Source: Eastern Daily Press
Pub date: Saturday, April 30, 2005
Subj: Size Isn't Everything (extract)
Author: Mark Nicholls
Cited: Legalise Cannabis Alliance http://www.lca-uk.org/
Don
Barnard http://www.ccguide.org.uk/donbarnard.php
A wasted vote? Certainly not, say the General Election
candidates fighting the Norwich South seat for the smaller parties. MARK
NICHOLLS caught up with four of them on the campaign trail.
It's 6pm on a sunny April evening in the centre of Norwich.
Most of the shoppers have left and so have a good number of the people who work
in the city centre stores.
Not much to go at for Don Barnard, candidate for the
Legalise Cannabis Alliance (LCA) in the Norwich South constituency.
Yet he hands out leaflets with his supporters, advocating
his party's policies as he attempts to engage passers-by in discussion.
One man stops, but there's no profit in it for Mr Barnard as
the voter reveals he lives in the South Norfolk area.
Mr Barnard, 63, has picked a tough constituency to fight.
There are eight candidates toughing it out for Norwich South: Labour, Liberal
Democrat, Conservative, Green and the three other smaller parties of the
Workers Revolutionary Party, English Democrats and UKIP.
He's up against Home Secretary Charles Clarke, and therein
lies the point.
"We do not anticipate forming a government this time
around," he concedes with an ironic grin and a rasp through smoking
cigarettes and the drug he advocates the legalisation of.
For the smaller parties, it's about raising their profile
and where better to do that than in a constituency where they will have the
attention of the regional and national media who will be watching what happens
to the Home Secretary who is defending a majority of 8816.
A single issue party, the LCA want to promote the benefits
of Cannabis as a plant for its industrial, commercial and medical uses. And if
they can smoke some along the way, all well and good they say.
"We believe cannabis is one of the safest and most
valuable commodities on the planet. I want to see it used for all its potential
uses, for social as well as medical," he said.
"I have not had a bad response on the street, but have
had some extremely abusive telephone calls."
And a wasted vote?
"If someone votes for me," said Mr Barnard,
"they will get a person that represents them in Parliament, not someone
who concerned with protecting their own party interests.
"I am not sure how many people will vote for me, I
intend to beat the last person that stood for us a here and get 5pc of the vote
so as I can get my deposit back and give it to someone else to stand next
time."
To top the LCA's 2001 standing, he'll need 621 crosses in
boxes for a party basking in the glow of achieving its first party political
broadcast this week, albeit on Welsh TV.
(extract)