are gaps in your coverage, or if you’re trying to do a short-cut, the best way to do this is to produce and distribute a very simply survey to each household.

This should use just a couple of lines to introduce yourself or your group, tell voters that you are working to make “our community” a better place, and ask them to fill in a box on the leaflet for them to write the biggest LOCAL problem they’d like to see sorted out.

You could have two smaller boxes for the second and third most important things which would make the local area better for them and their family. Finish with a note saying that you’ll be knocking on their door tomorrow evening to collect the survey and chat.

Deliver these surveys street-by-street over a period of several weeks, because collecting them takes much longer than putting them out. Of course, most people won’t be bothered to fill in the surveys, but they are a good conversation-starter if they answer the door in any case. Use a blank form to record their opinions if they’ve not done it themselves.

The very act of doing this will begin to raise your credibility as a potential local councillor, but the main point is to gather information about local issues. Even though you will only actually get relatively few completed surveys back, by the time you’ve studied these, and spoken with a few residents as well, you will have a good handle on

the local issues you need to talk about on the doorsteps, cover in your leaflets, and pressure the council and other relevant authorities to put right.

Play The Part This brings us to a really important fact of community politics – you don’t even have to be elected to start getting a reputation for getting things done. When a good local councillor finds out about an issue that’s causing residents problems, the first task is to decide which section of the council or other local power is in some way responsible, to identify someone in authority who can be contacted, and to do so.

But there’s no law that says that only elected councillors can do this, far from it. Anyone with local knowledge who cares about their community can contact and pressure the authorities. You don’t have to be elected. You simply “act as if…..”

In nationalist circles this was first done by a married couple of activists who lived just outside the West Midlands Black Country. The wife concentrated on their own quite middle-class ward, while the husband ‘adopted’ a council ward in the old industrial area itself.

In the Conservative middle-class ward, they didn’t actually find many problems that needed fixing anyway, but in the rough working class one they quickly found various local minor irritants which had been allowed to fester by Labour councillors who had never faced a serious electoral challenge and had got out-of-touch and lazy.

By the time the little team of nationalist activists had identified the first problems and worked out who and where to get them fixed, they were confident enough to tackle more, and to roll the same process out in other target wards.

A rough rule of thumb then emerged: By the time your group has tackled about twenty local problems, then even if you haven’t actually solved them all, word will have gone round the that you are the people to approach if something needs fixing. Some things, of course, are so simple that it may be feasible and appropriate for your team simply to do them in person.

Local Newsletters While word-of-mouth will kick in, you need to speed the process up and make sure that everyone knows what you’re doing, not just the local gossips! This is why cheap local leaflets and regular newsletters are absolutely central to the way the LibDems win by doing “Dog Shit Politics”.

So before you even start complaining about something or doing a clean-up, take photos which illustrate it. Where you get a quick result, take photos of your good work. Use these to illustrate a simple, plain leaflet, with the text kept to headlines and a couple of well-spaced paragraphs in big, bold text.

If sorting the problem takes longer, you should use short-run leaflets to keep residents informed of progress, encourage them to get involved with your campaign, and slam the opposition for their failure to stand with local people.

Ideally, your designated writer will be fully literate, but the wonders of the modern education system and the cancerous spread of sub-literate habits have made such individuals all too rare. But don’t worry too much, because the general public are even worse. Most of your target audience wouldn’t recognise a grammatical error if it slapped them in the face!

Keep your words simple and your sentences short and you’ll not go far wrong. Experiment with IT software. Try running your proposed text through Grammarly, for example. That will improve your writing style, as well as correcting spelling and grammatical errors, and it only takes moments.

The Workhorse of Community Politics Whole wards require some thousands of leaflets, so utilise local printers - you can’t buy the paper for the price they’ll charge to print and supply them. Use them for anything more than 1,000. But for short runs, set up cost makes even the cheapest commercial printer prohibitively expensive.

Also, leaflets which are too glossy and expensive can suggest you’re professional politicians – and everyone hates politicians! A ‘local community group’ needs to look and feel like exactly that.

The other problem with using professional printers is that they are likely to take several days at least to get your job done. When this is for something such as your main campaign leaflet in an election, it doesn’t matter, because the date when you need to start delivering them is known months in advance. But to seize on a local issue and make sorting it ‘yours’, you might have only a few hours to beat some on-the-ball rival to the punch.

Some events – such as groomers appearing outside a school, a racist attack on a local lad or the announcement of the axing of some valued service – demand an instant response. Strike while people are justifiably angry and while the iron is hot.

A serious effort in local politics therefore demands that you acquire the ability to produce simple, cheap, short-run leaflets, economically, within an hour. It sounds like a tall order, but it isn’t. The answer is to buy and master the use of a digital duplicator.

These are the machines on which the LibDems’ formidable local political machines are built. They were also absolutely crucial to the BNP’s electoral insurgency, with dozens of branches and groups having their own.

The modern digital printer is a clean, user-friendly computer-linked wonder of information. They are extremely robust, being capable of producing literally millions of leaflets over years of use, with just a few drum changes and the occasional service. So they are more than able to provide you with a few hundred leaflets for the weekend, fifty for a single street on Tuesday, and another batch of follow up newsletters for your activity the following Saturday.

The only remotely challenging thing you need to master to use the system properly is the ability to manipulate very simple Desk Top Publishing templates on a computer, and the common-sense and discipline to keep your written messages short, simple and clear.

In the BNP, we provided templates into which local units could drop their own pictures and text. For smaller or newer groups which lacked someone able to do that, we had members of the central team who would do it for them after a phone call about the issues, emailing the finished leaflet back to them for local printing.

In the event of something happening at a national level which needed an instant response, we could produce a leaflet and send it out to all units en masse, giving us the capability to respond to a crisis or opportunity, nationwide, in a couple of hours.

To buy a digital duplicator brand new now costs thousands of pounds. Fortunately, there is a ready second-hand market, with machines regularly sold by Scout groups, schools, village halls and similar institutions. Such a machine might be years old, but will only probably only have printed a few thousand leaflets in total. They will, however, be a fraction of their original price.

It will be a bargain, especially if one of your team enjoys working with machines. Hearing and watching a digital printer churn out a hard-hitting leaflet is a real pleasure, and activists love going out with something very topical and ‘hot off the press’. More important by far, the leaflets they produce will be central to your efforts to win local elections and – hopefully – your longer-term success in building a cohesive, self-aware and organised local community.

Planning Meeting Immediately you know of a by-election vacancy or well in advance of the annual round of elections, you must hold a planning meeting involving everyone who will perform a key task during the election. Teamwork is vital. No one can do everything themselves – there are many tasks to perform. If they are to be done properly, the burden must be shared. Also, to get the best out of people they must feel that they have ‘ownership’ of the matter at hand. That way they will get stuck in and feel committed to the outcome. However, (and this is in no way contradictory) one person should ultimately be in charge, otherwise there will be chaos and it will be impossible to stick properly to the ‘plan’.

It is important that you utilise all the manpower available – the efficient mobilisation of all available activists is crucial.

The planning meeting needs to establish the key issues that must be sorted out before the campaign can get underway properly, and determine how the campaign is to be fought. Jobs must also be shared out.

The preparation of the ward maps and canvass sheets, the selection of the candidate (where appropriate), the key campaign themes, the scheduling of the election timetable, the content and production of leaflets, meeting points, telephone numbers and nomination signatures – these all have to be sorted out.

At the planning meeting you should also have available previous election results for the ward so you can determine who the likely main opponent is going to be. Look at other recent by-election results in the same area.

The Candidate Standing as a candidate should not be taken lightly. Only the most committed and loyal members of your group should be considered. Being a local councillor is a heavy responsibility. You must be prepared to stick to your guns for the duration of your term. It involves a fair amount of work. You are likely to become the centre of attention as far as the local media is concerned. If elected, you must be a credit to yourself and your party – you must not have any embarrassing convictions or skeletons in your cupboard.

If you’ve followed the advice of this booklet, you will already know who your candidate is going to be – and many voters will already know that he or she is a good person, someone who listens to their concerns, takes action and can be trusted to get things done.

The Agent Every candidate has to have an Election Agent, although a candidate can be their own Election Agent. Having a separate Election Agent takes the pressure off the candidate. Also, if the candidate is their own Election Agent it looks like you are a one-man band. The agent has certain legal responsibilities so must be a reliable, committed activist.

Attendance at the count is guaranteed to the candidate and guest (used to be wife in less politically correct days), Election Agent and possibly only one observer. By having a separate agent, you guarantee an extra person at the count to scrutinise the process and minimise the chances of hostile counting agents ‘losing’ some of your votes.

The agent should be responsible for:

Obtaining the nomination papers:

Collecting the electoral register;

Delivering the nomination papers;

Attending the opening of the postal votes;

Attending the polling station on polling day;

Attending the count,

and the following legal responsibilities:

Appointing polling agents (people who can attend inside a polling station to ensure everything is in order);

Appointing counting agents (people who can attend and scrutinise the count).

In short, the agent should be responsible for handling all contact with the council and the Returning Officer. Not all of the above tasks are strictly the agent’s legal responsibility. However, it is far simpler if one person is detailed to carry out all of these tasks. Then it is clear where the responsibility lies.

The agent must provide the Returning Officer with an office address (which can be an individual’s home address or a P.O. Box) that is either:

in the borough or district in which the election is taking place; or

an adjoining district or borough; or

in a parliamentary constituency that at least is in part is within the borough or district.

The agent can live anywhere – the office address does not have to be his home address. Practically speaking, as important documents will be sent to this address, it is important that it is readily accessible to people on the campaign team.

The office address given is the address that is published and publicly displayed on

official paperwork issued by the council relating to the election (the candidate’s address will also be published on this paperwork). There is no requirement that the address used for the imprint used on election leaflets is the same address.

There is no agent in town and parish council elections and the candidate is automatically his own agent.

Electronic Electoral Register and Canvas Sheet Preparation You should obtain an electronic version of the electoral register. This is usually provided by the council on a CD, which contains a computer file, or they may just email it to you. The data is usually held in a text file that must be converted into an Excel spreadsheet to create canvass sheets for use in the campaign. If you do not have proper canvass sheets, then you cannot run a proper campaign. Two copies should be produced.

If you are in a registered party, then in order to obtain a copy of the electoral register from your council, you will need a letter of authorisation from the Nominating Officer. This needs to be taken with you when collecting the register.

Do not accept a copy of the old-fashioned ‘paper’ register. You will not be able to conduct a campaign properly with this. The council will not usually give you both a paper copy and an electronic copy, so make sure you get it right!

Once provided with a letter of authorisation, the council will routinely provide a copy of the full register for the whole authority soon after December each year. The electoral register is updated at that time with information gained from forms sent to all households in the local authority area. As the electoral register is updated on a monthly basis (with people who have moved or died deleted and new residents added) there are monthly updates available.

You should ensure that you get the yearly register (available after 1st December each year) and the monthly updates as a matter of course. That way, when an election is called there is no delay in getting things ready.

Some councils will get into the habit of emailing the register and updates to you. However, other councils are inefficient (surprise, surprise) and unable to supply updates. In this scenario, make sure you are not fobbed off by uncooperative council staff.

