Local membership in Stroud has followed the trend in membership of the national party, with record numbers attending last month’s meeting. We currently have 484 local members in the Stroud district, more than double the total 6 months ago.
We asked one new member, Rachel Stevens from Frampton-on-Severn, about her reasons for joining. She said:
“I’ve been voting Green for the past few years and a friend told me she’d decided to join the Green Party. I had a look at the website and realised that for less than £3 a month I could become a member and support the party I believed in. Cameron started talking about including the Greens in the election debates, and I suddenly felt “this could really take off”, after all the years in the shadows! So I’ve just joined and thrilled to be playing a small part in change.”
There is a lot of latent support in Stroud for our policies and core values, which has been repressed for many years by “tactical voting”. Publicity about the “green surge”, alongside cogent arguments against tactical voting from commentators like George Monbiot and Ian Sinclair, has made many people consider voting for what they believe in.
If you’d like to add your voice to the surge, you can sign up here.