Simonsays

Battle of the Beanfield: notes on the 25th anniversary of a British atrocity

**WARNING: This post only makes passing reference to the Internet and social media in the context of politics and history**

With the summer solstice occurring earlier this week I wanted to write a post about the 25th anniversary of the Battle of the Beanfield that happened earlier this month.

This is all the more important given the complete lack of coverage the anniversary has received in the mainstream media and the fact that the legacy of what happened on the day can still be felt and in fact set the tone for the type of society in which we now live.

On the 1st June 1985 a convoy of people living on the road and summer festival party goers were making preparations to head to Stonehenge in time to set up the annual Stonehenge Free Festival ahead of the solstice.

As they headed off the road was blocked by Wiltshire Police who tipped three tons of gravel in the way, forcing the convoy into a field of beans.

What unfolded was possibly the worst incident of policy brutality seen in recent times, as some of the shots from the documentary Operation Solstice below shows.

The events of that afternoon was so atrocious that ITN’s Kim Sabido who as at the scene recorded a piece to camera in which he reported:

"What I have seen in the last thirty minutes here in this field has been some of the most brutal police treatment of people that I've witnessed in my entire career as a journalist. The number of people who have been hit by policemen, who have been clubbed whilst holding babies in their arms in coaches around this field, is yet to be counted. There must surely be an enquiry after what has happened today."

Unfortunately Kim’s voice-over was removed on the evening new bulletin along with the worst footage of police violence. The raw footage also went “missing” shortly after broadcast.

This wasn’t a one off either. The Observer’s photographer Ben Gibson was arrested on charges of “obstruction” and removed from the site while freelance photographer Tim Malyon was simply chased from the scene by police.

The negatives of the images Gibson managed to shoot were also “lost” in an office move.

I am still shocked by the events of 25 years ago. Partly by the raw violence of the Police, but also by the reminder of the lengths that the State, working with the government, will go to in order to destroy the lives of marginal groups. Because let’s get this straight.

This wasn’t just random or opportunistic violence against ‘hippies’. The actions of that afternoon systematically destroyed people’s homes, their livelihood and chances of continuing their existence on they were released from prison or hospital.

The strategy was also to prevent the media from reporting what was happening and silence or smear anyone who dared to speak out against the State’s actions. Lord Cardigan, who owned land nearby, testified in a court case against the Police brought by 21 travellers for wrongful arrest, criminal damage and assault.

Following his appearance as witness, the UK’s press ran smear stories against him as an unreliable witness - The Times calling him "barking mad”. Although he took legal action against The Times, The Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and the Daily Mirror for their attacks on him, and received written apologies and damages from each it was too little too late - especially in an age when the media permanence of Google and linking didn't exist.

In the end, the defendants won their case but the judge refused to award costs meaning that their victory was Pyrrhic: all defendants had to use their compensation to pay back the court costs.

Now isn’t the time to go into the wider socio-political issues of why the British State and government felt threatened by the alternative ways of life during the late 1970s and 1980s (although a snapshot of events is evoked in a first-hand account here) but what happened in that Beanfield in Wiltshire echoes through the intervening years to resonate in 2010.

Unlike the highly visible and predicted violence and media tactics of the police at the G20 this was a concerted and successful effort to target - or more accurately, “decommission”, to use the police description – a way of life of a significant proportion of the UK’s population.

To drag this issue back to the Internet in a way that isn’t crass or trivialises the enormity of events, a reasonable question is would the state have attempted such a tactic knowing it couldn’t control the creation and distribution of media content in a way seen during the G20?

In short: probably. Despite the notion that citizen journalism can hold power and authority to account the reality is that the exposure of abuses of power depend fundamentally on whether the use of power is deemed an abuse. Or more simply whether what happens is seen as justice, rather than injustice.

This idea was addressed comprehensively and concisely by blogger and author, Cory Doctorow, last year when he explored the abuse of police powers at the 2008 Climate Camp at Kingsnorth Power Station.

Writing candidly, Doctorow argues that the transparency wrought by social media “on its own is nothing more than spectacle: it's just another season of Big Brother in which all the contestants are revealed, over and over again, as thugs.”

