Bridport Launch of West Dorset Referendum: Electric Palace meeting 7pm Thursday February 11

Here campaigner Clive Stafford Smith explains why:

 

David Cameron will apparently call a referendum in the Summer on Europe. Before that, though, a matter of far greater significance: on May 5th, West Dorset will be holding its own local referendum, mandated by the signatures collected by Public First. We will be launching our campaign in the Electric Palace at 7pm this Thursday (February 11th).

Our referendum is not party political and it will not change the people in office. But it will change the way they do business, inject some transparency, and make them more responsive to the citizens who elect them, and pay the taxes that periodically get squandered by them.

Thursday evening is about true democracy, as reputedly practiced in Athens centuries ago, but rarely seen in West Dorset today. Anyone who comes will be invited to voice a view. We will be hoping to recruit a dozen ‘Area Over-seers’ in Bridport who will each take charge of public education and leaflet distribution in a defined part of town. Working with them, we hope to find ‘Street Citizens’ willing to take their own subsection. They’ll all be advocates for a more representative Council. With them, we will develop Q & A sheets to respond to any more technical questions people may have, and further information will be found on our website (www.publicfirstgroup.co.uk).

This is historic – it will be only the second local referendum to take place in Britain – and we’re looking for a democratic debate throughout the District on a scale never seen before.

There is a sense of excitement around this vote – among all but the West Dorset councillors themselves, that is. They appear to view it as an unwarranted intrusion on their right to spend our money without reference to our views. I remain surprised that weeks have gone by and Anthony Alford, the council leader, still has not deigned to reply to my offer to come to Dorchester to discuss ways of resolving the dispute, so that £95,000 may be spent on something else. But all the councillors have been invited to attend on Thursday night and we must see whether they want to hear your views, or whether they have similarly little respect for our democratic process.