A half of two meetings

To London for two meetings, English Council wearing my Lib Dem hat, and a meeting of the council of 'Unlock Democracy' - I'm on the Management Board. Alright, they were due to run simultaneously, but they weren't far apart, and I reckoned that I could do part of both.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you what happened in the key business sessions of English Council, because I said that I wouldn't, but I'm sure that some other blogger will report back, although I don't think that any other bloggers attend, now I come to think about it. It was a bit more participatory than usual, with some vital decisions taken that will impact tremendously on our ability to fight and win elections in the future... but I digress.

English Council is an odd combination of grizzled veterans and comparatively starry-eyed novices to the English stage. Most of the latter group don't survive once they realise that they are there to be talked at in a series of talking head presentations. There is no training, no fringe, just a series of speeches and reports back. Occasionally, however, there is a big debate changing something fairly radically, generally at a meeting that you've had to miss for some reason...

At lunchtime, I left for Islington, where I arrived in time for a series of policy debates related to future activities of 'Unlock Democracy'. As an organisation, we aim to campaign for reforms that allow the maximum level of engagement and participation for individuals and communities. How we do that whilst dealing with the presence of extremist political parties is a tough challenge. We acknoweldge their existence yet, if we choose to engage with them, we alienate other groups, especially those whom the extremists would themselves exclude.

At election time, we traditionally seek to inform the public by holding public hustings meetings. Yet some extremist groups make that difficult by creating an atmosphere that is unsuited to proper open debate, making the aim of the exercise unachievable. There is clearly a conflict between our aim of inclusivity and our desire for open debate and dialogue.

And so, my work done, back to Suffolk and dinner with wife and cats...