Come on, Mrs May, let’s get this party going!
PETER OBORNE highlighted the fact the Conservative Party membership has fallen from 3 million in Winston Churchill’s era to just 70,000 today (Mail). This is something I have been worried about for a long time. I am a lifelong Conservative, as were my father and grandfather before me. I was wheeled in my pram as party leaflets were delivered door to door. I was a district councillor for 20 years and a Conservative parliamentary candidate. For donkey’s years, our village was the biggest fundraiser in the constituency. Hardly a month went by without an event, which not only raised money, but more importantly, confirmed members in their political views. Nowadays, there are no events and so no one to help at election time. A few years ago, it was decided that instead of members paying what they wanted or could afford, it was to be a set membership paid directly, not through the branch. This obviated the need for us to call on people — but what the powers-that-be didn’t realise was that when we knocked on people’s doors, we also told them about fundraising events and lined them up for the various jobs on election days. This has all gone. At one point, there were more than 500 paid-up Conservative Party members in my village; now there are between 25 and 30. I became chairman of the Banbury group when I was 31 and resurrected the branches in the area. Most of us were aged between 25 and 50, and it was a vibrant, exciting and organised body to belong to. I can’t believe that only one person — me! — turned up to select the candidate for the local elections in May. Theresa May has got to get the party going. As I once said at the Conservative Party Conference, we are the centre party, the party of all the people. From doctors to dockers, directors to dustmen, we represent them all. We must return to this all-encompassing party, as it was during Margaret Thatcher’s time. At the moment, I don’t see a way forward and fear the standards and values we aspire to will go flying out of the window. This country needs the Conservatives — the alternative just doesn’t bear thinking about.
ALINE GRIFFITHS, Adderbury, Oxon. WHY have so many of us left the Conservative Party? That is easy to answer: once, we had politicians we could look up to, solid people you could trust. They were interested in the people they represented and worked for the country. Now, we seem to have a bunch of people interested only in themselves, fighting like rats in a bag while the country goes to hell in a handcart. We would support them if they gave us a good reason to do so.
MICHAEL ADAMS, Rugby, Warks.