The Rock Blog

Eamonn Hurley-Flynn is the ‘Caerulean’ editor (monthly publication from UCL CF).

When the impartial observer examines the current state of Conservative Future it outwardly appears as though its importance is steadily dwindling – numbers are declining, campaigning activity is scattered and to some extent it can still be viewed as the last refuge of the young ‘Tory Boy.’ ‘Young Conservatives’ claimed membership numbers at their height of 250,000. This is clearly a stark and initially worrying contrast to the current 15,000 of Conservative Future. Many people would suggest that these numbers are indicative of a terminal decline for such youth organisations but there are a number of issues that need to be addressed before any conclusions are to be drawn.

Firstly, although Young Conservatives claimed 250,000 members, a large proportion of them were not there when it came to campaigning and other such activities. The numbers that turned out were undoubtedly far higher than the entire body of CF today but nevertheless they were not all out there when they could have been. This makes for interesting analysis. What seems to be the case is that, despite increasing voter apathy amongst the general youth population, a far higher proportion of the current CF members are willing to go out campaigning, provided that there is sufficient organisation of campaign days. This puts out a far more positive message than the Young Conservatives used to do. With the appropriate management, CF needn’t have the hedonistic, reckless image which turned out to be the source of Young Conservatives demise throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

This decline of conservative youth organisations on the surface seems a bad thing but when we step back and take a look at what we can now do with CF the decline of the decade or so is more likely to be a positive in the long term. Many of the problems that are holding us back in CF are inherent hangovers of the Young Conservatives but we are now in a position with a smaller and more focussed membership to be able to shed these problems and mould CF in to a forward looking organisation, one which Young Conservatives, with its outdated image and practices would never really have been able to achieve. Many young people of conservative persuasion who might previously have been put off by Young Conservatives’ image are now ready to be drawn in to CF, particularly with the party on the rise nationally.

CF currently also incorporates the university Conservative branches. This is a key element which Young Conservatives never had. At present the university branches are not particularly well integrated into the overall CF system and this is something which needs to be addressed if we are to utilise them to their full potential. (Indeed they currently make up the majority share of CF!) What the university branches need is to be assigned specific marginals, local to their university, in which they can campaign in a more focussed manner than they currently do. At the moment it is mostly the case that a disparate array of campaign days are arranged with minimal efficiency.

Thus far, the thrust of my argument has been to the positives of CF organisation over previous establishments; however there are two areas that Young Conservatives excelled in. First of all, the structure of Young Conservatives along closer constituency lines is far better than the hotchpotch patchwork of CF coverage we currently have. If CF is to actually have any effect, branches need to be broken down and assigned closer to constituency boundaries – if not to single constituencies because of problems with CF membership numbers, then to three of four neighbouring constituencies amalgamated into one CF branch. It is an extremely strange position at the moment that we have individual CF branches for Epping Forest and Saffron Waldon but Devon and Cornwall have only three branches, two of which are in Exeter! What is the point of having CF branches which cover such large geographical areas such as ‘Greater Manchester East’? Such a wide coverage with current membership numbers will achieve nothing. Michael seems to be the only candidate for CF Chairman who wishes to try and communicate on a more local level and I certainly hope that he will try and re-organise the branches and area chairmen along lines that actually reflect population and geography.

The most important difference between CF and Young Conservatives however is party leadership support and this is something I sincerely hope Michael will devote his time to. In order to have any increase in CF membership and effectiveness we need regular vocal support from the men and women at the top of the party. This will serve both as a means to give credibility to CF and to advertise its existence to so many young people who are oblivious to it. CF can be great once more but if it is to be of any significance it requires the support and funding from CCHQ which it hasn’t truly seen since William Hague was given the platform to give his defiant and rousing speech at the conference in 1977!

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