The public meeting and more especially election meetings have fallen out of favour.
I suppose it is partly the dominance of television and social media which rely on soundbites and glossy imaging along with the ascendancy of national over local issues and politics.
So, given the two-minute interview or the speech by leading members of a political party on the TV, who would to turn out to a cold and draughty school hall on a wet might in February to hear a local election candidate talk about bin collections or parking permits?
Well, the answer might be more than we think. After all the great debates and policy divisions can seem very remote while the closure of a school, the reduction in library hours and those bin collections are very immediate and should demand a response from an elected representative or a hopeful election representative.
I can still remember large public meetings at election time, most of which were held inside, but more than a few which were in the local park, village green or even the famous street corner.
Here in Chorlton at the beginning of the last century, the Socialist Society which found it difficult to book rooms, met on Chorlton Green, while the mainstream political parties organized public meetings both at election time and through the year.
Victor Grayson, the socialist MP for Colne Valley spoke at the Public Hall in Chorlton, as did other MPs during the first half of the 20th century.
Certain local issues like the closure of Withington Hospital, can always be relied on create a campaign, and with a campaign comes the rally and the public meeting.
I can’t now remember exactly when these pictures of a meeting at Oakwood High School on Darley Avenue and the rally on Hough End Fields were taken but both events were well attended.
And if you comb through media reports for the first half of the last century and the century before public meetings were frequent and packed.
Along with the big parks like Alexandra Park, meetings were regularly staged in Stevenson Square and Albert Square, on a range of issues, from unemployment and woman’s suffrage to conscription during the Great War, and opposition to Mosley’s Black Shirts.
One of the exciting things about attending such meetings is the opportunity for local people to have their say.
Often it can be raw and lack the subtle niceties of polite debate, but it always has an immediacy, and gives people that opportunity to be treated as an equal with the local candidate or candidates.
So, I miss those meetings.
Pictures; local public meetings, circa 1990-2, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
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| Gary Betney speaking at a public meeting |
So, given the two-minute interview or the speech by leading members of a political party on the TV, who would to turn out to a cold and draughty school hall on a wet might in February to hear a local election candidate talk about bin collections or parking permits?
Well, the answer might be more than we think. After all the great debates and policy divisions can seem very remote while the closure of a school, the reduction in library hours and those bin collections are very immediate and should demand a response from an elected representative or a hopeful election representative.
I can still remember large public meetings at election time, most of which were held inside, but more than a few which were in the local park, village green or even the famous street corner.
Here in Chorlton at the beginning of the last century, the Socialist Society which found it difficult to book rooms, met on Chorlton Green, while the mainstream political parties organized public meetings both at election time and through the year.
 |
| Andrew Simock and Gerald Kaufman at a local rally |
Certain local issues like the closure of Withington Hospital, can always be relied on create a campaign, and with a campaign comes the rally and the public meeting.
I can’t now remember exactly when these pictures of a meeting at Oakwood High School on Darley Avenue and the rally on Hough End Fields were taken but both events were well attended.
And if you comb through media reports for the first half of the last century and the century before public meetings were frequent and packed.
 |
| Listening to the debate and watching an intervention |
One of the exciting things about attending such meetings is the opportunity for local people to have their say.
Often it can be raw and lack the subtle niceties of polite debate, but it always has an immediacy, and gives people that opportunity to be treated as an equal with the local candidate or candidates.
So, I miss those meetings.
Pictures; local public meetings, circa 1990-2, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
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