The Eric Forth Award for Activism is an annual award given out at the YBF Activist Training Conference:

Eric Forth was one of the true characters of British politics.

A House of Commons man to his core, Eric not only knew parliamentary procedure inside out but he knew how – and when- to use the rules to maximum advantage.

The 6th Young Britons’ Foundation Activist Training Conference will take place from lunchtime on Friday, 23 October 2009 to lunchtime Sunday, 25 October 2009 at Wellington College, Berkshire.

This year’s YBF Conference will be much more interactive, with students working closely with mentors as they discuss how to handle a political war-game over the course of the weekend. Students will also get the chance to devise campaign strategy and design campaign materials, debate issues with conservative movement leaders and hone campaigning skills in readiness for the general election next year.
Confirmed …

One of the events being run in the Freedom Zone @ Conference is just for under 30s and is a great way for CF members to improve their public speaking skills:

TORIES GOT TALENT
Back by popular demand after the success of this event at last year’s Freedom Zone in Birmingham, TORIES GOT TALENT offers up-and-coming young Conservatives the chance to try out their public speaking skills in front of a large, friendly audience and to receive tips from expert judges on how to hone their speaking skills.
TORIES GOT TALENT will be …

CF will be getting involved with the Freedom Zone this year; we’re going to have a stand and we’re hosting a debate. More info on those to come soon, but for now here is some background on the Freedom Zone:
The Freedom Association invites you to The Freedom Zone. The Freedom Zone is an event on the fringe of the Conservative Conference 2009 in Manchester. It is outside the security zone so anyone is welcome to attend and entry is free.
It will take place on the 5th and 6th October at …

Our friends at The Adam Smith Institute also put a strong focus on encouraging young people to become engaged within politics, as such, organise a varied program of events for students. Most recently launched is their essay competition, ‘Young Writer on Liberty 2009′:
To enter you will have to write three different articles on the subject of:
The Three Greatest Threats to Liberty in 21st Century Britain
The title of each article is entirely up to you.
1ST PRIZE:
- £500 cash prize
- 3 articles published on www.adamsmith.org/blog
- 3 books on the subject of liberty
- …

Who is your political hero?

Ronald Reagan. He took on his party’s establishment, rebranded the Republican Party, campaigned proactively and with dynamism, communicated optimism, reduced the power and size of the state and freed millions enslaved by communism. That’s a pretty impressive record in anyone’s language.

Pick one thing about the last 12 years of the Labour government that you would change?

Simple. The Human Rights Act. The most pernicious, harmful and wrongheaded piece of legislation dreamt up by lawyers for lawyers. And I say that as a lawyer!

Christian, Edward and I recently returned from the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington DC, as part of the YBF group that head there every year. It is a meeting of the ‘conservative’ movement in the US with key speeches from the principal members of the movement – I recommend you watch the concluding speech from Rush Limbaugh (here) to get a taste of what it is like!
One of the groups we met over in DC was Students For Liberty, a forum of support for students and student organisations that …

Join dozens of fellow young conservative activists from around the country to meet and hear from prominent politicians and leaders of the conservative movement who hope to make up and drive the agenda of the next Conservative government.
Speakers, including Shadow Cabinet members, will engage directly with you at this exclusive parliamentary rally on issues such as:
- civil liberties, ID cards and the database state
- the European Union and freedom
- foreign policy threats and opportunities
- Gordon Brown’s recession
It will be a tour de force of current Conservative thinking and plans to …

For the past two summers, the Young Britons’ Foundation has taken dozens of young conservative activists from Britain over to New York, Washington DC and California to learn from the think-tanks and activist groups in the United States.

The result is that those activists have returned to Britain better trained and highly motivated to promote conservative values in their schools, colleges and universities, on the blogosphere and in their local communities.

On Wednesday 21 January, the YBF Media Training Team headed to Birmingham University for an afternoon of television training. Along with this, activists were treated to a talk from Tim Aker of The TaxPayers’ Alliance. Tim talked about the absurd waste of money that the EU is responsible for.
Aker says “The EU has a huge impact on the lives and finances of ordinary people both in Britain and around the world. The EU’s farming policies mean more expensive food for Birmingham students, and grinding poverty in the third world. This …