Space, Communication and the Daily exercise of solidarity: An Exploration of Distributed Discourse in the cyber campaigns of fire fighters in the UK
(Draft copy)
John Hogan, Senior Lecturer in Industrial Relations, University of Hertfordshire, UK (J.1.Hogan@herts.ac.uk)
Andreja Zivkovic, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cambridge, UK (az242@cam.ac.uk)
Through the examination of official and unofficial firefighters web sites, combined with virtual and real time in-depth interviews with key actors, this paper examines the specific domain of union governance, and suggests that tendencies towards oligarchy (sustained by control over the flow of information, access to superior knowledge, skill in the art of politics and a membership diverted by the pulls of work, family and leisure) are challenged by the distributed discourse that lies at the heart of organizing in the information age. In particular, we draw out the possibilities for greater equality of knowledge, distributed control over the means of communication, the enhanced communicative skills of more ordinary union members and a reconfiguration of the time-space dimension of communicative practice. Finally, the paper explores the role that distributed forms of communication and organisation can play in trade union renewal, particularly in promoting participatory democracy and overcoming tendencies to bureaucratic inertia.
Paper presented at The 37th World Congress of the International Institute of Sociology, Stockholm, Sweden July 5-9, 2005
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honoured disguise and borrowed language….In like manner, the beginner who has learned a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he assimilates the spirit of the new language and expresses himself freely in it only when he moves in it without recalling the old and when he forgets his native tongue.
Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon”
There is little doubt that we are living through a period of profound transformation, not least when confronted with the new possibilities unleashed by the seemingly permanent revolution in the world of information communication technology. The revolution in communicative possibilities is highly significant for trade union organisation and mobilisation. It is our contention that the space created for “the spirit of the new language”, distributed discourse, might well be opportune for a movement seemingly locked in the embrace of failure. However, there are compelling reasons to conclude that adaptation to the language and logics of the “Information Age” is labouring under the unbearable weight of tradition, most notably the obsession of centres of power to remain within the paradigm of the “native tongue” of control. In fact, it is rather telling that when a major conference was hosted by the TUC to discuss the implications of the internet in May 2001, one of the central calls was for the establishment of an “Internet Czar” to codify legitimacy and oversee union activity and presence on the internet.
Through the examination of official and unofficial firefighters web sites, combined with virtual and real time in-depth interviews with key actors, this paper examines the specific domain of union governance, and suggests that tendencies towards oligarchy (sustained by control over the flow of information, access to superior knowledge, skill in the art of politics and a membership diverted by the pulls of work, family and leisure) are challenged by the distributed discourse that lies at the heart of organizing in the information age. In particular, we draw out the possibilities for greater equality of knowledge, distributed control over the means of communication, the enhanced communicative skills of more ordinary union members and a reconfiguration of the time-space dimension of communicative practice. Finally, the paper explores the role that distributed forms of communication and organisation can play in trade union renewal, particularly in promoting participatory democracy and overcoming tendencies to bureaucratic inertia.
1. ICT, Distributed Discourse and Trade Unionism
2. Firefighting in Cyberspace
We shall now turn to the cyber campaigns associated with the bitter national industrial dispute that raged within Britain’s fire service between the autumn of 2002 and the summer of 2003. Fire fighters under the leadership of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) mounted an ambitious campaign for a substantial increase in wages. Events over the period included widespread demonstrations, a large number of meetings between the FBU and National Employers, high profile government-sponsored reports, moves to change the law governing the service, deep divisions between the labour and trade union leaderships, and most dramatically, a series of national strikes, all of which received wide spread media coverage. The dispute ended on June 12th 2003, when a delegate conference ratified the recommendation of the FBU leadership to accept a highly controversial, and for a substantial minority unsatisfactory, settlement.
Since the end of official hostilities on the national stage, a series of local disputes have broken our, including widespread wildcat unofficial solidarity action. Within the realm of union governance, acrimony continues to prevail, with deep divisions manifest in recriminations over the conduct and outcome of the national dispute, with special emphasis placed upon the quality of leadership provided and the opportunities for and absence of participatory membership control over union affairs. Rank and file organisations have been banned and union leaders have complained of illegitimate criticism. Perhaps most significant of all, the elections for the post of General Secretary of the FBU in May 2005 witnessed the defeat of Andy Gilchrist, who led the union through the dispute by a candidate, Matt Wrack, who is firmly identified with opposition to the June 2003 settlement and emphasises further the centrality of militant mobilisation. Nevertheless, it is still apparent that the governing body of the union, the Executive Council is still dominated by representatives associated with and loyal to the outgoing General Secretary. The direction and strategy of the FBU are likely to remain subjects of contestation at both national and local levels.