Mark up the existing postal voters on the canvass sheets before the campaign starts properly. The Postal Vote list is available from the council and should also be obtained in electronic format. As we will explore shortly, working the Postal Votes properly is likely to be an extremely important part of your campaign.

In a by-election most councils will provide you with an updated version of the electoral register (with all the monthly changes incorporated in it) for the ward concerned if you request it when you pick up the nomination papers. They do this to assist you in getting the ten signatures required to stand. It is not a legal requirement that they do this – it is only a legal requirement that they provide an up-to-date copy of the electoral register to duly nominated candidates (i.e. when you hand the paperwork in). However, most authorities realise that having an up-to-date copy of the register will assist a potential candidate to become a duly nominated candidate.

Maps You should obtain a large scale and clear map of the ward and produce numerous copies. There is nothing worse than sending activists out with shoddy (or no) maps. Ensure that any new streets, turnings and areas of difficult to find blocks are marked on it, by hand if necessary, before copies are made.

The ward boundary should be marked on each copy with a highlighter. Sometimes a road marks the edge of a ward, with houses on either side being in different wards, so be very careful that your marking is accurate, or your activists will waste time and be made to feel very foolish working in the wrong ward!

Also mark the polling stations so that activists get used to where they are in preparation for polling day and also so they can tell voters who are unsure of where it is.

Some maps must be kept by the campaign manager to show the progress made in each sweep. For example, the first sweep master copy map should be marked off in three colours: one for the streets covered by daytime canvassing, one for the streets covered in the evenings and one for the weekends. That way, on the second (and subsequent) sweeps, you can ensure that you do not do the same street twice in the daytime (for example) and neglect to knock it in the evening. By doing this it is possible, at a glance, to tell how each sweep is progressing and also which areas should be done at what time.

There should be a map on each clipboard issued to an activist canvasser, ideally with the streets that activist has to canvass highlighted together with an indication of where the redirection and meeting point for lunch are.

A good website that shows boundaries can be found at www.election-maps.co.uk. The maps themselves are not very clear and don’t name the smaller streets but they accurately show the boundaries of every ward in the country. You should use these maps to determine the boundary and then use better maps (buy them if need be) to copy up for the activists. Every organiser should have clear street maps of his area ready for reproduction. As a matter of course every organiser should also know all his ward boundaries.

Photographs You should already have a stock of good photos of your candidate working in the ward and interacting with local residents, preferably in places that voters will recognise instantly as in their ward.

But as the campaign starts you should also take plenty of pictures of the candidate in smart dress and, potentially, with a rosette. These pictures should be taken in the ward. Studio pictures are of no use as they do not tell a story – they do not place the candidate within the community. Every inch of a leaflet must serve a purpose, a studio picture is sterile.

Suitable locations are: outside the local shopping centre; outside a school, a police station, a railway station, a hospital, health centre or talking to some residents (these could be activists posing as local residents). Next to the major local landmark, next to a local street sign, next to some horrible graffiti (with a disapproving look on the candidates face), next to some run down housing and so on. These pictures should

illustrate the stories that you anticipate covering in the leaflets. You should also get a photo outside the Town Hall, as this illustrates the final message that the elector must use their vote to get your candidate into that Town Hall to shake things up.

Campaign Themes You will need to get your heads together at the planning meeting in order to determine the major concerns of the local community and what angle you are going to put on them. Get copies of the local newspaper. Review your survey sheets and all the short- run leaflets you’ve put out over the last year. Write a list of all the work and especially successes you need to remind voters about.

During the campaign, activists must be primed to pick up (and report back) any fresh local issues that are causing concern so that these can be incorporated into the campaign as it progresses.

Effective propaganda reflects popular concerns. Making scare stories up will damage your credibility with the electorate. You should not merely criticise things, you should also offer solutions.

Try to keep to a few simple issues and a couple of catchy slogans. As the campaign progresses, the leaflets should get simpler to focus the electorate’s minds on the main themes you are campaigning on. Avoid introducing new themes in the last couple of leaflets (out of a total of around eight in a normal full campaign) as it will confuse things. Activists should be provided with the key campaign themes and incorporate them into their spiel when canvassing.

Activist Campaign Guide and Timetable You should produce a brief campaign guide to be given to each activist for them to keep for the campaign. This should fit onto a sheet of A5 paper. The guide should help to ensure that the canvass sheets are completed correctly and help activists from outside the area to canvass confidently.

It should include brief instructions as to how to fill out the canvass forms. It should include the candidate’s name, the date of the election, the reason for the election and the ward name. The main campaign issues should also be summarised (to assist the canvassers in knowing what to say).

You should specify the rendezvous point and nominate cafes where people should congregate for lunch. It’s good for morale to get everyone together for lunch, and again after the activity is over, but do not allow activists to use the café as a rest camp and do not allow activists to drink alcohol whilst ‘on duty’.

You should also list contact telephone numbers in case activists are late turning up at the rendezvous point, or they get lost whilst out canvassing.

Another very important document for you to produce is a timetable covering every day until polling day, with key dates noted, such as: the last date for receipt of nomination papers, the last day for receipt of postal and proxy vote applications, the date postal votes are sent out and the first opening of postal votes.

The time to be allotted to each of the key tasks should also be marked – in other words the four sweeps and three re-knocks. Bear in mind that each sweep takes progressively less time, as each one gives you contact with more voters and cuts the number of so far unanswered doors which still have to be knocked.

All your activists should have a copy of the timetable and you must stick to it rigidly. There is never time left over to make up for wasted days, although in practice slippage always occurs – there is never enough time to do everything you will want to do!

You should also make it clear on the timetable when you will have activists out. In a major campaign this should be every single daytime, every weekend and every mid- week evening.

Mobilisation Do not just rely on the distribution of the activists’ timetable to ensure that activists turn up. All through the campaign you must regularly telephone, text and e-mail activists to get them out. All organisers (in fact any keen activist) within striking distance of the ward have a duty to participate in this mobilisation. It is better that one activist is told five times by different people that an activity is on rather than the activist not being told at all as everyone assumed that someone else would tell them.

Believe it or not but some people do not turn up as they think that enough people will be there to do the work. Make no mistake: There are never enough people to do all the work!

Preparing your Canvass Boards You must have your canvass boards prepared before the first activity. The boards should be arranged in pairs and each pair of boards should be identical.

The electoral register must be converted into canvass sheets (via Excel). You will need two copies of this. Each clipboard should have a suitable amount of canvass sheets for streets in close proximity to each other. There should be a map of the ward, with the relevant streets highlighted. There should also be an activist campaign guide. You will need to make an identical copy of each clipboard then band them together in pairs for distribution to your activists.

Paperwork and Legal Requirements

Nomination Papers For a candidate to be duly registered with a Returning Officer (the council official who administers the election) so that his name and any party affiliation appears on the ballot paper, he has to be properly nominated and must submit the nomination papers.

The nomination papers consist of the nomination form itself, the candidate’s consent to nomination, the agent’s appointment form and the certificate of authority for the candidate to stand as a representative of a registered political party (if applicable).

You can download the candidate’s consent to nomination and the nomination form from the Electoral Commission’s website if you wish to prepare them early, as many local councils will not release papers until immediately prior to the election.

How Many Nomination Signatures Do You Need? For District, Borough, County Council or Parliamentary elections ten registered electors for the electoral area concerned have to sign the nomination form for each candidate.

Strictly speaking these are a proposer, a seconder and eight assentors. In other words, ten electors in the ward, division, or constituency depending on the type of election (County Council ‘wards’ are called divisions).

For Parish or Town Council elections there is just a proposer and a seconder. In other words, only two signatures are required.

For the London Mayoral election ten signatures from each Borough and for the City of London, which makes 330 in total. No signatures are required to stand for the London Assembly on the London wide-top up list, but to stand as a Constituency member ten signatures are required for each constituency.

Getting the signatories is rarely a problem. If you have been doing your preparation work properly you will have plenty of local residents who will be delighted that you are standing and very happy to sign your paperwork. If for some reason you do have to knock doors ‘cold’ to get signatures, tell residents that signing doesn’t in any way commit them to you or say that they even agree with you, but just that they support your right to stand.

Deposits For bigger elections, a sum of money has to be lodged as a deposit with the Returning Officer when the nomination is submitted. The deposit is returnable if the candidate, or candidates (in a list system) obtain a certain percentage of the vote. In return, you get the right to the free delivery of an election communication (generally a leaflet, but in some Mayoral elections a page in a booklet) by the Post Office.

This is one per household if you do not address them, but one per voter if you do the considerable extra work of putting names and addresses on each and every leaflet. It is only the delivery which is ‘free’, the cost of producing, bundling and delivering the leaflets to the Post Office collection points is the responsibility of the party or candidate).

No deposit is payable for local council elections, whether they be for Parish, Town, District, Borough, Unitary Authority or County elections.

For Parliamentary elections the deposit is currently £500 per constituency, returnable to candidates who obtain over 5% of the poll. The deposits in London Assembly, Mayoral and Assembly and Police Commissioner elections are more, on account of the larger areas covered.

Signing the Nomination Form The nominators must sign with their normal signature and print their name legibly next to it (although the layout of nomination forms varies slightly from authority to authority). You should also include their electoral number and polling district code. The completed nomination forms must be handed in to the Returning Officer at the Town Hall before the Close of Nominations, which is the most important date in the entire election!

When you collect these signatures, explain clearly what they are doing. The list will be displayed on council notice boards, but signing the form does not imply that the person is a supporter.

Be sure to have a copy of the electoral register with you, with the electoral numbers on it, so that you can be sure the person you get to sign is actually on the register. Do not let a husband sign on behalf of his wife. It is best to get them to practice their signature on a plain sheet of paper before they mark up the nomination form. Never let them take the nomination paper off you to go into their house to sign it. Inevitably they will come back with it done incorrectly. They must do it in front of you.

Make sure that the person has not signed the nomination papers for anyone else. An elector may only nominate one candidate, and if they sign for two, it will only count for the candidate who handed their papers in first. The second candidate’s papers will be invalid.

Do not hand the form in at the last minute. Submit at least a day early so any mistakes can be rectified.

When you hand it in make an appointment with the Returning Officer and wait until you get written confirmation that the paperwork has been accepted.

Different councils adopt different practices regarding mistakes, use of correction fluid and crossings out on the paperwork. You could hand in ten good signatures, but with

only one assentor and one seconder, spread across three different forms. However, if the Returning Officer is being awkward and turns your nomination down you will have little option but to get them done again as the process for appealing and forcing them to accept your form will take too long, and cost money. The best thing to do is to hand it in correctly, or if you have made a mistake that you have corrected, hand the form in early and get written confirmation that it has been accepted.

You do not have to use the council’s forms. You can download nomination papers from the Electoral Commission’s website. This can be useful for the yearly round of elections if you are fighting a lot of seats and need to start getting your nomination signatures early. Councils are often slow in handing out paperwork.

What Does ‘Description’ Mean on a Nomination Form? On the nomination form there is a box marked ‘Description’. Each candidate has a description – for which no more than six words can be used. If you are a member of a party – this is where you put the registered party name. You should not enter “Housewife’ or ‘Six feet tall, dark hair and overweight’!

