Congratulations to David & Samantha Cameron

Congratulations to David & Samantha Cameron on the birth of their
fourth child.

Samantha had a little girl of 6lb 1oz this morning in the Royal Cornwall
Hospital, Truro.

Erewash Conservative Future and its membership would like to
congratulate the Prime Minister and his family on their new arrival.

votes at 16 update

I have done a bit of Digging around the area of the votes at 16 coalition.

It is the stance of the Conservative Party that the voting age is an arbitrary notion in the first instance, so we should leave it at 18. Otherwise, we could lower it to 14 or 15 or 15 and 3 1/4 or any ridiculously random age.

I am sometimes perhaps overly skeptical about things, I will admit, but to be honest, if we lower the age, who would use their vote?

Getting Involved

I attended the Erewash Conservative Association Membership & Fund Raising Committee meeting on Wednesday Morning. It was the first time that I had met the vast majority of the membership of the committee. It is made up of councillors and branch executives from across the constituency. For the majority of the membership the notion that young conservatives (YC's) is now Conservative Future and that there is an active presence of CF back in the Erewash Constituency is a notion that is met with great enthusiasm and positivity.

For me the opportunity to speak on a few occasions within the meeting was a great honor and a privilege. The fact that, what I would describe as the elders of the constituency and the party would listen to and value the opinions of a young 23 year old officer, to me, proves how the culture of politics and the ethos of the party has altered and changed over the years.

With the backing of Jessica (Lee), Julian (Rose), Kevin (Miller), Our great Association President (Mrs. A Noskwith) and the rest of the association exec, I am quietly confident of gaining just as good a membership rise as I experienced in Derby if not better.

engaging the masses

Here in the East Midlands we have a female MEP and 3 female MP's. Oh and did I forget to mention that they are all Tory's?

Theresa May holds one of the three highest ranked cabinet positions in the British government as the home secretary. Two of the last three Conservative Party Chairmen have been women.

In my local branch, we have a parish council that is more than 50 % female. So why are female Conservative Future members so hard to come by?

What makes young people, and young women in particular, get involved in politics? What makes women join a political party in general?

Erewash CF welcomes its newest author

It is with great pleasure that the Erewash Conservative Future Branch welcomes a new author to the CF blog.

Matthew Coolin is the Branch's Deputy Chairman and will be joining Richard as co-author to the Erewash CF blog.

What should the purpose of CF be, moving forward?

Amidst the hustings and policy of the CF National Chairman Candidates, I had a thought that got me thinking... What is the purpose of CF?

Well my first point of interest was obviously the CF constitution. The objectives that are cited there are pretty generic and the usual suspects show up in the objectives section:

3 OBJECTS OF CF

The Objects of CF are:-

3.1.1 to advance the principles and policies of the Party amongst people:-

under the age of 30; and/or studying at institutions of higher and further education within the

Nation;

3.1.2 to recruit members to the Party;

3.1.3 to advise and provide assistance to the Party on all matters where the

particular expertise of CF may be of value;

3.1.4 to represent and promote the interests and profile of Party members under

the age of 30;

3.1.5 to encourage and develop among its Members the formation, organisation

and operation of branches;

3.1.6 to work for the election of Conservative Candidates in local, regional, national

and European elections.

Well that provoked another thought, how, exactly, do we recruit members to the Party? More importantly, how do we keep our current members active and retain membership?

Indeed, why do people join political parties? One would assume that this is because a person feels a connection, either ideologically or otherwise to that party. In which case, they would possess the want and desire to get involved and be an active member of that party.

Therefore an active involvement or perhaps even a committee position or officer's role in the local association would keep the membership satisfied and active. But realistically this is not always enough for younger members. Which is why the vast majority of conservative future branches are based around and built upon social activity and dare I say it? Alcohol.

So how do we recruit members? Is it possible to sustain political interest in young people? The answer is, YES...

I was on a student union trip to our far flung campus in Buxton, prime rich pickings for a High Peak Conservative Future branch at the outset. We were trying to get some two way engagement going with the Union's democracy campaign. Now a strong FE base would normally cause a look of horror to be struck at the hint of the word politics, but, I was surprised at the amount of knowledge and engagement that I witnessed in a bunch of 16 & 17 year olds.

I even got a young lad to talk himself round from voting BNP to voting Tory, by his unknowing hatred for Nick Griffin outweighing his hatred for foreign migrants and immigrants. But by sitting and chatting with them, its easy to show them that their everyday lives are governed by politics.

It is upsetting, however, to learn that there are very few FE institutions left that teach politics.

I leave you with the question, then, is it time to bring politics back to the curriculum, and would those gaining academy status and the subsequent autonomy, include politics as part of their curriculum?