Written by Anonymous | 03 August 2011
Posted in Blogs - Blogs

Photography: hotgrill

This is the story of how I went from apathetic, moderate student to heavily political union hack and finally to Tory campaign manager. I didn’t know what hack meant until I was running to become one. Six weeks of utter hell with some of the best people you’ll ever meet is hard to describe. I found something I loved, at least. It changed university life for me forever.

Week 0

I call the week I was recruited week 0. It happened via Facebook, as many things happen these days. Someone who would later become a candidate running with me said he remembered reading somewhere I was a Tory and I should meet someone. A Facebook introduction later, and I had met my handler: a full on Tory with a mind to make our union better. After weeks of searching, he’d finally found what he was looking for. Christopher wanted a student with conservative views who wasn’t studying humanities. Being female, a scientist and non-white was just a bonus.

So why was he looking for this elusive creature? Christopher was part of a secret slate trying to push the left-wing students who held positions in the student union and take it back for the moderate majority. The slate comprised of Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat students who all wanted change in the union. For several years, the union had been run by various partisan and non-partisan left-wing students who wanted to use it to fight for Palestine. Whilst I realise that supporting causes outside of the university is important, the students here were being neglected and alienated from their union. Summing up our campaign in one word, I would call it ‘normal’. We wanted to get ‘normal’ students involved in their union.

The last night of week 0 was spent at perhaps the most Tory party I’d ever attended. It was a chance for me to meet my handler and a few other candidates but Christopher started with perhaps his worst call during the election by introducing me to aristocracy. It had already got around that he was wearing a £2000 outfit. Even for a Tory party, this was excessive. His credit card bill only added to my amusement. I knew these people existed, but to meet a real, live one was definitely an experience. After all, it isn’t every day you can talk to a man about the pros and cons of Marc Jacobs and Chanel handbags: Marc Jacobs is more affordable but can’t compare to the classic Chanel. The rest of the night passed somewhat better, with people who didn’t complain about how the old boys’ network from Eton disadvantaged their job applications. Whilst I could appreciate his views on handbags, I had to disagree with this statement.

The one Liberal Democrat at the party had her work cut out for her: one liberal against 30 Tories isn’t an easy task. What surprised me, though, was the sheer variety of views within the Conservative supporters. Disbanding the NHS, anyone? Or perhaps removing the right to peaceful protest? I’ll admit that I’ve never had a dull night with Tories. This night, in particular, was far from dull.

Week 0 was a very interesting start to my campaign. After all, it ended with me staying in bed until 4pm - just not my bed. Conservative family values anyone? Nothing like hypocrisy to begin my career as a politician.

Week 1

Week 1 started with a meeting in a synagogue, in the rain and under the cover of darkness. I admit that after the first hour of this congregation, I was ready to quit for the first time. I say the first time, because this inclination was going to make an appearance at least once a day over the coming weeks. The person who was running our slate, David, was somewhat terrifying. After several calls from Christopher for a break, I decided to wait out the meeting and see if any sentences came out of David’s mouth that didn’t include ‘14 hour days’, ‘6am starts‘ or ‘don’t expect sleep‘. In the end, those three phrases could summarise everything that was said that night but I wasn’t fully scared off just yet. Admittedly, meeting people at the pub afterwards helped. As did the jaeger bombs.

I saw the same combination of people from the slate everyday over the next week. Meeting after meeting after meeting. Of course, some of these meetings were conducted at the pub. Those which weren’t conducted at the pub ended up at the pub. I was beginning to see a trend emerging. David was right when he said I wouldn’t be getting any sleep but he neglected to point out that it would be because of the socialising, not the campaigning. Telling students they’re about to spend five weeks drinking is probably a much better incentive than saying they’ll be canvassing on the street for 14 hours a day. After never writing a manifesto or designing a flyer before, I had to do both to a decent standard within a few days. Throw in a lab report on a topic I didn’t understand and it resulted in no sports matches, no practice but an awful lot of time spent in the pub with manifestos.

The day of close of nominations was hectic, to say the least. I wrote part of a manifesto for the candidate our slate was running for a secretaryship. I hope voters never find out we wrote his manifesto and ran his campaign. He didn’t get elected so I guess it doesn’t matter anyway. We were told to submit our nomination forms one hour before the deadline so we could surprise the other slates. At the time, we were running six people for six seats in the least popular category. Never before had scientists actually had to fight for seats. Nominations were open for several days so submitting ours late meant people didn’t know who was part of our slate and didn’t run candidates of their own. We didn’t want to the scientists to do more work than was absolutely necessary, after all.