It is perhaps ironic that people at times accused of embodying the spirit of “old” labour should pursue their struggles into cyber-space. But that is precisely what they did and continue to do. Both the national union and unofficial activists within the FBU have identified cyber-space as a crucial terrain of engagement. As part of a long range research project into the use of the internet by fire-fighters, the following draws upon electronic and face to face interviews, as well as data generated from the close monitoring of official and unofficial web sites and discussion lists, between October 2002 and June 2005. In presenting our findings, we begin our journey from the point of departure provided by the unofficial web site: 30k FirePay.co.uk.
As the fire fighters’ pay campaign unfolded, one FBU union activist, Simon Hickman, established an unofficial web site in the June of 2002, the 30k FirePay.co.uk site. In 2004, the site was re-titled UK-Fire, with a new website address (http://www.uk-fire.net/).
Given space limitations, it is impossible to convey the full extent and depth of these sites. However, there are a number of features that are particularly noteworthy. The 30k site proved to be a very rich information resource, containing electronic archive and news materials, links to notices of rallies and meetings, news of strike schedules, and directed links to the facility to lobby MPs electronically and to view the official strike bulletins on the official/national FBU site. It used a search engine, invitations to contact the site and facilities to directly communicate the address of the web site to friends. Following an attack on the site in November 2002, Mr Hickman was compelled to move to a dedicated server, a cost that viewers were invited to contribute to, made possible by amongst other things an online electronic debit payment facility. Perhaps most interesting of all was the space made to interact and discuss the campaign and other matters of concern in chat rooms and forums. The registration process to enter discussion on the 30k site was quick and straightforward, interactions are moderated and the product of debate is openly available for view in separate interest groups.
All of the above features have been retained since the renaming of the site. There is no doubt that the 30k site has been seen as important. By the end of 2002, the site came third in an international poll of the best labour movement websites (official or unofficial) for the year (http://www.labourstart.org/lwsoty/) and generated a staggering volume of visits and participation. That the site should be regarded as a very rich communicative and information space was testified to by John Prescott, Deputy Prime Minister, who during the national dispute admitted in parliament that he regularly visited the site to gain insight into what was happening. The successor site, UK-Fire (http://www.uk-fire.net/), has maintained, although perhaps in different forms, this high status, if for no other reason, that the FBU Executive Council has seen fit, as of June 17th 2005 to take the step of trying to use Union financial, legal and administrative resources to exert disciplinary control over the site’s administrators and participants, with the ruling that:
…
membership; administration and posting on the UK–FIRE website are contrary and
prejudicial to the interest of the Union. Instruct that no member or official
should participate in the aims, objectives or administration of the site by
posting on the site, operating or helping to operate it or having any dealings
with the site except dealings specifically to ask for the removal of material
on the site.
Rule that the site acts out-with the democratic structure and democratic
processes of the Union.
Seek further legal advice to identify and take legal/IUD action against the
site, its operators, contributors and against members who offend or breach FBU
rules and policies.
That a standing EC Sub-Committee be established with a remit to ensure that
members and officials who are the subject of postings on this or other websites
which undermine the aims and policies of FBU are afforded the full protection
of the FBU. The remit of the Committee will include identifying and initiating
the appropriate action against any member or official who fail to uphold the
aims and policies of the FBU on this site or any other website.
While space constraints prevent a comprehensive assessment of these sites there are a number of key observations that can be made.
