From the telegraph to Tahrir Square
Some readers may have seen the analysis by blogger and New Stateman columnist Laurie Penny about the character of the new student movement that exploded with such an impact on the streets of central London and on campuses around the country before Xmas.
Ms Penny makes the point, quite rightly, that those centrally involved are people new to the politics of protest and keen to develop their own strategies and tactics without too much interference and guidance from the old men and women of the left. The issue about experience, youth and the politics of activism is an important one.
But my concern here is another matter of Laurie Penny’s argument, namely that the student protests were facilitated by the use of the social networking sites twitter and facebook, not to mention the use of mobile phones for texting and taking videos of demonstrations and posting them to the internet on the spot.
Penny suggests that this technology allows for a speed and flexibility that makes it difficult either for the State or the left with its socialist papers to keep up.
More recently her points have been echoed and amplified by BBC Newsnight economics correspondent Paul Mason on his BBC blog. Mason argues that twitter and facebook allow for an internationalism of activism that was very difficult even 20 years ago. It is for example perfectly possible to make contact via twitter with socialists involved in the events and Tahrir Square and discuss matters with them- provided you can do it in 140 characters or less.
The chances of the State monitoring or directly interfering with such conversations is very limited indeed, such are the volume of them.
Some readers again may have seen the picture of graffiti from a shop front on Tahrir Square which has the words twitter, facebook and Al Jazeera in English and Arabic.
As an historian I would note that we have been before.
It is now clearly established, despite what some used to claim in the 1960s, that the revolution will be televised.
Developments in technology mean that even if Governments control official TV stations it is very difficult for them to completely stop pictures coming from other sources.
But the argument about technology, the State and the left goes back a lot further than that.
When electronic means of communication began with the telegraph in the 1830s, the British Government did not take long to make sure that telegraphic transmissions were under the authority and control of the early Post Office.
The Government’s fear was that the Chartist movement would use the telegraph as a means of communication.
The first transatlantic telegraphs were sent in 1866 and the radical Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, owned by the Chartist businessman and later radical Liberal MP Joseph Cowen made good use of the new technology to report news of liberation struggles around the globe.
Suddenly information that had taken days or weeks to reach the UK would appear more or less instantly.
Some have dubbed the telegraph the Victorian internet
So the relationship between the left and technology is a long one, and it is certainly the case that socialists have embraced new ways of communication to get views across and sometimes to help organise.
As an historian I don’t have a crystal ball so I cant say where social networking sites may lead. For the time being though socialist papers, meetings and leaflets remain an important way of organising particularly when as the Egyptian State did for a period others means like the interweb are shut down. Then, as ever, word of mouth is the most powerful organising tool
