Expanded Campaigns Team

17th May 2010 22:30 | by Peter Brett

As I mentioned last week, I've been looking for some new people to join the Campaigns Team to help spread the load. Luckily, I've been able to find three people who want to get involved in supporting our campaigning efforts nationwide, and, even better, they've been approved by the NEC.

  • Andrew Tindall is our new Member Communications Officer. He's going to keeping all of the membership up-to-date with what's been going on in the party nationwide; you've probably all received the first issue of the new fortnightly e-mail newsletter. A computer scientist with  a keen interest in politics and law, Andrew's been a member of the Pirate Party since the very start. He sometimes finds time to study in between reading the forums, lurking in the IRC channel, and acting as the party's official 'Twitter Guy.'
  • Finlay Archibald will be the Universities and Colleges Officer. Finlay was one of the founders of the student Pirate activism group at the University of Strathclyde, and was the Pirate Party candidate for Glasgow Central in the 2010 General Election. He's going to be promoting student involvement in the Pirate movement across the nation, and after his exams will be labouring to produce a 'fresher's pack' of publicity materials over the summer in time for the end of the summer vacation. His stated aim for the next year is to get Pirate societies running at half of the UK's university's -- a bold ambition!
  • Diarmuid Clarke will be working on Merchandise and Publicity Materials as one of his Deputy Treasurer responsibilities. His help will be essential in ensuring that the problems we had over the last few months, such as the t-shirt fiasco and then the difficulties getting flyers printed for our parliamentary candidates, don't occur in the future.

As always, I'll do my best to answer any questions you have about our new and expanded team! Please do get in touch if you have any ideas or requests for new things we should be trying.

The next twelve months are going to be hard work for the party. We've got devolved elections coming up for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, as well as local council elections. We're not only going to have to work out how (and whether!) to contest the elections, but also to find candidates, build solid local campaigning teams, and develop a strong and cohesive national strategy.

To be effective, we'll need a strong Campaigns Officer to take the helm and steer our little ship through the tempestuous and often treacherous waters of British politics. I'm only in the role in an acting capacity; there'll soon be an internal election to select someone to take on the responsibility fully. Make sure you vote for a strong candidate. (And yes, I will be standing!)

Share

2 comments

May 18 2010 07:05 by Henry
Are we planning to contest any Local Elections at this time? And do we have any policies for local government at this time?
May 18 2010 09:05 by PeterBrett
Yes, we're planning on contesting every local election we can find a candidate for!

I was just commenting in our committee meeting last night that, as far as local government policies are concerned, we've got a bit of a 'chicken and egg' problem. The best people to be thinking of such policies are our candidates for those positions, but we've had people saying, "Oh, I won't stand for local government election unless we have relevant policies." I personally believe that our three main policy areas can and do touch on local government issues, and that there's the basis there for putting together a compelling local manifesto. Moral of the story: if you're interested in Pirates in local elections, help us out with working out issues to campaign on!

Hope that helps.
Post a comment