04/02/2014 - Burgess Hill Labour Party - Secretary’s report to Annual General Meeting
2013 was another busy year for the Branch, with campaigning our main priority.
We contested all Divisions in the West Sussex County Council Election in May and, although the results were very disappointing as a result of the strong showing by UKIP and the small turnout, we demonstrated our ability to distribute leaflets widely (some 25,000 distributed over a 5 week period) and canvass large numbers of people. The amount of canvassing undertaken was less than ideal as there was too few of us available to undertake this task but the residents of Burgess Hill must have known that there was an active Labour Party in the town.
Eight ward leaflets were produced outside election times, and we started a new activity of distributing leaflets in the town centre. By the end of year two leaflets had been distributed, on privatisation of the Royal Mail and the Living Wage and both seemed to be well received by the public.
Branch meetings were held in every month except May (when the scheduled date coincided with the County Council Election) with an average attendance of 10. We had speakers from the South Downs Badger Protection Group in October and the Labour Party National Policy Forum in December. We had been due to have a presentation by the Labour Party Brighton Organiser in November but due to the inability of Regional Office to manage staff diaries this did not happen.
The Branch actively participated in Labour Party Policy consultations, but little raised by our Branch made it into the final policy documents. The political discussion that took place on the policy consultations was, however, energetic and worthwhile.
The Executive Committee met on 6 occasions – at the start of the year mainly to manage the county elections and at the end of the year to deal with routine business and to manage the campaigning activity.
Our hard-working Councillors David Andrews and Janet Smith have continued to pursue many items of concern to the Party and Burgess Hill residents and comprehensive reports were made to Branch Meetings.
During the latter part of the year a new CLP website was established, although the site mainly contains news about Burgess Hill.
During the year David Boot stepped down as Branch Chair because of increasing family commitments and we welcomed Linda Church as a Branch Officer, who co-chaired the Branch for the remainder of the year.
Burgess Hill Branch continues to be a dynamic Branch with plenty of political debate and campaigning activity.