Having spent much of yesterday afternoon and evening in Wirral West, as one of the many people there helping the local Labour candidate Margaret Greenwood get elected, I decide to go back to the constituency today, as I take a day off from all forms of working.
It’s such a beautiful place.
Always my favourite place for reflective, meditative walks.
Today I’m reflecting on my happiness that Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters did such a good job and reintroduced ‘being yourself’ into a political system where that’s been thoroughly yet pointlessly discouraged for years.
It’s early summertime in the sandstone walls.
Bursting with life and purpose.
I’m not reflecting on who might or could form the next government. Because even though the next government might attempt to be formed today, it’s too soon really. All of the politicians, and half the population, will have been up much of the night. And so are too tired to think really.
What’s happened and is best to happen next needs a weekend’s reflection for us all.
I climb to the top of Thurstaston Common. One of my sacred spaces.
From here I can see across the Mersey to the North.
And across the Dee to the South.
Across the Wirral Peninsula to the Liverpool North Docks.
And across Wirral West and Birkenhead to Liverpool Cathedral and city centre.
The beauty of the maritime engineering.
Here we are then.
A beautiful map of the whole place.
Thank you Wirral West Constituency Committee.
Thurstaston Common. An open air sandstone cathedral to me.
I have never come up here and not felt renewed by the place. Calmed, stilled, at peace.
At peace now from the gnawing worry mixed with wild optimism of the week. Would Labour get slaughtered, might there be a Tory landslide, how would people survive after that? Up here now I’m happy that a very great deal has been done to alter how British politics gets done. The young people, many of them out on the streets with us yesterday, came out and engaged and voted like never before for a sea change. From shore to shining shore they weren’t prepared to have their lives ruined and controlled by a system they hadn’t been asked about. And their time has now arrived.
I walk down the hill happy to help with whatever comes next.✹
And go down to the sea shore.
West Kirby.
Still in the Wirral West constituency.
Middle Eye and Hilbre in the distance.
Not a day for walking across to them though. Not today. I wasn’t up all night, but it was around 2am when I turned my light out.
I stroll round the lovely town.
And buy Sarah some local lamb from Roberts the Butcher there. Lamb reared on the salt marshes inland from here.
West Kirby, the streets self decorated with poppies.
Then I go to where we all were yesterday. So many of us from Liverpool joining in with the Labour campaign in Wirral West. The candidate defending a majority of only something over 400 votes.
Woodchurch.
A large municipal estate that’s clearly been laid out under the influence of the Garden Cities movement.
Bike lanes.
Loads of space.
And took loads of people lots of time to canvass it over these last few weeks.
I only did yesterday and my appearance here was particularly tied to pies!
My friend and Coming Home Liverpool partner Jayne Lawless has been canvassing in Wirral West since the election was called. And noticed how hard it was proving to keep fed with so much work to do and often so far from any shops. So Tuesday evening she had an idea. On Twitter. Wondering if it might be good to take ‘some’ Homebaked pies over, specially for General Election Day?
Before long Jayne and Sally-Anne Watkiss from Homebaked were encouraging us all to ‘sponsor’ a pie or several pies, by buying them in advance, to be baked and then taken over to our nearest marginals by the likes of me, volunteer drivers for the day.
In the end a total of 210 pies were taken to Wirral South, Chester and here at Wirral West.
Where the pies are being appreciated and enjoyed by some of the Labour young people I told you about.
And by the winning Wirral West candidate, Margaret Greenwood. Seen here with Jayne.
Margaret increased her majority to comfortably over 5,000. And in fact each of the Labour candidates in the ‘pie constituencies’ won.
So you really can’t go wrong with a Homebaked pie. Known match winners at Anfield and Goodison, they’ve now proved they can help win elections!
But seriously, two lovely and completely different days in the same place. Thank you Wirral West.
✹ Two days later, still inspired by my experience of the Wirral West Constituency I have rejoined the Labour Party. Happy to help the young people change the world they’d been led to expect
Ah Woodchurch. Where I am from 🙂
Do you know the estate was designed by Herbert Rowse who did Philharmonic Hall and Mersey Tunnel buildings?
I love the plaque, did you see it? ‘Woodchurch Estate when completed will contain the houses and other buildings necessary to the fully developed life of new community of some 10,000 persons. Birkenhead Corporation AD 1946’
The Memory of a Hope…
Would be great to go there with you and do a joint story of the place? I think it’s beautiful and can see the Herbert Rowse connection.
That would be great. I’m actually there a week tomorrow (Saturday) to see my mum but we’ll be off by 12pm so probably a bit tight. But we should arrange another time. I’ll be back again in July.
Here’s something I wrote on it in the past, which also contains my slight criticism of the revival in fashion for brutalism: https://kenn-taylor.com/2012/02/06/a-memory-of-a-hope/
No rush Kenn, let’s leave it til you (and your Mum?) have got more time.
Thrilling days.
The peace of walking on the common…and the hard, happy slog of canvassing…getting the pies in and the vote out.
Cannot tell you how much I miss that involvement or how happy I am that Jeremy Corbyn, whom I knew years ago through the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, has come through against all the odds to let people buck the system, have a voice…and to be listened to.
Yes, truly thrilling Helen. The neoliberals will of course struggle and resist but we can feel the country changing now to a better and more hopeful place. To be out on the streets with so many people so much younger than me was fantastic.
Not much to beat that, is there…
I see The Guardian is back to its old tricks already….interviewing a Blairite deadhead to throw cold water on the result. Have they not learned the lesson? It is not just The Sun and The Daily Mail that have lost their power over people.
Did you know a chap called Roger Pope at all Helen? He did Labour lobbying and knew JC’s mum really well in Wiltshire.
You know, it does ring a faint bell, but whence….?
More will occur to me at some unearthly hour of the morning when I shall wake, sit bolt upright and think…yes!
Very interesting result given that insiders were apparently predicting it would be lost – so glad and well done you all and Homebaked! Blessed are the pie makers.
Homebaked pie (chicken and veg) set me fighting again from Lache in Chester. Thanks
Very glad to hear it Michael, you’re welcome.