The progressive potential of online organising.
| Author | Lownsbrough, Hannah |
| Position | Features |
No matter where you lie on the political spectrum, it's increasingly hard to find anyone willing to suggest that UK progressives have anything other than a very difficult few years ahead of them. For those who reached political maturity around the time of Labour's 1997 victory, progressive opposition represents unknown territory and uncertainty abounds as how to make the best, and the quickest, job of it.
One source of optimism should be that we have at least two compelling international examples in recent years for how to revitalise progressive politics in places where reactionary right-wing governments had a long-standing hold over politics: the USA and Australia. Both the US Democrats and the Australian Labor Party were carried to victory in 2008 and 2007 on a tidal wave of support from progressives.
Their stories differ in many respects, but in one critical area they are the same: both campaigns attribute a substantial proportion of their success to the online presence of progressives and, in particular, to the existence of effective vehicles for organising online--including MoveOn.org in the USA (www.moveon.org) and GetUp.org in Australia (www.getup.org)--which had come into being several years prior to their election victories and both of which were able to boast membership numbers equating to roughly 1 per cent of the population by the time these parties came to power. In the US, MoveOn provided vital membership and key staff and strategic advice to underpin the development of Organising for America (www.barackobama.com), the online element of Barack Obama's campaign.
For UK progressives, a number of organisations are emerging that are moving into a comparable space. 38 Degrees (www.38degrees.org.uk) (I am Campaigns Director) was launched at the end of May 2009 and already has over 100,000 people on its email list. Avaaz (www.avaaz.org), the organisation which aims to organise globally along the same lines that MoveOn.org organises in the US, has a high UK membership which takes regular actions targeting global institutions and governments around the world.
Here, some of the lessons from their experiences will be investigated and applied to a UK context and the future potential for the emerging progressive political space will be explored. Between them, these organisations illustrate some of the most effective example of online organising and have some impressive successes behind them. They have variously fought and won battles to defend public service broadcasting, forced climate change up the agenda despite strong political opposition, and provided a constructive outlet for solidarity with international human rights struggles happening largely outside the global media spotlight--like Avaaz's continuing work on the oppressive regime in Burma.
Further good news is that this renewal seems to be most likely to happen during periods of opposition. Much is currently made of the Conservatives' relative strength online. As progressives, perhaps the most positive interpretation of this is that we have easy access to multiple reminders of the reasons to be cautious about the Coalition government: the real Tories documenting their views in these spaces seem to hold far more reactionary views than their high-profile Westminster advocates, not least on issues of critical and urgent importance, such as climate change.
There's also a compelling progressive alternative growing daily: blogs like Liberal Conspiracy (www.liberalconspiracy.org), LabourList (www.labourlist.org) and Left Foot Forward (www.leftfootforward.org) offer a daily rebuttal to the idea that political blogging strength can only be found to the right of the political spectrum (not to mention an excellent riposte to those who argue that the internet is leading to the over-simplification or 'dumbing-down' of politics).
Online organising: deepening democracy
There are clearly lessons to be learnt about effective campaigning and movement-building from the successes of existing online groups.
Acting fast
First, these organisations are able to respond more speedily than organisations with larger staff (38 Degrees has only four staff; MoveOn has fewer than twenty) and more cumbersome forms of communication. This not only affects the character of campaigns (which can easily adapt to a changing situation) but also facilitates the rapid response to an emerging crisis which allows supporters to engage with the issue as it emerges in the media, rather than several days or weeks after the initial crisis has blown over.
When the super-injunction against reporting Parliament was taken out against the Guardian, for instance, 38 Degrees had an action to MPs live within a couple of hours. Equally, during the Copenhagen summit, Avaaz was a leading part of the international NGO effort to deliver day-to-day campaign targets that were congruent with the picture emerging from the summit itself. The day after BNP candidates were successfully elected to the European Parliament, anti-fascist activists Hope Not Hate delivered an extremely effective 'Not In My Name' photo petition which has grown their activist base to almost 150,000 (www.hopenothate.org.uk).
Bridging parties and single-issue groups
Equally, these forms of organising are able to operate in the space between single-issue groups and political parties. Political commentators have been cogitating on the...
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