Well it's my second week of blogging, and I think I'll make Thursdays my regular day for updates. So watch this space! Again any grammar errors that you find please let me know.
For this week, I'm going to go back to basics, not as John Major meant it, and focus on the local politics of my home town of Chesterfield.
Now for those of you who don't know, Chesterfield is a market town in the East Midlands. Not far from Sheffield, Nottingham etc. I'm sure most people are capable of using Wikipedia, and I'm not on the town's official tourism/ marketing board. It is also famous for the Crooked Spire (pictured), again if you are interested, please use Wikipedia or the local tourism information website:
http://www.visitchesterfield.info/
The Crooked Spire- Chesterfield's most and only iconic feature.
Politically, Chesterfield is interesting as it was traditionally a Labour stronghold. With famous Labour MPs, Eric Varley and Tony Benn (pictured below). Both of whom I plan to discuss in a later blog, this post is just an introduction. This was due to heavy industry and coal mining that was previously in the area, with companies such as DemaGlass, Markhams and Bryan Donkin. DemaGlass is particularly important to me, as it was the company at which my parents first met at in the 1980s, and the rest they say is history. Markams also gave my Dad his first job, aged 16.
The great, late The Right Honourable Tony Benn speaking at Glastonbury 2008
However, this Labour hegemony was broken at the 2001 elections. Not the most thrilling of election and historically famous for having a low turnout of 59%! Not British democracy's finest hour. In terms of Chesterfield though, it was a Lib Dem victory with Paul Holmes (pictured) taking the seat. This is partly explained by the resignation of Tony Benn from the seat at the election. Another reason is the much lauded Lib Dem strategy of "Target to Win", in conjunction with the build-up of local representation on the Borough Council.
Paul Holmes managed to hold the seat in 2005, as part of the Lib Dem "surge" to 62 seats in the Commons. Although by the 2010 election, 5 years later it was all change with Labour's Toby Perkins (pictured) taking the seat with a 1.2% majority over Paul Holmes.
Toby Perkins (right), the current Chesterfield MP with Ed Miliband.
The Green Party also had its first candidate (Duncan Kerr), who won 600 votes or 1.3% of the total vote. Not very much, but it is encouraging to see that at least there are some Green voters in Chesterfield. However at this time I wasn't really involved in the Greens and I'm afraid that I paid little attention to them.
Now 2010 for me was the first time I could vote. As a virgin to the democratic process, it was really excited in the build up to the election with the TV debates and the newspaper coverage. The thing that was most amazing was the open discussion that occurred in my Sixth Form, about politics. With questions like:
"Who are you going to vote for?"
"Did you watch the TV debates last night?"
For me it was a refreshing break from the usual blah about the Premier League, Sixth Form politics and UCAS applications. From what I can remember there was a majority of people who were intending to vote either Lib Dem or Labour. There was even a few who said that they would vote Tory, and I questioned one girls choice:
"Why would you vote Conservative?"
The response I got was:
"Well someone has to."
Out of this maelstrom of decision making, I chose to back the Lib Dems. My decision was based a range of factors.
1.
Labour under Gordon Brown was
looking worn out after 13 years in power.
2.
I didn't trust Labour after the
whole Iraq War/ carelessness in the pre-recession boom of the 2000s.
3.
The Tories just didn't hit it off
for me and I thought that all David Cameron amounted to was a rerun of the
clever electioneering of the Blair years.
4.
I quite liked the Lib Dems at a
local level and thought that Paul Holmes had done a reasonable job as MP.
5.
I felt at the time, the Lib Dems
were closest to my opinion and Nick Clegg had done reasonably well in the TV
debates.
All I can say looking back now, is how things have changed for me personally and how I've grown more interested in politics. Admittedly more the left than in 2010, but I wouldn't describe myself as a "rabid Marxist. The Political Compass, a great website puts me in the Left-Libertarian quadrant. A quadrant that I am still happy to occupy.
Well I think I'm going to call it quits for this week, but as this is only Part 1 there will be more. So keep an eye out. Just one more thing, a link to the Political Compass can be found below. This is a great website and I highly recommend that you check it out.
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