Party infrastructure

[JohnathanPhan]

Simple guide to explain the infrastructure of the Pirate Party UK.

NEC (National executive committee) Is formed of Pirate Party members who have been elected by there constituency to represent the constituencies interests in the NEC meetings. Please find a link below to a PDF that shows all the constituencies in the UK.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/geography/ ... icaons.pdf

At the moment I grouped Northern Ireland, Scotland ad Wales to be there own constituencies for a few simple reasons.

1> The total number of people in each regions as well as population density means that having 6 NEC representing 6 different regions with only 10 party members in each region is not productive.
http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.mo ... alpop.html
2> It simplifies the cross between the welsh and Scottish parliament campaigns and consolidates it into one power.

The Party leader can not be a NEC representative of any of the constituencies. This is to insure he does not put the interests of any constituencies over any other.

Roles of a NEC representative – This is the Pirate Parties version of a campaign manager and MP all rolled into one. You're supposed to manage your group to try and get a seat as an MP. You need to get as many people to become party members in your constituency as possible.

[rancidpunk]

I don't wish to sound daft or it might be staring me in the face but how do I join?

[JohnathanPhan]

We still trying to figure out away to list al party members. I am thinking that an online CRM system on the back end of this web-page will do the trick.

In short - the drupal account managerment area will have fields you can fill in to indicate weather you want to be a party member or not.

[Tom]

Simple guide to explain the infrastructure of the Pirate Party UK.

NEC (National executive committee) Is formed of Pirate Party members who have been elected by there constituency to represent the constituencies interests in the NEC meetings. Please find a link below to a PDF that shows all the constituencies in the UK.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/geography/ ... icaons.pdf

At the moment I grouped Northern Ireland, Scotland ad Wales to be there own constituencies for a few simple reasons.

1> The total number of people in each regions as well as population density means that having 6 NEC representing 6 different regions with only 10 party members in each region is not productive.
http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.mo ... alpop.html
2> It simplifies the cross between the welsh and Scottish parliament campaigns and consolidates it into one power.

The Party leader can not be a NEC representative of any of the constituencies. This is to insure he does not put the interests of any constituencies over any other.

Roles of a NEC representative – This is the Pirate Parties version of a campaign manager and MP all rolled into one. You're supposed to manage your group to try and get a seat as an MP. You need to get as many people to become party members in your constituency as possible.

That's a lot of constituencies for us to cover. I think at the moment we should have a much simpler committee with a lot less representives until our membership gets suitably large.

[Sharkz]

We need to start spreading the word. Any way we can do this through flyers and posters. Maybe even a PPUK event. That should boost our numbers.

[cabalamat]

NEC (National executive committee) Is formed of Pirate Party members who have been elected by there constituency to represent the constituencies interests in the NEC meetings. Please find a link below to a PDF that shows all the constituencies in the UK.

You need to fix typos, it should read: ...their constituency to represent the constituency's interests...

What constiturencies are these? UK parliamentary ones? Scottish parliamentary? European parliamentary?

At the moment I grouped Northern Ireland, Scotland ad Wales to be there own constituencies for a few simple reasons.

1> The total number of people in each regions as well as population density means that having 6 NEC representing 6 different regions with only 10 party members in each region is not productive.

Does this mean there will be 6 NECs throughout the UK? Woudln't it be better to have one NEC for the entire UK?

[Sharkz]

The typos have been mentioned an irc. It's just a matter of pointing them out and getting them fixed.

[anadin]

Please let me know when i am able to join the party. Thanks Antony

[epriezka]

Hi Jonathan,

I love your ambition, but your planned organization is going to disperse a lot of effort around an awful lot of seats. My fear is we will be spread too thin and be less competitive as a result. Remember, even if Brown hangs on as long as possible, we have less than a year until the next general election - the last possible date is 3rd June, 2010.

Trying to win every seat is noble, but it would also cost a fortune. Up until the 1980's, even the Liberals, who were the third largest party, did not field candidates in every constituency. If I remember correctly, there will be 649 seats at the next election, with a £500 deposit in each, meaning the party would need to raise £325k in total to field candidates in all seats, ignoring any other expenditure. I hope we do, but let's aim a bit lower to begin with, and raise our targets to fit what is realistic. Right now, we have a lot to do just to field one candidate in one seat. Once we know we can do that, we can adapt our infrastructure to aim for two, then five, then ten... and so forth.