Qualifications for Candidates To become a candidate for a local authority (i.e. local council, including County Council) you must satisfy the following criteria:

be at least 18 years old on both the day of nomination and election day, and,

be a British citizen, or a citizen of the Irish Republic, the Commonwealth or another member state of the European Union.

A person must also meet at least one of the following qualifications:

they are a registered local government elector for that authority both on the day they are nominated and election day, or,

they have occupied as owner or tenant any land or premises in the local authority area during the whole of the 12 months before the day they are nominated and election day, or,

they have had their principal or only place of work in the local authority area during the whole of the 12 months before the day they are nominated and election day, or,

they have lived in the local authority area during the whole of the 12 months before the day they are nominated and election day.

For a Parish or Town Council election only, the residence qualification is relaxed and the candidate may live within 4.8 kilometres of the parish boundary.

A person is disqualified form acting as a candidate under the Local Government Act 1972 if he or she:

Is employed by or holds a paid office under that local authority (including joint boards or committees); or

Is an undischarged bankrupt, or has made a composition or arrangement with creditors; or

Has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment of 3 months or more (including a suspended sentence) without the option of a fine, during the five years before the day of election; or

Has been disqualified under Part III of the Representation of the People Act 1983, or under the Audit Commission Act 1998.

A person may also be disqualified from election if he or she has been convicted or reported guilty of a corrupt or illegal practice by an election court. Additionally, the Local Government Housing Act 1989 defines a number of politically restricted posts under a local authority, holders of which are disqualified from election to and membership of a local authority.

To be qualified to be elected as an MP a person must be aged 18 or over at the date of his or her nomination and a British subject. There are certain disqualifications for election which exist under Statute and Common Law, including, for example:

holding a paid office as defined in the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 as amended;

undischarged bankruptcy;

having been sentenced or ordered to be imprisoned or detained indefinitely for more than one year, being detained in pursuance of such sentence anywhere in the British Isles or the Republic of Ireland, or being unlawfully at large when otherwise would be being detained;

being disqualified under any enactment relating to corrupt or illegal practices, and

being a member of the House of Lords (this disqualification does not apply to hereditary peers other than those continuing to sit in the House of Lords by virtue of Section 2 of the House of Lords Act 1999).

Imprint Requirement It is a legal requirement that every item of election literature carries the correct imprint. This is what used to be called ‘the printed and published address’. This is a requirement as the imprint links the material to the candidate’s campaign which is important for proving the level of expenditure incurred and also in case legal or libellous statements are made. The imprint information must be on one of the faces of the printed material.

No material of any description may be put out that does not have the correct imprint.

You can use any legitimate address for the imprint address on printed matter. It can be a P.O. Box address. The address does not legally have to be in the district, an adjoining district or borough. However, it looks better and has a better feel to it if it is a local address.

There are many legally acceptable variations of the imprint. A valid one must be used on all leaflets, placards or banners used from the date of publication of the notice of the election.

The Campaign

Time is always of the essence in by-elections. We will be distributing many leaflets, providing a mass of information to the electorate. You do not need to do a warm-up leaflet first. This delays the start of canvassing and will cause leaflet fatigue – we are going to hand out a lot anyway and we want our message read at the end of the campaign if at all possible.

The campaign is extremely intensive. A mark of the success of a campaign is that near the end voters start saying ‘Oh no, not you again’ and we hear general complaints that we are over doing it. Never get put off by this – you must develop a thick skin. You must realise that in an average by-election well over half of the people will not vote, and a good third never, ever vote. Inevitably these disinterested folk will get irritated. Very few people admit that they will not vote, and they will use our heavy campaign as an excuse for not voting when they wouldn’t anyway. We may deliver up to ten items of literature. The Liberal Democrats often deliver twelve or more items and they are the acknowledged masters of campaigning.

The way the campaign works is that it builds slowly and almost out of sight, under the radar of our opponents. The first sweep takes longest, but once it is over the rest of the sweeps and re-knocks come in quick succession, giving our opposition little time to adjust to the rapid deployment of our campaign. In the last week our targeted part of the electorate will get a re-visit, plus further visits and the mail merge. This is a very powerful end to the campaign, and should swamp anything our opponents do.

Canvassers should be put into teams of two and given identical boards, at the end of each session the boards should be collated so they both show the same information. It is essential that canvassers concentrate at all times and complete their sheets accurately.

First Sweep (S1) A sweep is when you canvass the entire ward. You knock on every door to determine whether the elector is likely to vote for you or not.

The appropriate response must be entered in the S1 column on the canvass sheet. When filling in canvass sheets you should use standardised terms so that when people come to help they will be able to fill in the sheets without confusion. The options are:

Y – meaning ‘Yes’ – this person has said they will vote for you. You will be whipping in on polling day (reminding them to vote), so only put down Y if you are sure they’re serious.

P – meaning ‘possible’ – you believe this person may vote for you if they get good leaflets persuading them during the campaign, and they are worth a second knock

during the re-knock stage in the hope that they turn into a Yes (and so will be whipped in).

N – meaning ‘No’ – they will not vote for you. They are hostile or they support another party, or just don’t like you, or they don’t want to vote for anyone, or it is an empty property or a new voter who is not on the electoral role and there isn’t time to register them from scratch. This a house that should be ignored for the remainder of the campaign. Additional useful remarks (e.g. for hostile or empty premises) can be added in the ‘Comments’ column. When you find a No, enter N across all the columns for that household to make it clear that that house will not be visited again. Do not just draw a line as that makes the paperwork scruffy – always enter N N N N.

O – meaning ‘Out’ – self-explanatory. Leave a leaflet and a ‘Sorry we missed you’ slip if you are using them. If you try to canvass a property with an entry-phone system and you cannot gain access, then leave it blank and make a suitable note in the comment field. Do not mark as ‘Out’ as this would imply that the door has got a leaflet. The door will have to be visited again at another time with the relevant sweep leaflet.

You are looking for one response per household. If you wish to go into greater details, then use the ‘Comments’ field on the canvass sheet. For example, if you establish that the wife is a definite ‘No’, but the husband is a ‘Yes’, then mark the household as a ‘Yes’ but put a suitable warning in the comments field. We make the general assumption that all electors in one household will vote the same way.

You should use a local issue leaflet as a canvass aid to give to the elector who answers their door while you canvass them. This leaflet should also be left in households where no one answers the door (Outs).

If you see the elector but they can’t talk as they are old and it’s too late, or they are just on their way out, then mark them as ‘Out’.

If it is an entry-phone block that you have not been able to access even to leaflet, then leave all the relevant doors blank on the canvass sheet and put a mark in the ‘Comments’ field saying they are entry-phones (put this comment whether you get access or not). Clearly these doors have not been knocked and must be visited again before the end of the first sweep, perhaps earlier in the morning when the ‘trades’ button works.

Each canvasser should have a clipboard, pen, a suitable number of canvass sheets (more than enough to keep them going for the allotted time), a ward map (ideally highlighting the streets to be covered by their canvass), an activist’s guide/timetable, enough leaflets and ‘Sorry we missed you’ slips.

This is quite a lot of material and should be neatly stowed on the clipboard. The boards should be made up before the activity takes place by the campaign organiser, otherwise

half the activity time will be wasted. This is quite a time-consuming exercise but ensures that the activities run smoothly.

The boards are made up in pairs as there should be two canvass sheets for each street. The person in charge of each board must enter their initials at the top of the canvass sheet. This is so that the campaign manager can tell if an activist is making too many mistakes on the sheets and provide extra training if required. For example, putting an inapplicable mark against a house, leaving blanks which suggest that the house hasn’t been done, or one of the board pair showing a house as a ‘Yes’ while the other board shows it as a ‘No’.

There is also a basic security reason for putting initials on the top of each sheet. Without wishing to be the cause of paranoia, a supporter of an opposition party could volunteer as a campaign worker and deliberately mark down a ‘Yes’ as a ‘No’ and a ‘No’ as a

‘Yes’. However, as we do re-knocks (see below) errors of this sort are picked up and it would soon become apparent who the culprit is.

In some areas you may send the canvassers out in pairs. This is the most efficient way to canvass. In other areas you may wish to have a pair on each door (e.g. a man and a woman) or have one activist with the board and several canvassers reporting back to him with the relevant result. This last method is the least efficient and leads to the most errors.

Make sure everyone meets up at a prearranged location at the end of the activity. It is essential that no one goes off with their boards, spare leaflets or any other materials.

After each activity the campaign manager must compile the results so that each pair of canvass sheets agrees with one another.

Make sure that every single door is covered by the first sweep. It is essential that activists are vigilant in ensuring that they do not miss doors. Inevitably this does occasionally occur. Sometimes it is more efficient for the campaign manager to go around the odd doors that have been missed whilst the other activists get on with starting the second sweep.

The ‘Comments’ field on the canvass sheet is there to make a note of such things as whether the household wants an information pack, whether they requested a poster, whether they requested a lift to the polling station, whether the husband is anti, whilst the wife is a supporter, directions of how to find awkward doors or how to get access to blocks, etc.

Absolutely no other mark than Y, P, N or O (or a tick – see below) should be entered into the sweep and re-knock columns. Only one mark should be entered against a household. We do not want Y/P or a tick together with an O or numerous Ys for each member of the household, or some weird and wonderful letter scheme dreamt up by the

individual canvasser. Strictly one mark per household. If extra details are needed, then these are placed in the ‘Comments’ field.

Second Sweep (S2) The second sweep is essentially a repetition of the first sweep. A new, distinctive leaflet should be used. The aim is to canvass all the doors of people who were out during the

first sweep. So only the ‘Outs’ from the first sweep are canvassed. The ‘Ys’ and ‘Ps’ from the first sweep just get the second sweep leaflet delivered through their letterbox. These doors must not be knocked again. We only want to speak to someone in a household once during the sweep phase as we do not want to annoy people. A tick is entered on the canvass sheet against the doors that just get a leaflet (i.e. the existing Ys and Ps) to indicate that the door has been covered. Giving existing Ys and Ps leaflets reinforces our message.

When you find an N at any stage enter Ns right across the relevant row for S1, S2, S3, S4, R1, R2 and R3. This makes it clear what has to be done and hopefully prevents those doors from accidentally being knocked on again.

If a street was knocked in an evening during the first sweep, you should knock it in the daytime or over the weekend during the second sweep. That way there is obviously more chance of catching the person in. This is regulated by the campaign manager who marks his maps up to show which streets were done and when.

The second sweep takes less time than the first as fewer doors have to be actually knocked. On the second sweep, a simple ‘Sorry we missed you…’ slip could also again be left with the ‘Outs’.

Third Sweep (S3) The third sweep is more of the same. A third distinctive leaflet should be used. The third sweep takes even less time as yet fewer doors have to be knocked. The streets should be done at a different time than when they were canvassed on the preceding two sweeps. Again, you only knock the residual Os and mark the appropriate response. The already identified Ys and Ps (from both preceding sweeps) are just leafleted and marked with a tick on the canvass sheet.

It should be noted that it is impossible for a tick to be put against an O and it is wrong for there to be more than one response in a box (e.g. a tick and a letter). Also, there should not be more than one Y or P unless, for example, someone who was spoken to on S1 was in their front garden when delivering the S2 leaflet and they expressed an opinion (in that way an S1 P may turn to an S2 Y).

