..still hanging on

Alright, now I am quite interested in the US elections. And Hillary is hanging on in there. Strangely enough, I can understand this apparently odd response to Barak Obama’s win. Hillary has been in this for the long haul and giving up on the dream, acknowledging it is over is almost unbelievably difficult.

The night of the General Election in 1992 was one of the most emotional of my life. Just before midnight on 9 April I had been at Woolwich Town Hall for the count, supporting Rosie Barnes, the SDP MP for Greenwich. We all of us knew that this was the end whether Rosie won or otherwise. There were only two people from the SDP defending seats, David Owen was not standing, the party was truly over. My head knew it but my heart had much difficulty in actually understanding that the cause that I had devoted most of my free time to for over 10 years had gone.

I was at the Town Hall to oversee the vote counting. And of course one began to get a feel for the way the vote was going. The atmosphere was almost volatile with supporters of the other parties hustling, spitting and swearing at us and as it became more apparent that our woman had lost we became more obdurate in response. When Rosie arrived we gathered round her, she looked at us and asked how it was going. We just shook our heads slightly and I remember her saying “oh well, never mind”. After the announcement, she gave a terrific speech, brave and gracious against a background of belligerent noise. A Conservative swore aggressively at a female colleague of mine. We cheered and screamed wildly and until my throat was raw.

After the count, we went back to our HQ in an old shop where all the supporters were gathered having watched the count on TV. I got back a bit before Rosie and her agent. We determined we would give her the most rousing welcome home. She had told her agent she would not cry. She walked in, we cheered, she started to speak and got as far as “well everyone” before she choked to a halt.

I have never experienced an evening like it. The wild, friable mood swinging from tears to laughter in seconds, and the desperate need to hang on to the community we’d built up over years, people who spoke the same language and had shared the disappointments and kept on going. Over the years we’d all seen our friends’ bemusement at our passion for politics which took us out on miserable Sundays to walk around the council estates, our descent into dullness as we obsessed about electoral systems and national insurance reform.

You don’t give that up easy. I bet there’ll be a few tears at Hillary’s party this weekend. And if they have the same sort of hangover that I had all those years ago, it will, at least be one thing they remember.