Improving Lib Dem Campaigning: Increasing social relationships in your local party

Liberal Democrat membership has fallen over the years to be now less than 100 members per Parliamentary constituency. While this is not desirable, there are some things which can be done to use this to the advantage of the local party and its members.

Dunbar’s number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person. This number is believed to be about 150 and was popularlised in the book The Tipping Point.

Large groups rapidly reduce the efficiency of an operation. Peer pressure is much more powerful than the somehow vague concept of a boss or punishment. In a political party not being sufficiently motivated to help out on a campaign, leafleting, or attending events means they won’t turn up, but people do live up to the expectations of their peers in smaller groups where they have a personal relationship with each of their co-workers.

So having a small local party is not necessarily a bad thing as it means there are opportunities to forge stronger relationships and have a more committed activist base. The trick is to encourage those social relationships between members. I remember when I joined I got an email to ask if I wanted to deliver leaflets. This wasn’t the most effective invitation to engage me and I am sure many will feel the same. It would be much more effective to foster building relationships.

So how do we do this? Reasons why people joined in the first place is:

• To have the power to influence the direction of the party
• To meet like-minded people
• To gain information on national policies
• To gain access to key decision-makers
• To gain access to training and resources for personal development

So we use these as a way to engage people in the local party. An invitation to campaign (including leafleting) but stressing that new (or newly active) members will be buddied up. Inviting members to the formal and social events in the local area where they will be able to meet people. These are simple ways of encouraging social relationships in the party.

Another way could be send a list of members to members (if members opted in) with their interests and whether they would welcome contact from other members. Encouraging people to contact each other is a good way of forming the important social relationships which will encourage people to attend, campaign and promote the party.

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