None of that means we should not encourage local teams to raise local money for local campaigns. In the end, we would field candidates where we have the best local support and organization. But suppose you had a good local team in one seat, and a not-so-bad team in the seat next door. Don't you agree we would be better off persuading the people next door to concentrate our resources on the seat where we have better support and organization?

Did you notice the Jury Team in the European election? They fielded a national slate of candidates, supposedly backed by popular support at a local level (candidates were chosen based on open primaries run by text messaging). However, they barely registered any attention from the electorate, despite getting a party political broadcast on the TV. Result: complete wipe-out everywhere. If they found it hard to get media attention before, it will be even harder now, plus their supporters must be deeply depressed. We should try to avoid that kind of meltdown, which will see any successes washed away as unrealistic expectations turn to disillusion.

In contrast, an independent candidate in London got over 50,000 votes. It was not enough to win, but a good proportion of votes in one seat will generate much more positive publicity for our cause than more total votes spread over many seats.

So please, let us aim a little bit lower and build up our targets as we build up our capability. Maybe we will field candidates in every seat - but let us be flexible enough to also have the option to not run a candidate in a constituency where campaigning may mean wasted resources and cause a distraction from other, better chances of winning.

[bavardage]

I don't know whether such things exist (shame constituencies aren't much smaller) but perhaps make sure most effort is put into 'young' constituencies (i.e. don't stand in south devon)

[Pete]

We sahoudl be lookign at places like Glasgow Central and Edinburgh South. Large student populations.

I'm not sure of the best ones England/Wales/NI wise, but there the best 2 scottish ones IMO

[epriezka]

We sahoudl be lookign at places like Glasgow Central and Edinburgh South. Large student populations.

I'm not sure of the best ones England/Wales/NI wise, but there the best 2 scottish ones IMO

Very good idea. Another kind of target would be to aim for seats of high-profile politicians who may be vulnerable to losing their seat not because we win, but because we take votes away from them. I'm thinking here of people like Justice Secretary Jack Straw, who would be a Portillo-like scalp if he lost his seat in Blackburn. He had a majority of 8009 in the 2005 election. Campaigning against the Justice Secretary on our platform of law reform would generate plenty of media-friendly opportunities, and would pay off double if we got a strong showing that caused him to lose his seat.

[epriezka]

Simple guide to explain the infrastructure of the Pirate Party UK.

NEC (National executive committee) Is formed of Pirate Party members who have been elected by there constituency to represent the constituencies interests in the NEC meetings. Please find a link below to a PDF that shows all the constituencies in the UK.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/geography/ ... icaons.pdf

This isn't the right constituency map to use. We need the map for the constituencies that will be used in the next general election, not the one used in the last election.

[Andy_R]

The problem with the constituency map is that there are 646 of them, which would make the NEC a bit unwieldy to say the least!

The assigning of candidates to parliamentary constituencies would be handled by the Nominating Officer, who is the person registered with the Electoral Commission for that purpose.

Personally, I think that for now we can just put a provision that at some point in the future when the size of the party becomes sufficiently large we will put a regional NEC system into place.

[freshlysqueezedcynic]

I think in the constitution we should note that infrastructure should be provisional until we can set up some kind of conference and we have the numbers to justify a regional organisation. I'm all for regonalism and decentralisation, but it seems premature at the moment. Our organisation should be centralised for the moment because it really has to be.

[epriezka]

I think in the constitution we should note that infrastructure should be provisional until we can set up some kind of conference and we have the numbers to justify a regional organisation. I'm all for regonalism and decentralisation, but it seems premature at the moment. Our organisation should be centralised for the moment because it really has to be.

I think freshlysqueezedcynic and Andy_R are spot on. We're starting to building some castles in the sky by worrying about what we'll do when we need to devolve power to thousands of members all over the country. We'll have done bloody well to get to the point where we need to worry about such things.

I doubt there are any wannabe Adolf Hitlers planning to use the Pirate Party UK as their vehicle for diabolical and despotic rule. That means we need to trust some people to be the leaders and get on with making some decisions. Only then will we build interest, membership and awareness of the party so it can become an effective political force, and get to a point where internal governance needs a greater degree of formal checks and balances to ensure all interests are fairly represented.

