Early on in the life of Rise we took a very big hit. It turned out that one of our key members was in fact working against us. The individual waited until we had launched and then closed down our website. Worse still the individual then contacted us suggesting that they could give us the website back if we took them on as a paid consultant to look after the very website they had removed. We took a deep breath and rebuilt the website within 3 weeks. Not bad when you consider none of us had any experience in the field and the individual who’d closed down our previous site was a so-called expert and had taken 5 months to provide us with a site that due to its number of shades of red, we secretly felt looked like a scene from Kill Bill.
The first few days after the site was taken down were awful. It is the sense of betrayal more than anything. I think I’m long enough in the tooth to know that people do bad things. We’re human – we do bad things. I’m certainly not blind to the fact that many people who claim to be caring can be nasty charlatans. Often people talk about ideologies and that’s what it is for them. To them an ideology can be proof that they are wiser and better than the next person but it may bear no relation to the way they behave. I’ve seen this in charity, in religion and in politics. We have to accept it will happen and not become embittered or cynical.
Anyway for a number of days I struggled. Do I carry on? Is it worth it? Will it always be that there will be somebody who is simply trying to use us to further their own vanity? I decided the answer to all three questions is yes. Yes I’ll carry on, yes it is worth it and yes there will always be someone trying to use us to promote their own agenda.
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Which brings me back to what this article is really about. Our need to keep gaining members, why we want to gain members and how we will avoid it becoming a vanity project.
In terms of our need to gain members, it isn’t about being boastful of our membership numbers. We want members because we are a membership led party and that provides us with the framework to be a people led party. We need to gain members because our membership is the lifeblood of the party.
We’re ambitious and we want members to:
Formulate Policy
Our present policies are not fixed in stone. They are a template that our membership will help evolve into our full offering. Not that they’re not strong policies. They’ve already had many hours put into them. But for sure there is a need for the widest base to not only establish policies but also to provide depth to them. We’re not like parties from the past who give you a list of policies without any detail. Our process will be fully open to scrutiny. We’ll openly record issues with our policies so the issues can be resolved. It tells you all you need to know about the present parties when they save their manifesto for a big splash near election time and refuse to answer questions about policy between elections. Of course they do that. They don’t want to commit to anything without seeing which way the wind blows. They have no detail to their policies when they do appear so that they can go back on their word and use the same old “oh yes, but circumstances change”.
Circumstances do change and a party should be able to react to circumstances, but the core of any parties policies can be built in detail in advance. Our policies will have the following support data:
- Policy paper providing a deeper insight into the policy and how it will be delivered.
- Support documents from studies to evidence the policy.
- Any issues and risks identified and a resolution / mitigation path.
- Outline costings.
- Benefits. On occasion benefits will be weighed against issues and a policy may go ahead if the benefits far outweigh the issues. This would be by vote though.
- Roll out schedule. Rather than just presenting a ragbag of policies, we will provide timings for delivery with proper interdependencies and who will do what.
For all the above we need members. Some to work on the above should they feel willing and able, some to communicate our policies and some to write about them in the media. Some just to support us financially to make it happen. All help is equally valuable to us.
We want imaginative policies. We want the strength of many people engaging to change the UK for the better.
Identify and Deliver Projects
We don’t want to campaign especially at election time. We are a movement as well as a party and we want to carry out projects in our communities. This will need ideas, plans, people, and funds. Our model for delivering community projects is to build up a portfolio of solutions to roll out across the country and when in government to use them to help identify where the needs are.
Hold our representatives to account
We will stand councillors and MPs. In fact we’ll very much encourage people who wouldn’t normally regard themselves as worthy to put themselves forward. We want those that have felt the impact of being disenfranchised to represent their communities.
We’ll hold our representatives to a high standard. They will be answerable to the people in their constituency or ward. We’ll apply these rules to our representatives and when in government we’ll introduce it for all public representatives. As we often say and we mean with all seriousness, well be in service, not in power.
Summary
The founders of Rise are not big names in politics and nor do we want to be. Our role is to facilitate and to help empower the people. Of course there will always be the ones trying to get ahead off the back of others. Keeping the party free of the self-promoters will always require diligence.
Things cannot go on as they are. The system is broken and millions in the UK and abroad suffer because we are ruled by corrupt fools.
To be part of the change you can join Rise here.
Im interested. Do you support disabled , autistic and MH sufferers and our equality and human rights thanks. im booted from twitter by Boris Johnson and Isabel Oakeshott in a personal way as in my freedom of speech was impinged as was the fact it was opinion not abuse I can share the post that did it as it’s screenshot
Hi Maria,
Apologies for the delayed reply. I hadn’t noticed we had a new comment.
Yes we support all disabled rights. We regard these rights as being core to changing society. MH services have been decimated. Disabled people have been killed through government policy. See our article Throwing Wheelchairs Off Balconies – Britain’s Persecution and Killing of Disabled People to get some idea of our views on this subject.
I hope the above helps.
Best regards,
Michael