antoniabance.org.uk

Antonia's blog

Welcome to my blog, a commentary on news and events in Oxford West and Abingdon, the UK and across the world. All posts are my own opinion and cannot be taken as the policy of the Labour Party.

20 November 2004

Back at home now, and it’s back to everyday politics, and back to work. Apologies for not posting much since I’ve returned, but I’ve been really busy. Some things that have caught my eye over the last few weeks:

In the aftermath of the Boris Johnson sacking, the Tories let their homophobes out of the closet on the Today programme - some Julian guy from the Tory Family Campaign started talking about how at least Ben Bradshaw (Labour MP for Exeter) was open about supporting the "homosexual agenda". For once in my life I was cheering Edwina Currie as she took him apart. Bet he wasn’t happy on Wednesday, when Labour peers turned out in force to ensure that the Civil Partnerships bill got through the Lords - when it comes into force, at the start of 2006, lesbian and gay couples will be able to get hitched and enjoy all the rights that straight married couples have.

I still get a bit cross that my government, who took all the heat from the bigots, couldn’t take just a little bit more heat to call it bloody “marriage” - which is what it is, literally in everything but name. After all, I can’t see anyone getting down on one knee to ask their nearest and dearest “Darling, will you make me the happiest woman in the world and enter a civil partnership with me?”, and when the lovely Jo finally makes an honest woman of me, we certainly won’t be having “civil partnership ceremony invitations” and a “civil partnership ceremony cake”!

Wanted to say a big thank you to the good people at Stonewall and at the Labour Campaign for Lesbian and Gay Rights for making this happen. And to any lesbian and gay people and other supporters of equality out there who aren’t sure who to vote for at the next election, remember this - it was a LABOUR government that put civil partnerships in the Queen’s Speech last year, apropos of nothing. It was a LABOUR MPs and peers that passed the bill and removed the Tory wrecking amendments, and it is a LABOUR government that has ensured that no more lesbian and gay couples will be denied visiting rights in hospital or will lose their homes through inheritance tax when a partner dies. You can keep your Lib Dem promises and Tory good intentions - it is LABOUR that delivers on equality for lesbian and gay people.

7 November 2004

Just got back this weekend. Wanted to round up the trip to Philadelphia.

To put it in perspective, here’s a bit of electoral math - to win, either candidate needed to hold every state from 2000's election, and win two of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida. Our job was to make sure that the liberal metropolitan denizens of the City of Brotherly Love voted for Kerry in large enough numbers to overhaul the rural conservative votes from central Pennsylvania.

Throughout the time I was in Philadelphia, the atmosphere just walking around the city was fabulous - it was great to be in a city where politics really mattered. Philadelphia had voted for Gore and for a continuation of the Clinton-era prosperity in 2000, but had instead been landed with an irresponsible President who had played fast and loose with jobs and with the cash for regeneration so desperately needed in a former industrial city, and now it was sure that Bush was on the way out. Everyone was motivated - happy to take a sticker, happy to volunteer, happy to honk at the enormous Kerry signs waved at them at every major intersection. In the run-up to the election, everyone felt that the US was at a turning point, and that it was going to make the right choice.

Not that anyone was leaving anything to chance. In the run-up to the election, on Hallow'een, we started giving out goodie bags full of sweets, leaflets, flyers and an Eminem CD to young people - the slogan was "Happy Hallow'een! Don't get tricked by the Republicans!" Over the weekend before the election, Liberty City organised the Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell (sometimes touted as a national candidate himself), to do his traditional tour of the gay bars. It's a ritual he has observed just before every election since the mid-80s, and one that is really appreciated by the lesbian and gay community, who were so proud to see him and who chanted his name at every bar - truly as close to being a movie star or FA cup winner that a politician ever gets! We also held a huge rally to get out the gay vote on the Sunday, with openly gay congressman Barney Frank and a couple of actors from Queer as Folk America. The gay community was vital in Philadelphia, which had to get out 250,000 more votes for Kerry to make sure that the state stayed Democrat. And the gay community really are in the firing line - as Gov. Rendell said, it's time to remove homophobia from the list of election tactics.

