Pirate Party: a lawless bunch speaks

The UK chapter of the Pirate Party anchored briefly at Warwick on Tuesday in an effort to persuade students to support its political agenda.

Party leader Andrew Robinson explained that their main aims involve freedom in every area of life – freedom of information, freedom from excessive surveillance, freedom to participate in culture and, most importantly, freedom of speech. But, despite being the biggest political presence on Facebook – the party has 9,000 online members – Robinson said: “There’s no way we’ll ever get a seat in parliament until we get proportional representation.”

The talk, which was hosted by the Warwick Libertarian Society, was intended to raise the profile of the party before the coming general election. It was only formed six months ago but has already gained a considerable following and is currently the third largest political party in the country.

The Pirate Party was founded in Sweden after the closure of the Pirate Bay website – a file-sharing organisation – by the Swedish government in 2006 and aims chiefly to get rid of laws concerning copyright and patents which it considers to be very much outdated.

A bill is currently passing through the House of Lords which threatens to release the details of offenders who have downloaded files from the internet illegally – the Pirate Party feels that this would be a step backwards for politics and for freedom and is very strongly against it.

Robinson stressed that, through the medium of the internet, young people have the power to change, citing last year’s Christmas number one battle between The X Factor and Rage Against the Machine as a particularly relevant example. The internet has played a significant part in the UK Pirate Party’s founding – much of the political discussion on policies and manifestos is done on tits website and Andrew Robinson himself was elected leader through the webpage’s forums.

Robinson was keen to emphasise that the party is not a typical one in that he and his fellow members do not see it as existing for the long term, but plan to disband it once their chief policies are passed as laws in Britain. The party also has no other wider ranging policies with Robinson claiming he knows nothing about Afghanistan or other ‘big issue’ policies which constantly appear in the popular political spectrum. Similarly, the party does not fall to the left, right or indeed centre of the political spectrum – “We have a hugely dispersed membership politically and socially” – but instead brings together those who are passionate about doing away with these unpopular laws.

2010 will mark a significant year for the Pirate Party which aims to increase it popularity to an even greater extent during the general election. While Robinson does not hold out much hope of winning a seat he is, nevertheless, running as an MP in his home town of Worcester and encourages anybody at Warwick who feels strongly enough about the party’s beliefs to join the party and consider running for election in the West Midlands.

Robinson and Tom Wales – leader of the Libertarian society – agreed that the visit had been a great success.