There’s an election coming and you should vote, but a healthy democracy requires more of its citizens than rocking up to the polling booth. Ideally, all of us would do some thinking before voting, and politics relies on a smaller number actually doing: party activists are an important part of the electoral process, putting in the unpaid work of leafleting and door-knocking.

This activism is on the wane. Combined Conservative and Labour membership was around 4 million in the early 1950s –........

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