Getting dates into your Co-operative Party Calendar can make your planning a lot easier. Anticipating some activities could put us ahead of the game and instead of reacting, we set the scene.

Dates for your diary

These are suggestions, put these few dates in your calendars, share with all your members. Get your branch or Party Council to consider an activity or event, Officers can place them on the website, but let us know so we can put in our calendar too.

Fairtrade Fortnight is from 25 February until 10 March, the theme is Cocoa this is an opportunity to highlight co-operative trade, ethics in the supply chain, fairness in employment.

Council elections, 2nd May, not everywhere but contesting about 270 English local councils, five directly elected mayors in England, have you got your Co-op sponsored candidates lined up. Have you helped them include co-op policies in the joint election address with the Labour Party? You need to be looking at this now, if you need advice on this get in touch.

Co-operatives Fortnight is 23rd June to 7th July, can you connect with a local co-op, we can help you find several. They could speak at a meeting, educating members. Could your Councillors arrange a meeting with local Co-ops? Could you highlight a local co-op with a press release?

One way to help organise the whole year is to have your party council and branch Annual General Meetings in your calendar. This can set the dates for subsequent meetings. Tie in other events and give yourselves an activity and interesting event for every meeting.

If you have members without an email, you can let them know the dates in one letter.

Local Government Conference on Saturday 8th June in Newcastle, this is becoming one of the highlights of the party’s activities.

October is Black History month, could you promote an activity, an opportunity to learn, to share to listen?

Party Conference

We have your Party Conference 12-13 October in Glasgow. This sets other things in train, members are asked to suggest policies, consider these in the first quarter of the year, refine them by June.