With
the Swiss and Italian governments having recently
taken joint legal action with the US Justice Dept
against Rackspace,
resulting in 20 IndyMedia websites temporarily being
taken down world-wide, once again the importance
of the Internet and the fear and loathing it seems
to instil in the powerful, especially in the political
sphere is highlighted. One expects hostility from
national governments to the Internet; after all
it takes a powerful weapon, the control of information
to their respective populations, and places it in
the hands of, well, almost anyone who is prepared
to make a bit of effort. What is more surprising
is the anger and hostility displayed towards it
from non-governmental politicians and their political
parties. Many in the leaderships of these political
parties, who come from across the political spectrum
ranging from the far left across the centre to the
right, show an equal venom towards the net or rather,
to be more precise, to those who use it to question,
propagandise and democratise.
One would have thought these opposition politicians
would have welcomed the Internet and the opportunities
it offers them to not only get across their own
and their party's policies and programs, but also
to take advantage of the net to converse with both
their membership and the wider electorate. But no,
this seems far from the case, although on the surface,
like the governments they wish to replace, they
claim to be great supporters of the Internet, many
of them continuously waffling on about the democratic
opportunities it offers. And, whilst it is true
that these days most of the political parties they
lead have expensive looking party websites, many
of which must have cost a small fortune by the standards
of the average bloggers site, on closer inspection,
as with much of today's politics, appearance (of
these web sites) is not all it seems. Once you get
behind the shiny logos and touched up photographs
of our political heroes glad-handing their constituents
and supporters, the majority of the sites are pretty
shallow. I took a look at a majority of the political
websites that are owned by the main parties that
operate within the North and South of Ireland. Among
those I looked at in the Republic were Fianna Fail,
Fine Gael, Progressive Democrats, Irish Labour Party,
Socialist Party, Greens (all Ireland), Sinn Fein
(all Ireland), Republican SF (all Ireland), and
from the North the SDLP, UUP, DUP, UKUP, Woman's
Coalition, PUP, S.E.A/SWP and the IRSP.* *
What I found was the same much of a muchness. Blue
seems the favourite colour for many of these sites;
indeed half of all the sites I visited had blue
as their main focus colour. Which is highly indicative
and perhaps not surprising taking into account the
conservative nature of most of Ireland political
parties, as blue is regarded by many as the colour
of conservatism with a small 'c'. What is more surprising
though is that the Green Party and SF also use Blue
as the dominant colour on their websites. The Woman's
Coalition, like Ken Livingstone when he stood as
an Independent candidate for London’s Mayor,
chose purple, a case of 'Hail Ceasar', I suppose.
All of the Unionist sites in the North are a pale
imitation of the British Conservative Party's website,
almost identical in some cases, which I found very
disappointing. One would have thought at least the
PUP or even the DUP would have made an attempt to
break from their former masters, if only on the
Internet. To be fair to the DUP, their site does
have a splash of yellow, perhaps we should regard
this as an omen for a more liberal DUP in the days
ahead? One can hope I suppose.
The one striking exclusion from all but one of these
sites is the inability of party members to use the
sites to converse directly with each other or with
the leadership via a message board, and vice versa.
The one exception is the Irish Republican Socialist
Party who has a link on their site to their Derry
Branch, which has its own message board. With the
past history of the Irps when settling differences,
I found this not only amusing but also somewhat
encouraging. As to the rest of Ireland's political
parties, if their members wish to get in touch with
their leadership they can post an email to the site
and patiently await a reply, but that is as far
as it goes. They are looked upon as consumers. They
are buying into the party leadership, hook, line,
and sinker, and if they have any doubts about the
product, their leaderships do not regard the Internet
as a suitable forum to discuss these concerns —
preferring, it seems, to stick to the old tried
and trusted/discredited method of settling differences
behind closed doors in smoke filled rooms, an environment
in which secret deals rather than principles come
to the fore...
To conclude there is little doubt in my mind the
powerful and not so powerful within politics, no
matter what they may profess in public, hate the
net and especially discussion lists and often derides
them to their memberships as being only for saddos,
the point being to dissuade their members from participating
on these lists and from demanding that such a tool
is attached to the party's website.
For the first time in decades, with a little effort
ordinary folk are gaining power, because information
and knowledge if used in a sensible way is power.
Whereas for centuries those with power have censored
what the masses can know, this is no longer an option
without causing a major power failure or cutting
the telephone lines down. Of course nothing will
stop the powerful in their search to find a way
to cease this free flow of not only news and information,
but also the unique opportunity that the Internet
offers political activists to organise themselves
and debate and correspond with one and other way
beyond the local or national. It is not possible
to stress enough the importance of such an opportunity
in these times of multi-national dominance via globalisation.
We live in a world in which multinational corporations
are all powerful, their representatives, whether
political or industrial, can with the flick of a
satellite video link switch, talk to one another
and make decisions that can detrimentally affect
millions of people without their approval or even
knowledge at the time of making. Lives, and indeed
as we have seen with Iraq, whole nations can be
reduced to ruin and chaos for no better reason than
personal and corporate greed. Is it any wonder that
those who have power —or dream of the day when
they will possess it— look at the freedoms
the Internet offers with real horror and in the
meantime are doing all in their power to belittle
the usefulness of the Internet and abuse those who
advocate its use as a liberating tool? This being
so, if ever one wished to witness a 21st century
version of David and Goliath, then the forthcoming
battle as to who controls the Internet will be one
to watch out for,
To conclude, as I have said above out of all the
main political parties within Ireland, I could only
find one small party that has a message board on
their website. Think about this, the Internet via
such a simply installed tool, would offer leading
Politicians the opportunity to debate on an individual
basis directly with not only their own membership,
but also members of the wider electorate. Yet despite
the fact that many of these parties have expensively
produced websites they have failed to avail themselves
of such a simple tool. So much for all their talk
about open democracy and embracing the new technologies;
far better it seems to forget about all this new
fangaled technology and leave it in the politicians'
hands, as they know best. Which in reality means
the very people who have been on ‘watch’
over the last 30 years are saying to us, "trust
us." Surreal!
http://www.finegael.ie
http://www.progressivedemocrats.ie
http://www.fiannafail.ie
http://www.greenparty.ie
http://www.labour.ie
http://www.sinnfein.ie
http://www.socialistparty.net
Social
Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP)
http://www.ukup.org
Ulster
Unionist Party (UUP)
http://www.dup.org.uk
Irish
Republican Socialist Party
Republican
Sinn Féin
Northern
Ireland Women's Coalition
http://www.pup-ni.org.uk
http://socialistenvironmentalalliance.org/cgi-bin/sea/index.pl