Multi-Voicing and Visibility
Between August 19th 2002, when the site began to monitor and record site visits, and July 8th 2003, the 30k web site was visited 487,418 times, with the viewing of 2,959,367 pages, while there were nearly 5,000 visitors registered as members of the chat rooms and forums, who combined to contribute to the posting of over 126,000 messages. Both the 30k site and the FBU official site deployed the same software for generating statistics about visits, which allows easy comparisons to be made. On the available evidence, we can see that the unofficial site[1] clearly outperforms the official site[2]. The average number of visits per day at the time of inspection, July 8th 2003, stood at 1,168 for the official site and 1,875 for the unofficial site, average visit length was 1 minute 37 seconds for the former and 9 minutes 20 seconds for the latter, in terms of the average number of pages viewed per day, the official site scored 1,538 while the unofficial site registered 9,744. Thus, while mindful of the perils of relying upon polls as well as raw statistical data, such evidence suggests that the 30k site did achieve a significant level of visibility for the cause, while providing a communicative space for the multiplication of voices in a manner that could not be achieved in real time and space. Furthermore, the evidence suggests support for our contention that the relatively low cost and distributed character of the technology provides ready means for actors outside of official structures and with far fewer resources to access the means of developing and transmitting information, to such good effect that they can even out perform established institutions.
Skill Development
The power provided to the non-expert is illustrated when one profiles the web master of the 30k site . Hickman is not a computer professional. He is a fire fighter and an FBU station representative. As he explains,
“The initial set-up took a couple of days if that. I run a few personal sites so I had the hang of it really. http://www.salfordfire.co.uk/ was the first one I set up and that site has changed allot since that was started in '98 but has given me the tools to run this site. Day to day running of the site….Normally a couple of hours updating it daily, that's searching for news and any other ideas that have been passed to me.
The time consuming part is the forum. I have 5 people helping me moderate it...” (e-interview)
A number of key issues are suggested here. The task and cost of managing the site are distributed, from the many who supply information to the few others who share in the task of moderating remotely. That said, cyberspace does not exist as a ‘virtual’ paradise, free from the burdens, ties and demands of everyday life, for as Hickman has also pointed out, his activities have placed upon his domestic space and time considerable pressures, indicating that internet communication still takes considerable time to do properly. However, there is no doubt that the costs of matching the product of his efforts through conventional communicative means would have been prohibitive.
While it is evident that Hickman developed his skills over time through practice on the web, it is also the case that his site is a space in which skills are developed. Beyond the development of understandings that might come from debate, the site also allows individuals to share ideas about how to systematically analyse documents and to draft responses and to then share the products of their efforts with other visitors. For instance, in one stream of discussion a contributor posted their thoughts on the White paper put forward by the government to modernise the fire service, asking for critical comments so that the quality of response might be improved. Another stream included the posting of a letter that one activist had published in his local newspaper, outlining the arguments in support of the pay claim, an intervention that was greeted favourably by others, many of whom committed themselves to use it as a template for their own letter writing efforts. These examples illustrate our argument that virtual asynchronous meeting has the advantage of allowing for communicative skills to be developed and confidence to be built through rehearsal in safe spaces (Greene, Hogan and Grieco, 2003).
Transparency, Performance and Auditing Accountability
The 30k site also illustrates our arguments about the implications of internet communication for the enforcement of transparency, performance auditing and accountability. Many contributors to the site commented on what they perceived to be inadequacies in the democratic credentials of the FBU and its leadership:
“…the only truly democratic point of this dispute was the initial strike ballot. Since then democracy has been placed back on the shelf where this union has kept it for many years. This site ….is the only democratic outlet left to us. Meetings are re arranged or called at short notice, motions are ruled out of order by archaic rules intended to stifle debate, huge branches are cancelled out by groups of 5 or 6 who's branches carry equal weight.
Democracy also works on the majority making an informed descision based on all the facts and they haven't exactly been forthcoming have they? (posted at 21:39 on 5/6/03). http://www.30kfirepay2.co.uk/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=13978
When the FBU leadership attempted to persuade the union membership that they should settle, the site became a forum in which the offers were discussed Amid accusations that the centre was attempting to restrict the flow of information between branches to prevent a momentum of opposition developing, some of the contributors to the 30k site used the space to organise opposition, part of which involved exchanging information about how the campaign to reject the proposals was developing in different locations. The site also became a forum for complaint about the voting methods used to conclude the dispute http://www.30kfirepay2.co.uk/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=14116. Since the conclusion of the pay campaign, both the old and new site carried a number of messages calling for the resignation of the General Secretary and other leaders. Here readers are reminded of the transformation of the positions adopted over time, allowing the easy comparison of statements of defiant confidence early in the dispute with the “resignation to realism” at the close. Furthermore, amid allegations that the union leadership was so wary of criticism that it was attempting to postpone annual conference, the 30k site became a place where activists from different branches and regions could post the result of the resolutions passed in their localities calling for the conference to take place, while it was noted that such information would be useful to collate for the purpose of exposing the extent to which the leadership of the union were prepared or not to accommodate the wishes of the membership (see:http://www.30kfirepay2.co.uk/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=15215).