Fourth Sweep (S4) The fourth sweep should be very quick. A fourth distinctive leaflet should be used. Most doors are leafleted and a tick entered in the relevant column, rather than canvassed, as by this stage nearly every door will already have a response marked against it. You can pair up a leafleter (a non-canvasser) with a canvasser at this stage, with the canvasser just doing the residual Outs. If the first two sweeps have gone well it is sometimes worth pairing a leafleter with a canvasser on S3. The fourth sweep usually takes place in the week before the election. It is not so important when you do each street as if the first three sweeps have gone well, each street will already have been done at a different time.

First Re-Knock (R1) The re-knocks are a vital part of the strategy. The re-knocks compliment the sweeps. During the sweeps you are identifying potential voters – the re-knocks shore them up. The re-knocks should start no more than a week before polling day (apart from postal voters who you identified as Y early in the campaign, they should be re-knocked shortly after the postal votes arrive).

This is our chance to remind our voters when polling day is and to trump any other parties which may have been canvassing and trying to turn out Yeses. It makes it clear to our supporters that we are in earnest, that we are campaigning very hard, that our campaign is to be taken seriously and that we are not a wasted vote.

At this stage in the campaign, we should get some feedback from voters saying things like ‘Blimey, not you again! We’ve had loads of leaflets already.’ If you do not have comments like that then it means your campaign has made no impact. A tiny number of people will say that they are fed up with our canvassers and will not vote for us because of that. Do not be thrown off course by this. Such people would never have voted for us anyway. This method is tried and tested. It works. It is as simple as that. It works in every village, every town and every city.

R1 takes quite a long time as it is almost the same as re-doing S1. The first re-knock consists of literally re-knocking all the Ys and Ps that have been identified during the sweeps. Obviously give the already identified Ns a miss. You should also continue knocking the residual Outs. A tick is inadmissible in R1 as a tick means you are just delivering a leaflet to someone you have already spoken to during the re-knock phase, and you cannot have already spoken to them in R1.

Because the re-knocks are like a complete re-canvass of the ward, make sure the vertical line on the canvass sheets between the last sweep and the first re-knock is bold, to reinforce in the canvasser’s mind what is going on.

The canvassers must be adroit enough to alter their spiel to be able to address the residual Outs from the sweep phase with the standard sweep spiel, while for the sweep Ys and Ps they should say something like...

‘Hello (Mrs Jones), sorry to disturb you. I’m calling in support of Sam Bloggs, your ……… candidate. We called earlier in the campaign and I’m just coming round with a final reminder that the election is next Thursday. We need everyone out next week as it’s neck and neck. We have an excellent chance of winning so please tell your friends and neighbours.’ You should have another special leaflet to hand over as you are talking to them. If they are out just put the leaflet through the letter box and enter O.

You should not say, ‘I’ve got you down for a Yes – you are voting for us, aren’t you?’. This is being presumptuous, and you don’t know on what basis the previous canvasser put them down as being a Yes – they could have spoken to the husband while you are talking to the wife, or they could have gauged them as a Yes without the person actually saying it. The canvasser must be bright and positive and not give the voter the opportunity to think that they may be voting for anyone else. Make them believe that you (and/or your party) can win and are the only ones who will represent them.

The decent people will engage you in a bit of conversation and, if the campaign has worked, you will get a healthy conversion rate of Ps turn into Ys. Inevitably though, some Ys will become Ns, as will some Ps.

As you are virtually re-canvassing the entire ward (less existing Ns) the first re-knock takes quite a long time to complete.

If you do not have a poster design on the reverse of your R1 leaflet (which is to be advised) you should also offer the Yesses posters. These should not be offered in a wishy-washy way, such as ‘Do you want a poster to put in your window?’. Rather, as you give them a leaflet, whip out the poster and just say ‘Have one of these as well’. When they accept one of your nice, smart posters, psychologically they are going to vote for you. It does not matter whether they put the poster in the window (although quite a few people will and that is excellent). A lot of people put them up inside their home, but when their friends come round, they see it.

The responses that should be entered on the canvass sheet under the R1 column are Y, P, N or O again. We want a new set of responses. Remember, a tick is inadmissible in R1.

Second Re-Knock (R2) The second re-knock is the second attempt to see an elector for the second time. In other words, you refer to the R1 column. If the response under R1 is Y or P, then you just put a leaflet through and enter a tick in the R2 column. We ignore Ns. The Os are either people who have always been out or people who were seen during the sweep phase but were out when you called during R1. These need to be knocked for R2.

Again, the stubborn Os – those who are always out – must be treated as a new

canvass, while the Os that were Ys or Ps in the sweep phase must get the re-knock spiel.

By this stage the leaflets should be getting simpler, with easy-to-read slogans. The main propaganda message should have gone out already. The other parties will be campaigning hard by now and there will be a mass of leaflets landing on people’s doorsteps and many people will be getting tired of them. So keep the message really short and simple. Continue to offer posters to the Yesses (if you are using them).

Third Re-Knock (R3) The third re-knock should be quick, and it is a repetition of what you do in the second re-knock. Usually, you only have time to do it on the Tuesday or even just on the Wednesday, the day before polling day. By now there should be hardly any stubborn residual Outs. Most of the Ys and Ps from the sweeps should have been seen on the first two re-knocks. So, it is largely a leafleting exercise, and you can pair off a non- canvassing leafleter with a canvasser, with the leafleter just putting the R3 leaflet through the door of the people who have a Y, P or tick against them in the R2 column and then entering another tick. Posters should still be offered (if you are using them).

By the end of the re-knock phase, you hopefully will have seen virtually everyone you saw during the sweep phase again. You do not want to see the same person twice during the re-knock phase. The idea is to see all the electors once during the sweeps and see the Ys and Ps once more during the re-knocks.

Example of a Completed Canvass Sheet

The above is a typical extract from a set of canvass sheets fully completed and ready to be used on polling day for the delivery of the ‘Good Morning’ leaflet and whipping in.

In real life, the entries will all be by hand. You would not fill the sheets in on the computer file as it is not worthwhile, and errors will be made in transferring the data. These canvass sheets are designed to be used for the duration of the campaign at all stages.

Types of Leaflet These campaigns are very intensive in terms of the demand for regular, different types of leaflet. A different one is needed for each sweep, and they come thick and fast at the end of the campaign. It is a blunder to start a sweep without the relevant leaflet being ready. We must also ensure that the leaflets are distinct so that the voters read each one and don’t think that they have already received it. Also, we must be imaginative enough to produce a variety of propaganda as different things will appeal to different people, and too many A4 leaflets, for example, will lead to leaflet fatigue.

The first leaflet you should use, on S1, should be largely generic. It should be colourful and appealing with, at this stage, little detailed information on the local issues of concern. A leaflet such as this enables you to get on with the first sweep immediately. It buys you time to get suitable photos of the candidate done after canvassing the ward during the first sweep and identifying all the local concerns – meaning that your subsequent, first local leaflet will be right on the button. The first generic leaflet will also prove useful in any secondary election campaign.

All leaflets used after the first should be bespoke and full of local issues, but not too wordy. It is advisable to focus on the issues that are unique to you (and where applicable, your party). In other words, whilst it can be useful to discuss ‘normal’ local issues, you must be distinct from the other parties – don’t shy away from the issues they are unwilling to discuss. With the issues you do choose to focus on, put your unique slant on them.

Ensure that these leaflets have the candidate’s name in big letters on the front and back. They should have the date of the election and big, clear photos of the candidate ‘in situ’. The various leaflets should not look too similar. Use different coloured inks and produce leaflets in different sizes. Towards the end of the campaign use a different coloured paper and make them even simpler, with more emphasis on the main issues.

Hold back production of the last couple of leaflets until the last possible moment just in case you have to answer back an opposition claim or smear. Do not be worried about being repetitive in the leaflets – use similar slogans throughout the campaign. The last leaflet should be on garish bright paper so that it stands out from the crowd.

You should encourage people to regard the election as an opportunity to register a protest. You should talk up your chances and make it clear that you could win (perhaps by using a bar chart), but that it is close and that every vote counts. You should not issue counter smear leaflets as such. Where required, you should incorporate rebuttals in your leaflets and also incorporate attacks on the record of the other parties, while at the same time being positive.

It is not always necessary to use a glossy personalised election address. These are relatively expensive. Believe it or not, cheaper, more locally produced looking leaflets

tend to have a much bigger impact. They give the feel of a local community, grass roots campaign, while glossies give the impression that they are from a distant corporate body. Remember – politicians are deeply unpopular, so aim to be seen as the local grass-roots heroes!

However, some electors will appreciate a glossy, so if you do use a proper election address it should be delivered around the time of S4. The main election address tends to take time to produce and will usually not be ready before the postal voters start to vote.

Another useful tool is the postcard. Towards the end of a hard-fought campaign, when leaflet fatigue is setting in, a nice colourful postcard with some simple issues on it will work wonders. Having to fit a few issues on a small card is a useful discipline anyway as people tend to be overly verbose. Remember, less is more – less words, bigger writing! If you use a ‘Sorry we missed you’ card, then that should be postcard sized as well.

Sometimes in a quiet campaign for R3 you can just use up leftover leaflets from the previous phases. This is because at R3 you don’t speak with too many people, but those that you do actually see are the key aspect to it, rather than the content of the leaflet. There is leaflet fatigue anyway and so any vital message you have to impart will be unlikely to get through, and because another vital task at the end of the campaign is to just overlay, or swamp out, any opposition message that they are trying to put out at the last minute. Leaflet fatigue works to your advantage if the deluge of leaflets you’ve put out makes it kick in before the big parties get their campaigns into gear!

Lastly, come the morning of polling day you should deliver, as quickly as possible, a ‘Vote Today’ leaflet. This should be attractive, bright and noticeable. In the afternoon you whip in your ‘Yesses’. You knock on their door and drag them out to vote. A special whipping in card is needed for this. This should have a map showing where the polling station is, a clear and large exhortation to vote for you (or your candidate), instructions on how to vote, the times the polling station is open and a number to call if they need a lift. This should be handed to each ‘Yes’ voter.

Mail Merge Leaflets There are two distinctive types of mail merge letters. They should be distinctive as the same person will often get both and they must not think that they have already received it. The first is a postal vote mail merge which only goes to postal voters early in the campaign and should be a marketing style business letter. The main mail merge letter should look like it is handwritten by the candidate and the envelope should be a small C6 ‘Granny’ envelope (the sort that well-brought up children use to send thank-you notes for Christmas presents). The proper mail merge should go out around the time of S4 (it could be used for the S4 delivery) or R1 (using leafleters – people who will not canvass).

The ‘Granny’ mail merge is a highly effective piece of propaganda as it conveys the feeling that the candidate is a local campaigner who has taken the trouble to write personally to the elector.

Ideally the letter should be actually handwritten and then copied on a digital duplicator in blue ink. Or you could type it using a suitable fake handwriting font. The letter is not personalised (i.e. it is to ‘Dear Elector’) and should not have a picture on it as this destroys the ‘personal letter’ look and feel of it. The imprint should be written in small writing along the side of the front of the letter. The letter should be on one side only and be about 130 words long at most. It must be written in general, friendly and hopeful terms and not be too heavy. The letter should have a contact telephone number at the top (where your address would go) and date it to the month it is being delivered in. Have a signature at the bottom and print the candidate’s name. It is not necessary for the candidate’s genuine signature to be used. In fact, to avoid identity theft it is best not to use the candidate’s genuine signature.

