Pirate Crew

Another good idea which we can copy from sister parties is the Pirate Crew, the first I heard of this was from a German Pirate in Australia, where I understand it's been successful, and it's one of those things which seems to make instant sense once it's been suggested. It apparently works particularly well in large cities, where you have many people, Berlin and Brisbane were mentioned as examples, so there should equally be plenty of scope here to do this.

During the conference, party members spoke to me and others about building our organisation from the grass roots up, in addition to what we have to do to run a national party, and local crews provide a possible way of doing this. In many ways, Pirate Crews follow on from the Three Pirate Rule which was declared after the conference.

What is a Pirate Crew?

Reduced to essentials, the concept is as follows:

• A crew is a self-organising entity of the pirate party at the local level. It serves primarily for social networking, consensus building and transfer of knowledge to new Pirates.
• Each pirate is generally in no more than one crew.
• A crew consists of five to nine pirates, so you can sit at a table, and hold a common conversation. If the crew grows above nine members, it divides into two new ones. If it shrinks below five active members, it dissolves or merges with another.
• Each crew selects an anchorage for regular crew meetings in a public place (eg pub, cafe, library...). They will meet as often as the members see fit, but at least once a month.
• Crew members should generally live in the same approximate locality in which the anchorage lies, so that regular meetings are possible.
• Each crew chooses a concise piratical name, to make it recognisable and avoid confusion with other Pirate teams.
• When decisions need to be made, a consensus of the whole crew should be achieved. If that does not work, the majority decides. The minority either accept majority decision, or form a new crew.
• Each crew maintains its own Wiki page, which contains the names of the members, the address of the anchorage and the dates of the crew meetings.
• Each crew elects a Captain and a Navigator. They have no additional decision making power. The captain moderates the meeting and represents the crew to the outside, the navigator coordinates the meetings, assists new crew members and is responsible for maintaining the wiki page. Captain and Navigator can always be voted out.
• New Pirates are cordially invited to come to the crew meetings of the crews in their area.

I wrote about this idea on the forums a long time ago, but perhaps that was at too early a stage for us, as you need to be able to get 5 or more Pirates able and willing to form a local group. You can also refer to the Australian concept documented on their wiki , which I've trimmed and paraphrased slightly above to the basic essentials and what's relevant in a UK setting.

If you think this is a good idea, and know Pirates to form a crew with, then you don't need any more permission or encouragement, you can already make use of the Three Pirate Rule to adopt the principle (or a variation on the theme) and set about forming a local Pirate crew, needing only two more locally-active Pirates to form your first crew.

The only caveats which might apply are broadly similar to those mentioned before:

• Don't do anything illegal or which could bring the Party into disrepute
• You can't allocate party funds, though you can ask for them
• If you did want to raise funds independently as a crew, as in the Australian model speak to the NEC and in particular the Treasury under Pete Liddell, as there will be specific requirements that we must comply with
• If you want to do anything in Northern Ireland, speak to the NEC - we need to learn what is possible in Ireland, and what would be needed to get to a point where you could operate as a recognised Party organisation

Postscript:

If you are logged in to the site, and posting comments is disabled for you at present, I don't know why and comments should be possible, maybe try via the forum blog page or the web team will fix it in due course. If it is working and you can comment directly here, great :D

EDIT: Should be fixed now.