Worse, the ability we now have to shine a spotlight onto the dark corners of power and authority compounds the situation in which we find ourselves.

“Transparency on its own,” concludes Doctorow “robs as much hope as it delivers, because transparency without justice is a perennial reminder that the game is rigged and that those in power govern for power's sake, not for justice.”

Coalition Government to introduce epetitions that will influence parliamentary debate

It's been a short while since my last post, and in that time we've acquired a new Conservative-Lib Dem government.  So what better way to get back back to blogging than drawing attention to an interesting piece of Conservative policy that offers a major opportunity for campaigners (especially digitally active ones) to get their issue on the the government's agenda - and potentially have a real impact on legislation.

The policy in question is referenced in the Coalition's final Programme for Government in the section on Political Reform where it sets out the following commitment:

"We will ensure that any petition that secures 100,000 signatures will be eligible for formal debate in Parliament. The petition with the most signatures will enable members of the public to table a bill eligible to be voted on in Parliament."

Pretty radical?

In essence it seems the government is committing to ensure that any petition over the magical 100,000 number will eligable for debate in Parliament.

Even more interesting is the secondary commitment to allow public petitions with the "most signatures" to also table bills. Now this second point is rather vague but I'm sure that I remember reading in Conservative policy documents during the election campaign outlined petitions with 1m signatures or more would be tabled as bills.

Two immediate thoughts spring to mind here.

The first, prompted by a Glen Tarman on the ecampaigning forum, covers the implications for campaigning groups - especially those effective at online mobilisation.

Glen argues that a "high-visibility impactful campaign is not always [...] correlative to the numbers game" and of course he's right. But he also points to recent examples where significant numbers of people have 'signed-up' to social change causes far in excess of the benchmark of 100,000 set by the current policy:

• Jubilee 2000 petition - 2,960,262 UK signatures
• Make Poverty History - 500,000 petition signatures (90% of signatures were online)
• Trade Justice Movement - 750,000 signatures
• Downing Street Road Tax epetition - 1.8m online signatures

And that's what I find interesting with the 100,000 (and possibly 1m) signatures benchmark. In the age of email, social media and social networking it really isn't too difficult (although it's not *easy* either) to mobilise significant volumes of people around an important issue.

As the list above shows, even less-mainstream aid issues can generate enough signatures to secure a parliamentary debate. Compare this with the infamous road tax epetition example or this England/World Cup Facebook Page which has generated 140,000+ Fans in 48 hours.

So what are the implications for professional campaigners? One the one hand the policy taps into our digitally networked age where online sign-ups and 'Likes' lower the barriers to taking part in social change movements and campaigns.

Conversely, it can be argued that this will enshrine a culture of 'slacktivism' in our political system which in turn may lead to a de-incentivising and disenfranchising of real-life action and its corollary, an increase in disproportionate policing and political prosecutions. 

While I'm not suggesting this is definitively the intention of the policy, it is - in my mind at least - a possible outcome. Of course, this may also have the opposite effect. Who can say yet.

The other implication of the policy worth considering is whether a distinction will be made between public petitions and NGO-driven petitions?

As well as the likelihood of generating different petition topics (e.g. international trade justice vs domestic road pricing) it's arguable that NGOs or professional campaigns are likely to consistently mobilise 100,000 signatories on 'progressive issues', as opposed to the weirder - or 'self-interested' as Glen more appropriately puts it - ones.

Any decisions around implementing the policy will need to factor in these issues if the initiative is to be seen as credibie - especially to a traditionally hostile media when it comes to anything remotely disintermediating and web-based.

It will be fascinating to see how this policy issue will develop and play out as it's clearly an integral part of the Conservative's plans for parliamentary reform that aims to put citizen empowerment at its core, e.g. the web-based Public Reading Stage for new laws.

Add to this EU plans to introduce a similar petition policy and we could start see a radical political agenda that involves and enfranchises citizens at the core of democracy. But then that might open another debate as to who and how criteria for citizenship are constructed. But I'll save that for another blog post.

Labour's iPhone app mobilising supporters

There’s a great blog post from Stuart Bruce about Labour’s iPhone app that serves as a timely reminder that new media and the Internet isn’t primarily about ‘social meeja’.