The envelopes should be printed using a mail merge word file of all electors (after deleting known Ns) – one envelope per elector (so some households will get multiple letters) – the envelope is ‘personalised’ while the actual letter is not. Use a handwriting font in 14 pt.

To print the envelopes, you should use the cheapest possible Lexmark printer. Extensive research has shown that these are by far the best ones to use – they are cheap and are one of the few printers that can take C6 envelopes. Do not spend a bit more to get a slightly more expensive machine – this will be a mistake. The cheapest available is exactly the one to use.

It is not worthwhile to personalise the letter by addressing it to ‘Dear Mr Smith’ or attempting to include more intricate details relating to a small area of the ward. The extra effort required to do this is not justified when 95% of the impact of a mail merge letter is served by the standardised version outlined above.

Old People’s Homes At an early stage in the campaign, you should identify all the old people’s homes and sheltered accommodation. It is sometimes difficult to gain access to these places as they are often staffed by Labour Party placemen who prey on the vulnerable and confused to steal their votes.

The best people to get to try to obtain access are female or elderly activists of our own. If it is possible to get in and canvass the doors as normal, then just treat the block as any other. If it is not possible, it is best to deliver handwritten envelopes with leaflets in. It is best to do two or three such drops, if possible, with the leaflets done up to that stage enclosed.

Polling Day

Before looking at polling day itself, it’s important to note that, in areas where large numbers of voters have postal votes, there are really two ‘polling days’. The obvious one, on the actual election day, and the very important one which only really switched- on parties and their activists know – the day when the postal vote forms drop onto the doormats. You must find out this date from the local authority responsible.

People with postal votes are at least three times more likely to vote than conventional ballot box voters, so in a low turn-out election, postal votes can often decide the election.

In the most sophisticated old BNP campaigns, we therefore compiled lists of all postal voters. If we had the manpower, we timed our multiple sweeps on their doors to finish just before the postal ballots arrived. We also aimed to hit them with extra literature, particularly personalised mail-merge letters in time for this ‘first polling day’.

Once the postal ballots had been delivered, we also knocked on the doors of identified supporters on the postal voter list again, in order to check that they’d filled them in and posted them. Even with the three times higher voting rate, it was constantly shocking how many of our firm supporters had tucked their postal vote forms behind the mantelpiece clock and already forgotten about them.

Get them to fetch them and complete them there and then, and make sure they’re posted too!

Especially if the weather is bad on polling day itself, postal votes can easily make all the difference. Don’t lose out because you failed to work them properly.

Polling Day Paperwork By polling day you should have two completed sets of canvass sheets, with the results from the final re-knock phase fully compiled. You then need to prepare this paperwork for polling day. One set will be used as a reference when delivering the ‘Vote Today’ leaflet and one set for whipping in.

In the P (for polling day) column of the set to be used for the ‘Good Morning’ leaflet you should mark, with a highlighter pen, against every household that is a Y or a P (and possibly residual Os). Against most households there will be two letters: one from the sweep phase and one from the re-knock phase. Ys and Ps that have become Ns should not be highlighted. By highlighting the relevant doors, you make the job of the leafleters that much easier.

In the W (for whipping in) column of the set to be used for whipping in, you should mark with a highlighter pen against every household that is a Y. Again, against most households there will be two letters: one from the sweep phase and one from the re-

knock phase. A Y that becomes a P, or a P that becomes a Y should be highlighted. Obviously do not highlight Ys that become Ns.

One thing to bear in mind is that sometimes the wife may be a Y and the husband a N. Hopefully if this is the case it is made clear in the Comments field on the canvass sheet, and you can mark the whipping in paperwork accordingly.

Polling District Captains Ideally you should appoint a Polling District Captain to each polling district. This activist will be responsible for the campaign on polling day in that district. He will ensure that the ‘Vote Today’ leaflet is put out on time to the right doors. He will ensure that the Polling Agent is there when he needs to be there. He will ensure that there is always a teller on the polling station and that the teller is relieved to go for lunch and so forth. He will prepare the whipping in sheets by using the results from the telling and he will organise the whipping in for his polling district. You need to appoint your best activists as Polling District Captains.

Manning Polling Stations – Telling The teller is the person who stands outside the polling station collecting the electoral numbers from people who come to vote. The teller should be smartly dressed and wear a rosette. The teller should politely ask each elector as they come into the polling station for their electoral number (as found on their polling card) or, if they do not have their card, their name and address. It should be politely explained that this is to ensure that we do not knock them up in the evening.

At some polling stations the presiding staff will tell you that you should only ask this information when the voter is on their way out - especially if you are the only one there telling properly (which is often the case), as they will get the voters to leave their polling cards in the polling station in an attempt to sabotage your efforts to whip in! If you get imprecise information from telling it is not too drastic as you can do a complete whip in if necessary (where all Yesses are whipped in – some will have already voted so you just apologise for disturbing them).

The teller should not let a single voter get in without asking for their number. If one is missed, get them on the way out! There is no law on telling, although it is against the law to hand out party literature of any sort to voters outside polling stations. That apart, telling is not governed by any legislation. There are customs and what is regarded as ‘good form’ and you don’t want to appear too pushy, so it is always best (in this instance anyway) to go with the flow and conform with accepted practice in your area.

Remember, outside the precincts of the polling station the Returning Officer has no say. We can ask people whatever we please. If tellers are within the precincts they are governed by what the Returning Officer allows.

The teller is also a greeter. He greets voters with a big smile and a ‘hello’. Because of this, keep your tellers there right up to the close of polls but rotate them during the day so they don’t get stale. Usually, you will find that workers from all the other parties, if they also do telling, are perfectly friendly, as are the staff in the polling station.

Telling Sheets Special telling sheets should be prepared. These are ruled off sheets of paper with separate columns for electoral number ranges so that when people vote the teller can write down their electoral number (or address). This greatly assists the preparation of whipping in sheets.

There should be different telling sheets per polling district – with the polling sheet identification letters on the bottom, so telling sheets from the different polling districts cannot get mixed up. You will need at least ten telling sheets per polling district.

Polling Agents Polling agents are workers who are allowed by law to attend within the precincts of the polling station on polling day. They are allowed to scrutinise the electoral process as the votes are cast. Usually, you must supply the Returning Officer with the names of one or more polling agents per polling station several days prior to polling day. This is usually the same day that you must inform the Returning Officer of the names of those who will attend the count as counting agents.

The polling agent should be present at the polling station for as much of the day as the number of activists you have out allows. In other words, if you are short of leafleters for the ‘Good Morning’ leaflet, use a spare polling agent. If you are short of whippers in or tellers, use the polling agent. Ideally though, the polling agent should at least make his presence felt several times during the day so the staff in the polling station never know when he may appear to see what’s going on.

It should go without saying that the polling agent should be polite and friendly to the staff at the polling station.

As far as we are concerned, the main role of the polling agent is to ensure that the ballot box is not stuffed. This means that it is of paramount importance that polling agents are in attendance when the polls open at 7.00am to ensure that the ballot box is empty before the first vote is cast. The polling agent must also be there when the polls close at 10.00pm to ensure that no further ballots are put in the ballot box after the last vote is cast, and to ensure that the ballot box is properly sealed - if necessary, using their own seals or ties.

This is particularly important in the case of elections where the ballot papers are not counted until the following day. If only council seals are fixed on the ballot boxes, then corrupt leftwing council officers involved in the process can and will cut the first ones off,

steal some of your votes, and then reseal the boxes with new ones. The only protection against this is to affix your own seals at close of nominations, which is your absolute and long-standing legal right.

The importance of this practice was highlighted in the different results in the BNP’s key EU Parliamentary seat, North West England, in 2004 and 2009. The first time around, no attempt was made to secure the ballot papers as they poured into local town halls. The contest had been made fully postal, with the openly stated reason being that the resulting high turnout would ‘stop the BNP’. As the campaign progressed, dozens of calls were received from council workers warning that their left-wing managers were stealing BNP votes from piles and boxes of ballot papers.

Come the day of the count, the left-dominated big towns and cities in particular saw unprecedented numbers of spoilt ballot papers. Time and time again, tellers reported the same phenomenon: Dozens or even hundreds of spoilt ballots in which the BNP vote was marked in all sorts of different styles, but where second ‘votes’, usually for the fringe Socialist candidate, where marked with identical crosses. The BNP had been robbed of untold thousands of votes, and didn’t win the seat as many opponents had feared.

Come 2009, however, and things were very different. The region contained nearly 50 local counting centres, each receiving and opening postal ballot papers every day for the final fortnight of the campaign. The BNP utilised a rota of small teams of activists committed to attending every such vote opening.

Tellers watched as the envelopes were opened and the actual votes separated from the voters’ identification slips. So far, so quiet. But as the first day’s proceedings came to a close, the fun began. With the council officials fixing seals to the ballot boxes, BNP officials people stepped forward and showed them their OWN seals, showing them the laminated copy of the obscure electoral regulation allowing them to do so.

In some places, the officials were surprised but unfussed. In left-wing strongholds, by contrast, they were apoplectic. Some even called the police, who also looked at the laminated regulations and told them the activists were within their rights.

Many of the ballot boxes were no longer metal, but flimsy, collapsable cardboard, from which ballot papers could easily be pulled out from the bottom. Preparations had been made for that as well, with rolls of unusually marked sticky tape which were used in addition to the actual bespoke seals on the lids.

When all those boxes were opened at the actual count, the number of spoilt papers was back down to normal – a tiny fraction of the huge number by which the BNP were robbed five years before.

Rosettes You should have a plentiful supply of rosettes to hand. You never know when a by- election will crop up and you do not want to be scrabbling around for rosettes at the last minute as you will have enough on your plate during the election. On polling day, the tellers absolutely must have rosettes, the candidate absolutely must have a rosette, the people attending the count must have rosettes and ideally the whippers in should have rosettes. It adds colour and excitement to the day.

If you wear a rosette within the precincts of the polling station (i.e. if they allow tellers to stand within the precincts) then you may be obliged to put a sticker over any party name on the rosette. It depends how strict the Returning Officer is. If you stand within the precincts of the polling station you must abide by the ruling of the Returning Officer.

Good Morning Leaflet You should distribute a ‘Vote Today’ leaflet on the morning of polling day. In general, this should be hand delivered to every Y and P on your canvass sheets. The night before, all Ys and Ps on one copy of the canvass sheets should be marked up with highlighter pen to assist the leafleters – so they know which doors to deliver the leaflets to. These leaflets must go out as soon as possible – at the very latest before lunch.

In some areas where manpower is short, or opinion is very polarised, it may be more sensible just to deliver the ‘Vote Today’ leaflet to the Ys.and Ps. Conversely, if there are areas of the ward that you were unable to canvass properly (e.g. entry-phone blocks) and it is a ward with few actively hostile electors, then you may wish to deliver the ‘Vote Today’ leaflet to the remaining Os.

