Well I didn't quite get a break, in fact far from it, and although I made some good contacts, learned a lot and thoroughly enjoyed the day the last event of the evening quite ruined everything.
Elaine Bagshaw, recent chair of Liberal Youth, was nearly sacked tonight by conference.
Elaine Bagshaw with Cllr. Chris Ward, an hour or two before the vote of no confidence
I'll lay it down for you in narrative: the day had been productive, good humored and fun, we had decided it would be a good idea to ban mosquito devices, lower the drinking age to 16 for beer and wine and had listened to a very healthy debate between Stephen Williams MP and David Howarth MP on higher education funding and afterwards decided to keep our position on fees. The atmosphere had been good and although now I recall a couple of the exec members being a little anxious I had honestly heard nothing to prepare me for what happened next in the last part of today's conference activities.
We had just been receiving a talk by the very competent and fun Martin Shapland and Simon Radford on the Save Darfur campaign and the room was relatively full when we moved onto the next item, the reports of the the exec. It all seemed quite good, when the chair of the event asked if there were going to be any votes of no confidence and no one raised their hand it was joked 'that's a first' by one of the people there.
It was at this point that the chair was handed a note. He read it, his expression was surprised and his tone changed quite significantly, more emotional, quivering almost. He told us that there had been a proposed vote of no confidence for Elaine Bagshaw, the chair of Liberal Youth. The people proposing the motion were the following: Ben Mathis, England convenor, Naomi Smith, Chris Butler, James Shaddock and Dominique (Head of liberal youth essex) and quite possibly one or two other people though I forget the names.
They made their case well with preprepared speeches: Elaine had been incompetent, had lied, and had become near impossible to work with, this was a last resort. People were shocked, Michael Atkins, the brilliant policy wonk of Liberal Youth, had absolutely no idea this was going to happen until he found Elaine outside the main room on her own looking understandably anxious. The case was made for Elaine, by herself as well as by others, we had no preparation and no knowledge whatsoever that this was going to happen, still we tried to defend her.
Elaine had been under a lot of stress, she had cocked up quite a few things but a lot of those things weren't just her responsibility. Ealine admitted to the failures of the freshers packs and told conference that these people should have talked to her if they were unhappy rather than just spring it out of the blue in a vote of no confidence. She had built up better relationships with the party and was trying to set liberal youth onto the right direction.
I was listening to what others were saying around me, they frankly didn't have a clue what they were voting on, they didn't know what had gone on behind the scenes at the exec or whether Elaine deserved sacking! The proposers didn't seem to have understood the first rule of no confidence motions, win them before you fight them.
Me (left) and Vincent McCrae (right) in the main conference room moments before the proposal of the vote of no confidence.
I made a speech, more out of anger with the proposers than out of any support for Elaine.
Everything we had done that day and tried to achieve would have been overshadowed by this. Relationships would have been further hurt rather than repaired and Elaine's reputation will be seriously damaged, this was the wrong place, the wrong time and the wrong method. Coming in all at once in a small group with preprepared speeches in an attempt to sack the head of the organization without anyone else having a clue about it looked, to be frank, underhand. Labour students and Conservative Future were the only winners from this act.
When it came to the vote, most people abstained, it wasn't passed, nobody apart from the original proposers voted for the motion of no confidence.
Naomi talked to me about it afterwards, she seemed to suggest that everything would just carry on as usual. I told her that probably wasn't going to be the case and that she and the other rebels needed to have a long sit down and talk with Elaine and the rest of the exec if they wanted things to work. If this Liberal Youth was a business it is quite likely that the rebels would have been sacked by now. What they did was stupid; working relationships are complicated intricate things, you don't try to fix with them with hammers.
I just hope the wounds can heal and people can get on with it. I depend on Liberal Youth for a lot of my activism and young people need a strong voice in the party.
