A Bit Weird
The Guardian had a quirky piece in the paper the other day - listing 10 things that people didn't know about the Labour party. Here's one of them:
Research in the 1980s concluded Labour party members were "a bit weird". Deborah Mattinson says that she commissioned a study to enable the party to learn more about its membership. The woman who conducted the research spoke to party members all around Britain and made a worrying discovery. This is what she told Mattinson:
"Basically, they are all a bit weird. I mean, what they had in common wasn't their political opinions – they covered the whole spectrum, from centre-left to far left – they weren't united by any ideology or political belief.
No, it was that they were all slightly strange people ... strange personally, I mean. They were people who really did want to spend their evenings sitting in church halls or community centres agonising over quite arcane points of detail.
And they weren't just doing it that night, but every night – the committee for this, the committee for that, the council, whatever. They were sort of lonely and socially odd."
Who knows whether things have changed - but it does go to show that democracy is too important to be left to the 'committed' activists of any party - not just Labour.
Research in the 1980s concluded Labour party members were "a bit weird". Deborah Mattinson says that she commissioned a study to enable the party to learn more about its membership. The woman who conducted the research spoke to party members all around Britain and made a worrying discovery. This is what she told Mattinson:
"Basically, they are all a bit weird. I mean, what they had in common wasn't their political opinions – they covered the whole spectrum, from centre-left to far left – they weren't united by any ideology or political belief.
No, it was that they were all slightly strange people ... strange personally, I mean. They were people who really did want to spend their evenings sitting in church halls or community centres agonising over quite arcane points of detail.
And they weren't just doing it that night, but every night – the committee for this, the committee for that, the council, whatever. They were sort of lonely and socially odd."
Who knows whether things have changed - but it does go to show that democracy is too important to be left to the 'committed' activists of any party - not just Labour.
