True Wales at Carmarthen: What really happened
‘We were over in Carmarthen leafletting [Saturday] and found opinion pretty evenly split between Yes and No people’. Thus Rachel Banner of True Wales responding in the St David’s Day Western Mail to the ICM poll showing that backing for proper law-making powers for the National Assembly is now 56%. You’d think they’d done some serious campaigning and polling on the day.
So what really happened?
Tomorrow’s Wales had asked one of our supporters to observe the True Wales ‘event’ in Carmarthen between 11.00 and 12.00. He found two leafleters outside Marks and Spencer, together with a man with a clipboard. The leafleters were finding it very difficult to get shoppers to accept a leaflet.
After a time our man approached one of them and asked what they were handing out. ‘You’d better speak to my friend’ was the response, referring to the clipboard man, who turned out to be Paul Matthews from Newport Gwent. The sheet on the clipboard was blank.
Ms Banner says that she’s ‘not very convinced by opinion polling generally’. As far as True Wales polling is concerned she can say that again.
John Dixon has also blogged on the weekend’s events, read his view here.
3 March 2010 at 8:42 pm
Sir, True Wales attended Carmarthen at my invitation as a former Councillor and one of the few actually born in the town I felt it my
duty to give the many non-Plaid voters the opportunity to voice their opinion on a referendum. It has been my experience that there are
many within the town who would vote No for more powers but feel
that they have been abandoned by their elected representatives as
the four parties are supporting a Yes campaign. Considering the poll
was held on the day following an evening rugby international the
response was quite good.Yes there may of been leaflets discarded
but no more than those discarded after a Plaid leafletting session.
Mr. Dixon should realise that this was the first of many and there
are a lot of us who remember Plaids first foray into Carmarthen in
66 but of course he wasn’t around here then.
4 March 2010 at 6:59 pm
The “True Wales at Carmarthen: What really happened” isn’t what really happened. Some of the team arrived at 11am and began leafleting. I joined at 11.30 and the remainder just before Noon. The questionning survey was then conducted for a fixed period until a suffient number of answers had been obtained. Because the above report has been carried over to Waleshome.org challenges were made to me to explain what really happened. In the ‘Big Lie’ article by Daran Hill, somewhere towards the end of the postings, I provided an explanation in two postings.
I am disappointed that John Dixon has taken the attitude towards True Wales on this subject because in our exchanges to his article on Waleshome I thought we had a civilised and serious discussion.
What really happend at Carmarthen is we asked face to face questions of real people who not only answered our questions but entered into discussions about the pros and cons of the referendum issues. It was an enjoyable experience meeting with a large number of pleasant people, many of whom shared our opinion - more than expected.
That’s what really happened.