Recently Labour party activist and former councillor Andrew Brown tossed in a gem of a comment on this blog celebrating the role of political parties at local level. He said they should:
stop believing the press they get and recognise the strengths they have in being a persuader for better civic cultures. It’s members of political parties that a big part of the civic glue, serving on school governing bodies and health boards, active in local charities, and of course the people who put themselves forward for elections to councils, regional bodies and parliament.
I emailed Andrew asking if he might expand, and so he does over on his blog with a plea for activists to match their on-the-ground civic commitments with more engaging activity online.
These thoughts come from looking at the online presence of the local parties here in Lewisham. None of the sites are absolutely dreadful (although the West Lewisham Tories old site was close to it) but none of them make any real attempt to go beyond a fairly basic description of who they are.
In part I expect the reason why these sites are as uninspiring as they are is because no one is really thinking like a visitor to the site.
I’d like to see us try to do things differently, I’d like to show you the range of people who have joined the Labour Party and why they think that by doing this they are helping create a better Lewisham and a better Britain.
I’d like to try and explain a bit more what being an active member of the party means to me and the hundreds of other Labour Party members across Lewisham; what inspires us to join, to become active and to stand for positions. How we contribute to our communities in all sorts of ways that are all but invisible in the mainstream debate about Lewisham, but which mean that our schools, hospitals and charities are rooted in the communities they serve.
I’d like to show you just how hard our representatives work on your behalf, and some of the successes they have.
And I’d like to have a better debate about policy.
I think that some of the new ways of using the web would help do that, but we need to believe that we have a message that is worth telling and that the public might be interested in hearing it.
And while the web is not the primary place for this to happen, it should be part of a strategy of trying to describe who we are, what we believe and why we think you might want to help out.
As Matthew Taylor argued at the recent e-democracy '06 conference, much political blogging just reflects the negative, snide, gossipy slanging match between traditional media and politicians. He called for more thoughtful deliberation - as does Andrew. He certainly leads the way on his blog, being prepared, for example, to argue the benefits of a directly elected mayor when others are mounting a campaign to "bring back democracy". What's particularly democratic about having councillors, rather than electors, choose the Mayor, asks Andrew. I also like the way that Andrew offers a round up of what's happening in Lewisham.
I hope Andrew is successful in further encouraging more civic online activity in Lewisham. I suspect this is going to come from individual activist bloggers rather than a speedy transformation in the way that the main parties present themselves. Individual voices online are easier to develop than collective ones. But then, that's another example of how individuals and social media can show how to do things differently... and as this little blog-comment-email-blog-blog exchange shows it's easy to start a conversation.
Hello David
There are issues going on in Lewisham that are vital to the future of lewisham yet seem to be pushed to the back of the table.
I'm involved with a number of residents who are opposed to the Lewisham Gateway scheme as it stands at the moment.
Apart from a number of areas of concern, what may have started out as 'regenaration' and was taken up by a number of groups who had an idea that this may improve the centre of Lewisham (open up the waterways, provide more green space etc etc) has now descended into a developers feast to see how much money they can make out of the development and how high they can build the tower blocks to make a profit – and lets be in no doubt about this – at the expense of the residents and users of Lewisham.
It is a complex subject that requires effort to understand and be involved, an effort we, as residents, and not members of a political party, are prepared to make.
We are prepared to make this effort because we believe we are looking after the interests of Lewisham (in our own small way), and we are continually coming up against bureaucratic brick walls that need to be challenged.
So, what about us?
What about the people who don't want to affiliate themselves with a party – any party – that will gobble up our beliefs and put them into the 'regeneration' pot. (The same regeneration pot that has granted Manchester of "super casino")
Anyway, please visit our website at www.lewishamgateway.org.
Richard Proctor
Posted by: richard proctor | January 31, 2007 at 11:02 AM