Sitting in the union with my form submitted an hour and a half before closing, I felt I had the right to be smug whilst watching one of our candidates rush his manifesto and submit it at 15 minutes past the deadline whilst convincing the office to accept it. Everyone came upstairs with the question, ‘Has Sam submitted yet?’ The answer was normally no.

After the close of nominations, the weekend passed fairly event free if I discount the offer of a threesome. I’m almost certain that the situation was staged but coming out of the bathroom to see another candidate, Jennifer, and her boyfriend debating about whether I would agree to a threesome or not was definitely one of the stranger moments of the campaign. I laughed it off, but it’s nice to know the offer is there if I want it.

Week 2

The week after nominations, week 2, was filled with yet more meetings: official and unofficial. We didn’t meet in a place of worship at the dead of night again but they were equally clandestine. The official meeting was just an opportunity for the election officer to tell us no candidate should have an advantage over another. I was under the impression that the whole point of a campaign was to gain advantage over your opponent. We spent much of the week running a petition. Whilst this petition is something I believe in, much of it was a ploy to get names and numbers of people when the short campaign began. It worried me how easily students would give away their details. We got hundreds of mobile numbers within days.

By this point, I was struggling to juggle my sports, social life, degree and the campaign. I had thrown everything into the campaign and everything else was beginning to suffer. My lifestyle had changed so much. I didn’t attend matches or practices anymore, spent more time in the pub which tended to end in fast food and I had nothing resembling a normal sleeping pattern. I had stopped taking care of myself and my body definitely didn’t like it. I wonder if this was my life during union elections, what is it like in mainstream politics?

I had grown particularly close to one person in my slate. After seeing the slate more often than my own flatmates, it was easy to rely on them. We had much in common and all had the same goal. Her going on holiday made it one of the hardest weeks. Whilst I was sometimes tempted to drop out of the running several times, it happened more often during this week because she wasn’t there to tell me to keep running. It turns out, her boyfriend (who had proposed the threesome) saved the day here. He told me I was too good a candidate not to run. I am a good candidate. I just need to remember that sometimes. I turned to Christopher as well. I took a photo of his response:

‘You’re articulate, confident, a fluent and regular writer who manages not to be completely up their own arse about it, and political without being geeky.’

He told me I was his favourite from the non-executive candidates. This gave me the confidence I needed to carry on running for the next few days, at least.

Week 3

Week 3 was when the multiple campaigns started. Not only was I dealing with the union elections, but I also ran for an executive position on the board of the department society. I was lucky that the campaign and elections were all finished within an hour. I gave a minute long speech, the other candidate gave a minute long speech and then the members voted overwhelmingly in favour of me. I was beginning to think I was taking over the union one society at a time. The executive candidates for the union elections didn’t have it quite so easy though. For them, union elections meant hustings. Speaking in front of a room of people and accepting questions from the floor can hardly be the easiest task. I was just happy it wasn’t me. However, there was general consensus that everyone who attended hustings knew whom they were voting for already. After all, they were all hacks - hacks who wanted to keep the union exec positions filled with hacks. It was a difficult circle to break in to. Changing this was one of our aims, though.  After hustings, we effectively lost David. He was trying to deal with campaigns at more than one university and was definitely spreading himself very thin. We didn’t canvass much this week and it is the only blank space in my diary for the entire duration of the campaign.

It was this week I started sleeping with another candidate in the slate. Spending 18 hours a day with the same people doesn’t leave much time for socialising with other people. I told myself at the start that I wouldn’t sleep with someone in the slate because of how much time we had to spend together. Turns out, a little alcohol and all my principles go out of the window. It wasn’t awkward in the end. Well it wasn’t awkward until I had to see him at every meeting and campaign. It definitely wasn’t awkward when the rest of the slate found out. It was past awkward. I learnt several valuable lessons this week. Mainly, don’t sleep with someone you work with. I also learnt my new lessons will go out of the window after some more alcohol. Half-way through the campaign and I’ve already violated conservative family values and my own principles. I really was turning into a politician.

Week 4

Whilst we were still light on campaign managers, we were running riot. That is, if we can define running riot as doing no campaigning and attending many socials. After doing no sport so far, I decided I couldn’t let the campaign take over my life. I signed up for matches and refereeing matches several nights a week. It made no difference though. We had no one to coordinate our campaign. I was technically on four campaign teams but I didn’t get a single call. After a week of a David being non-existent, we took it upon ourselves to run our own campaigns. The Labour students split off to run their campaign, and we formed a coalition slate. I saw David for the first time in a week at the end of week 4. Turned out, he had been running the Labour campaign and had left the rest of us to our own devices. That proved to be a mistake for his candidate and ours.

