Pirate Party All At Sea After First Election

The UK Pirate Party’s anti-copyright and intellectual property stance has failed to excite interest in many voters in its first general election.

In a blog post on Friday, the Pirate Party admitted that it attracted just 1340 votes across nine seats or 0.34 percent of the vote. The party’s John Barron described the result as a “learning experience” and one that would benefit the organisation in the long run.

“Before this election, we didn’t know what level of support we could expect,” he stated. “Nor did we know how to organise ourselves, or how to navigate the election requirements and comply with the law. So this has been a tremendous learning experience for everyone involved, and where we’ve had false starts and had to begin again, and then found a fresh way forward.”

Putting Pirate Party on the map

Putting a very postive spin on the result, Barron added that the poor showing was at least the start of something. “Everything starts somewhere, and we are now on the map,” he stated. “Now we need to build on that, and prepare for the next election.”

The Pirate Party also believes that it could benefit from a hung parliament and the greater focus on smaller parties that has resulted. “With a hung parliament and a likely minority government in the UK, this may happen sooner rather than later,” stated Barron. “There is much to do, and much hard work to develop further, however we can rightly say that we have made our first mark and that this is only the beginning for us.”

Following the success of the Swedish Pirate Party in last year’s European elections, the international group which campaigns against excessive surveillance and restrictions on file-sharing formed the UK Pirate Party.

The party lists its three main aims as:

• Reform copyright and patent law. We want to legalise non-commercial file sharing and reduce the excessive length of copyright protection, while ensuring that when creative works are sold, it’s the artists who benefit, not monopoly rights holders. We want a patent system that doesn’t stifle innovation or make life saving drugs so expensive that patients die.
• End the excessive surveillance, profiling, tracking and monitoring of innocent people by government and big businesses.
• Ensure that everyone has real freedom of speech and real freedom to enjoy and participate in our shared culture.

New campaign strategy

In the wake of the election, the Party has now committed to reorganising itself and its tactics. In a blog post on Sunday, Peter Brett, the party’s acting campaigns officer said that he had been promoted from deputy campaigns officer despite admitting that his tactics for the election hadn’t been effective.

“In my opinion, my plan for decentralised campaigning didn’t work very well; not only did it result in quite a lot of duplicated effort, but candidates didn’t have a good feel for what levels and variety of support they could reasonably ask for from the national team,” he said. “In future, I think the party should have a much clearer and more centrally-directed campaign strategy.”

But voter apathy for many of the Pirate Party’s aims was reflected in the relatively poor opposition to the Digital Economy Act which critics claim was rushed through Parliament in the so-called wash-up period before the election.