Contents
Editorial
European Parliament Election 2004 and the ELDR Group
Reports from the Field
    - Euro-campaign, north of the border
    - Excitement in Eastleigh
    - Impressions of the 2004 Euro-Campaign

SAJ KARIM MEP	FIONA HALL MEP

Lib Dem fundraising and campaigning definitely paid off in the 2004 European Parliament Elections, as we not only kept all 10 MEPs who stood for re-election (including former Conservative Bill Newton Dunn who joined the Lib Dems in 2000), but also gained two seats to bring us up to 12 MEPs. Our gains were Fiona Hall our first MEP in the North East, and our first ethnic minority MEP Blackburn born British Asian Saj Karim in the North West. Both Labour and the Conservatives lost considerable seats, many due to the UK independence party UKIP, who now have 12 MEPs, indicating that the need to communicate the value and benefit of EU membership to the British public is still VERY necessary.

Overall the EP remains with a similar political balance as before, with the PPE (conservatives/Christian democrats) as the largest party, followed by the PSE (socialists) and the European liberal group the ELDR. Discussions are currently underway between the ELDR and a new political group in the EP called Democrats for Europe formed on 17 June 2004 by some French MEPs whose parties traditionally belonged to the EPP. As the ancient Chinese proverb says, we live in interesting times...

This Euro election special edition newsletter has a number of reports from the field, an analysis of the results as a whole and what they mean for European Liberals, and an invitation to our AGM taking place on 14 July 2004 in Brussels.

Well done to all who worked in the EP campaigns!!

GRAHAM WATSON MEP

There is a sense of tension and expectation in the corridors of the European Parliament in Brussels. What is going to happen to the third largest group, the ELDR? The largest group, the European People’s Party (PPE) is predicted to get 278 seats, the Socialists (PSE) 199, the Greens 41 and the ELDR 67. This will include our 12 Liberal Democrat MEPs from the UK, 7 FDP MEPs from Germany (welcome back after a 10 year absence!) and 4 MEPs from Poland. So in the new Parliament of 732 MEPs, the ELDR is set to continue as the third largest group.

Welcoming the success of the ELDR, Leader of the Group Graham Watson MEP said:

"The European Liberal Democrats remain the pivotal political force in the European Parliament. I expect the ELDR Group to be at least as strong as we were in the last Parliament, if not stronger."

Indeed, the question is, how much stronger can it get? Francois Bayrou, who leads the French UDF members, will not sit in the PPE with Jacques Chirac's UMP. Francesco Rutelli, who heads the La Margherita, says he wants to be part of a broad centre grouping. On 17 June Rutelli and Bayrou announced the formation of a new party "Democrats for Europe". Will they join the ELDR? It is a tantalising prospect, as the group's membership would go up to 78, and the PPE down to 267. So not only a major pivotal role, but also more power and influence.

Whilst the picture will become clearer in the coming weeks, we will have to wait until the first Constituent Session of the new EP in Strasbourg on 20 July to see whether negotiations will succeed in bringing-off such a result.

ELSPETH ATTWOOLL MEP

Euro-campaign, north of the border

Having worked on last year’s Scottish Parliament election campaign tour, I had certain expectations about how I would be spending my three weeks in Scotland. I quickly learned that unfortunately a European election did not capture the imagination of the electorate in quite the same way as a general election.

This time round, as you may know, in Scotland we did not have local elections or Mayoral elections. Scotland, as most UK electoral regions, lost one of its seats, going from eight to seven. How to convince 3.9 million voters of the merits of voting, when only seven politicians would be sent to Europe, was not immediately evident. And this was reflected in Scotland’s turnout of 30.9%, which was lower than the UK rate of 38% but higher than Scotland’s previous turnout in 1999 of 24.7%.

Fortunately, I did not have to contend with this headache myself. I spent my three weeks travelling around Scotland on the campaign trail, usually with Elspeth Attwooll, the lead candidate and incumbent. In our trusty people carrier, we travelled all across Scotland, making it all the way to Thurso on the north coast, Aberdeen in the east and Oban in the west. Mind you, I was not so confident that we would make it to Thurso, through the pea-soup fog that engulfed us during the last hour of the drive!

Much of our time was spent campaigning in town centres, handing out leaflets to mum and dad and helium-filled balloons to the kids. Without a doubt, walking through a town centre clutching 10 or 20 bright yellow, helium balloons lets people know you are there and proved very popular with those who were, sadly, too young to vote! Unfortunately, the Gods did not always look upon us so kindly - one good gust of wind was all it took to entangle all the balloons and their strings around your neck.

