What is in Kelvin's Head?

10 Things I learned from being a General Election Candidate

05/05/2015

Ten years ago today there was a General Election in the United Kingdom and 10 years ago today I was a candidate in it. Indeed, 10 years ago as I write this I was wearily standing at the polling station for the last 20 minutes of polling, thanking a few final voters for turning out. I was standing in the contest to become the Member of Parliament (ie the Westminster MP) for the Stirling Constituency.

Here’s 10 things I learned

1 – You don’t have to win to do well.

I never expected to win and in the end I was rather pleased with myself, doubling the vote that the party I represented had previously got and moving them up a place, knocking the SNP into fourth place. (You can see the results here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_(UK_Parliament_constituency)

2 – Lots of people know almost nothing about the democratic process
You find out when you knock on doors canvassing that lots of people just don’t have a clue how it all works. Very many people don’t realise that those who come knocking on the door are looking for people who might vote for their party and that’s about all. They want to encourage likely voters to turn out. They are really not interested in those sure they will vote for someone else.

But frightening numbers of people don’t understand how to vote at all. Vast numbers of people don’t understand devolution and have no idea which things are reserved to Westminster and which are devolved to Holyrood. (One discovers that this even applies to some candidates whom one might be standing against).

3 – You are always going to be asked about Trident/Abortion/Euthanasia/Palestine

You are also not going to be asked about them by many people at all. You are far more likely to be asked about the economy, jobs, transport (train fares/cars speeding/cycle paths) and dog poo. Dog poo is a topic that unites people of otherwise different political interests.

4 – Some people trust you if you are religious and others distrust you for the same reason.

It evens out in the end. However, if you happen to be a member of the clergy standing for election, one can find oneself stopped short by nice people saying, “Well we want to vote for you, but you are identified with the church and so we don’t trust you to be a decent person.”

5 – There’s nothing like working with a team all focussed on one thing

I had brilliant people around me who worked their socks off. I had an agent who worked morning, noon and night to get other people working morning, noon and night. Brilliant organisation pays off in the end. But there’s a buzz that is very satisfying about all that which I’ve never been able to capture in my work in the church. In politics, people unite (if things are going well) around the idea of just trying to get more votes than anyone else. It is a simple aim which leads to various tasks that can be easily monitored. In the church there are a thousand reasons for every person being present. Motivation is much more complex.

6 – Activists have more in common with activists from other parties than with non-voters

There were comparatively friendly relationships between political activists where I was fighting, which is why I feel the pain of some public bad behaviour in the current election campaign so keenly. Particularly after the election, we had informal pacts to take down one another’s lamppost posters. (Except the Tories, which we left in place for their own people to go round taking down, obviously).

7 – People are often nicer to one another in politics than the church

I know, I know. People don’t like to be told this, but it was very much my experience.

8 – It is incredibly moving to see the crosses by your name

It is one of the most extraordinary things going to count where your name is on the ballot paper. I was always moved to see the number of people who trusted you enough to make their mark by your name. Even if your stomach is churning with what might happen (which could change your life forever) it is still incredible to see that you’ve been winning people around.

9 – All politics are local

You don’t realise this until you go knocking on doors and delivering leaflets. “So Mrs Voter, I hear that the roads round here are terrible?” “Oh no, the roads here are fine, the road surface at the top of the street is terrible”.

10 – You learn more by standing in an election about mission than you do by anything anyone teaches you in the church

You learn that everything is a communication problem. You learn that every communication problem is worth trying to solve. You learn that change can happen. You learn that change will happen anyway so you might as well try to influence it. You learn the limits on power. You learn how hard it is to change someone’s mind. You learn that democracy is a sweet thing and not to be taken for granted anywhere. You learn that you need to aim to speak to 50 000 people as though you are addressing them each as an individual. You learnt that ideas matter, campaigns matter and above all that people matter.

2005, candidate, clergy, general election, priest, stirling

7 responses to “Whither the Kirk?”

Pausing Place

25/08/2010

I missed last night’s programme, but I thought your comments were interesting.

In a sense, perhaps it’s unsurprising if the SEC is inwardly more positive about itself than the CofS. My take is that in the recent past, at least, the SEC started from a lower common denominator, not being the “local” church in the same way as the Kirk, and so it doesn’t have to contend with others saying of it “look how the mighty have fallen” in quite the same way.