Stuart’s post come as uber-Tory blogger Iain Dale writes in the Telegraph that this so-called Internet election isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

Of course, it was largely the media that set the standards for the ‘Internet election’ and Iain’s blog post seems to argue that because candidates aren’t blogging and Twitter is "useless as a campaigning tool" then the digital election is a failure. But let's not forget it's also meant to be the Mumsnet election as well but everyone seems to have forgotten that already.

As a timely rebuttal, Stuart observes that when it comes to creating virtual networks of activists, then the Internet is doing a great job, thank you very much.

In fact, many political activists I know argue that what really matters at an election is  feet on doorsteps, canvassing phonecalls and ultimately crosses on ballot papers.

And let’s face it, until we have some concrete evidence to prove otherwise it's widely accepted Twitter or Facebook aren’t necessarily going to deliver these – although that’s not to say they don't have other important roles to play too.

And this is the mistake the media and many others in the PR world seem to make. They look to Obama and say: "it’s social media wot won it" and make the logical progression that we aren’t seeing that campaign replicated in the UK in 2010.

Those in the know, however, are acutely aware that it wasn’t social media wot won it for Obama but rather email marketing. Obama’s team judiciously used huge volumes of targeted data to motivate voters ahead of polling day and mobilise them on polling stations.

Data protection laws differ in the US from the UK and while no UK political party yet seems able to replicate Obama’s email campaign, Stuart runs through some of the successes Labour has been having with it’s iPhone app in identifying and mobilizing voters.

The app has been designed and built using feedback form grassroots activists and is packed with functionality that empowers people to get out on the doorstep, make phone calls and attend events.

Specific features allow users to access the Labour manifesto in text or video format, use GPS to locate party campaigning events happening near them, read Labour Party tweets, call and canvas people using Labour's virtual Phonebank tool (crucially, it this works within the UK's data protection legislation - something the Tories failed to take into account recently).

In fact, the app is so good, even the acerbic Popbitch gives it the following praise:

“The ‘Inside the Campaign’ section is, surprisingly, not mind numbingly dull.”

Stuart tells us that Labour’s learning is: “if you want to mobilise large numbers of people in a network to do things for you then you need to involve them.”

And on that point he couldn’t be more right.

Two post-event analyses of the #DEBill by me

As you might have seen in my previous somewhat splenetic call to action against the Digital Economy Bill the past few weeks have been spent with my blood pressure rather high.

Perhaps out of therapy – or merely because it’s offered a fascinating case study of how social media can be used to potentially open up some form of direct democracy – I’ve pulled together a couple of blog posts on the subject.

The posts broadly cover the use of social media to campaign against the bill and the – I argue – ground-breaking way Twitter was used to report the crucial debates in real-time as well as engage with politicians mid-debate.

The first post was published over on We Are Social's (i.e. my work's) blog while the second was guest posted over at Royal Holloway University’s New Political Communications Unit blog.

Enjoy!

The digital industry must act now to stop the Digital Economy Bill

The way the UK’s Digital Economy Bill was created by Lord Mandelson and the music industry was  staggering in its audacity and truly disgusting. There was no attempt to veil the fact that the legislation was patently designed to protect the content industries; support executive salaries (and don’t for one second think that this will protect artists’ revenues. It doesn’t and it won’t) and insulate industrial busienss models form the creativity and innovation opened up by the Internet. It was also clear that the Bill would directly impact on citizens and consumers’ personal freedom and rights.

Outstandingly, as this vile piece of legislation has passed through the democratic process (and having been party to some of the to-ing and fro-ing of amendments in the Lords, I use that term loosely) the application of corrupt, money-driven, corporate, executive-serving self-interest has reached even loftier heights of shame.

I won’t dwell on the passion Lord Mandelson has shown in seeking to drive the Bill through the Commons without democratic debate; nor the disgusting collusion shown by all mainstream parties to date in order to gratify big business by preventing a debate; not even the appalling silence from both my own MP, Stewart Jackson, and Lord Clement Jones, who tabled a catastrophic amendment in the Lords at the behest of his content producing clients for at his firm DLA Piper. Without any doubt he is truly a vile, greed-obsessed man more passionate about protecting his client’s interests and his personal wealth than individual, human right.