We went on a number of visits including the Guide Dogs for the Blind training centre, Strathmore mineral water, some cottage/farm businesses (one of which produced incredibly delicious jams), a wood recycling project providing jobs and training for local people with mental handicaps, and a similar enterprise in Glasgow providing jobs for disabled people. Of course, there were also the obligatory radio and TV interviews for Elspeth, which helped to ensure that our message got out to a wider audience than those we were able to meet.

Despite a good reception on the streets, apathy and ignorance were prevalent - many people did not even realise that there was an election taking place. Some people still think the EU is a Franco-German conspiracy to colonise the UK. Many are convinced those working in the EU, officials and MEPs, are all living on the gravy train, all corrupt and ripping-off British tax-payers. I could go on.

The frequency with which we were told this does not bode well for any referendum on the EU constitution. To say there remains an uphill struggle is an understatement. Nevertheless, despite UKIP’s success "down south", we managed to keep them out of Scotland and our share of the vote increased by 3.3% to 13.1%, returning Elspeth for her second term. The other six seats were shared evenly between SNP, Tory and Labour (who lost their third MEP).

SCOTTISH RESULT

BARONESS NICHOLSON OF WINTERBOURNE MEP	CHRIS HUHNE MEP

As the UK’s biggest electoral region with ten European Parliament seats up for grabs, South East England was a key battleground in this year’s elections, not least for the Lib Dems. The South East was the only region where we had two sitting MEPs to defend and also includes eight of our Westminster seats.

I spent a week campaigning in Eastleigh for my old boss, Chris Huhne MEP, who headed the Lib Dem list for the region and will be Westminster candidate for the Eastleigh seat at the next general election. A third of the borough council seats were up for election this year so we were fighting a joint local and European campaign. This obviously changed the dynamics of the campaign, but it meant we could push the Lib Dem message for both the local and European levels at the same time and also had a stronger argument to encourage people to turn out and vote since they were getting ‘two for one’ on the same day.

As in most of the Party’s target and held seats, Eastleigh was pretty much running a full-scale campaign, with a general election possibly only twelve months away. This was particularly the case in the Eastleigh South ward, a key target and one of only four Labour-held seats on the council. The energetic campaign paid off, with the Lib Dems winning the target ward from Labour and picking up another seat from the Tories, cementing the already comfortable Liberal Democrat majority on Eastleigh Council. UKIP came nowhere near winning a council seat, but did push Labour and the Conservatives into fourth place in several wards.

In the South East as a whole our vote held up and both Lib Dem MEPs were successfully re-elected, while Labour and the Conservatives each lost a European seat.

I lent a hand in two Euro-campaigns. Both were inter-twined with local elections; in London with the mayoral and Assembly elections; and in my corner of south-east England - Sandgate in Shepway (the Folkestone & Hythe constituency of Michael Howard) with elections for a newly-formed Parish council.

It is difficult to find anything positive to say about the Euro-campaigns, which were practically invisible. Of course, we were right to exploit the lunacy of following Bush into Iraq, but on this issue we were competing with the Greens and Respect, the party formed by former Labour MP George Galloway. For Respect the Iraq war was a single issue, but it was not enough to stir the electorate as the new party did not do very well at all (no MEPs and only 1.5% of the vote). We were however the only party with both anti-Iraq war and pro-European credentials. We could have better fitted together our stance on Iraq with our policy of support for European political integration.

Would the electorate have responded positively to our making it clear that we thought (most of) Europe was right on Iraq? Could we have gained support by stressing that we wanted our government to try to make common cause with our EU partners on foreign policy issues, and that doing so in the case of Iraq would have avoided a horribly expensive war involving about one third of the British Army? A more overt and pro-European stance here surely could have portrayed the EU as more relevant - and benign - to the large proportion of the population fed on a diet of anti-European propaganda.

But my impression of the Lib Dem campaign was not wholly negative. One positive impression was the excellence of the literature put out in both areas. Another was that the Euro-campaign seemed to be conducted as a joint campaign with the elections at other levels. The Sandgate council election campaign for instance, gave Chris Huhne and Emma Nicholson a prominent spot in its election literature. Thirdly, it was good to see the Party using the Euro-elections to pull out all the stops (as a sort of dummy run) to unseat Michael Howard next time round. This included setting up an impressive headquarters in Sandgate to operate at least until the next Westminster elections and a first-class and popular Parliamentary candidate in Peter Carroll, who worked closely with the EP candidates. BELD members who want to help out in the next General Election are encouraged to make a bee-line for Shepway!

This edition was edited by Rebecca Taylor

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