Generally speaking, to win a ward you will be reliant on a good number of Ps voting for you. This is why it is usually the case that it is best to deliver the ‘Vote Today’ leaflet to Ys and Ps. By this stage in the campaign, Ps that are not going to vote for you under any circumstances and are really polite hostiles (or Ns) should have been weeded out by the re-knock process. Accordingly, the remaining Ps (often a large number of doors) are unlikely to include many out and out Ns and so by delivering the ‘Vote Today’ leaflet we are not offending against the rule that as the campaign progresses we must focus our energies on those who may vote for us and totally ignore those who won’t.

Campaign Headquarters It may seem that it would be ideal to have a campaign headquarters that can be used on polling day, for example an activist’s house that lies either in, or very close to, the ward. The headquarters would act as a base from which to prepare the whipping in sheets. However, what tends to happen is that campaign workers accumulate and hang about gossiping and drinking cups of tea. Because there is a temptation for campaign workers to accumulate and sit around if the campaign headquarters is a house, it is preferable to use the back of a car. Park a car outside each polling station and do the paperwork there. Then there is no delay in getting whipping in results from the teller, and there is no delay in sending out the whippers in.

Whipping In Whipping in is the process where you visit your potential voters on polling day and ask them whether they have voted or not and if not, you encourage them to go down and vote. A surprising number of people forget that the election is on (even though with our campaign they should have had two visits over the preceding four weeks). Some people are lazy and don’t appreciate that their individual vote counts. By going around on polling day whipping in you can get an avalanche of votes late in the day that can turn an election result your way.

In some ways the whole campaign is designed to produce a whipping in list. The people you whip in are the Yesses. So when the canvasser fills in the canvass sheet, they should only put a Y against those households that they believe are worth whipping in.

The night before polling day, one set of canvass sheets should be prepared for whipping in. On polling day, the Polling District Captain must get the telling sheets regularly and by reference to the Electoral Number marks off the Ys who have voted with a black marker pen in the W column on the whipping in canvass sheets. These voters clearly do not have to be whipped in. At 2.00pm the Polling District Captain needs his whippers in ready. He divides up his canvass sheets and sends them out to knock up the Ys. It is best to start at this time because mothers with young children and the elderly will probably not go out in the evening.

Ideally special whipping in cards should be produced. These would have a map of the polling station, a phone number in case a lift is needed, the opening hours of the polling station, brief instructions on how to vote and a very short campaign slogan. These are handed to people who answer their doors. If you do not have a whipping in card, the whippers in should take a bundle of old leaflets, just for something to wave at the householder when they open the door. They should leave a leaflet if no one is in. The whipper in is only interested in whether the person is in. If they are in, put a tick in the W column. If they are out, put O. If they say they have already voted, and/or voted for us, put a note in the Comments column.

The whipper in should simply say:

‘Hello, sorry to disturb you, I’m just reminding you it’s polling day. I’m representing…, we have an excellent chance of winning, but we need everyone to turn out.’

After the first whipping in session, once all the Yesses on their sheets have been visited, the whippers in should return to the polling station. The Polling District Captain must then update their canvass sheets by marking off the Yesses who have voted while the first whipping in session was going on. The Polling District Captain should keep up with which Yesses have voted by circling the Y polling numbers on completed telling sheets by referring to the canvass sheets that were used for the ‘Vote Today’ leaflet.

Then it is a quick process to update the whipping in canvass sheets and the whippers in can get back out for another session. This should carry on until all the Yesses who have not voted have been seen, or until 8:30pm. You should try to get around to each Yes door at least three times before giving up.

Once you have seen a household during the whipping in phase there is no point in knocking the same household again, even if you think they have not voted. By being too pushy you are as likely to put someone off voting for you if they were intending to go out later.

During the whipping in phase, you should have several cars available to take people to the polling station. If a lift is needed the whipper in should ring and get the car there as soon as possible. The canvass sheet will be marked in the Comments field against some people that a lift is required. Make sure these are sorted out.

Ballot Boxes As already mentioned, it is important that polling agents attend the polling station when it opens (to make sure the ballot box is empty before any votes are cast) and when it closes (to make sure no extra votes are stuffed in the ballot box). After the polls close the polling station staff seal the ballot box (sometimes there will be more than one ballot box at a polling station). As already noted, you can add your own seals to the ballot box. The polling agent should make a note of the ballot box and seal numbers and follow the ballot box (usually by car) to the place where the count is being held. The ballot box number should be passed to the activists attending the count so a check can be made on what ballot boxes have been delivered.

The teller for the relevant polling station will probably still be there and it is a good idea for the teller to wait ready in a car to follow the polling station staff to the count.

The staff in the polling station are not obliged to tell the polling agent (or anyone else) the turnout at any time during the day. However, they often will. If at all possible, try to obtain the number of people who have voted at each polling station and pass this information to the activists who are acting as counting agents, so that we can ensure that the number of votes declared really represents the number of votes cast.

There are a wide variety of ballot boxes in use, and many are of a flimsy design. The agent should make an appointment with the Returning Officer to inspect the ballot box design prior to polling day to establish the best method of sealing them (e.g. tape or cable ties).

Counting Agents The candidate, his guest or partner (someone else can stand in for the candidate’s real partner if necessary), the agent and a varying number of counting agents may attend the count. The number of counting agents depends on the size of the room the count is

to be held in, the number of candidates and the number of seats up for election. Typically, it is between two and four.

The names and addresses of the counting agents must be submitted to the Returning Officer before polling day. The Returning Officer usually posts passes to the counting agents which allow them admittance to the count.

Some people seem to think that going to the count is an honour and that when at the count they can just swagger about with a look of self-importance upon their face. The count is a vital part of the campaign. Everyone at the count must concentrate and do a job of work. In broad terms their job is to ensure that the process is carried out correctly and that we are not cheated out of any votes.

Sometimes councils have an area where other campaign workers can view the count. Sometimes this area is a public gallery and pretty much anyone can go there.

Sometimes the council will require a list of names in advance. Ask the Returning Officer what the arrangements will be for your count.

The Count The first task for the people attending the count is to check the ballot boxes in from the polling stations to make sure that what arrives at the venue where the count is taking place tallies with what left the polling stations. The ballot boxes should be followed from the individual polling stations and the slip of paper that has the details of the ballot box number must be handed over to the agent – who should wait outside the count for the cars to arrive.

Generally, there will be one ballot box per polling station, although some large polling districts have more than one ballot box.

There will also be a ballot box for postal votes. The postal votes will be opened and counted, but not sorted prior to the proper count. The opening of the postal votes will be advertised by the Returning Officer, and the agent or a representative may attend. This could take place during the day on polling day or one or two days before. Sometimes there is a second opening of postal votes on the day of the election. Further postal votes are received on polling day, and it is acceptable for voters to manually hand their postal vote form in to any polling station. These extra postal votes are verified and counted separately.

You should keep a special count of the postal votes. Technically, the staff at the count just open and verify that the postal votes are valid. They do not sort them by candidate and often keep the ballot papers face down so you cannot easily tell how many postal votes you get. However, you should do what you can to establish how you have done in the postal vote and get an accurate count of the number of postal votes cast, for future information. Once verified, the postal votes are put back in a ballot box and mixed in with other votes for sorting.

Once the ballot boxes have arrived, they are opened, and the contents tipped out onto a table. The staff then open the folded ballot papers and sort them into bundles. This is to verify the number of votes cast.

The purpose of attending the count is to overlook the counting process. There is vital work to be done at the count and the people who attend should be carefully selected for that purpose irrespective of how much work that person may have done during the campaign.

Our people who attend the count must evenly space themselves out around the tables on which the votes are being counted. Every person should keep a tally of the votes that they see while they are being opened. They must have a pen and a piece of paper with columns drawn up for each candidate standing. They should make a note of what ballot box they are doing a tally for and then put a mark down in the relevant column each time they see a vote for that candidate.

In this way, you will quickly see how you are doing and get a good indication of your strongest polling districts.

Once all the ballot boxes have been counted and the number of votes cast verified against the figures the Returning Officer has from the individual polling stations, the ballot papers are sorted by candidate.

By this time, from the tally sheets you should have a very accurate view of what the vote should be.

Our workers must be very vigilant to ensure that none of our votes are put in the wrong bundle. Making such a ‘mistake’ is the most common way in which hostile counters try to steal election victories from nationalist candidates.

Spoilt ballot papers, where the intention of the voter is not clear for whatever reason, are looked at separately by the Returning Officer and the agents for the various candidates. There is a considerable body of case law that determines what is and what isn’t acceptable. It is very rare that improper decisions are made, but the agent must be prepared to challenge votes.

If the result is very close and you only just lose then it is quite acceptable to ask for a recount or at least a flick through. What is close? It depends on the size of the electorate. If you do call for a recount, make sure that your people are watching the ballot paper bundles even more carefully than before.

Things to Avoid in a Detailed Campaign

Carrying out a full four sweep and three re-knock campaign is a very tall order. It requires an immense amount of activist time and effort, and keeping the campaign going needs precise and intensive staff work. There is basically never any time for anything else. No other activity is more important than carrying out the full four sweep, three re-knock programme. It is the door-to-door contact and focussed activity that counts.

You must remember – with a detailed, full-on campaign, it is our aim to increase the election temperature only with our carefully targeted support base which we painstakingly identify through the sweeps and reinforce through the re-knocks. We do not want to increase the election temperature throughout the ward in general. We want ‘our’ turnout to be high and the turnout for the rest of the electorate to be as low as possible.

Our campaign is intense, but low profile. We’re aiming to identify and mobilise our voters, but to leave all the others in the dark and apathetic.

So what actions are sometimes mistakenly considered as worthwhile alternatives to the remorseless grind of knocking on doors during a full-on election?

Stunts and Stalls One common idea is to set up a stall in a local shopping precinct or market. It might be a trestle table with a flag draped over it, collection buckets perhaps, local leaflets on display or a petition for shoppers to sign. Raising your profile and gathering data is the name of this game, and it has serious potential value in certain Deep Community Politics operations – working to set up a local charity, for example. But it is NOT a tactic to use during an election campaign.

The trouble with this sort of activity is that it is random. The aim of the campaign is to focus our energies on an identifiable section of the electorate, who we can harness and whip in on polling day. With a random activity such as this you are not left with any names and addresses of electors (perhaps you will get some from a petition). Many people who see you will not even be from the relevant ward. Opponents in the area will see you and be motivated to vote against you. It is a counter-productive distraction.

Another bad idea is to do graffiti removal or a rubbish clear up campaign. This is another activity which can be very valuable if carried out well in advance of the election, when it best involves activists wearing high-viz kit, making it clear who is responsible for the work. But if carried out during election time, these stunts run the risk of looking like cynical vote-bribing exercises, as well as it being a random activity with the same drawbacks as outlined above.

These types of activities are all very well (and are in fact excellent) as part of your year- round programme in your target ward or during a big election (e.g. General Election) where we just want to get noticed by the maximum number of people. But in a by- election, or even during the prime campaigning period before the regular round of local elections, they are a distraction.

To achieve the full four sweeps and three re-knocks you must be single minded. Nothing is more important. If you cannot manage four sweeps do three. If you cannot do three do two. But do not get distracted. Always remember, the friendly chat on the doorstep is the most valuable weapon at our disposal.

