Ludlow College HUSTINGS

On 17th December 2009, around 150 students had a taste of what is to come of the upcoming election early this year by taking part in our very own Hustings event. If, like me, you did not know what on earth a Hustings was, it is a gathering of representatives (well, they are MPs, so that’s debateable) on a platform to present their views prior to an election. This gave politicians the chance to get some [much-needed] practice in before the election in either March or May. The drama studio took the form of a Question Time styled platform with a panel of seven people, me included, nervously sitting next to Emma Reynolds.

Each parliamentary candidate pitched their “vote for me” speech for a couple minutes each, before Roy (as people who know Dr Perry call him) took charge and moved everyone on to the main bulk of the Hustings. There were pre-agreed questions, suggested to Roy by everyone who wished to do so via Moodle (mostly sociology students!) which covered the Economy, Tuition fees, transport, government cuts and other subjects that our students were concerned with. Roy exerted his power over the parliamentary candidates and soon stopped them in their tracks if they went off topic (which they did a lot).

There were some amusing and incompetent answers to some questions during the two hours of discussion: Jacqui Morrish thought it was perfectly reasonable to solve Britain’s debt crisis by not building any more roads, which got a laugh from both me and people within the crowd. At this point I turned to Emma, who was next to me, and quietly said “Yeah, I’m sure that’ll help”. Generally, a lot of Morrish’s answers were put down by the other candidates as they already held the same policies and effectively rendered the Green Party useless.

Christopher Gill got a lot of cheers and applause from the crowd for some controversial views on immigration. I clapped too, but I got some odd frowns from Emma and Heather on my side of the table so I slowly stopped and pretended to be professional.

In general, all the participants seemed to make deliberate plays for votes to the audience with a slightly patronising tone which didn’t really work on any of us. As politicians often do, they spoke at length using as much complicated language as possible to baffle us – my response, when asked to pitch my views, was to say exactly what I meant without the confusing political frills. If I wanted something cut, I was straight to the point. However, the others, Phillip Dunne in particular seemed to dance around the issues of cuts and attempted to change the topic to his rehearsed spiel.

At one point, Emma Reynolds, who came on behalf of Labour as we did not have a parliamentary candidate for them at the time, was challenged. Some brave girl from the audience stood up and challenged her presence there as she was not local and therefore could not answer a question on local transport. This resulted in a slightly fiery response, but reliable Roy came through and stopped it to continue with the event.

I have to say, it was one of the most nerve racking things I have ever done and wouldn’t recommend doing it unless you would like shaky hands for a couple of hours. If you were there and saw me constantly drinking water, that was because it steadied my hands!

All in all, the Hustings was a success, being extremely lively at times and having regular audience questions fired at us. I was asked whether I would drop EMA for tuition fees – which I would do, considering tuition fees are worth much more. I hope everyone who was there enjoyed themselves and thanks for taking part.