The Wardman Wire

Hazel Blears is giving a talk this afternoon to the Hansard Society about the need to re-engage with the grass roots politically and the need to break out of the limitations imposed by a professional political class.

That is a subject very close to my heart. I just gave a talk about that myself, where we debated the potential for blogs to support engagement. In our case the programme was even changed after a debate on the blogs.

However, having just come off the phone to the Hansard Society, I find that it is not being streamed on the Internet - so those of us at the grass roots are not going to be allowed to engage with it. Contrast that with the “Organise, Activate, Influence” Conference in Dublin last month, when not only could it be watched online - but they also took questions from people over the Internet to model what they were calling for people to do. The videos of the presentations are archived online here.

It’s not even as if it is difficult to do: it costs - literally - NOTHING. All you need is a) a laptop, b) a camera, c) an internet connection and d) an account at a free service such as UStream.tv.

This is going to be interesting, and I’m not willing to comment in detail until I’ve seen the full text since it deserves a serious response.

Reflections

I’ll just make three brief points:

1. Why is a talk that focuses on the need to re-engage with the grass roots being given by a Professional Politician to others inside the Westminster Bubble, without using a free and easy to use way to engage the grass roots then and there?
2. Why has an attack on Political Blogs been briefed to the Main Stream Media and not to anybody at the grassroots? This looks like an attempt to create a media narrative, combined with a carefully targetted mugging.
3. I can’t help thinking that a Minister who just abolished a swathe of Local District Councils over the wishes of many of their residents, and therefore facilitated a shift of power to far more “professional” County Councillors, is asking for trouble speaking out against the professionalisation of politics.

I’ll say no more about the speech until I have read the script, but I suspect that the problem is that Ms Blears and her speech-writers are seeing the view from inside the Westminster Bubble looking out.

Debate and Examples of Political Blogs

Tom Watson has some interesting debate about this on his post.

You could also read the feedback from the Bevan Foundation Debate on Blogging.

This is a list of a few examples of the use of blogs in grass roots politics that I quoted in the comments of the Bevan Foundation Post linked:

• A blog helping show the reality of abuse: Stories behind the stats.
• A long term campaigning blog I’m involved in: SPCK News Blog.
• Here’s one written by someone at the sharp end: Benefit Scrounging Scum.
• Here’s one by somebody writing about changes in a tiny area in Belfast that I had never heard of: Holylands Warzone.
• And here’s one that sourced the photograph that Gordon Brown used to convince the G8 to take more action on Zimbabwe: Sokwanele.

  Here is their Election Violence map, and their Flick-R photo feed.

• And here is a blog article about Homosexuality in Lebanon.

The big media just doesn’t do this focused, fine-grained and long-term campaigning work. It CAN’T - that would be like asking an elephant to crochet a dolls dress. And that is why blogs are TOTALLY necessary.

More coverage:

• Justin (somewhat annoyed ).
• Chris.