Labour's Youth and Development Officer Neil Ward figuring out where to next in Bethnal Green and Bow during UK GE 2010

In April and May of this year, members of the Labour Party travelled to six different constituencies in the UK to campaign on behalf of the British Labour Party. The constituencies I got to have a look at were Bethnall Green & Bow, Westminster North and Poplar & Limehouse (incidentally, the Labour Party was successful in all three of these constituencies).

I travelled to London in the hope of learning how we could improve our constituency organisations and election campaigns, and also to meet with various staff members of the British Labour Party to see what lessons could be learned.

From the first day, it became apparent that the Irish Labour Party are much, much better organised that we often give ourselves credit for. There was no magic method obvious in London which I hadn't previously encountered at home. The first 'visibility exercise' on which I was sent involved leafleting a local Tesco with the candidate - something all of our constituencies carry out on a regular basis. And my first evening was allotted to a straight-forward canvass and leaflet-drop. Even the quality of the printed materials being delivered was broadly equivalent to what we produce all across the country.

After five days of such activity, there remained only two clear differences that jumped out at me. Firstly, the British Labour Party ask everyone how they intend to vote, and they record this information religiously. This information is all collated, and provides the data for their voting-day get-out-the-vote drive. While the short-term benefits of this can be debated, over a long period of time (over a decade in the case of the British Labour Party), this data allows the party to monitor its support amongst various demographics, and to shift attention and focus in response to this support.

The second clear difference was on polling day. While some of our constituencies have well-oiled traditions on polling day, the sheer effort expended by our British counterparts on polling day was a sight to behold. Up to 200 activists were involved in polling day activities in each of the marginal seats. Starting at 6am with a dawn leaflet drop, and canvassing right up until the close of polls, this activity is credited with boosting the vote of individual candidates by up to 10%. For many of our constituencies, building a team of this size presents an enormous challenge, but if those benefits could be replicated in the next General Election, it would be enough to win a lot of potentially marginal seats in Ireland.

The second reason I was in London was to meet with various Labour staff about how they have built their organisation. The lessons learned were far too many to list in a short piece such as this, but will certainly appear in greater depth at a future point. These included learning about building single-issue online campaigns, and converting this support into party support; storyline development as a means of controlling media coverage during a short campaign; gathering all new members who join during an election campaign and directing them to key marginal seats; providing detailed campaign handbooks to all constituency organisers to give them a range of options on how to effectively run short campaigns.

In our constituencies, we are every bit as capable as the British Labour Party of building organisations and winning seats. And as a party nationally, we're not far behind. But continuing to look at other options, and improving ourselves step-by-step, is the only way that we can organisationally challenge Fianna Fail and Fine Gael and deliver a Labour-led Government.