Election Day dawned, and I had already been up for hours, getting early morning leaflets to all the houses in the patch I was responsible for. I was a team leader, with a set of volunteers, two polling stations, a borrowed mobile phone and a piece of central Philadelphia, bounded by Broad Street, Locust Street, 12th Street and South Street to look after all day. Much of the day was spent being visible - getting people pumped up and reminding them to vote. Other parts were about making sure that everything ran smoothly - that the polling stations opened when they were supposed to, that everyone knew where to vote (unbelievably, Philadelphia doesn't write to everyone to tell them where their polling station is!) and that people weren't getting turned away or intimidated. My job was also to collect the number of people who had voted every two hours and phone them to HQ, so they could monitor turnout. I couldn't believe it when, at 9am, two hours after polls opened, nearly 200 people of the 600 registered had already voted at one of my polling stations. Eventually nearly 70% of my area voted, and looking at the returns later, 95% of those votes were for Kerry. Thankfully, neither of my stations had long lines at the end of the day, and there was little trouble, although I did have to contend with two Nader supporters urging people to vote for him as a write-in candidate, which could have damaged our turnout amongst young voters, and with six preppy Bushites knocking on doors in my area - an unusual species indeed in Philadelphia.

At eight, when polls closed, our footsore team made our way back to campaign headquarters - a nightclub taken over for the purpose, full of free food and drink, with banks of computers, a huge screen and a legion of exhausted volunteers - not just Philadelphians and Brits, but people from Washington and New York, Maryland and New Jersey, who knew that their states were safely in Kerry's column already, but who felt they needed to do more. As the results rolled in, it looked good for Kerry, and certainly the atmosphere was one of suppressed excitement. As a Labour party member, I know the only way to be on election night is pessimistic, but even I was beginning to hope that after a race of dead-heat, Kerry might actually pull it off. We really raised the roof when MSNBC called Pennsylvania for Kerry at about 11pm, but gradually, as it became clear that there was not going to be a result for hours, people started to drift home to bed. I left at 2.30am, with the race still undecided, and when I woke at 9am, NPR was still reporting no decision, so I went back to sleep. When I finally got up at one, it was clear that the lead Bush had in Ohio was greater than Kerry could hope to overhaul from the provisional ballots, so he conceded. Until then, I'd been calm and slightly dazed, but we all wept during his speech.

On the streets of Philadelphia later that day, people were quiet, subdued - we'd done our job and they had done theirs: Philadelphia county was the fourth-highest percentage vote in the country for Kerry, behind Washington DC, Chicago and Los Angeles, and we'd held Pennsylvania, as Ed Rendell had promised Kerry we would, but it wasn't enough. Kerry had lost Ohio and Florida, and with them the election. When the campaign staff went out for dinner later on Wednesday, it was all we could do to keep talking about the future - the highest turnout ever, which in any other election would benefit the Democrats, and we'd still lost. No-one was sure what more they could have done. We let it all out at one of Philadelphia's wonderful piano bars, with a pianist who was slightly surprised when fifteen drunken tearful Brits and their American friends settled in for a night of Cosmopolitans and howling along with country music.

It was a great experience, and one that could have been even better, but I did learn a lot to bring back to this country - about the power of community politics, about the strength of the internet as a tool for organising. And about a wonderful country, half of whose citizens couldn't quite believe they'd managed to elect George W. Bush again. (The hottest forwarded email amongst liberal Americans on Thursday and Friday was the front page of the UK Daily Mirror, a picture of Dubya, which said simply "How can 59 million people be so dumb?")

I've promised my friends in Philadelphia to be back - for the senate elections of 2006, when the homophobe Republican Rick Santorum, who likened homosexuality to bestiality and incest, is up for election, and in 2008, when hopefully Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards or one of a host of Democratic rising stars will both win Pennsylvania and take the rest of the country too. First, I need to return my focus to the UK, though…

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October 2004