Keep The Post Public National Tour: North West Region Day 3

Carl Webb Regional Secretary reports on the North West Tour

20th May 2009

We arrive at Old Trafford at 7.30am to meet up with Jim, Bruce, Billy and Kieran from Greater Manchester branch, our mission was to inflate the now famous 20 foot inflatable postbox as close to Old Trafford as possible.

Before we can even start the generator a steward was dispatched to enquire what we were up to and to move us on, luckily for us the steward was a former CWU Branch Officer from Stockport who was well known to us all.  Thanks to Lenny’s now legendry skills at inflating large inflatables we soon had the Postbox standing proudly in front of one of the most famous football grounds in the world.

Being a Liverpool fan I hope the CWU appreciate the sacrifice I was making. As quickly as we put it up it was deflated and back in the van and Lenny and me were on our way to the true home of football Liverpool.

Due to the Stockport Council putting the blockers on our planned visit we arranged to pay another visit to the City of Liverpool to do photo shoots at Anfield and Goodison Park.

Mark, Mike and Duncan all Liverpool fans agreed to help us. After explaining to another steward what we were up to we then took pictures outside the ground of the most successful club in England and then we went to Goodison.

We will be forwarding pictures to the local newspapers.

Then it’s on to Warrington whose council unlike Stockport’s had been more than helpful.

They kindly gave us permission to site the postbox, postcard and stand in a busy shopping area in the centre of town. We met up with Dave, Jake, Chris, Paul and over a dozen reps and members (too many to mention) who had turned out to help.

We soon had everything set up and right away attracted the local populace, many of them critical of their local MPs Helen Southworth and Helen Jones for not coming out publicly and condemning the plans to sell-off part of Royal Mail. We were left in no doubt that the electorate in Warrington were very unhappy with their Members of Parliament. If they have a second home, I wouldn’t choose any new wallpaper if I was them.

The local newspaper arrived to interview Dave Kennedy the local Branch Secretary and to take photos.

I was then asked to take pictures of the Stockport Postal Workers who were debarred by the council from campaigning in their own town.

The local media had requested the photos as they wanted to expose the Stockport Council’s decision.

People were now queuing up to sign the petition and register their opposition with the government’s plans to sell their Royal Mail. Time to think again Mr Brown, the electorate have spoken. 

This was by far the most productive day in relation to collecting signatures and the distribution of campaign material.

This was mainly due to the numbers of volunteers and the fact it did not rain, well not until we had packed up, so that was a result.

Bring on Day 4!

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