johninnit

At Congress 2008 in Brighton, which is turning out as interesting as ever - spending a week in the company of pretty much every element of the UK labour movement.

I spoke at a fringe today on online organising, along with Eric Lee and  APT’s Paul Smith. For the 99.995% of trade unionists who didn’t make it along, here’s part of what I had to say - my 4 predictions on how unions (or at any rate unionists) will be using Web 2.0 in the next couple of years: (more…)

For me, one of the most interesting things about the screenwriters’ dispute in the States (click here to support it!), is the use that individual Writers’ Guild members have been making of online video to contribute to the overall campaign. Here are a few of them (hat tip: James). (more…)

I noticed something I liked a lot today. A bunch of CWU members, the dodgyclaimers, made a pop video parody to promote the union’s dispute with Royal Mail, and stuck it on YouTube. To say it’s not very polished would be a bit of an understatement, but it more than gets the point across - real people telling their story in immediately human terms. It’s set to the tune of the Proclaimers’ 500 miles:

“And we all walk 500 miles,
but Royal Mail want 500 more.
We’re going to be the men that walk 1,000 miles,
then fall down at your door.”

A couple of hours (and most likely a couple of beers) of an evening, with a cheap digital camera, free editing software (Yes Mac fiends, you get it on Windows too…), free hosting on YouTube, and 16,032 people have seen it. That’s 16,032! Loads of favourites and a string of comments that show it managed to motivate strikers all over the country.

So they did another, “The Posties” - sung to the Monkees, and another, a skit on “Brick in the wall” with the genius chorus “We don’t need no Alan Leighton”.

And the remixers are at it too. This isn’t new on social media - For every OK Go routine, there are a squillion kids who’ll make tributes (I even saw the treadmill dance acted out with Lego), and this phenomenon has already happened to dodgyclaimers’ Floyd cover. It is new for unions though

I’ve seen a few activist video skits from the US, but these are the first examples I’ve seen from the UK. Some unions are  doing well investing in swishy video reporting (Amicus) or quality campaign ads (PCS) but this kind of grassw00ts activism has every bit as much power to get the message out fast and wide - the scattergun approach means it only takes on to be funny. Unions might find it scary to deal with loose cannon communications during sensitive disputes, but there’s a lot to be gained from going with the flow of this creative individual activism. I’m hoping this is only the tip of a very big, and very funny, iceberg.

Well, yes apparently we do now, and it’s called Labourhome.org. Very mysterious, a nice open blog to stimulate debate in Labour’s digital grassroots (grassw00ts?) circles - a MySpace for us tired lefty hacks.

It’s quite elegant (in the way only an empty website can be) and it seems to be built to encourage newbies to adding their 4pth without being intimidated by the cliqueishness of the more energetic political blogs. Hopefully there are going to be some more detailed help files coming though, as it’s likely to totally bewilder anyone who’s not already thoroughly used to this kind of thing.

Anyway, well done those chaps, and let’s hope this is one of the first steps we need to start catching up slightly with the right wing blogohemisphere, who’ve rather stolen a march on us. I hope Conservativehome realise that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!

http://www.labourhome.org