Chadwick, A. (2009) “Back to the
Future: Organizational Values and Online Campaigning.” Written version
of my speech to the Progress/Blue State Digital conference “Labour 2.0:
Campaigning for the Net Generation,” Canary Wharf, London, February 28,
2009.
First, let me say thanks to Progress and to Blue State Digital for
organizing this excellent event. It’s wonderful to be here at Canary
Wharf. It doesn’t quite have the resonance of Farringdon Street, which is
where the Labour Representation Committee was founded on February 27,
1900, but I think the WiFi here might be better. We’ll see.
It may sound surprising, but I don’t want to say too much about
technology. There’s now no doubt that we’re living through genuinely
significant change in the political communication environment. I have long
argued that in order to understand where party politics is going, we need
to understand how technologies shape politicians’ and citizens’ behaviour.
But I also think we need to examine things from a rather different
perspective — the other end of the problem, so to speak.
So I want to throw out some ideas on organizational values and their
importance in shaping the future of online campaigning. To do this, I want
you to join me in a brief “thought experiment.” On this historic
anniversary, let’s consider the diverse mixture of organizational values
that led to the foundation of the Labour Party, and let’s briefly consider
how these have relevance for Labour’s approach to online campaigning.
The Labour Party is now well into its second century, but the historical
traces of that famous meeting in Farringdon Street in February 1900
remain. As is well known, the Labour Representation Committee (as the
party was first named) was pluralistic. It was, and still is, a federation
of affiliates. Today it would probably be called the “Labour
Representation Network”. But certainly it was a rather awkward blend of
very different pre-existing organizations. There was the Fabian Society,
the Independent Labour Party, an obscure group called the Social
Democratic Federation, some trade unionists, and some Lib-Lab MPs.
Each of these groups brought a distinct set of values to the new Party.
The Fabian Society, then dominated by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, brought an
emphasis on collectivism, regulation, order and control. They celebrated
rational administration by trained experts and insisted that some element
of hierarchy was essential for good governance. They saw the Labour Party
itself as a compromise between a responsible mass democracy on the one
hand, and enlightened authority, on the other.
Then we have the Independent Labour Party of which Keir Hardie was the
most prominent figure. The ILP advocated a new morality based on
voluntarism. They emphasized local community initiatives, the importance
of fellowship, fraternalism, and individual and collective creativity.
The Social Democratic Federation believed in a rather curious mixture of
radical libertarianism and revolutionary socialism. They were suspicious
of the centralizing tendencies of the Fabians and tended to promote
individual rights and freedoms rather than bureaucratic regulation. They
were sceptical of claims to authority, highly critical of representatives
and wished to see them replaced by direct democracy through ongoing public
debate and decision-making by referendum.
Finally, we have the trade union movement, which steadily moved towards
formal support for Labour over the course of the next two decades. The
dominant ethos of the unions was based on pragmatism, collaboration,
co-operation and solidarity in the world of work, but also in the sphere
of politics.
Of course, much has changed since February 1900. The Labour Party’s ideas
continued to evolve in all kinds of ways that can’t be covered here. But
my point is that many of these founding values are still highly relevant
to the contexts of twenty-first century British politics. And, more
importantly, it is a combination of these values that ought to inform the
Labour Party’s future approach to online campaigning.
The future of Labour’s online campaigning should be a matter of enshrining
as many of these diverse values in the online spaces that the party
constructs or, perhaps more importantly, the spaces and networks with
which the party chooses to affiliate. Online campaigning ought to balance
hierarchy, leadership and structure against voluntarism, creativity and
initiative. It ought to balance individual freedom and scepticism of
authority against collaboration, co-operation and solidarity. And it ought
to be about local community activism as much as it is about the
Westminster elite.
Though it’s evolving rapidly, the communications toolkit for the next
election is already in place. After web 2.0, a term that I do think has
substance, it’s now clear that the 1990s British political website model
is finally dead. Initiatives like Labourlist.org, for example, are
breaking the mould. Any online environment that structures a range of
opportunities for meaningful action by politicians and citizens deserves
to succeed. But I wonder if Labourlist might not end up being too driven
by the Westminster elite, especially as the urge towards command and
control intensifies in the run up to the next election campaign?
So arguably the immediate challenge is this: can Labour design its online
campaign so that it meshes with the diverse aspects of its organizational
structures that it values and wishes to maintain. But can it also loosen
and democratize its structures, to reach out to those millions of
self-organizing citizens who now conduct their politics far away from the
official party websites, in the fragmented spaces of blog comments,
discussion forums, online petitions, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, and
Wikipedia, to name but a few.
In other words, can Labour learn from its foundation, and build new
networks of democratic affiliation?