Thread: Advice for Independent Candidates?

I will be standing in the council elections next May as an independent. I would appreciate any snippets of wisdom, experience or ideas that people may have please.

I am in a double ward, Wraxall and Long Ashton (North Somerset). It is mostly rural, with three substantial areas of housing, each with their own identity and local issues. The two existing councillors are both Conservatives.

Last time there was a single challenger, a Liberal Democrat.

Thank you.

Number 3 is the trickiest - I have a real tendency to blather on...

Starting now, prepare some warmup leaflets to spread round your ward - work out a standard template, sort of a Lib Dem Focus type thing ("Butcher's Bulletin?"). Have two or three items on each leaflet, concentrating on local issues, what the council are doing wrong and what you would do better. If you're not sure about layout etc, look at thestraightchoice.org and see what other parties and candidates do. You can knock up a standard banner in Paint and then paste it into a word processing file, the difficult bit is writing the content. Focus on issues and general council incompetence, don't attack the opposition personally unless they have actually just been convicted of a criminal offense (you never know your luck). If resources allow, try to leaflet your area once a month - that's what the big parties do when they're targetting an area. You probably won't have the time or money to leaflet your whole ward every month, so do what you can - maybe target a small area. I've found that I can deliver about 100 leaflets an hour, but I live in a built up area - you won't do as well in a countrified area, so make a realistic estimate of what you can do. The idea is to get yourself known to a certain extent before the election.

Incidentally, you'll find that getting your leaflets professionally printed works out cheaper for large print runs than printing at home, so find a reasonably priced and reliable printing firm with a quick turnaround time. I've used stressfreeprint.co.uk in the past, they were OK, but it's obviously a good idea to shop around.

In the same vein, read your local paper and write to it about some local issue at least once a week if you can. If your letters get published, they'll be read by more people than any leaflet you can possibly deliver.

If you can, recruit some henchmen who will help you deliver leaflets at election time. Henchmen are great, even having one person helping you can keep your energy levels up so you get those leaflets shifted faster - it also makes it more fun, just rember to have some snacks in for them, henchmen can be quite selfish and expect to be fed at least once a day. If you're unlucky enough to be doing it all single-handed, try to arrange to take a couple of weeks off work at election time to allow for delivering leaflets, that's probably how long you'll need. When leafleting, you want to be wearing a good pair of shoes that are suitable for walking long distances and thick socks (even if the weather's hot, trust me on this). A small backpack will hold several hundred leaflets and don't forget to include a water bottle or two. When I was helping someone with a local campaign in East Anglia in 2009, one of my fellow henchmen was rushing around in the hot weather, not bothering to stop for a drink and nearly keeled over from dehydration, so take care.

I'd vote for you, Anthony, if i lived in your area.