Netroots to me, held yesterday at the Congress Centre, Great Russell Street, was a fundamentally great idea.
The description of Netroots is given on this web page: http://www.netrootsuk.org/about-netroots-uk/
Netroots UK will bring together hundreds of grassroots activists in central London for a day of workshops, discussions and networking activity.
Hear from innovative and effective campaigns in other fields.
Make useful contacts with key people and organisations.
Get practical training in digital techniques and technologies.
Take part in the debate on the future of UK activism.
The day will feature keynote speakers and discussions, as well as many workshops, aimed at all levels of activists. There will be plenty of opportunity for networking outside the organised sessions.
We’ll be helping make better links between campaigners from the worlds of politics, environment, development, civil liberties, unions, community groups and many more.
Labour would benefit from having a powerful social media strategy, comparable to that developed by @TimMontgomerie for the Conservatives. However, there were a barrage of tweets yesterday from supporters from Labour. One group tweeted sensibly from Oldham East and Saddleworth about their experiences in campaigning for the seat there on behalf of @Debbie_Abrahams. The other group flooded my Twitter timeline was a string of mostly nonsense tweets like, ‘can’t wait for the pub after curry tonight’. Whatever the solidarity that took place in Netroots, it unfortunately gave the impression of young well-off upper middle class people playing with their iPods and Blackberries, and raving about how wonderful, for example, Polly Toynbee is. In case it had escaped your attention, by the way, Polly Toynbee does not support Labour; her views are more in tune with the SDP. I do, of course, concede that my timeline was flooded also by negative comments about Netroots by people I wasn’t following – these tweets had been vigorously retweeted, several times. Anyway, in traditional Oxford PPE style, here is a definition of ‘humility’. Also in Oxbridge-style these days, this definition is from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humility).
Humility (adjectival form: humble) is the quality of being modest, reverential, even politely submissive, and never being arrogant, contemptuous, rude or even self-abasing. Humility, in various interpretations, is widely seen as a virtue in many religious and philosophical traditions, being connected with notions of transcendent unity with the universe or the divine, and of egolessness.
Twitter for me has become full of “RT @author1 author2 wrote a brilliant blog shortlink.org < thanks”, with the same political bloggers tweeting each other, regularly excluding other people with genuine sensible comments from their conversation. Such people look egotistical, and run the risk of genuinely alienating potential Labour supporters with their own brand of ‘being a clique’. For example, I really respect Sunder Kutwala from the Fabian Society, and so I was saddened to see the level of conversation reduced to this like some sort of exchange between Danni Minogue and Louis Walsh. The link is here.
Laurie Penny of the New Statesman – a talented writer, who has a rising profile as an emerging voice from a new generation of the radical and feminist left – rather misrepresented this point, whether accidentally or just to serve a polemical purpose, by mangling this comment on twitter into:
Sunder Katwala says it’s the shadow chancellor’s job to propose economic alternatives, not workers’. Pity Labour has no idea
I certainly don’t think about the shadow chancellor and “workers”. Indeed, I didn’t mention “workers” – except that I went on to to say that unions have a distinctive role too.
It is this aspect which actually concerns me the most about Twitter and the blogosphere. Certain individuals wishing to make a high impact in a feverish celebrity atmosphere; further to that, I am finding a lot of arrogant overtones in how people feel that they represent ‘the ordinary Labour voter’. It is this ‘born to rule’ which Labour accuses the Conservatives of which means that the whole thing for me smacks of hypocrisy. So – in summary – less tweeting and more reflection on humility wouldn’t go amiss for me. And yes – I am a Labour member too, I’m afraid. I feel we have an open goal at the moment, and we certainly haven’t learnt the lessons of Tony Blair, described by the man himself in ‘The journey’. We should be using the opportunity on really producing a radically innovative message, whilst we have the opportunity, and not concentrate on the packaging of the message much more. That’s why many – but not all – think New Labour was essentially an exercise in rebranding.