Loudspeakering From the previous section it should be obvious that loudspeakering has no place in a proper campaign. It is a random activity. The whole purpose of the campaign is to focus our energies on our potential voters. Anyone with ears can hear a loudspeaker. Unless you are very close to the loudspeaker vehicle, or it is going very slowly, then you tend just to hear a blur of words, which again merely serves to increase the feeling that an election is on – it slightly increases the overall ‘electoral temperature’. Again, loudspeakering and billboards have a vital role to play during a big election where we just want to get noticed, but they are not appropriate for detailed campaigns.

Posters The only type of poster that has any place in a proper campaign is one that is displayed inside a voter’s window or on their property somewhere. Posters displayed in this way show other voters that we have the active and declared support of their neighbours. It encourages other people to vote for us. They feel they will not be alone. The positive effects of this will outweigh the negative, namely the possibility of motivating hostile people to vote against us. Thus, this is the one random activity that should be encouraged. It is the exception that proves the rule. You will be surprised how many people will be willing to put up posters in their windows if they are offered one as part of the full campaign.

However, fly-posters, or posters attached to railings or lamp posts merely increase the electoral temperature of the ward. They do not have the advantage of being identifiably within someone’s property. When defaced (and it is likely that such posters would attract the opposition in that way) they would add to the disfigurement of the area and look like graffiti. They are another tactic with potential value in big elections where the trick is just to get noticed, but should not be used in a proper campaign at all.

There are a few areas of the country where there is a local convention that all parties put up large numbers of posters on lamp posts and if we do not do the same it looks like we are not taking the campaign seriously. In such circumstances it is ‘permissible’ to put up posters in this way but be prepared to replace them when they are damaged or stolen.

Be sure to study the local by-laws about taking them down after the election as well, and design posters which can be stored and re-used, because professionally printed correx boards are very expensive, and hand-made ones are very time-consuming to produce.

Leafleting Random leafleting has no place in a proper campaign. Numerous leaflets are distributed but in a targeted manner. They are delivered to specific addresses during the campaign. Indeed, each phase of the campaign has its own leaflet. Random leafleting carried out in the traditional manner, to all letterboxes, would serve to ‘wind up’ our opponents. The key word to think about is ‘random’. The campaign goes to great lengths to identify ‘NOs’ and people who will definitely not vote for you. By delivering leaflets to all letterboxes, you will encourage these people to vote against you.

Most randomly delivered leaflets are not read. However, their very presence on the door mat increases the impression that an election is on. This will slightly increase the

electoral ‘temperature’ of the ward. Remember, one important aspect of this campaign is to only increase the political ‘temperature’ of your potential voters and you specifically target these people. You must run a targeted campaign, not a random one.

A variety of other leafleting techniques are sometimes tried. Again, these should be considered at the expense of the four sweeps and three re-knocks. For example – an anti-smear leaflet – perhaps attacking all other parties and pointing out their criminal failings. Other ideas for specific leaflets include ones targeted at certain ethnic minorities perhaps, or to old folk, or to people identified as ‘NOs’ (perhaps a leaflet attacking the main opposition party).

One thing to bear in mind is that a full campaign runs to eight or more leaflets. This is a lot. Putting out random leaflets tends to increase leaflet fatigue (so there is less chance that voters will read the special targeted leaflets at the end of the campaign) and increases the general level of ‘electoral noise’.

Telephone Canvassing Telephone canvassing is often used by the old parties as they can pay people (who often live at the other end of the country) to do it, particularly when they lack activists on the ground. It is very impersonal compared to doorstep canvassing. It lacks any visual aspect which is very important in order break down misconceptions and help form strong, positive first impressions. It is also impossible to hand over leaflets when telephone canvassing.

However, there are usually some addresses in a ward that cannot be reached by normal canvassing. Perhaps they are in a gated estate. If it is not possible to doorstep canvass households then clearly telephone canvassing is better than nothing and it

would be useful to try to find such electors’ phone numbers and ring them. However, you must be careful as there are rules which govern making unsolicited phone calls to people and a list is available of people who have opted to never receive such calls.

As a rule of thumb, the success rate of telephone canvassing is much lower than doorstep canvassing, so it should never be regarded as a straight alternative.

Publicity and News In a detailed campaign the aim is to fly under the enemy’s radar. Accordingly, you should never broadcast your intent. For small parties, you should never trump up your prospects in internal publications or your website, and press issues should not be released to the external media saying how well you expect to do. Victory will provide all the publicity you need and shouting from the rooftops beforehand can jeopardise the chances of achieving it.

The only advance notice of your belief that you can win should be in a last-minute leaflet delivered to your firm supporters. This should tell them that you are just in the lead and favourites to win, but that the main opposition party are still fighting hard, so every vote counts.

Postal and Proxy Votes

Very few people apply for postal or proxy votes off their own backs. Postal and proxy votes are nearly always ‘organised’ by political parties. Therefore, it is likely that the electors who have existing postal or proxy votes are supporters of other parties.

However, a surprising number will ‘convert’ when canvassed. After all, they may have become a postal voter at the behest of another party, which would almost certainly have been during a previous election that you, or your party, were not contesting. By canvassing and converting an existing postal or proxy voter you are, in a way, stealing an opposition vote.

Great care should be taken to ensure that the postal vote process is conducted legitimately by the council staff. Postal votes are extremely vulnerable to tampering by corrupt staff after they have been delivered to the council offices. It is an absolute certainty that this happens.

Details of the dates for the last delivery of postal or proxy vote applications, and the opening of postal votes will be included in the election timetable provided to the candidate and agent by the Returning Officer. Postal votes should be sent out to voters ten working days prior to polling day.

Postal Votes The position you should take towards postal votes is complex. Electors can opt to vote by post. If they have submitted an application, the council will send them a ballot paper and a declaration about two weeks before polling day. The elector will probably cast his vote considerably earlier than those who vote by visiting the polling station (although a postal vote can be delivered to a polling station on polling day if it has not been posted previously). The postal ballots are kept unopened at the council offices until the day set in the election timetable for the opening of postal votes. They are then opened (you are allowed to send a representative to witness this) and it is verified that the appropriate declaration is there, and a sample are checked against a signature provided in advance. The opened postal votes are not sorted in any way and are supposed to be kept face down so no one can see at this stage how anyone has voted. A note is made of how many have been submitted and they are stored at the council until the main count (i.e. on the Thursday evening or Friday morning as is increasingly becoming the practice at some authorities).

Now here lies the problem. What could happen to the postal votes while they are kept at the council offices for several days? Is it conceivable that they could be tampered with? There is no uniform way they are kept ‘safe’. Sometimes they are left in an envelope in someone’s drawer. Sometimes they are left unattended in open boxes left in corridors. Sometimes they are sealed – supposedly securely – in a ballot box. We must insist that they are kept in a secure ballot box with seals placed upon it.

Even if a council is not directly corrupt (as many are in this day and age) there is another problem in that if you make a concerted effort to get your supporters to register as postal voters, the opposition (via their friends at town hall) will realise this and target your voters. You’re telling them who your voters are.

During the yearly round of elections postal votes are usually opened over several days well in advance of polling day. This makes it even more difficult to scrutinise the process and leaves it wide open to abuse. In some ‘communities’ the postal vote is blatantly manipulated by ‘elders’ and ‘community leaders’ bullying voters to vote in a certain way or just to hand over their blank postal vote forms.

Bearing all this in mind, what should you do?

Do not make a concerted effort to recruit new postal voters. In fact, in your year- round campaigning in a target ward you should discourage your supporters from having a postal vote.

Get the list of postal voters which the council is obliged to supply to the candidate and agent and make a concerted effort to canvass them early. If you are conducting a full four sweep three re-knock campaign (or approaching that standard) then the postal voters will be canvassed as a matter of course. However, during the initial stages of such a campaign there are no tasks for leafleters. Accordingly, you should prepare separate postal voter lists and target them with a special mail merge letter with instructions on how to fill out their ballot paper (and vote for your candidate). The turnout of postal voters tends to be considerably higher than those who vote on polling day in person, so it is worth focusing on getting their vote.

Make a special effort to have someone attend the opening of postal votes and make sure they are sealed in a ballot box. This is essential in a by-election, although it is particularly difficult in the yearly round of elections when postal votes tend to be opened over several days and it is usually impossible to have someone at the town hall for that length of time.

As postal voters vote early you must make sure that the main election address goes out as early as possible in the campaign.

The general position regarding postal votes is to discourage people from voting that way. But if people already have a postal vote, then you may as well try to get as many as possible to vote for you. In doing this you have to accept the risk that corrupt council staff will switch your votes to votes for an opposition candidate. If the process is scrutinised, then there is less chance that this can happen.

The canvass sheets you use should have a column marked PV. In this column a mark should be made against each postal vote using the list obtainable from the council.

Proxy Votes If postal votes are to be discouraged, proxy votes (sometimes called absent votes) are to be positively encouraged. A proxy vote is when someone votes on behalf of another person. Perhaps the person is too infirm or will be away. They are for people who cannot ‘reasonably’ be expected to vote, either by post or at a polling station. They sign a form (available from the council) granting permission to someone else to act as their proxy and vote on their behalf. You can act as a proxy to only two electors unless they are family members in which case there is no limit. If, while canvassing, you find a ‘Yes’ who will be on holiday or is otherwise unable to cast their vote in person on polling day, get them to sign the relevant form, ideally making one of the campaign team their proxy. Alternatively, they may feel happier getting one of their close friends or relatives to act as their proxy. A proxy vote granted to one of your campaign team is obviously a vote in the bag. The council will send a letter of confirmation to the proxy. On polling day, the proxy goes to the polling station (with proof of I.D. but not necessarily the confirmation letter) and votes on behalf of the person who completed the form.

You can apply for a proxy vote during the campaign. The last day for receipt (by the council) of an application for a proxy vote is 5pm on the sixth working day before the election. The proxy vote forms can be downloaded from the internet, or quantities can be obtained from your local council offices.

Other Campaigns

A Trimmed Down Version With the best will in the world, sometimes it is just not possible to run the full four sweep and three re-knock campaign. Maybe the ward is too big or the number of activists too few. So what should you do? Revert to crashing around with leaflets? Put posters up everywhere? Go around loudspeakering? No. The next best option is to do three sweeps and two re-knocks. Or just three sweeps backed up by targeted leafleting (i.e. provide door numbers of ‘Nos’ so the leafleters can avoid them). Nothing is better than canvassing. Simply do as much as you possibly can. The plan detailed in this manual is the ideal. It is extremely rare for there to be time to carry out a perfect campaign. Use common sense and do as much of the ideal plan as possible with the time and manpower at your disposal.

Weaker Campaigns This guide has been deliberately pitched to those who wish to engage in as near a perfect campaign as possible. We must be ambitious. If we want to make a difference, we must strive to do better and better. In local by-elections, where a team of regional activists can be concentrated, it is essential that this sort of campaign is utilised. If a by- election is fought by just a small number of local activists then they should seek to do as much of this as possible, using common sense.

