An introduction to Every Monday Matters

Monday, January 5th, 2009

Today marks the launch of a new initiative by the Young Britons’ Foundation – the publication of the first instalment of Every Monday Matters. Here YBF Chief Executive, Donal Blaney, introduces Every Monday Matters. Later today, Chapter One will be published on this site – so be sure to return later today!

Being a young conservative activist can be a lonely and unrewarding experience.

Often young activists will find themselves persecuted for their conservative views by schoolteachers or university lecturers. Booking facilities can become difficult. So can accessing funds.

Sometimes they will even be shunned by those they once considered to be their friends. Conservative students’ academic grades may suffer, as may their social lives. Standing up for freedom certainly isn’t an easy route to popularity.

I first became politically active while at school. It was a rite of passage for sixth form pupils at Tonbridge (as traditional a public school as one could imagine that still had fagging as late as 1992) that they should become trendy lefties rebelling against the life of parent-funded privilege that had been theirs hitherto. And yet in my final year I was one of half-a-dozen or so pupils who were proud to stand up for conservative values.

I would literally preach conservatism from the pulpit – even to the extent of having a fatwa pronounced against me by one Islamic pupil! I stood in the 1992 mock general election as the Conservative Party candidate (and won handsomely). With friends who have gone on to successful careers as entrepreneurs, journalists and in the City, but with whom I remain close, I helped hijack a European Conference Day that was devised to force-feed pro-EU propaganda down the throats of 250 or so pupils by ensuring my fellow students heard both sides of the European debate. While at school I proudly joined both the Conservative Party but, first, the Campaign for an Independent Britain.

At Southampton University I was fortunate to join a flourishing Conservative Students branch led by Conor Burns, now the parliamentary candidate for Bournemouth West. Conor invited the majority of the then Conservative cabinet to speak at Southampton and I was privileged to meet and speak to a host of leading figures from the 1980s and 1990s as diverse as Keith Joseph, Ted Heath, Enoch Powell, Douglas Hurd, John Redwood, Patrick Mayhew, Michael Portillo, Peter Brooke and Peter Lilley. At the same time as my fellow students and I were being exposed at packed speaker meetings to these leading Tory figures, I became heavily involved in the students’ union. Eventually we managed to take control, reducing spending on wasteful politically correct hobbyhorses of the left and instead delivering cost-effective services for the benefit of ordinary students.

Conservatism at Southampton University had a powerful voice in the mid-1990s. It may not have been to everyone’s tastes – that’s for sure – but it was undoubtedly effective, so much so that the Vice-Chancellor of the University summoned me for a bollocking for destabilizing the students’ union. I had begun a campaign for the removal of the students’ union’s most senior member of staff after he had been described as “deceitful and disloyal” in an Employment Tribunal judgment arising out of an illicit affair he had had with a bar manageress. I had been told to drop my campaign by a University official because the students’ union staff member was “one of us”: needless to say I declined to be party to such a cover-up.

After being Chairman of both Southampton University Conservative Association and Wessex Area Conservative Students (and standing unsuccessfully to become National Chairman of the Conservative Students), I was brought onto the committee of the National Association of Conservative Graduates by Daniel Hannan – now a prominent Member of the European Parliament. After organizing a European Conference and editing the NACG monthly journal, Ocean Blue, I was elected Chairman. NACG ran a series of successful monthly debates at Kettners in Soho – including one memorable debate on the Arts addressed by Peter Stringfellow, the impresario Raymond Gubbay and art critic Brian Sewell.

In 1998, William Hague united the Conservative Graduates, Conservative Students and Young Conservatives together to form a new youth organization – Conservative Future. I was appointed its first Chairman. The main achievement of my year as Chairman – apart from keeping my cool live on Today when Anna Ford opined that all young conservatives were racists while interviewing me – was to keep three previously warring factions together at all. Until then it had been the bane of our lives that the Thatcherite YCs wouldn’t hand over membership data to the more pro-EU Conservative Students leadership who, in turn, wouldn’t hand over their data to the more libertarian NACG. As a result, thousands of conservatives who could have gone on to contribute to the conservative cause were lost.

I lost my re-election bid in 1999, thanks to the guerilla campaign led by Andre Walker (for which I am, as you know Andre, eternally grateful). By then I had been elected as a local councillor in the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham alongside Greg Hands, now the Member of Parliament for the parliamentary seat encompassing much of that borough. Adopting the campaign tactics pioneered and perfected by Andrew Rosindell when he was a local councillor in Havering (prior to winning the Romford parliamentary seat in 2001), Greg and I managed to out-liberal the Liberals. We won Eel Brook ward on a 15% swing at the nadir of Tory fortunes in 1998. While now Hammersmith & Fulham is the leading Conservative local authority in the country thanks to the leadership of Stephen Greenhalgh, 11 years ago it was Labour-led and weakly opposed by a compliant and ageing Conservative group.