Think of it this way. For all the fuss about the BNP, they have about 6,000 members nationally, or less than 10 per constituency. UKIP has about 16,000 members or around 25 per constituency. The Lib Dems, the third largest party, has 70,000 members or a little over 100 per constituency. In reality, the spread will not be even. There will be some places with very large membership, other places, none. Even the Lib Dems will have some constituencies where they have bugger all members. Regionalism is wonderful, but meaningless unless we get to a scale where it practical. There's no point worrying about regional decision-making until we get to the point where we have enough people in each region to make it worthwhile. At the moment some of these constitutional ideas look like they are scaled up for the size of Labour or the Tories - and even the Tories are a highly centralized party in practice!

[Sharkz]

I agree. There is no point dividing our efforts by splitting us up. Maybe if a particular area had 100< people then it would need some closer 'management' but for now were fine with one central leadership.

[epriezka]

I also think we may be missing a trick here. The Pirate Party could have a constitution totally unlike most other political parties. Most parties have to be organized on a geographic basis because of the very real practical challenge of needing to organize people through meetings they physically attend and the need for lots of interpersonal contact. Who says we need to be like that? We would have the one party where you could guarantee that every active member is also on-line. We could organize in a radically different way as a result.

I'm not saying do not have any respect for picking candidates that reflect local interests and support, but let us be honest - it is not as if we're going to have many policies that have special importance to any particular part of the country. We're not the Scots Nats and we're not going to be taking a stand on most issues that might have a specific relevance to a particular constituency (like bailing out a car manufacturer, or the planning and approval process for new homes). Our policies are national in nature, and not really going to need to be tailored for any particularly part of the country.

So why assume we should end up with a regionalized constitution? If it is just a case of local people picking the local candidate you could still do that through the same central infrastructure - restrict the vote on the local candidate to the local members, but process the results over the internet and do it through the same central hub. There is no specific need to recreate governance mechanisms at a local level. That's the power of the internet - we can break the cord between what we do and where we are. Why not use it to give us a unique advantage and keep party costs down?

To keep costs down, chances are a lot of our campaigning will be on-line because it will be cheaper and is a 100% match to our target voters. Local events will most likely be motivated by the same driver as it does in all the other parties - social events. But social events don't demand a lot of consideration in terms of party constitution or governance.

What do people think?

[rancidpunk]

I agree with most of what you say, which is nice, but, (I did say most of) we can't rely on the power of the internet alone and we have to have a prescence in the physical world for building personal relationships with the media and the voters.

[epriezka]

I agree with most of what you say, which is nice, but, (I did say most of) we can't rely on the power of the internet alone and we have to have a prescence in the physical world for building personal relationships with the media and the voters.

I totally agree. We should not seek to exclude or prevent 'real world' campaigning. All campaigning is good. My observation is that we need not copy the 'real world' constraints of other parties if we don't have to. They have to meet in person etc because they seek to represent viewpoints held by people who may not have or want to access the internet. We can manage a lot more over the internet than they could. If the other parties did things over the internet, there would be legitimate criticism that it excluded some of the people who should be allowed to participate. Because a central pillar of our policy relates to freedom of information on the internet, we can reasonably suppose that anyone who supports us also has internet access. So we can do things online that other parties won't.

An obvious example is that we can legitimately and democratically run an election of our officials which is exclusively online, but any other party would need to allow for postal votes or people voting in person.

Another example is we don't need to have party conferences in the traditional sense. We may have them - we just don't need them for the same reasons. A Labour Party conference makes decisions. In the Pirate Party, we could include all the same kinds of people, and make the same kinds of decisions whilst doing it all online.

Another example is meetings of members, committees, working groups etc. Another thought is that we writing documents collectively (e.g. the manifesto, the constitution) but there are more tools for collaborative authoring out there, if we wanted to be really democratic etc.

We should seriously look at doing things that other parties cannot do, in order to get an advantage over them. New technology just gives us extra options. It is no different to Buddhist monks using their mobile phones to send videos of the repression in Burma, or the Jury Team innovating in this country by holding open primaries, voted for using SMS, for the candidates they ran in the Euro elections. We should be engaging the interest of lots of people with imagination for how to use technology. Instead of just copying other parties, we have the chance to innovate, and we may get some big advantages as a result.

I was going to write a quick response, and this turned out rather long. After all, you did say you agreed with most of what I wrote. I must actually be getting excited about the potential for this party...