Union Democracy, Disintegration and Distributed Discourse?
In noting the critical voices released on the 30k site, one might be left with the impression that the FBU nationally was completely unwilling to entertain the possibility of constructing such an open forum. However, interviews with an FBU official reveal that such an experiment did take place at the beginning of the dispute. An open forum for the posting of messages was made available and the site was inundated with communications, but the decision was made within two days to close the space, for while a very high proportion of the postings were supportive of the pay claim, there were a significant minority of emotive and critical remarks from “army wives”, as well as abusive and vulgar interventions. From then on, messages were solicited, but before being posted they would be checked to see if they were “appropriate”. The rationale provided was that the union was involved in a high profile dispute, there was intense and hostile media attention and that to make the web site a host for the defamatory and critical could only damage the reputation of the fire fighters and their organisation. Commenting on the 30k site, the observation was made that the site had been “loyal” at the beginning of the dispute, but that it had lost its value as it degenerated with postings abusive and insulting to the leadership, while revealing an unwillingness to accept the majority democratic decision to accept the final settlement.
There were plenty of notices on the 30k site that give credence to the above position. It is true also that the successor site has retained this tradition. However, while it is practically impossible to know how far the practice of censorship extends, an inspection of content does reveal a remarkably open dialogue, with postings from opponents of the strike, advocates of the final settlement (see for example: http://www.30kfirepay2.co.uk/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=9637), as well as the critical of leadership performance. It is clear that sharp divisions can surface when debate reigns relatively unconstrained, but should this be regarded as necessarily damaging to a union and if so, more than the hidden resentment that may lie undetected and therefore all the more difficult to redress when silence prevails? While the FBU site concentrated mainly on image management, the unofficial sites have provided this space.
During the conduct of the dispute, it is clear that the FBU nationally maintained a permissive approach to unofficial web activity amongst the regions and branches. Every branch and region of the FBU that had a web site maintained a link to the 30k site throughout the national pay dispute, emphasising the point that cognitive policing on the internet can be readily subverted as centres of control are by-passed. Admittedly, at the time of writing in July 2005, it is now the case that all trace of unofficial fire-fighter web activity has now been erased from the websites of FBU regions. And, as we have already pointed out, the national leadership of the union is now attempting to police unofficial web space.
There are considerable difficulties presented by this approach to cyber unionism. In any case, there are different and at times more effective ways of maintaining unity. Processing individual dilemmas and doubts through collective communicative spaces, where participants have the time to consider their responses and suggestions may take the raw emotion out of debate. This was shown on the 30k site in the discussions around whether or not it is worth retaining union membership following the bitter disappointment at the perceived failings of the FBU’s leadership (http://www.30kfirepay2.co.uk/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=14825). What is more, although it would be naïve to suggest that endless debate is a worthwhile end in itself, we would suggest that to make a virtue out of repression, whether in the name of collective discipline or for the sake of effective marketing, necessarily closes off openness to the expansive imagination and creativity that are seen as so lacking, yet necessary for renewal (Hyman, 1999)
Conclusions
While there is no doubt that the 30k site is regarded as important by many of those who have and continue to participate within its realm, success or otherwise is difficult to measure with precision, while the contours of future development and impact are yet to be seen. However, as a lived and living experience it provides a number of significant lessons: the internet is an increasingly important space for the conduct of union-related activities; its low and distributed cost of operation makes it a more accessible space within which visibility can be gained and for communication skills to be nurtured and developed; and, by providing space outside of institutional restraints, it can be exploited in more innovative and interactive ways, to highlight and perhaps attenuate the deficiencies of official union web presence and communicative practices. Yet, Unions are caught in a dilemma; on the one hand, between engaging with a communicative form that is popular and in many ways expansive and on the other, with the traditions of “collective responsibility”, combined with maintaining unity in the face of adversity. How this is to be resolved, is an open question. We suggest that it is fruitful to begin with reflection upon the emerging reality that is distributed discourse and the proposition that,
“Sterility, banality, orthodoxy-that is what ensues when debate is stifled in the name of order…It is what happens when power overwhelms imagination-especially the imagination of those out with power, whose imagination could rewrite history.” (Clegg, 2002)
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