douglas denny

That is one Helluva bitter tirade; pouring bile and poison.
I leave others to judge its veracity in the content.

Time for you to take up a nice quiet activity like gardening chum, and keep your blood pressure down.

It never fails to amaze me that there are so many people around, wherever people gather for a common interest, whether it be a golf club, church, political party or even a woman's institute who spend their time in bitterness about some other person in that group and fill their waking hours dreaming-up invective about their demon target. What is worse, often putting it into practice. Why? What's the point? Why can't they just get on with playing golf, praying, putting leaflets into letterboxes or making cakes - in other words just getting on with life enjoying themselves?

This tirade is the answer Mr. BAware needs to show why the 'leadership' of UKIP are reluctant to meet people who form groups like the Lechlade Group - for what would be the point in trying to talk to someone with the capacity for the kind of attitude as above ?

DED.
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B.A.Ware

DD This tirade as you like to call it is exactly why Nigel should meet up with these people, are you telling me if you had someone like this in your organisation you wouldn’t want a face to face meeting with him, even if it were to dismiss his ideas as not practicable.

What you have got to remember is when Volunteers put time, money and effort into a venture and they think they might know a way of improving things the least these people expect of salaried leaders is for them to listen.

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C_steam

Don't agree. Big parties are succesful in that they are a broad church and have a lot of room for different sub groups within the main party to both have differing opinions and to influence future policy. In other words, policy may come and go but the party continues. See all three of the main parties for details!

Small parties can't do that - because they are too small to be, in fact, a broad church and tend to be led by ego rather than accomodation.

And here's the thing - we talked about it before, you and I, and that is the need for a 'small party' to have a very strong set of joined up 'core values' supported by policies which may flex. Because, in reality, we tend to vote for the perceived values of the party rather than the policies of the party.

This is one reason, I believe, that UKIP is not succesful - because it has no recognisable core ideology beyond 'Get out of the EU'.

The ED's however may be a little bit more succesful in the long run as they may become associated i peoples minds with 'englishness' - however I'm sure that if any success starts coming their way the ED's 'Unique Selling Point' will be triangulated out of existence by labour and the Tories.

Hope I'm making sense.

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C_steam

Dear oh dear. You really are not a particularly enlightened person are you?

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SponPlague

For the record, Doug, the founder of Lechlade is now writing the party's pensions policy - obviously something good came out of it... :-)

douglas denny

Nirvana never was my strong point.

DED.

douglas denny

Excellent! I did not know that. As you say, some good has come out of it all then.
It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

It's a pity more people of the previously mentioned groups don't get involved in the nuts and bolts of helping along policy groups (or the party in general) instead of bemoaning their splinter group got nowhere by being ignored. Of course its going to be ignored when most of the people involved just bellyache about Nigel Farage or the NEC.

I know a chap who was involved in a policy 'think-tank' group of the Conservatives in Thatcher's time. Apparently there were lots of them, all working on different areas of policy with the remit to 'think outside of the box' in order to come up with radical but practical ideas for consideration. It was one of the reasons Thatcher was considered 'radical' with some of the policies of the time. Sir Keith Joseph was the driving force apparently - a very clever man.

It is the opinion of my friend that one of the reasons for the demise of the Conservative Party is the dissolution of most of these groups when Thatcher was ousted. Now whether this is true or not I do not know, but the implementation of expert-led policy think-tanks seems a good idea to me for any party. Even if only one in a hundred ideas is implemented but is a rollickingly good one, it is worth it.
UKIP's policy groups are (I hope) the same kind of development.

It also seems obvious to me that if these other side-groups like 'Lechlade' and 'Grassroots' want to go ahead and have discussions and make an impact, they should be doing the same kind of thing as the above - get people together with experts in a particular field to discuss a single issue and thrash it out for developing new ideas - then present it to the chairman of the policy groups and/or the NEC.

Their present methodology of dreaming up a Christmas wish-list of their personal pet ideas and prejudices of how to 'improve' the party management or direction is not, as far as I can see (to put it kindly), very useful. Having known dissenters and Nigel-haters presenting such material is not particularly diplomatic either.

DED.

