Standing With The National Conservative Party
OCA was, until recently, an independent organisation which was not part of the national Conservative Party or Conservative Future. Historically, relations between OCA and the national party have been weak, for example OCA (together with Cambridge University Conservative Association and Durham University Conservative Association) were automatically treated as organisations separate to Conservative Future when it was founded in 1998, and after various unflattering stories in the national press, Conservative Party Central Office has traditionally been quick to distance itself from OCA. However, as of 6 October 2009, the Association officially voted to affiliate to the Conservative Party, and is now an official representative branch of Conservative Future.
In March 2010, an Association event in support of the Oxford West parliamentary candidate, Nicola Blackwood was used to launch Conservative Future's national 'Time to Get Involved Campaign' and the association was praised by the party for its campaigning efforts
OCA members are often asked to stand for election to Oxford City Council. The Council has traditionally been Labour dominated and the Conservatives haven't held a seat on the council since 2001. Alex Stafford (President, Michaelmas 2007) stood unsuccessfully for Holywell Ward in the 2008 Oxford City Council Election achieving an 8.2% swing for the Conservatives - his brother, Gregory Stafford, now a Councillor in the London Borough of Ealing, stood in the same ward in 2004 for OCA.
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Famous quotes containing the words standing with the, standing, national, conservative and/or party:
“Most observers of the French Revolution, especially the clever and noble ones, have explained it as a life-threatening and contagious illness. They have remained standing with the symptoms and have interpreted these in manifold and contrary ways. Some have regarded it as a merely local ill. The most ingenious opponents have pressed for castration. They well noticed that this alleged illness is nothing other than the crisis of beginning puberty.”
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“And so, standing before the aforesaid officiator, the two swore that at every other time of their lives till death took them, they would assuredly believe, feel, and desire precisely as they had believed, felt, and desired during the few preceding weeks. What was as remarkable as the undertaking itself was the fact that nobody seemed at all surprised at what they swore.”
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“When people put their ballots in the boxes, they are, by that act, inoculated against the feeling that the government is not theirs. They then accept, in some measure, that its errors are their errors, its aberrations their aberrations, that any revolt will be against them. It’s a remarkably shrewed and rather conservative arrangement when one thinks of it.”
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