As to the health of the Kirk (and the SEC for that matter), I think we need to reflect on our self-perception and to consider carefully the points and places in which a dying church (congregation or denomination) should be allowed to die gracefully, and the ways in which we might see new life emerge from the rubble.

As a young(ish!), relatively new Christian I have seen examples of (both urban and rural) SEC and Kirk congregations where there are few signs of new growth, little to draw in younger (under 50 year olds, to pick a random-ish number) new folk, and much to sustain negative preconceptions of church as boring, irrelevant and so forth.

We as a faith community need to get much better at stepping up to the mark in our creativity and engagement with our society. The sad truth is that most young adults do not know and have not heard about Jesus Christ, and unless we engage with them in ways culturally relevant to them, and which do not presuppose previous knowledge (too often taken for granted) they never will.

It troubles me, but I do think it’s true to say that in the SEC and in the Kirk we have a church sustained by the traditions and cultural reference points taught to a previous generation. Culture has shifted radically, with the result that the same will not be able to be said in 20 years time.

Our challenge is clear. Whether the Kirk and the SEC can step up to the mark to address what it means to live out the Great Commission in the 21st century is less so.

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Cal

25/08/2010

I didn’t really understand who this programme was aimed at, or even what its aim was.

Yes, numbers have fallen, but perhaps the small number of people who remain are there because they actually want to be, not because it’s the done thing on a Sunday morning.

And personally, I rather like the idea of a church “sustained by traditions”. Clearly the church has to be relevant to modern society, but in abandoning the traditions of worship then you lose the centre of why the church exists in the first place.

There was something very Presbyterian about the programme with its “we’re doomed” mentality. I find the SEC generally more positive in outlook.

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John

25/08/2010

The only book the presenter seemed to have used in his research was ‘The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800-2000’ By Callum G Brown – indeed Callum Brown was one of the speakers. The thesis of this well argued sociological study is that “quite suddenly in 1963 something very profound ruptured the character of the nation and its people sending organised Christianity on a downward spiral to the margins of social significanceâ€. That something he identifies as new media, new gender roles and a moral revolution which has dramatically ended peopleâ€™s conception that they lived Christian lives.â€ It could be said to have happened as â€œsex beganâ€ between the end of the Chatterly ban and the Beatles first LP as the poet Philip Larkin so famously put it.”
To balance this statistical decline the programme flagged up some of the “church without walls ” iniatives in a lame sort of way. All in all a most unsatisfactory programme that only told half the story.

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Kenny

25/08/2010

Good crit Kelvin. My reflection at the end of the programme was, “Lord, we visited this stuff over 30 years ago, and have come out of it stronger and better Church in the SEC.” Hopefully, we stopped longing for ‘the good old days’ a long time ago!

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MartinRitchie

26/08/2010

I thinking “Pausing Place” makes a good point about needing to creatively engage with society. From my own experience of working with a CofS congregation, this creative engagement is a weak spot for many.

As a counterpoint to the programme, interesting to note in the latest “Life and Work” a very positive article about a growing CofS congregation in Stornoway – and I mean really growing! So not all doom and gloom, and I’m sure there are many more examples of bright spots, just as there are in the SEC!

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Graham Vahey

28/08/2010

If the C of S disappeared completely we would be at a loss. During the dark and bleak years of Thatcher’s reign she refused to visit Scotland for 5 years. When she did she expressed shock that we had Royal Regalia and ordered it to be removed immediately for safe-keeping to England. Her ‘Sermon on the Mound’ is now historical for its condescension to the Scots. She was none too pleased to be handed two reports on poverty in Scotland by the powerful Church and Nation Committee. Indeed, it was to this Committee that the population turned to for a moral lead during Thatcherism. When James VI (‘Jamie the Saxt’) became James I in England, the population turned to senior Scottish earls for a moral lead. Unfortunately, the Piskie Church does not give a moral lead in Scotland, apart from the work of the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the recent past. The RC Church does pronounce on moral issues. Could it not be conceivable that all the major Churches could unite in a Committee to pronounce for Scotland on moral issues as the Church & Nation Committee once did?

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Aldous N. Gaiters

01/09/2010

Speaking as a Nonjuror myself I am sure the SEC has a right to a moral voice in Scotland. Taking the US daughter church of the SEC as a model you could see where the fissures would appear. There is room for a modern liberal Christian voice, but even I an old Liberal myself, would have to fear that such a voice might appeal to only a select few.

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