C_steam wrote
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We must get the party back to its grass roots.
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I have been a member of UKIP since 1994 and I never thought of it as grass roots based. More your centralised dictatorship type of organisation. I suppose that is inevitable, given the way the Party is structured, the lack of activists and the lack of a non-political secretariat.
When there were only a few of us, Sked's Secretary in the Office said, "if you want a branch, you start it." She sent me a list of people who were supposed to be members, told me to call myself the Chairman, and let me get on with it. There were no rules and nobody to tell me what to.
If you want grass roots you take the basics of UKIP and adopt them to suit your own local circumstances. It is easy to keep your own house in order but the structure doesn't let the grass roots influence the top. Even the Conference which is supposed to be the place to have your annual shout is run mainly as a rally, and any motions are always handled so badly, one never gets a really satisfactory result. You are not allowed organisational motions as these are supposed to be dealt with at the spring business meeting. This is also structured to prevent motions being put.
The main problem is that if there is someone at the top who understands the mechanics and how much it costs to have a really good organisation, he/she has insufficient influence to bring it about. They always underestimate by factor of a least five, how many really good people you need, working full time, to run and service the party and particularly the fighting of elections. The grass roots can't do much about that except try to work round it.