So back to the purple brigade, and many many thanks to Woman on a Raft for supplying me with some of this information (see comments here and here). I was getting quite confused as to how all the main players were related so I put together a bit of a family tree to try to make sense of it all. All of the information is in the public domain I’m just trying to put it together – in the spirit of our new open and transparent politics.
Just to try to explain that a bit the dotted lines from BlueStateDigitial show their clients, the solid lines indicate clear channels of control (e.g. Mark Ross registered the domain for “take back parliament”, the other solid lines to “take back parliament” indicate members of the coalition). Despite this starting from Counting Cats post I can’t find a direct link from this lot to 38 Degrees though interestingly they did used to be registered as “Progressive Majority”.
Anyway back to the main players the client lists of both BlueStateDigital and SoapBox Communications make interesting reading as there are a lot of familiar names in both places.
For instance SoapBox list “Charter 88” Unlock Democracy, Compass and the Electoral Reform Society as clients all of whom are part of the TBP coalition. Their other clients include people such as UNITE, but then “SoapBox is the communications agency for think tanks, campaigns, politicians and NGOs” – so perhaps it’s hardly surprising to see so many names cropping up in the same place. Looking at the supporters list for SoapBox client “Vote for a change” quite a few other TBP coaltion members crop up such as:
Benedict Southworth, World Development Movement
Dr Matthew Sowemimo, Director – Social Liberal Forum
Ken Ritchie, Electoral Reform Society
Neal Lawson, Compass
amongst others.
There are more interesting cross links, which again are surely just due to shared goals:
Coalition member Democracy Matters is it self a coalition that includes TBP supporters BASSAC and Unlock Democracy. The same group of names also crop up supporting Power 2010 including our friends over at Ekklesia(though oddly they list the Muslim Council of Britain twice.)
Many of the other TBP members are politcal “think tanks” e.g. New Economics Foundation and Ekklesia or politically associated group such as Social Liberal Forum (Which formed out of the LibDem Beveridge Group)
So with just a bit of poking around this great grass roots movement collapses into a circle jerk of think tanks, think tank controlled “independent” sites all mainly leading back to the same vested interests they helping us all protest about.
But at least that lot are at least notionally British, here for the delectation of all those that complained about the “foreign” influence of lord Ashcroft are a few of TBP’s international members:
Avaaz.org – Ricken Patel – New York
enoughsenough.org – registered via a Canadian anonymous domain registrar
power2010.org – registered by BlueStateDigital – Washington
That of course is ignoring possible international influences such as Greenpeace.
If you can fill in any further gaps that’d be great but I suspect it wouldn’t actually be possible to plot all the interconnections in this popularist movement, but the involvement of so many people from the “old” politics the campaign is meant to be changing troubles me. The same old think tanks, quango’s and wonks representing the same vested interests – I find it hard to believe their interest in reform has the same goal as many of the people on the protests.
Many thanks – that’s an impressive analysis. I didn’t realize how big it was. It’s always difficult to research this stuff as it is only too easy to find oneself reaching for the tinfoil hat and ghibbering “They’re all in on it”.
Maybe electoral reform is the way to go, but I want to know
a) Who says
b) Who is paying them/who are they paying?
c) What’s in it for them?
There is an indirect link between David Babbs of 38 Degrees and Take Back Parliament, but it depends on whether you believe he was at the protest purely by coincidence.
Barnsley Bill in a comment on Old Holborn on 9 May 2010 said:
“Supporting a labour flash mob activated to pressure clegg into propping up Brown is not what you should be about.” IanB agreed and continued “Look at the 38 Degrees website. They’re a front for Red/Green. Leader David Babbs is formerly head of activism for Friends Of The Earth. All the rest of them are Green apparatchiks. The funding is from Red/Green philanthropists (a Roddick, an organic profiteer called Henry Tinsley). It’s astroturf. They want PR to permanently emplace this “progressive consensus” that is the new meme. It’s a British branch of MoveOn- one of the Board is an American from the Yankee network- with the same purpose of creating a shadow party to control the politicians and mobilise hordes of placard-wavers from one “ishoo” to another at their beck and call, the kind of people who go on a march and then ask what they’re marching for this time. It’s astonishing how naive Libertarians can be, considering how cynical we’re supposed to be. Don’t be fooled. This sudden clamour for PR is astroturf.”