Instead I want to call on my friends and peers that work in the digital and technology industries and issue a call to action: stand up for democracy; stand up against authoritarian, corporate-driven legislation; stand up for what is right.

The effects of the Digital Economy Bill as it stands will have serious implications for everyone. Us digital media types won’t be able to stop off at a café for a coffee and check our emails because free, open wifi will be shut off. Our children won’t be able to do their homework or learn about the wonders of the wider world because the household has been disconnected without evidence after someone has been suspected of 'illegally' sharing a large file.

But simply, if the Digital Economy Bill is passed we'll be faced with a bleak future where the stupefied consumers of Huxley’s Brave New World are now being shown the Orwell 1984 treatment.

Please. Please. Please. Act NOW before it is too late. Wake up from your stupefaction and do something:

• Email your MP demanding they call for a debate using 38Degrees easy form
• Join the Demo outside parliament next Wednesday 24th March 2010
• Join the Open Rights Group [Disc: I’m a board member]

Mumsnet election: an analysis

The following was posted as a guest post at Royal Holloway University's New Political Communications Unit blog.

Justine Roberts, founder of online mums and parenting community, Mumsnet, spoke at an Albion Society event on digital democracy last week and provided a fascinating insight into the future of politics, digital campaigning and organisational structures.

Justine questioned why so many politicians were keen to get in front of Mumsnet members and suggested the reasons may be more conventional than first thought.

Firstly, Mumsnet, as a concept or new media channel is much easier to grasp than other social media tools, such as Twitter. While Twitter is still largely a dangerous and mysterious tool to a lot of MPs, with inherent etiquette, esoteric terminology and demanding, difficult to manage real-time functionality, Mumsnet is much more like the Richard and Judy of media politics.

You have a 95% female community; mass membership (1m uniques a month) and since the media claimed the election a Mumsnet election the community has been on the watch-list of most Westminster hacks meaning what MPs say is likely to get reported in the traditional media.

Given this high level of awareness, does Mumsnet have any real political power, Justine asked.
The answer in short was, yes. Because, despite MPs' perceptions that Mumsnet is just another traditional media channel with a mass, passive readership, they've overlooked one major difference: participation and self-organisation.

Mumsnet real political potential lies in driving single-issue campaigns relevant to members. Justine gave an example where members had vociferously opposed plans by the Government to change the childcare voucher scheme, challenged the prime minister on a live webchat on the site, and pushed the most popular current Downing Street ePetition (currently standing at 99,000+ signatories). The campaign eventually caused Gordon Brown to change the unpopular policy.

Given this potential effect on policy, Government is now engaging the community proactively. The wisdom of the community is being exploited by the Department of Health, who are involving Mumsnet community members to help develop its policy towards women that have suffered miscarriages.

What this all adds up to, Justine suggested pragmatically, was that while Mumsnet may not have political power in the traditional sense, it certainly has power to mobilise its members in the same way organisations such as 38Degrees, the single-issue political mobilisation platform, can.

This was a fascinating comparison, given that Mumsnet is also a peer-to-peer support community for many other members as well as a more traditional news portal for even more.  I couldn't help wondering about the potential for a study of Mumsnet to test its organisational hybridity.

Finally, Justine dispelled the myth of the bloc vote in Mumsnet. Their own internal surveys of members' voting intentions revealed that party support is fairly evenly split across the three main parties. Despite this, however, the BNP was actually caught out trying to infiltrate discussions and shape debates around a fascist/far-right agenda.

While not entirely conclusive evidence of Mumsnet's organisational hybridity, Justine's conclusion could certainly be interpreted as reflecting the complex socio-technological structures at play within the community. “Mumsnet,” she concluded, “is a non-aligned mouthpiece for its community. It’s not a union bloc vote; it’s more like an octopus with pre-menstrual stress.”

MyDavidCameron: some post event analyses

With the buzz about the remixed Conservative Party election posters and Clifford Singer’s MyDavidCameron website a few days old I thought I’d reflect on the debate and offer up some analysis about what might be going on here and what it means for political parties ahead of the election.

