North West Meet Up, 5th September

It's that time of the month again. It hardly seems any time at all since the last regional meet up, but it's been a very active month (certainly for me personally, hence the light blogging).

This month's meet up is at our usual Manchester watering hole, the Kro2 Bar on Oxford Road (near the BBC). There should be a lot to talk about as we now have several prospective candidates for next year's local elections and we're aiming to establish a more formal organisation for the North West branch.

As usual, this meet up isn't just open to Libertarian Party members, everyone's welcome, just turn up and introduce yourself if you'd like to find out a bit more about what the Libertarian Party's about and what we aim to achieve. We're a friendly group, especially once we've got past the first couple of beers.

North West Regional Meetup 3 July

Following the very successful Carnforth meetup, the next regional meetup is going to be in Manchester, at the Kro2 Bar on Oxford Road (near the university buildings and next to the Mancunian Way) on Saturday 3 July, starting about 1.00pm. As usual, interested non-Party members are welcome to attend. The format will be informal, although subjects for discussion are likely to include recruiting prospective candidates for next year's local elections, finding ways to attract new members and suggestions for future activities.

North West Regional Meetup, 13 June 2010

Now that the elections are out of the way, we're having another regional Libertarian Party meetup in the Lounge Bar of the Royal Station Hotel in Carnforth, Lancashire, starting about 12.00 Noon on Sunday 13 June. This is just across the road from the famous railway station which was used as a location for the film "Brief Encounter". This is a nice bar that does decent food - the Station Burgers are both reasonably priced, tasty and very filling. There'll be a lot to discuss, since we now have experience of running an election campaign in Manchester and we're now in the process of recruiting candidates to stand in the local elections next year, not only in Manchester but in all parts of the North West.

Our meetups are pretty informal and you don't have to be a Libertarian Party member to attend. Anyone interested in libertarian ideas is welcome - so feel free to come along, talk about libertarianism and see if we're the sort of party that you'd like to support. We're a very friendly group.

EDIT 31/5/10

Please note that this meetup was originally scheduled for 6 June but has now been rescheduled for 13 June. My fault, I forgot about a prior commitment on the same day. I hope this doesn't cause any problems for anyone.

North West Monthly Meetups

I had a bit of a longish drive from Manchester to Carnforth (near Lancaster) yesterday, for the latest meetup of Libertarian Party members in the North West of England. Although it wasn't a very big group that met there yesterday, it's always good to meet fellow Libertarians.

While sampling the beer in the bar of the Royal Station Hotel, we had some constructive discussions on the subject of organisation, and especially how we're going to support Gregg Beaman's campaign as our candidate for the Morecambe and Lunesdale constituency in the General Election.

We've also agreed to make Carnforth the venue of our regular monthly regional meetups on the last Sunday of each month, starting on the 27th September. These will be in the bar of the Royal Station Hotel (right across the road from the famous train station), starting about 12.30pm and finishing whenever people get bored or run out of beer money. The Royal Station Hotel is a nice boozer with friendly staff, and they serve really good food.

The meetups will be pretty informal. The North West branch of the Libertarian Party (which covers Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Cheshire, Lancashire and Cumbria) currently functions as a loose association of members in the region, but holding regular meetups is an important step towards becoming a properly constituted Branch with a constitution and elected officers. We also expect to start some campaigning activities in the near future.

As I said, these meetups are pretty informal at the moment, and they are not just open to Libertarian Party members. Anyone who is interested in living in a more liberal Britain and wants to see what we're about is welcome to come. So if you're within travelling distance of Carnforth on the last Sunday of every month (starting 27th September 2009), why not come and say hello? Free thinking people will always be welcome, and you may even decide you like us so much you want to join us!

Griffins Land in Manchester

On Sunday 19th April, the North West branch of the Libertarian Party (which has members in Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Cheshire, Lancashire and Cumbria) held its first meeting at the Kro2 Bar on Oxford Road, Manchester. This was intended as a relatively informal "getting to know you" session, a chance to discuss the organisation of the branch and election of officers (including confirmation of myself as Regional Co-ordinator, county reps and a Campaign Manager), and possibly most importantly it was our first opportunity to get together to plan the election campaign which we will be fighting soon.

The meeting went pretty well, there were a lot of good ideas discussed, as well as a definite plan of action for the imminent campaign. We now have at least the bare bones of an organisation set up - it's still a bit ad hoc, but adequate for our needs at the moment - and the North West branch should be able to develop organically over time without any major problems. I'm not going to try to kid anyone that we're going to be a major political force overnight, but we've laid the foundations and with the range of skills and experience we've got, I think we'll at least be able to make our prsence felt in this year's and next year's elections. I'm especially impressed by the experience of our new Campaign Manager. As to which particular elections we'll be fighting, watch this space - there's no point giving the opposition advance warning.

So a lot of useful planning was done and a good time was had by the whole posse - the Kro Bar sells pretty good beer, I was certainly pretty well tranquilised by the end of the meeting. The food wasn't bad either, it's a nice boozer generally and not too crowded (we were able to find a free table big enough for the whole group). We'll probably use that venue again, although the feeling among the assembled Party members was that we should move the meetings around a bit, the North West being such a large and diverse place. We didn't set a firm date for the next meeting, but it will almost certainly be in the next couple of months. We'll certainly be holding regular meetings as soon as this campaign is out of the way, so I'll canvass the membership for suggestions as to future venues. First we've got a campaign to fight - our first election campaign - something else to look forward to!