C_steam

Some agreement with your last para but it is incorrect vis-a-vis the lechlade group. As pointed out, the current pensions paper came out of Lechlade members and including some discussions in exactly the way you suggest.

Regarding NF, whilst Lechlade was a group of individuals it is fair to say that the majority were not 'fans' of nigel BUT we were prepared to support the party and there was ALWAYS as standing invite for any member of the party to attend - Certainly both Roger in his time and Nigel and other MEP's (Graham and Gerard at the very least, iirc).

It is also worth pointing out that no less than THREE founder members of Lecghlade became NEC members - I think that counts as 'getting involved in the nuts and bolts'. Notwithstanding the initial try to get 'youthkip' up and running and the initial 'policy groups' activity, both of which came out of Lechlade.

Not bad for a few people in a pub, don't you think?

The reason Lechlade failed, IMHO, is simply that a dialogue was not entertained by senior party members. And since that time no group has managed to establish or maintain such a dialogue.

Honestly, Lechlade set out to try and help the party and to give a route for members 'in' to policy and discussion, to share best practice from branches, have an opportunity to 'talk politics' with similar others and to sink a few beers. That was it. To view it as a 'subversive' movement or 'a party within a party' is incorrect.

Anyway, it's water under the bridge now, but I still feel the party missed out on an opportunity.

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brian lee

The mistake in most organisations is to assume that the best people get to the top. That is rarely the case. Unfortunately those people who do get to the top by all kinds of ways believe that they have got there by their superior intellect and knowledge. That being the case, anyone who does not accord with their ideas and suggests other ideas is branded as a trouble maker. If the leader is poor the upstart will be marginalised instead of being welcomed.

It is not a question of being a Farage hater. It is a question of Farage not having the capacity for being a good leader. Hence he will surround himself with yes men so that he is unchallenged.

Did those who organised 'Grass Roots', however competant they are, seriously thing that Farage would take any notice of them?

A few years ago I knew John De Roeck. He was no Ego tripper and not in UKIP for personal gain. When, as Party Treasurer he dared to act as a Treasurer should do he was sacked. The Party Secretary who defended him was marginalised. One of the ways this was achieved was to move the UKIP office from London to Birmingham, well out of his travelling distance. Gerard Batten opposed this move. There was a lot of spin about Birmingham being more suitable. It wasn't.

The history of UKIP is full of competant people at different levels in the organisation being ignored and marginalised. When they eventually left the Party the standard retort was that they were useless trouble makers and good riddance to them. When I left I got off lightly because my contribution was obviously considered to be insignificant, except believe it or not by Piers Merchant who expressed his regret. All I got was to be called a traitor by one of my closest colleagues.

The reason 'Veritas' and 'One London' were set up was due to the failure of the UKIP management to deal with internal matters intelligently. Kilroy Silk was a problem, but he could have been dealt before he created mayhem in the Party. In the run up to the 2004 European Election, Farage and Lott decided to deal with internal problems by sending out solicitor's letters to 21 activists. Can you imagine anything so stupid? They didn't think so.

B.A.Ware

As one of the founding members of the Lechlade group C steam is exactly right in what he has posted. The group was open to all who wanted to come and this included The Ukip hierarchy and when they did come they did not receive a hostile reception, this is hardly the way a subversive group would work within the party.

If any one wanted to know what the group was about our aims were posted on a Lechlade website one of which was to SUPPORT Roger knapeman who was the current leader at the time, again hardly a group trying to be subversive.

Here are some of the aims we were trying to achieve

Produce a world class website with a separate area for members.

(Something Nigel promised in his election address and in my opinion failed to deliver)

Produce a youth movement (Youth kip)

(Something Nigel promised in his election address) Who eventually got a movement going; Del and he too was a Lechlade member.

Start policy groups
(Something Nigel promised in his election address)

Produce policy papers and present them to the NEC.
(Something Nigel promised in his election address)

Promote Ukip as a positive force instead of telling people what we were always against; tell them what we stood for.

(Nigel’s quote from a TV interview when he became leader, as I remember it; People know what we are against we are going to tell people what we are for.)

Start a by-election fighting fund and team of activists

Start research groups

There are more but like C steam says its all water under the bridge now, strange a lot of what Nigel has promised seems to be what the Lechlade group were recommending talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water.

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