But before I can do that I need to jump back to September last year when I discussed Manuel Castell’s theory of networked power and suggested how it could be applied to the UK’s political blogosphere.

In a nutshell, Castells argues that power in networks is fundamentally about the ability to establish and control particular networks.

This can be achieved by one of two ways:

1. the ability to constitute network(s), and to program/reprogram the network(s) in terms of goals assigned to the network (largely by setting and controlling the way we perceive issues and information)
2. the ability to connect and ensure cooperation of different networks by sharing common goals and combining resources (i.e. identifying like-minded networks with which you can work to challenge the dominant program)

Castells calls actors in the first mechanism ‘programmers’ and those in the second mechanism, ‘switchers’.

I argued that Conservative and right-wing blogs were successful because they had programmed the UK’s political network by a) adapting early and b) creating a broad anti-government debate which resonated with the media and wider public.

This meant that left and liberal bloggers had to find common issues and threads with each other and the public with which to try and switch the dominant power in the network away from anti-government/right-wing debate.

So what does this tell us about the MyDavidCameron success? Firstly, I think it supports my original hypothesis. That is, Labour have identified a wider – albeit smaller - network outside of the UK political blogosphere with a shared value (mocking David Cameron/the Conservatives and graphic design).

They are then co-opting this network, forming a strategic partnership but letting the idea and content go where it goes, as opposed to trying to centrally plan and control what happens with the David Cameron imagery.

In my opinion, a political party having the foresight and ability to spot an opportunity like this and use it to help try to ‘switch’ the dominant discourse in the political blogosphere is smart.

Yes, there may be those that say: “well, who wouldn’t jump on an opportunity if it arose?” But I’d argue that the traditional approach to this kind of online meme would be to try and own it: take it in-house.*

I think Labour have deliberately avoided doing this, having learnt the lesson from last summer’s #Welovethenhs grassroot campaign that which Labour co-opted, arguably tried to centralise and quickly destroyed the value in the network. Compare how they're currently using a Labour Party version of MyDavidCameron (i.e. becoming another node in the network) versus their mini-campaign site for #Welovethenhs which argubly tries to own the decentralised campaign network.

But thinking logically about the MyDavidCameron campaign: would Labour seeking to ‘own’ the network really kill it in the same way that it killed #Welovethenhs?

I’m not so sure for two reasons:

1. Firstly, the #Welovethenhs campaign was not a pro-government campaign; nor was it an anti-tory campaign. It was a pro-public healthcare system campaign. It’s an issue that traditionally has a shared value for with liberal/left networks but not solely. Labour arguably killed this campaign as it tried to go further than switching and instead reprogram the networks’ values as pro-government/pro-Labour.
2. Secondly, network alignment based on shared opposition to David Cameron and/or the Conservatives is one thing, but the reality is that only Labour can defeat the Conservatives at an election. Therefore, Labour trying to reprogram the goal of the networks driving the MyDavidCameron campaign to be pro-Labour is actually a smart move.

What this says to me is that now we’re entering the run up to an election, the political discourse is no longer split broadly between anti-government/right-wing ideology and pro-Government goals (that were largely indistinguishable form Labour policy).

Instead, Labour is starting to reprogram the UK’s political networks through creating a discourse of Conservatives vs Labour. It’s early days and the Conservatives still have the upper hand but I’d argue that the MyDavidCameron campaign plus the recent emergence of distinct left and Labour-aligned voices is starting to re-balance the pro-right-wing goals of the UK’s political networks.

Footnote:
* What this reveals is Labour’s ability to switch between a traditional command and control political party and a node in a fluid, participative network. Something Andrew Chadwick has defined as “organisational hybridity” – the internet driven phenomena that enables organisations and institutions to switch between being member-led hierarchical institutions, single-issue campaign groups or temporary, loosely joined networks of like-minded individuals. I believe this is what political parties of the future will look like: political parties in all but name, But that’s something for another post.

**UPDATED** Ofcom: remind me what it's for again?

I'm sorry. What's the point of Ofcom again? I'm sure it plays a valuable role regulating something but it seriously doesn't get the internet does it?

