Full Manifesto
My full manifesto, backed by our current Chairman Harry Aldridge can be found here:
Olly Neville YI Manifesto PDF
Olly Neville YI Manifesto MS Word (sadly only the PDF version hosts the pictures)
Mini Policies: Policies in a tasty bite size format
Increasing the importance of regional YI
Create regional branches for the whole country,
with regional committees akin to YI Yorkshire giving people a first point of
contact when they first join UKIP and allowing local YI to tailor their
programs to local events and hold action days, campaigns and social events as
they see fit.
A plan to improve our presence at Universities
As someone who helped form a University society I
know how difficult it is to get around campus bureaucracy. I will created a
dedicated Universities officer to help societies get set up and get the best
UKIP speakers available. I will use the people who have helped form societies
to create best practice guides on how to set up, maintain and campaign for a
society on campus. I also plan to create comprehensive Freshers' Fair packs
that can be distributed to societies and purchased by regional YI or UKIP
branches.
I understand that being a university student is about having fun. If we seek to make our university groups boring and party-line toe-ing then we
will attract no members and actively go backwards, losing the societies we have
and our ability to expand on campuses. We must not insist on university
societies ‘engaging’ with the main party but must simply be there to help them
grow and form as they see best to attract new members to YI.
University societies underline a theme running
throughout my whole campaign: that to attract new members and enthuse current
ones we have to be a fun and flexible organisation, not a dour, centralised
one.
Improving the social side of YI with far more social
events
People are happy to leaflet maybe a few times a
year in the sun for a political party, but why will people get up at the crack
of dawn, in a wet winter morning to campaign? The answer is because they have
an emotional investment in the party. We cannot expect people to instantly have
this investment; to turn YI into a campaigning organisation alone is to shut
off the vast majority of prospective new members from reaching this level. YI
is not leaflet fodder - to attract new members and to encourage fringe members
to become fully committed ones we have to build links between them and
committed activists by getting them involved with YI. Fringe members are unlikely to
go campaigning with people they don’t know when they have many more pleasant
alternatives, but if we can build friendships within YI via social events,
which are more likely to attract people, we can develop fringe members into
committed activists.
I want to see socials held more often and not
just in London. Part of my regional structure will be for regions to hold their
own socials, but this does not prevent National YI from holding both events in the
North and in the South, as well as holding social and/or campaigning holidays both
within the UK and abroad.
The Brussels trip
that was held this summer was a fantastic experience. Trips to Brussels, Strasbourg,
Westminster etc should not be changed to elitist cliques for the friends of the
Chairman, but should continue to be another great way to get new YI members
involved. I met several YI members that I hadn’t known before on the trip and
it has created friendships as well as enthusiasm for YI and real progress.
Increasing the reach of YI in and out of the party
As someone who has attended YBF, TFA and Liberty
League conferences I have seen first hand how these are natural recruiting
grounds for YI. As Chairman I will build on the links I already have with these
organisations to expand YI’s presence there. With an expanded YI presence
showing delegates at these events both how large YI has become and what high
quality members we have I believe we will be able to convert many more people
as well as improve Young Independence’s influence and recognition amongst
centre-right and liberty-minded individuals and groups.
One of the key things that YI has failed to do is
to announce its achievements to the main party. Many question what YI does
because our members work so diligently behind the scenes without boasting about
achievements. While I applaud this attitude I also want a chance each year for
YI both to show the main party our successes and also for YI to congratulate
publically the members who have done the most for us. A YI conference should be
about YI, and not an excuse to use YI as a campaigning tool. As a YI event it would
be a great place again to build up social ties and meet new people as well as
initiate new and non YI members into the YI fold.
Improving and streamlining the Council and making it more in touch with average members
I wish to reform the council to make it more
streamlined. I would keep the Vice Chair position appointed, as experiments
with an elected Vice Chairman position shows that it has not worked. I would
merge Press and Social Media officer into a Communications officer role, being
a single point of contact with the press, the party and the YI members. I would
change the Grassroots role to take over the duties of the current Fundraising &
Recruitment officer and give it much more focus on regional development.
Finally I would make a new position of Universities officer to directly focus
on building up our campus presence (full details of all positions can be found
in my manifesto).
Another area I wish to develop is with sub-teams.
YI has a whole pool of talent, whilst each member of the council is just one
person with lives to lead; they cannot do everything. By building small sub-teams like the current Social Media team more tasks can be delegated and more
areas tackled at once. It allows us to use the talent we have in YI and
increase our output compared to just one elected official attempting to do a
whole role. We are, after all, a team, with the same end goal and the best way to
achieve it is to work together.