In January 2001 I attended my first Conservative Political Action Conference in Arlington, Virginia. Having attended Conservative Party Conference every year since 1993, I thought I knew what to expect. But after hearing from Benjamin Netanyahu, Jesse Helms, Chief Buthelezi, Charlton Heston and Dick Cheney all at one dinner, it became apparent to me that the approach the Conservative Party had adopted in Britain was, to put it mildly, outdated.

At CPAC I came across a number of organizations that shaped my political outlook and inspired the creation of the Young Britons’ Foundation two years later – the Leadership Institute, the Young America’s Foundation and the Heritage Foundation. All three organizations had multi-million dollar budgets and substantial staffs. All were respected and feared by their opponents. All effectively and persuasively sold the conservative message to voters. The repeated successes of the Republican Party from 1980 onwards were owed, in no small measure, to the organizations led with such distinction by Morton Blackwell, Ron Robinson and Ed Feulner respectively. I have little doubt that the LI, YAF and Heritage will be at the forefront of the reinvigoration of conservatism in America in the coming years.

It was blindingly obvious to me that we needed our own Leadership Institute in Britain to train young activists. We needed an organization that would do the work of the Young America’s Foundation too – nobody was standing up to leftists effectively on campuses in Britain. Someone should set up such groups in Britain, I said.

But who?

And how?

My time as a councillor convinced me that I did not want to seek election to the House of Commons. My calling was to help identify, train, mentor and place the next generation of conservative activists in politics, academia and the media. I wanted to help young conservatives campaign effectively in schools, colleges and universities for a balanced education and to help redress the bias in our nation’s education system. With two younger colleagues, Ben Pickering and Greg Smith (who is now in the cabinet on Hammersmith & Fulham Council), the Young Britons’ Foundation was born and officially launched at the Young America’s Foundation National Conservative Student Conference (CSC) in July 2003.

Since then, YBF has trained over 1,000 activists in areas such as public speaking, debating, campaigning, fundraising and media skills. Many of those YBF has trained have gone on to become parliamentary candidates, local councillors, political researchers and journalists. Others have gone on to successful careers in the City, the professions and in business – from where they are already supporting conservative causes. YBF has helped overturn bans on the military from having a presence at universities, campaigns for the Anglo-American Special Relationship, and is increasing student awareness of the perils of the EU’s seemingly inexorable march towards a United States of Europe.

My grounding as a conservative activist as school and university – coupled with my roles leading the Conservative Graduates and Conservative Future – have helped me develop the experience that I believe I am able usefully to pass on to today’s student activists. They are able not only to learn from my successes – but more importantly, to learn from my many mistakes. And there were many, trust me!

Why Every Monday Matters

Every Monday Matters is a week-by-week battle plan for young conservative activists. Initially published every Monday on the Young Britons’ Foundation website (www.ybf.org.uk), Every Monday Matters will be published in hardcopy form in the Spring. It will help equip young conservatives with the weaponry, ideas and mindset necessary to take on and defeat those who have ridden roughshod over the rights of those with whom they disagree so violently for too long.

George Bernard Shaw once remarked that “if you teach a man anything he will never learn”. Dale Carnegie, author of the seminal text on human relations, How to Win Friends & Influence People, observed that “learning is an active process; we learn by doing”.

For Every Monday Matters to be the success that I want it to be, the many young conservative activists who read its weekly chapters will need to take the steps recommended. The steps are designed to be eminently achievable by those who are on their own as well by those who are fortunate enough to be part of a vibrant group.

Not every recommended step will be appropriate to every activist. Some may even be wholly inappropriate given local circumstances. But the goal of Every Monday Matters is to encourage young conservative activists to be proactive activists. Time is not on our side. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have destroyed many of the achievements of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, not least our once flourishing economy. Millions are dependent on welfare. Our liberties are steadily being eroded. Our national sovereignty is being handed over to Brussels by stealth.

It is all too easy for young conservatives – and indeed more seasoned activists – to expect the tide to be reversed by our national leaders. That may well happen. Only time will tell. But in the meantime it is incumbent on every conservative activist, regardless of age, to do everything within his or her power to advance the agenda as effectively as possible at their level.

Every Monday Matters will help young conservatives do just that. It will help young activists look themselves in the mirror and answer positively when asking themselves whether they did all that they could to advance the agenda effectively that week.

Every Monday Matters has been written because every week truly does matter. Every week presents a new opportunity to advance the cause of freedom in schools, colleges and universities up and down the country. Many activists may already have their own week-by-week vision mapped out clearly. Every Monday Matters will hopefully complement that vision. But for those who are willing to receive suggestions from outside the confines of their school, college or university, Every Monday Matters will, I hope, become a useful road map and reference tool.

Now let’s get cracking…