Week 5

Week 5 began with a quiet weekend. We covered a few private halls on Sunday but that was as far as I got with the campaign. Being asked to leave a hall was one of the highlights of the weekend, if a little embarrassing. After Christopher offered to do my flyers for me (mine were horrendous), I was still campaigning with no flyers. I was lucky I rarely came across science students because writing my name on the back of other flyers was getting tiring. After some pressuring, Christopher finally admitted not having the time for it. I can’t say I was pleased that he’d wasted a week of my campaign but he didn’t seem overly bothered. After several weeks of self-coordination, I was now definitely on my own.

I doubt I would have survived without Jennifer. She had the campaign experience which I needed. Week 5 also meant the opening of polls. The day before polls, I was campaigning late into the night. Tuesday, being a day of no lectures, meant I had free time before campaigning started again. Having free time was a weird feeling at this point. It was so close to polls. I should have been out talking to people and getting votes, right? The few days of polls have to be seen to be believed. Few people had survived without getting ill. It turns out working non-stop with no sleep, food or drink is very bad for your health. Being only a council candidate, I worried about the exec candidates. I was ill and exhausted. If I had time for two meals a day, I was lucky. I couldn’t imagine how they were doing it. I sent many candidates off to have naps in offices or to get food. I can only admire the dedication of everyone involved.

It emerged that several of the candidates had been cheating throughout the campaign. Financial fraud was a phrase used more than once. We’d long ago established that the member of union staff who was supposed to be enforcing the election regulations was useless. After several candidates had broken regulations before campaigning had even begun, she merely responded with ‘play fair’. If we conveniently ignore the fact that we were an illegal slate (although, let’s be honest, find me a candidate who wasn’t in one) we ran a very clean campaign. We didn’t negatively campaign, tear down opposition posters or rub out opposition chalk. Even video evidence of candidates breaking these rules led to no consequences.

There really aren’t words to describe results night. Only someone who had invested so much in the campaign and was in the union at the time could understand it. Emotional, perhaps, would be a good start. The results were delayed, as expected. With our union, you can’t expect miracles. At 9pm, and after a two hour delay, the results were out. We all gathered in the union bar to watch the most inaccurate PowerPoint presentation I had ever seen. The scale on the graphs didn’t help, but in some cases, it didn’t matter. There were differences of over 1000 votes for some seats. Considering last year only 4000 people voted, that was a huge amount. During campaigning, we had gone from five sabbatical candidates to four. My heart broke when we lost seat after seat. Seeing each stage of voting in the Alternative Vote system used made it worse. People cried whether they had won or lost. Hysterics weren’t uncommon. In all of this commotion, I forgot that I had won my election but, to be honest, it didn’t matter. All of our sabbatical candidates lost theirs and that was all I could think about. Devastated doesn’t cover how we all felt.  As upset as I was, it was clear that David was worse off. None of his sabbatical candidates won. "It didn’t occur to him that when only 50% of councillors turned up to meetings, we would have a clear majority." We had achieved our aim. We were about to make the union more accessible for the moderate student.

As we reach the end of term, the drama over elections has passed and I can look back on what we achieved as a slate. We don’t occupy half of the council seats, but we will have a majority at a standard council meeting. Voter turnout in this election doubled compared to last year. Personally, I can no longer call myself apolitical. I got involved to give moderate students a voice and in the process, I met some of the best and the worst people. I’ve met the politicians and anarchists of the future. I can only imagine how their dedication to their cause will increase after the transition from student to mainstream politics. In 10 years’ time, I will be able to say I’ve worked with MPs of the blue, red and yellow variety and they were some of the best people I’ve ever met.

It turned out that I was a natural when it came to campaigns. I was Christopher’s heir apparent. With not all seats filled, I’ll have the opportunity to not sleep, eat or study for another few weeks in the new semester during the by-election. If that’s not enough, I’ll be running campaigns again in a little under a year. I’ll be something of a cross between Christopher and David. I can only dream of being as terrifying as David was when I first met him but if I have a glare that scares Christopher, perhaps that will work on any candidates I run next year. Nothing can compare to the adrenaline of a campaign. Going from not knowing a person to spending 18 hours a day with them is commonplace and your campaign team become more like your family. Despite everything, I wouldn’t hesitate to do it all over again. We made a real difference, and I made a family in the process. All it cost me was some sleep and a lot of beer.

The names of the people in this article have been changed.

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