Left and liberal bloggers unite

A number of bloggers including quite a few Greens were at a meeting organised by Sunny Hundal of Liberal Conspiracy yesterday, discussing the future of Liberal-left blogging.

It was a very interesting discussion: all of the bloggers felt that MPs and the political establishment as a rule just ‘doesn’t get it’ (as several of them said, self-consciously echoing Howard Dean’s online campaigner Joe Trippi).

For instance, the editor of Comment is Free said that their pieces are now read in much greater volume than those in the paper itself, but this has not broken through into the understanding of the political hierarchy.

Bloggers on the other hand do understand how grassroots connections can be recreated through activities like blogging, and break into real life activity. Labour home has become the hub of a campaign to unseat their Treasurer, to at the very least create enough votes against him to signal the dissatisfaction of their membership.

(I’m very glad I have to say not to belong to a party where the maximum impact the membership can expect to have is to register protest.)

Both Liberal and Labour bloggers noted the independence of the blogging networks that have grown up in their parties. Both Lib Dem Voice and Labour home are independently run and reflect the content of their party’s memberships, and are often critical of their leaderships.

This is a phenomenon that the Green Party has yet to grapple with, but I am sure that on occasion things will emerge.

It’s also worth mentioning the discussion about the lack of female bloggers, and the discussion as to why this is, and to the nature of feminist blogging. It is noticeable that three of the Green Party’s most successful blogs are by women.

A lot of the meeting focused on what sort of campaigning can be created online, and there was an emphasis that it needs to cross back into the real world, but that online networks can now be as powerful, if not more powerful, than those that existed pre-television, in the last age of mass participation in democratic politics.

One point that did not emerge is the differences between these old-style grassroots networks and the new. There are a number that make them more powerful, in my view. Firstly, information is much more connected, referencable, researchable, and recorded. Conversations exist, potentially, in perpetuity. Connections can be made across time and space. They are potentially extremely visible.

On the downside, there is a tendency I believe on the web to find what you want and to screen out everything you don’t like. It is extremely easy for liberal left bloggers to essentially talk to either themselves, or at best to other politically-committed people, while never reaching out to the wider public. That still has to be done on the streets!

Find links to other reactions here.

Jim Killock's site