This twinning, across regional boundaries, has been far more systematic and enthusiastic than at any recent set of elections. 

For me personally though, just being able to be a doorstep cog in Labour’s electoral wheel was a big deal. 

I used to be somewhat notorious among my friends for my enthusiasm for canvassing. The only previous period of my adult life when I hadn’t been able to do it was when the law stopped me because I held a ‘politically restricted’ job as an adviser to Labour councillors for a couple of years. 

But last Saturday was the first time in over two years – since early February 2009 – that I had physically been able to canvass on the doorstep. 

The last time I canvassed, back in early 2009, I had for a week or so been experiencing shooting pains in my legs, tingling in my hands and feet, and weak leg muscles that were slowing down my walking and making it difficult for me to keep ahead of the pack in my usual role as the guy leading the team with the clipboard. 

I thought I’d better stop canvassing while I waited to see a doctor and sort out whatever was wrong. I didn’t know then it would be over two years before I was well enough to start again. 

In the meantime I had a medical experience that was the stuff of nightmares. Two months of increasing pain, weakness and loss of coordination culminating in collapses in the street. Five months in the National Hospital for Neurology with a diagnosis (after a number of very painful procedures) of POEMS Syndrome – an extremely rare neurological condition driven by antibodies produced by a bone marrow tumour. At the lowest point I was unable to stand, let alone walk, and needed help dressing, opening a soft drink can or moving my bed covers.  

Treatment with radiotherapy has worked – my tumour has gone according to a scan this year – and since September 2009 intensive physiotherapy to get me walking again has been a big part of my life. 

I was still using a wheelchair at last year’s general election count, then graduated through a frame, two crutches, and one crutch, to now being able to walk with a stick and ankle orthotics (splints). 

I must be one of a very small number of neuro-physio patients to set themselves the higher level balance goal of being able to walk while writing canvass returns on a clipboard. 

I’ve written and spoken elsewhere about what I owe the NHS (my life and my ability to walk again). I’m trying to pay that debt back politically in my role as chair of health scrutiny in Hackney. 

While I was recovering and unable to go out on the doorstep I kept myself busy with other campaign activities including organising campaigns, phone canvassing and running committee rooms. I want to encourage other Labour members with a mobility disability to find roles they can play in a campaign – often ones that will free up more mobile members to go out leafleting and canvassing. 

But now that my recovery has reached the stage where walking is a helpful part of my exercise programme rather than a painful chore, I can’t tell you how good it feels to be back out doorknocking.

 That’s partly a personal reaction – it’s good to achieve a goal you have set yourself, and every piece of the life that I had before 2009 that I can get back is a little personal victory. 

But it’s also a political reaction. What I realised, or rather re-remembered, on the doorstep in Ockendon on Saturday was what a brilliant part of the British democratic process canvassing is. Talking to voters to identify and then mobilise your supporters is a great election tactic. All the academic research available shows that voters are far more likely to turn out if the party they support bothers to canvass and then GOTV them. All Labour’s own analysis of 2010 shows a direct correlation between the CLPs that did the most Voter ID and those that secured the lowest swings to the opposition – and vice versa in seats where less work was done. 

But it’s also about the way in which canvassing door-to-door enables voters to raise issues direct with politicians and political parties. And the way in which it forces us as activists to listen to and address voters’ concerns, to get out of the Westminster or town hall ivory tower and get firsthand feedback from the people we aspire to serve. Of course, there are other avenues to meet voters: streets stalls, advice surgeries, meetings of different kinds with residents. But all of these have the disadvantage compared to canvassing that the audience are to some extent self-selecting and therefore those who are most interested in politics. 

Canvassing also helps keep Labour sane. I defy anyone not to end up with more moderate, commonsense politics if they spend time on the doorstep hearing what real people, particularly those we think should be our core working-class voters, are concerned about. 

There are people out there in the Labour party who question the value of canvassing. I never have. Now I’ve tried doing politics without canvassing for two years and that experience has reinforced my belief in its importance. 

I hope the doorsteps of Ockendon will be followed by many years more of putting Labour’s case to the public.

Photo: skuds