Aysgarth School

David Faber has spent three weeks at Aysgarth before taking up his post as Headmaster at Summer Fields School in Oxford. During his time spent at the School, he formed an election club, inviting the boys aged between 8 – 13 yrs to get involved. 20 of the boys, divided into groups, volunteered to stand as candidates for the Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, UK Independence, Communist and Monster Raving Loony parties.

The objective of the club was to engage as many boys as possible during the run up to the election. They discussed policies, parties and the individual leaders. The candidates were asked to put together a manifesto and take on the ‘character’ they chose. After a couple of weeks of enthusiastic campaigning and while the rest of the country was getting ready to go to the polls, the ‘school election’ was held the evening before the general election itself. The standard of speeches from the platform and contributions from the floor was extremely high. In the end the winner by a comfortable margin was the candidate from the Monster Raving Loony Party David Austen, aged 11, who appeared in character as Screaming Lord Sutch and won over the audience with a well-crafted speech.

The two Conservative Party candidates came second and third with only one or two votes between them.

Between 1992 and 2001 David Faber served for two terms as the Member of Parliament for Westbury in Wiltshire, holding a number of Committee and Opposition Front Bench positions. He fought his first election in 1987 in the Stockton North Constituency.