Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign group Momentum has raised more than £250,000 in six days in a record fundraising drive as it urged people to take a week off work to help its campaign in the run-up to the general election.
The group took £255,000 from 10,000 individual donations and has nearly equalled the £260,000 it raised across the entire general election period in 2017. The fundraising comes as the group, chaired by Jon Lansman, a socialist member of Labour’s ruling body, launches a campaign strategy on Monday called Labour legends.
This encourages people to take a week off work and campaign for the party full time as it gears up for the poll.
Labour has already taken £2m in donations in the first two quarters of this year.
Momentum’s national coordinator, Laura Parker, said the level of fundraising showed that the “same people-powered movement” from 2017 “is back, bigger and more dedicated than ever”.
Staffers of the organisation, which has 40,000 members, took an average £26 per donor in its fundraising drive and hit £100,000 in the first 12 hours. At some points in the past six days they took £1,000 a minute. They said the money will be spent on their plan to “mobilise thousands of activists” and will pay for more help with training and organising the activists.
The Labour Legends campaign will ask activists to get in touch to say how much time they can commit to the election, describe their skills and share their location, and they will then be given one-to-one support from a Momentum organiser.
This could involve phone banking, canvassing, volunteering in a party office or even being embedded in a marginal constituency for a longer period.
Parker said: “Big business and the bank accounts of billionaires may be backing the Tories but we have something altogether better and stronger. Our strength lies in the thousands of people in all corners of this country who are ready to chip in and change this country for the better.”
The group is largely credited with playing a key role in Labour’s surprise election successes in 2017. The party fell short of a majority but took far more seats than expected after dire polling.
So far this campaign, Momentum has focused heavily on Chingford and Woodford Green, which has been held by Brexiter Iain Duncan Smith, a former leader of the Conservative party, since 1997. Labour’s candidate is economist and thinktank director Faiza Shaheen.
Their mycampaignmap.com website, developed especially for this election, tells activists which marginals to visit to campaign in for Labour, rather than just their nearest marginal seat.