Although we have been detailing the ideal campaign, realistically, given the limitations of manpower and time, there will be many instances where it is impossible, even with the best will in the world, to mount anything like a full campaign. Similarly, in parliamentary contests, it is impossible to cover the ground in anything like the same detail.

In these circumstances, many of the tactics that have been discounted during this discourse have a place on the basis that at least it is getting the word out. Such a campaign, unless it is waged in a particularly favourable area (and with the opposition split by contesting multiple wards), will stand no realistic chance of success, and so the aim is different. Here we are trying to motivate our more positive supporters to get out and vote, in order to get as good a result as possible with limited resources.

For these sorts of campaigns, the use of random leafleting, random postering, loudspeakering, stunts and stalls can all be useful and should be enthusiastically carried out.

General Election Campaigns As stated, in big elections where you can not hope to be able to canvass, the aim is to get as much publicity as possible and to get as much literature out to the public as possible. Increasingly you would then use local newspaper advertisements, billboards,

large scale random leafleting, A-boards, loudspeakering and street stalls – all things we are not supposed to do with a detailed campaign. For bigger parties these campaigns have the bonus of Party Political Broadcasts, and the Royal Mail will deliver, for free, an election communication. You still have to pay to produce and print the leaflets, but Royal Mail will deliver them.

In a parliamentary by-election you should seek to have the Royal Mail deliver an addressed communication to each elector rather than to each household, and to deliver a mail merge letter to as large a portion of the constituency as possible, whilst endeavouring to canvass as much of the constituency as possible, alongside other public and highly visible activities.

After The Campaign

Thank-You Leaflet Win or lose, after a well run campaign you should put out a ‘thank-you’ leaflet throughout the ward. It is a nice touch that the electorate tend to appreciate. If you lose, it is quite permissible to slightly admonish those who didn’t vote for you.

Year Round Work You should always work your target ward year round. You should regularly deliver leaflets, engage in community clean ups, and get involved in local tenant’s and resident’s associations. You should attend council meetings. The list is endless. You should act as if you are the local councillor before you are the local councillor.

You will lose the element of surprise by doing this but more than make up for it by winning the trust of the local community. The proper way to win an election is by year round work, so that winning an election is the result of winning the community’s trust and respect.

Addendum

Voter Registration While a large majority of ordinary Brits hold politicians in contempt, disillusionment with the whole political process is strongest among patriots in betrayed white working-class communities. Many of these people have not only given up voting, but they’ve also even given up registering to vote. This means that the people who are likely to be your strongest supporters have dropped out of the electoral system completely.

When this booklet was first produced, our activists were already very familiar with the frustrating phenomenon of finding a whole household of fervent BNP supporters who were not registered to vote, and the problem has got even worse since the Brexit disappointment.

When we came across such people at the start of a campaign, there was sometimes still time to get them registered, but we often found them after that deadline had passed, leaving displaying a poster the only thing they could do to help us.

This was as issue which we only addressed in 2014, with a staggeringly successful experiment which holds vital lessons for those who want to tread any part of the electoral road today or in the future.

Britain’s media and political elite responded to the BNP’s European election breakthrough in 2009 with a drastic change of tactics. The old method of hysterical denunciation peaked with the infamous Question Time lynching of Nick Griffin. Contrary to leftist mythology about the programme, this was not a ‘disaster’, which ‘exposed the real BNP agenda’, but actually produced the party’s highest ever ratings in the opinion polls. Where our best-ever showing previously had been 6%, in the week after Question Time it shot up to 22%.

It was this that led to the shift away from demonisation to a policy of silence. Rather than having BNP spokesmen on to abuse us, they switched to pretending that we had simply gone away, and ramped up the promotion of Nigel Farage as the great opponent of immigration and UKIP as the only viable anti-System vote.

In the 2010 general election, the new tactic hadn’t worked fully, and the BNP beat UKIP hands down. By 2013, however, with the European elections looming once more, it was clear that the strategy was working. We had stopped winning council seats, and it was clear that we were on course to lose our European ones.

We decided to try to re-establish our visibility and credibility by pouring effort into one carefully chosen council seat. The town of Maryport, on the Cumbrian coast, provided the best opportunity. Two wards were up in the town and we contested both seats, but from the very start threw most of our effort into the one where our candidate was a popular local woman and a super-activist.

The ward, suffering significant deprivation, included a large post-war council estate and some low-grade town centre Victorian terraces, as well as more modern and middle class properties. With the election due in May, we started our campaign in January.

Before we began, we brought in a member who was a skilled salesman and sales trainer. He spent a few hours door-knocking to get a feel for the place, then gave our core activist team a briefing and training in what to say and what not to say on the doorsteps.

We had already studied the electoral register carefully and noticed a very significant number of inhabited houses with no-one registered to vote. A session of experimental canvassing on such premises had conformed what we already suspected: Many of these people were either ardent BNP supporters, or strongly opposed to mass immigration but alienated from the entire political process.

From the very start of our first sweep, therefore, our primary focus was not merely identifying supporters, but also checking that they were already on the register and, if not, getting them the vote. All our canvassers carried voter registration forms and had been taught the best ‘sales’ pitch to get them to fill them in there and then.

Leaving nothing to chance, we double-checked every application form and took them to post ourselves. As the weeks turned into months, we got more than 800 previously voteless supporters on the town’s electoral register. Many of them also filled in forms to get postal votes.

Fearing dirty tricks by pro-Labour council officials, we dripped the application forms in and kept the lowest profile possible. We also put a fair bit of work into the second ward, not with a view to winning it, but hoping to mask our actual target ward. None of the activity was reported, even in internal bulletins. The bulk of the work was done by four or five people, although other activists came in from further afield, especially as the evenings lengthened in the spring.

We were right, however, to fear dirty tricks from the Labour party. When the postal votes were sent out around 200 of the voters we had registered simply didn’t receive them.

The majority did, however, and we harvested those votes ruthlessly, although we once again spaced out their delivery to the Town Hall as much as possible. Despite this, we knew from the maths of our full four-sweep canvass that we were on course to win.

To our surprise, despite receiving 45% of the total vote, we were narrowly beaten by Labour. We didn’t find out why until a few weeks after the election, we obtained a copy of the Marked Register. This is simply a copy of the electoral roll on which the council’s elections department has put a mark next to the name of every elector who actually voted.

The Marked Register is a very valuable tool for serious electioneering, allowing extra effort to be put into the people who habitually vote. In this case, however, it showed us

something else: That a shocking number of people who we knew for sure had voted – because we had physically collected and delivered their postal votes – were recorded as not having done so. Clear proof that a large number of our votes, perhaps another 200, had simply been stolen, and with them our hopes of the credibility and publicity boost which might have won a second term in the European Parliament.

The experience had, however, also shocked our opponents and they took drastic steps to stop us doing the same thing elsewhere again. Key activists were arrested and charged with illegally handling postal votes. These charges were eventually dropped, but before the voter registration lessons could be rolled out the BNP was hijacked by asset strippers and nothing more has been done in this field.

Despite the Establishment’s ruthless response to our innovation, however, there are very valuable lessons to be learnt from this, and the systematic registration of voters remains both legal and a vital part of the preparations for any serious electoral challenge at any and every level of government.

In order to avoid having ‘our’ votes identified and stolen, and also to avoid malicious prosecution, it is not advisable to repeat the Maryport drive to register large numbers of voters in a few months of intensive work. As with many other nationalist activities in an era of ever-increasing Establishment intolerance and totalitarianism, it is necessary to work under the radar.

This makes voter registration the ideal partner of Deep Community Politics. The much longer time-frame over which supporters are created or identified, and registered to vote, makes it impossible for even the most bigoted and intolerant council bureaucrat to distinguish nationalist supporters from the routine new applicants who drip onto every electoral register in the country.

FreePost This is a good place to give brief mention to another innovation we experimented with in 2014 - the full exploitation of the Post Office Freepost for top tier elections. Up until then, the standard nationalist use of this system was to supply the Post Office with one leaflet per household. This was still a huge undertaking, not least because the leaflets had to be broken down into bundles of approximately 100, then boxed and labelled in the right numbers for every local postal district, and delivered to the appropriate local sorting office. In the 2009 European election, we did this with more than 17 million leaflets!

The actual Freepost rules, however, are that candidates may either have one unaddressed ‘Election Communication’ delivered to every household, or one personally addressed Election Communication delivered to every voter. In our key seat in North West England in the 2014 European Elections, we took full advantage of this.

We obtained electronic copies of the electoral register for every ward in the whole region of 4.4 million voters. First, we split out the Postal Voters. Next, we created a list of the most common Muslim names, identified and discarded those voters.

Then we created a list of the most common male and female Christian names. We used this to continue our electronic sorting, splitting around 90% of the remaining electorate into men and women. In most households, this allowed us to identify two different named electors.

Once a party delivers the properly prepared bundles of Election Communications to the Post Office, they are put out for immediate delivery, so they don’t clog up. This meant we could hit Postal Voters with mail-merged personal letters at the same time as their ballot papers arrived.

With households of conventional ballot box voters, we used the split into men and women in a different way. One person in each family received a Freepost leaflet early in the campaign. This was the largest and most elaborate leaflet of the entire campaign, delivered early in the hope that it was more likely to be read as it would probably be the first item of election material through most doors.

The second person in each family home was sent a much simpler leaflet or mail-merge letter, timed to arrive just before polling day. The same electronic split also made it easy for us to create a list of families of three or more voters. A couple of volunteers who weren’t up to street activity but were competent with computers went through this list manually, glancing at the Christian names and guessing as to which of each family were the father and mother, and which were the children.

Changing fashions in first names make this broadly accurate enough to know that Herbert and Mildred were probably pensioners, Jackie and Gary were boomers, and Chardonnay and Ryan were probably first-time voters. The electoral register itself also gives the dates at which particularly young voters become 18. We combined this information to give us the name and address list for yet another separate leaflet, which was aimed at young people.

The efficient exploitation of the Freepost system is, of course, irrelevant to the local election contests for which this handbook is overwhelmingly intended, since no Freepost is available in contests where no deposit is required. This section is included so that any nationalists who do have some residual faith in the ‘parliamentary road’ know how much more it entails than simply finding a candidate and stumping up the deposit.

It gives would-be serious contenders the best possible starting point for their own innovations. And it exposes anyone who appeals for funds to pay for a separate mailshot “to back up our Freepost leaflets” as a grifter who is contesting an election as a way of raising and skimming funds, since the relatively simple expedient of splitting the electoral register allows multiple deliveries for free.

Finally, it helps turn this document into an accurate record of the remarkable efforts of the thousands of unsung heroes and heroines, whose tireless efforts, dedication and courage allowed the BNP to launch the most successful and sustained nationalist electoral insurgency in British political history. This work is dedicated to them.

This manual is based upon material originally published by the BNP. Revised in 2024 by the INN, with additional material supplied by Nick Griffin, Richard Lumby and the INN. Edited by the INN.

All information is correct at the time of publication. For additional information, updates and regional variations, visit www.electoralcommission.org.uk

Published 17th August 2024

Not bad for a bunch of “knuckle-draggers” eh? Help put this ground-breaking document into wider circulation, please Restack it and copy and share the link all over social media in general. There’s no parliamentary road to the survival of our people, but winning elections WILL be part of the long road back.