As a newly selected candidate in Gloucester, I made it my mission to speak to as many young people in the community as possible. I first became interested in politics as a teenager; I am passionate about getting more young people involved on their terms. So I visited schools and spoke about the issues young people wanted to: voting at 16, employment and training, the lack of part-time jobs for students, most of which are taken by adults desperate for work, the unfairness of unpaid internships, and the fundamental problems with housing. Then a young woman, Hollie Gazzard, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in Gloucester, and domestic violence became the issue they most cared about.

I have had very close friends affected by domestic abuse, and I had personally experienced difficulties in getting advice and information at a time of crisis. I knew people who were close to the Gazzard family, but kept my distance, as I did not want to wade in as a political candidate, even though I cared desperately about the situation. When the family established the Hollie Gazzard Trust, campaigning for education in schools on relationships and abuse, and I told our shadow equalities minister in the Lords, Glenys Thornton, about the aims of the trust.

From there, Hollie’s dad contacted me and we soon established that we shared a common drive to fight for better education for young people. I already knew the Gloucestershire Domestic Abuse Support Service after attending an event they hosted about changes to practices in handling domestic abuse with the police. GDASS and the Hollie Gazzard Trust were working together, and I have done my best to support their work since then.

I know because I have been close to this that domestic abuse does not just happen to other people or other families. Like rape, and most other crimes and abuses, it can happen to anyone. We need to make relationship education compulsory in all our schools so that all our young people learn their rights, about what sort of relationships are unacceptable, and about how and where to ask for help if they do need it.

The Tories have no answers. They preside over a fragmenting education system where Michael Gove’s 1950s view of curriculum forces our young people into academic straitjackets. They have no appetite among them for improving PSHE across our education system. Domestic violence reporting is on the increase, but conviction figures are falling. Organisations and charities that work in this area are facing cuts and uncertainty over future funding thanks to the Tories’ austerity policies which are ideologically designed to attack the most vulnerable.

We need to make sure that young people are educated about their rights and about relationships. Two women die each week at the hands of partners and former partners, yet there is no national outcry. These are all reasons to care about politics and they are reasons why politics matter. And they are what motivates me to get up every morning and campaign for Labour as the candidate for Gloucester in 2015.

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Sophy Gardner is parliamentary candidate for Gloucester. This is an extract from her chapter in Our Labour, Our Communities published by LabourList

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Photo: Kninki