Hackney Independent, and the old Hackney IWCA

DC: "The aims and principles will be added later.

The changing from IWCA to Hackney Independent was a decision taken to avoid confusion for ordinary people. There is no relationship, in terms of language, between IWCA and Hackney Independent.

The politics of the group have not changed. The newsletter still is and was called Hackney Independent. The group would still be in the same strong position now if it was called Hackney Independent or IWCA.

The 2002 election material has still been left with IWCA or with Hackney Independent in brackets afterwards."

Thanks for the reply DC.

However, you never answered the question as to the dishonesty of changing leaflets and newsletters from the past. I can see why you did it but couldn't you just have had a notice at the top of the archive like you had on the main page of the old site? I'm always uncomfortable with the idea of people denying their past.

Aside from that, I don't think you are in as strong a position now as HIWCA was after the 2002 elections. Then they'd been working in Haggerston for 3 years and got around 600 votes each for two candidates. Yet after 3 or 4 years working in Hoxton, at least, you've only got 300 votes, about 10% of the vote. Most of all, this is 1100 votes behind Labour, yet in 2002, you were only 90 votes behind. This seems like a step backwards as it is generally just what local independent candidates get without any record.

Do you think that this is because voters see hackney independent as a new organisation rather than a continuation of the IWCA branch? Given this, what do you think are your chances of standing a candidate in the 2006 elections?

Anyway, this is something that we can discuss at the gathering.

DC: "It may well be an aspect of the website that is altered - it just wasn't seen as an important matter, that was all.

Standing in Hoxton during a General Election was always going to be a difficult job - although, having been a number of leaflet drops over the years, there's never been any community campaign work to speak of.

That has nearly all been reserved for Haggerston.

A comparable result would be the first time when a candidate was stood in Blackbird Leys (also during a General Election) and received around 300 IWCA votes to the Labour Party's 2,000. A year later, they won the seat.

There has been a provisional decision to stand a full set of candidates across Hoxton and Haggerston in 2006. The final decision to which, of course, is dependent on a number of factors."

Cheers for the reply.

I apologise for the fact that my earlier posts sounded hostile but I just hate it when libertarians, anarchists etc do things, even for the best of reasons, that look like the type of thing the left does.

On the Oxford vote, I recall being told at some point that Stuart Craft stood as an independent the first time he was a candidate. This validates my point about 300 being the average type of vote that independents get.

I do wonder if HI suffers slightly from its name which could be seen as as implying you are an umbrella group for independents rather than a political organisation.

On the CAG, I was wondering if you had invited the IWCA to speak at the event as that could be an interesting discussion.