A misty start in Gloucester soon gives way to sunshine as we head towards Worcester, to meet Labour’s candidate Joyce and her team. So much sunshine by 10am that sun cream is required before we set out to Charlie’s Cafe to meet members and local people to discuss local issues, not least flooding.
Worcester has suffered serious flooding of the ‘once in a hundred years’ order – twice in the past decade, in 2007 and 2014 a flooding is a big issues for many local people including Mary Dhonau who has since been awarded an OBE for her activism to address the issues of flooding, flood risk and floor recovery.
A quick door knock later and off to Redditch to meet Rebecca Blake, to canvas the delightful village of Feckenham. Not only does it have an award winning volunteer run Village Shop, it also has plenty of Labour Stakes, put up by villages and a local farmer – A great sight!
Promoting Labour’s love of local foods, a home-made pasty and BlackWatch Scotch Egg made for a filling lunch, then off to Tamworth and the campaign of Carol Dean.
A canvas in the Fazeley area highlighted the importance of effective community engagement in securing good flood defence; the local community had been defended from flooding by a brook, yet surface water flooding continued to affect local streets after the lightest of rain – much to the irritation of local residents.
Our last port of call was Litchfield with Chris Worsey. Again flooding is a local issue, here with a 200yr old dam that is at risk. After a good discussion of the local situation another hour saw 200 homes canvassed byan excellent team of well motivated Litchfield Labour people ! And, of course, Huw’s last contact saw yet another local resident come out and commit to voting Labour. Bring on May 7th.
Tomorrow High Peak and Rossendale,
Hywel Lloyd is a Co-founder of Labour: Coast & Country
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, Labour: Coast & Country.
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