AULS' Cardiff Day Out

Aberystwyth University Labour Students' first trip of the new year (or the last trip of the old year, if you’re feeling pedantic) was a great day out followed by a night out in the Welsh capital. Members came from as far afield as Edinburgh to help in the By-Election campaign for Cardiff South and Penarth, as part of a Welsh Young Labour Campaign Day. The member from Edinburgh was so eager he turned up at 00:20 am on the day of the campaigning and had to survive a trip through a Cardiff City Centre in full swing to reach somewhere to crash. 

A slightly blurry Welsh Labour doorstep team

The day began properly with a general meeting at the Unite HQ in Cardiff… once the motley team of councillors, students and young people was gathered we were greeted by the irrepressible Shadow Welsh Secretary Owen Smith who had some important points to make about the upcoming by-elections. First and foremost, he said, we cannot afford to assume the contest in Cardiff is any less important than the contest in Corby. The majority in Cardiff South and Penarth is only 4709 votes and by-elections are strange things (just ask George Galloway). Any margin of victory in Corby is mission accomplished, but in Cardiff South and Penarth we’ve got to do more. We’ve got to increase our majority to say that we’ve really won the election. He also had some interesting things to say about changing how we talk about things in the party and not being afraid to disagree, but that’s a topic for another post. 

Once the rounds were handed out, the Vice-Chair was given charge of getting us to our first canvassing round in Grangetown (slightly worryingly given his legendary map-reading skills). However despite the occasional panics and almost heading off down completely the wrong street, we managed to locate our rounds and were ready to meet some voters (whether the voters were happy about this is another issue). 

Canvassing is the act of bothering voters about which way they are thinking of voting. If you’ve never done it before it can be enjoyable, horribly awkward or a weird mixture of the two. But it is one of the main things political parties do locally to keep in touch with the people they’re supposed to represent. It’s not fun sometimes, but there’s always a great team spirit. 

We had a really positive response from the people that we spoke to and we contacted people from all walks of life, young, old, professional, retired. That in itself is a great experience. Towards the end of our last round we received reinforcements led by Welsh Young Labour Organiser Lauren Allpress. With their help we finished the round, but barely paused to catch our breath before being whisked off to join the Right Honourable Alun Michael MP and our candidate Mr Stephen Doughty in Butetown, which was a great opportunity to talk to the current and hopefully soon-to-be Labour MPs for the area. 


By the end of the day we’d made such great progress we’d not just run out of energy and leaflets but were almost out of voters. Staggering into the Westgate we met up with the rest of our comrades and decided to call it a day. With that we headed out to enjoy Cardiff for an evening and take a hard earned break in the City Centre. A great day was followed by a great night out where we rounded off our star studded day by running into Joe Calzaghe in a bar on St Mary’s Street!

None of this would have been possible though without the hard work of the Welsh Young Labour Team, so hats off for them for a great day in the ‘Diff! We’ll be back… 

Matt
Vice-Chair
mdb12@aber.ac.uk