Completing Percy Meyer’s election leaflet, receiving the very un-prepared duo of Carole Crompton and Jack Taylor who joined me to start the process of writing their Bury leaflet and then chairing a dozen or so Liberal Democrat activists by prior arrangement in my office as we reviewed our campaign. Sally seemed home and dry, Percy now needed the priority and was a probable win but the Bury campaign was in trouble and I telephoned Peter Downes, the Huntingdon Constituency SLD Chairman, afterwards to warn them of our predictions.
The news today was of the release at last of one of the American hostages in Beirut after pressure from Iran, Robert Polhill, an accountancy professor from New York. A coup attempt to overthrow President Ibrahim Babangida in Nigeria was thwarted but the pressure between the Moslem north and Christian south continues. After floods in New South Wales, Australia, there is now bad flooding in Brazil that has left 5,000 homeless and killed 11 so far. Chancellor John Major is still trying to hold down Public Sector wage increases to try and contain inflation but there would be trouble ahead as a result.
A dry day today but still with that chilly wind. A more relaxing morning, getting up later than usual but my throat infection and cough were still very bad and worrying for me as I had the forthcoming Council Meeting and visit to Suffolk in mind. It was my first task to continue with Percy's leaflet and I arranged for him to get the final copy for checking and pass on other copies to Sally and Michael for their further comments and corrections. Then, after lunch, Carole Crompton and Jack Taylor came down and joined me to start the process of writing the Bury leaflet. I had to work with them from scratch as they had not even written their articles, let alone typed them in ready for incorporation!
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I first talked to them about their campaign and went through the Conservative leaflets to see how best we could respond to them. In the end, I could see an approach but they have not really been on top of the logistics and the Tories, for their part, had been very active and so we may not win the Bury Ward without a radical fillip to thr campaign. Before long, my office filled up with a dozen or so Liberal Democrat activists by prior arrangement and I called the meeting to order and reviewed our campaign. I got each candidate in turn to give a five minute summary of how their campaign was going and then asked Moira to present a statistical summary of how our support compared with that of the Tories in each ward. The we planned the rest of the campaign and looked ahead to polling day. We learned that Sally was well ahead by a factor of 2:1 on the Richmond formula, and Percy was also ahead marginally but Carole was trailing the Tory by a ratio of 2:3. After a discussion, we agreed that Sally be left with friends and new helpers to get in her vote and that our experienced canvassers be put into Percy's ward to get him more safely in the lead.
We would be pressing the Huntingdon Constituency SLD people to help Carole much more vigorously to try to close the gap and review the situation again next weekend. I telephoned Peter Downes, their Chairman, afterwards to warn them of our predictions that they would fail to win this, there only target ward, if they did not get their act together. This evening, I worked on the copy for this final Bury leaflet which was taking on additional importance in view of the Bury situation. Trouble was that I did not have all of the information that I needed, nor the familiarity with that part of the District and so it was slow going. I had to break off very late, well after midnight, and go to bed.
The news today was of the release at last of one of the American hostages in Beirut after pressure from Iran. The man was Robert Polhill, an accountancy professor from New York who had been held since January 1987, some 1,183 days. A coup attempt to overthrow President Ibrahim Babangida in Nigeria was thwarted but the pressure between the Moslem north and Christian south continues. After floods in New South Wales, Australia, there is now bad flooding in Brazil that has left 5,000 homeless and killed 11 so far. Chancellor John Major is still trying to hold down Public Sector wage increases to try and contain inflation but there would be trouble ahead as a result.