The 2001 Thurrock Council election took place on 7 June 2001 to elect members of Thurrock Council in Essex, England. The election took place at the same time as the 2001 general election after being postponed from the first week of May due to an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. One third of the council was up for election and the Labour party stayed in overall control of the council. [1]
Thurrock Council is the local council for the borough of Thurrock in Essex, England. Since 1997, Thurrock has been a unitary authority, combining the functions of a non-metropolitan county with that of a non-metropolitan district. The other such authority in Essex is Southend-on-Sea. It is a member of the East of England Local Government Association.
Essex is a county in the south-east of England, north-east of London. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and London to the south-west. The county town is Chelmsford, the only city in the county. For government statistical purposes Essex is placed in the East of England region.
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to the west and Scotland to the north-northwest. The Irish Sea lies west of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south. The country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, and includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight.
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Among the candidates in the election was Pauline Campbell who stood as an independent candidate after resigning from the Conservatives. [2] Campbell, who was disabled and used a wheelchair, said that she had been first told she was the Conservative candidate but then told that she could not stand as she would not be able to canvass. [2] However the Conservatives denied this and said that they just wanted to give someone else a chance. [2]
The Conservative Party, officially the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom. Presently led by Theresa May, it has been the governing party since 2010. It presently has 314 Members of Parliament in the House of Commons, 249 members of the House of Lords, and 18 members of the European Parliament. It also has 31 Members of the Scottish Parliament, 12 members of the Welsh Assembly, eight members of the London Assembly and 9,008 local councillors. One of the major parties of UK politics, it has formed the government on 45 occasions, more than any other party.
A wheelchair is a chair with wheels, used when walking is difficult or impossible due to illness, injury, or disability. Wheelchairs come in a wide variety of formats to meet the specific needs of their users. They may include specialized seating adaptions, individualized controls, and may be specific to particular activities, as seen with sports wheelchairs and beach wheelchairs. The most widely recognised distinction is between powered wheelchairs ("powerchairs"), where propulsion is provided by batteries and electric motors, and manually propelled wheelchairs, where the propulsive force is provided either by the wheelchair user/occupant pushing the wheelchair by hand ("self-propelled"), or by an attendant pushing from the rear.
Canvassing is the systematic initiation of direct contact with individuals, commonly used during political campaigns. Canvassing operations are performed for many reasons: political campaigning, grassroots fundraising, community awareness, membership drives, and more. Campaigners will knock on doors to engage in personalized contact with an individual. It is used by political parties and issue groups to identify supporters, persuade the undecided, add voters to the voters list through voter registration, and it is central to get out the vote operations. It is the core element of what political campaigns call the ground game or field.
After the election, the composition of the council was
- Labour 37
- Conservative 10
- Independent 2 [3]
