Get Involved

As you will all be aware, we are running up to a general election, and this is a time when, despite all the gloom about finances, people who ‘need our votes’ are most ‘susceptible’ to being called upon to make statements in support of good causes – i.e. the inland waterways.

At the recent Promotions and Communications Branch Workshop at Stoke on 6 February, it was mutually agreed that it would be helpful to try and make contact with some Prospective Parliamentary Candidates, and members and branches asked for help in planning how to do this as part of the SOS campaign in the run up to the General Election.

Contents:

Waterways MP Data base
The Prospective Parliamentary Candidates
Prioritising your Actions and Resources.
Local Invitations and Letters.

Waterways MP Data base

As a start, we have created a database of waterways, by Region, showing by branch:

The waterways that each branch is responsible for;
The Navigation Authority/operator (where known by Head Office);
The sitting MP;
The constituency; and
The MP’s majority.

The database comes with two health warnings:

The first is, it may not be 100% accurate. Neither BW nor the EA could assist us fully with this exercise so we had to resort to tracing waterways onto an OS election constituency map; for reasons of scale, we may occasionally have accidentally identified certain waterways as just within a constituency whereas in reality they may be just outside. Only branch local knowledge will be able to validate this. 

Second, the database reflects current constituencies. Some constituency boundary changes will come into effect at the General Election. Unfortunately no national maps reflecting boundary change are available until after the General Election. So it may be necessary for you to locally establish whether your constituencies might be subject to boundary change and the implications for waterways i.e. a waterway which runs through an existing constituency may not after a boundary change. You can check the Ordnance Survey website – www.election-maps.co.uk – which offers a post code search and will show individual constituency boundaries, but we have found that the website is not always available, and can’t be used to give a national picture. 

If we have got something wrong – please let us know.

MPs by regions:

Eastern Region MPs
East Midlands Region MPs
London Region MPs
North East & Yorkshire Region MPs
North West & North Wales MPs
South East Region MPs
South West & South Wales Region MPs
West Midlands Region MPs

The Prospective Parliamentary Candidates

In addition to knowing who your local MPs are, the following websites will help you identify the other Prospective Parliamentary Candidates. These are:

•  Labour
•  Conservative
•  Liberal Democrats

Prioritising your Actions and Resources.

We know that branches are stretched and will need to prioritise what resources they can muster as effectively as possible. –The following is advice based on the recent workshop.

A first consideration is whether the waterways within the constituency are significant enough to warrant IWA making representations. Only you as a branch can decide.

If the waterways are significant, and you do have the resources, identify the Prospective Parliamentary Candidates and decide on how you wish to approach them.

Questions to help you prioritise further.

1.     If you have a marginal constituency (as a rule of thumb a majority of about 5000 or less can be regarded as marginal) your Prospective Parliamentary Candidates will be more open to local representations since the more marginal the constituency the more that every vote will count – Probably the most important for IWA branches to target if you are able to do so .

2.     Is there a retiring MP who currently has a large majority? Normally in these circumstances the successor party candidate will probably win. They may be worth targeting since they will be an unknown quantity in terms of attitude towards waterways.  

3.     You may have a sitting candidate with a large majority, who will clearly be re-elected, and who already takes an interest in the waterways – probably only worth it if local resources allow to reinforce that interest and gain a commitment?

4.     If you have a sitting candidate with a large majority, who will clearly be re-elected, and who despite your best efforts has taken no interest in the waterways – is it worth it?- can you spare the effort?

Local Invitations and Letters.

Only you can decide what is best for you given your particular circumstances. 

If you have the time, we would really appreciate it if a letter to the Prospective Parliamentary Candidates could be sent. We have attached a template letter for you to send to Parliamentary candidates for either  BW or EA waterways within the constituency. If you also want to send a hard copy of the Parliamentary Briefing we still have stocks here. Please feel free to contact me or David Padfield for copies.

Some branches have found that a trip on a boat is a technique which has worked well in the past with certain politicians. An informal commitment to the waterways could be gained, and then followed up by a letter, but this is all about what you are able to resource and support.