Spending the entire day organising the election, delivering leaflets with Dina locally early on, touring the committee offices to keep them organised and then supervising the counts with Debbie's Birthday taking the back seat. We had just retained Paxton and Priory, but also won the Eaton’s to give us four seats tonight and a total of seven on the District in all. After composing, typing and then faxing a press release to the media announcing our results, it was after 3.00am by the time I went to bed which was the third very late night of the week!
Up before 5.30am and then out on my bicycle, delivering the morning leaflets to remind our supporters to vote before they left for work. Diana was also doing the same thing. It was a fine and warm morning and a pleasure to be around at that time so that we both actually enjoyed the experience. I toured the village to see if the other helpers were also succeeding in delivering theirs and helped one of them finish his round before coming back to The Hayling View to serve everyone coffee and get the committee room ready. It being a nice day, I decided to send John over to Southoe at the opening of the poll to start telling there in the hope that we might be able to keep the process going for some time in the day. Chris James was here on time to start telling at Paxton and I personally saw her start there to make sure everything went well.
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I then spent a lot of time with Committee Room organiser, Keith Seiler, running over the procedures and use of the computer system to find that he had a deep suspicion of it that was going to last all day and provide a great distraction from driving the knockers-up. We had the help of Pat Wright from Buckden who started well and so I then extracted myself and went on to Priory Park to get them under way. I found Sally wandering away from the set procedures and so got her back on the straight and narrow and then demonstrated the basic entry and reporting routines. I was trying to do this to John Davidson, as Sally was expecting him to be in charge of the computer in the morning and evening, but he did not want to stay and so we were again left without his active help when we needed it most. In the end, I showed Jane Cross and Sally and then left them to key there numbers in whilst travelling on to the Eatons to do the same thing.
The first part of the day followed a pattern of going from committee room to committee room, telephoning the others to get the statistics and check up on how they were coping with their tasks; first the entry of voter numbers, then the print of turnout figures and finally the printing of "shuttleworths"; ever reducing lists of our supporters who had not voted to be called upon or "knocked-up". By mid-afternoon, the Eatons were in full swing, working the two wards from the same committee room and computer and Priory were getting along with Sally, Michael and candidate Sheila Shorten and a friend providing the most effort. Their problem was not having had a complete enough canvas and therefore not having enough people to knock up without making repetitive calls. Meanwhile, back in Paxton things were beginning to grind to a halt. Operator Pat was feeling the effects of her medicines without eating and was now struggling to operate the computer.
Keith was spending most of his time and energy worrying about the accuracy of the computer data due to some reports looking wrong and the knocking-up process had ground to a halt as the last of them had either gone home or, in the case of John Brown, were stuck telling at Southoe. I came back and analysed the situation and decided to call for help. I brought David Giles of the Eatons over to drive the computer, put Pat Wright up at Southoe telling and called over Michael Pope from Priory to knock up and dedicated a further half of my time to do the same thing. Within fifteen minutes we were back in business and, with other knockers-up arriving, were able to get through some work. I intercepted Peter While arriving and got him out quickly and helped to overcome the prevailing lack of urgency that was leading to people hanging around in the committee room instead of getting back out.
I had the telling lists input for Southoe and, after we could tell no longer at 6.00pm, I went over to there and personally knocked up our supporters for an hour and a half which I felt was going to make all the difference to a close Paxton campaign. I checked statistics at 8.00pm from each committee room and found that the others were all right but that Paxton was left manned only by the computer operator, starved of telling slips and stuck for progress. I drove back via Paxton to collect the next batch and got David up to date and printing out more Shuttleworths for the last knock-ups. During my own knocking up earlier, I gave a lift to the blind chap that walks around Paxton and got Jim Davie of the Polling Station staff to show him to the booth and help him to vote. I had quite a good chat with the blind lad and find that he now lives in Huntingdon but frequently visits his parents in Gordon Close. In Southoe, I had started knocking up at the remote ends of Lees Lane and Rectory Lane and then ended by chasing out the council houses in the High Street, within a few minutes of the village hall.
At 8.45pm, I left Southoe and came back home to change and shave and then pack some drinks and refreshments ready for the count so as to leave about 9.08pm for the count with John Brown and David Giles. There then started the climax to the evening, with simultaneous counts being organised for each of the six elections - 5 district and 1 town - with two of our tellers at each table checking the officers work and taking samples which Michael Pope, as agent, brought over to me for assessment. It soon became apparent that the District Election for Priory was very close with Tory Ruth Clapham in real danger of getting in. Then, after the Southoe box was opened first and gave us a false impression of John Brown's lead against Nicola Kay, the box from Little Paxton then showed them very level and this too became a cliff-hanger.
Over at the Eatons table, we had a surprising lead for John Roscoe over the unpopular Bill Longford, but early samples for Ross McKay did not show him very far ahead. The counts progressed and we saw that the Eatons were both ours and then, with us only 23 votes ahead in Priory at the close, the Tories demanded a recount. Back at the Paxton table, the counting method left us all baffled until, near the end, we seemed to be about 50 ahead by account of both sides. These were the results that prevailed:- We had just retained Paxton and Priory, but won the Eatons to give us four seats tonight and a total of seven on the District. The last seat, which we had not fought seriously for lack of resources, was won by the Tories from Labour with our paper candidate getting a respectable total.
We also won the only Town Council seat up for election for us to retain 9 out of the 18 total on this authority. I invited all of the workers at the count back to The Hayling View where we had drinks and snacks whilst listening to the other local election results coming in. There were other Liberal Democrat gains in Cambridgeshire and around the country. I printed up the results stickers for the flagboards for each ward and then, after the "party" broke up, teams went out to paste these whilst Percy and I stayed behind to compose, type in and then to fax a press release to the media announcing our results. It was after 3.00am again by the time I went to bed which was the third very late night of the week!