I am blown away by the sheer mind-numbing stupidity of today's report (which the BBC seems to be slavishly re-gurgitating without question.

According to Ofcom, the UK is one of the "world's most advanced countries in terms of digital communications". Why might you ask? Is it because we amazing broadband speeds? Is it because we have cloud wifi covering major cities?

No. It is because - and prepare yourselves for this - we, as a nation:

• spend more time watching TV than other countries
• send more texts than other countries
• leads the world in online advertising (WTF??)

This blows me away. It really does. Call me a cynic but the reasons given hardly amount to anything substantial or even coherent (texts,TV, online ads?).

But what if you were a government trying to push through an insanely authoritarian bill that will curtail free, public use of the internet. You might want to convince the public that Britain is a great digital nation, thus giving the impression they can be trusted to make the right decisions.

It's not as if the report is independent. It's by Ofcom, a government body. The same body who will likely gets lots of money and power from enforcing the draconian laws in Peter Mandelson and the music industry's  Digital Economy Bill.

Sorry to harp on, but the report (or at least the BBC's coverage of it) sounds hollow. While it may be purely coincidence, given the nightmare of Mandelson's Digital Economy Bill which will certainly push us down any real global measure of 'digitalness' I can't help wonder if the two are connected.

**UPDATE** The BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones tells me via Twitter that it's a just "a bunch of stats" Ofcom release every year. So it's more likely that it's a crappy news angle for a press release rather than anything sinister.

Mandelson's Digital Economy Bill will switch off public wifi

Another amazing and appalling consequence of the Digital Economy Bill has been unearthed by the Open Rights Group (ORG) and it's digital law team.

In a blog post analysing the detail of the Bill it seems that anyone offering wifi will held accountable if someone uses it to illegally download files. This means they'll face criminal proceedings and disconnection.

From the ORG blog:

"An end to internet cafes and shared networks

The Bill appears to impose obligations on account holders for the behaviour of other users. This will adversely affect many businesses and stop the many people who currently extend their access to the internet to people in their community."

Take action now to prevent this from becoming a reality.

This is an important announcement...

Those that know me may be surprised that I haven't yet blogged about the government's appalling behaviour to take a fat wad of cash from the music industry in return for turning a blind eye to the amazing power the internet is bringing every facet of humankind and instead amending British law so that we can all take a giant leap backwards in terms of digital rights.

This is purely done to ensure that the UK's moronic entertainment industry executives get to keep their fucking enormous salaries until they retire, upon when they can also cash in their even more enormous fucking pensions.

But that's not all: in case the government wasn't sure that this is a totally fucking stupid idea that might cost them votes, they're also criminalising young people (some might say the electorate of the future), potentially breaching individuals' universal human rights and into the bargain Lord Mandelson has also opted to award himself the personal power to amend copyright laws willy-nilly with the barest minimum of parliamentary oversight.

This (and a whole lot more evilness, such as the loss of free public wifi) is wrapped up in a nifty Bill announced in last month's Queen's Speech called the Digital Economy Bill.

If you want the biggest, most hilarious of laughs, take a look at what I predicted and indeed hoped might be in the Bill when the initial consultation phase was announced last year.

Here's what really happened:

1. Lord Carter appointed to consult on Digital Britain 
2. Lord Carter speaks with various people and turnsout a not-perfect but very respectable white paper
3. Lord Carter moves on
4. Digital Britain progresses
5. Lord Mandelson meets David Geffen and host of other music industry chiefs
6. Lord Mandelson reverses pretty much everything that made sense in the original white paper and announces plans to turn himself into the Digital Witchfinder General

Your help is needed...

Here's what you can do now to help:

1. Join the Open Rights Group (disc: I'm on the board) to help them lobby for sanity to be amended back into the bill and protect your future online rights
2. Sign the Downing Street petition, signed by the likes of Stephen Fry, Graham Linehan, and loads others
3. Adopt your MP to make sure they know about the insanity of what the Digital Economy Bill will inflict on the public

We need your help *NOW* - Mandelson is adamant that the Bill gets passed before they lose the chance to fuck us all up by shutting down the internet. Please take on one of the actions aboce and help spread the word by Tweeting, emailing or Facebooking this post.

Thank you.