Making Friends

Politics may not seem like the friendliest business.  In some senses, it is the wordy alternative to relying on fists to arbiter a decision.  Churchill said "To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war".  In the House of Commons, the distance between the opposing front benches is the length of two swords.  This symbolizes that each side of the house must use language to engage opponents, instead of using violence to intimidate them.  Whilst politics may sometimes seem like combat through wordplay, only a poor politician would try to overpower all opponents.  A better politician realizes to win a democratic argument requires the skill of persuasion.  And that is just another way of saying we win if we make more friends than enemies.

The wonder of modern technology means people can now become friends even though they are far apart.  I have a good friend in Canada, although we have only twice met in person.  She met her husband, an American, through an internet chatroom.  These days she emails me photos of their beautiful daughter.  Wonderful though technology is, it cannot yet substitute for all forms of human contact and communication.  The Pirate Party has a lot of advantages over traditional political parties.  It can reach supporters and connect people far more readily using electronic communications.  However, we still need to physically meet too.  That is why it is genuinely encouraging to see we had a great turnout for Saturday's event in London, and that there is a meeting taking place in Manchester as I type.  A meeting is planned for York on this coming Saturday, September 12th and on the forum they are discussing dates for a meeting in Leicester.  These meetings are just as important for the success of the party as having a healthy and vibrant presence on the internet.  Not every aspect of the British political process can be satisfied remotely.  Running election campaigns also means finding active supporters willing to canvass, leaflet, and run events to boost the profile of candidates in their region.  There are a lot of voters active on the internet, but not all voters are.  We will find it easier to win support and win credibility as a political party if we reach out for the votes of all voters, both virtually and in person.  The internet is our most powerful advantage, but we need to complement it by building a network in the real world as well.  As the group walked from Regent's Park to a nearby pub, it was heartening that so many participants asked the same question - 'when is the next event?'

The free use of language is core to the ethos of our party.  One of the other wonderful things about the event at Regent's Park is that is gave us an opportunity to properly talk with people who are not already party members, but who were interested to find out more.  A lot of people prefer to engage in a personal conversation, rather than receive one-way communication or present themselves as a 'newbie' over the internet.  Passerbys sat in on Andrew's talk, took leaflets and, most importantly, took away a positive impression about our values and what we stand for.  Some of those people may never have found us on the internet, but they may well speak positively about us to their friends, or be more inclined to listen if one of our candidates is talking on the radio.  One of the other speakers at the Regent's Park event was Professor Gary Hall of Coventry University.  I hope we made a new friend in Gary.  Gary is an academic who not only wrote an article called 'Pirate Philosophy' about the impact of 'piracy' on academia, media and culture, but who also distributed the article using P2P and encourages people to rewrite the P2P version as they please.  Even though Gary may well have heard of us through the internet or mainstream media, and clearly knows how to use technology to connect with people remotely, it still makes a difference to actually see the supporters in person, and to engage them in dialogue, as Gary did.  I believe we also made friends with the organizers of the Treehouse Gallery at Regent's Park, who invited us along.  We owe them thanks for the invite, and I hope that after seeing the numbers of people who came along from the Pirate Party, that they are encouraged to get involved too.

To answer that question, 'when is the next event?', I first must first ask a question: 'who wants to organize it?'  In other words, members should feel free to take the initiative and propose and arrange meet-ups and events using the party's wiki and forums.  We can use new technology to assist with the old-fashioned challenge of getting to know our fellow party members and making contact with the general public.  We are all interested in politics because we want to take the fight to our enemies in big business and big government.  To do that, the first thing we must do is make lots of friends.