Simply googling “David Babbs” and “Take Back Parliament” returns several hits of which a good one is:
http://www.waveguide.co.uk/news100510.htm
David Babbs of 38 Degrees was at a protest outside parliament. He wanted to speak about the consequences of a coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, presumably preferring a Lib/Lab pact. This would support Barnsley Bill’s assertion that it is more in the nature of a Labour flashmob than a spontaneous political expression.
Kay Burley interviewed him and was fairly aggressive. She appears to have had an idea she was being spun and regarded Babbs as attempting to usurp the democratic process. Her main point: ‘this is what people voted for, who are you to say they wanted something else?’ is, with hindsight, the correct one. Babbs kept insisting that people voted for something else, which they patently did not.
Afterwards a twitter mob of supposedly shocked Sky viewers coordinated a ‘sack Kay Burley’ campaign, and somebody took the trouble to rank the stories on Wikio, under the meme “what happens when journalists try to squelch voice”. The usually deft Mr Ishmael, for example, ran the story as if it was about Burley bullying a protestor, taking Babbs at face value.
However, that was the whole point; Babbs is not ‘voice’. He’s highly partisan and opportunistic. Sky, to its credit, seems not to have allowed Burley to be cowed by this attack.
Here’s a strand of spaghetti, pulled out from IanBs remark.
38 Degrees changed its registered office last year.
REGISTERED OFFICE CHANGED ON 01/06/2009 FROM
14 ST. MARY`S STREET
STAMFORD
LINCS
PE9 2DF
Now, quite a few buisnesses an organizations work out of that address. One of them is
BETTERWORLD LIMITED
14 ST MARY’S STREET
STAMFORD
LINCS
PE9 2DF
Company No. 03408967
That company changed its name in 2005
07/06/2005 TINSLEY INVESTMENTS LIMITED
Nothing wrong in that, although it does nicely obscure the Tinsely name. (Note the date, that magic year when Lord Shutt took control of all the Rowntree trust money and set up the Power Enquiry.)
Betterworld made various donations, such as that to Lib Dem Annette Brooke, MP for Mid Dorset and N. Poole.
“Amount of donation or nature and value if donation in kind: £2,500. This was given to the constituency party, which has reported the donation to the Electoral Commission, or will do so in its next quarterly report. Donor status: company, registration number 03408967 (Registered 30 March 2010)”
Betterworld Limited, previously known as Tinsely Investments, had made systematic donations targetting Tory marginals, as detailed in the Telegraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1579772/Ethical-donor-targets-Tory-marginals.html
Henry Tinsley is the donor and he’s on the board of 38 Degrees (as IanB said)
Henry Tinsley Former Chair of Green & Blacks Chocolate. He has been an investor and board member in many businesses, mostly in the food industry. A political activist since he was 18, Henry now spends much of his time engaged in charitable and campaigning activities. He is a trustee of the Carter Centre UK, Technoserve Europe & Article 1.
http://38degrees.org.uk/pages/board/
The trail thus runs:
Betterworld Limited – donations to Lib Dems – Henry Tinsley – 38 Degrees – Mike Babbs – coincidentally outside parliament insisting that what people REALLY wanted was Proportional Representation and attempting to get Kay Burley sacked for suggesting that it might not be the democratic will of the people to try to impose PR rather than vote on it.
Which is very convenient for the Lib Dems.
I claim a bar of chocolate for having verified the connection in IanB’s comment. Which is ironic as Henry Tinsely made his share of 20m when he expanded Green and Blacks then sold it out to Cadburys in 2005 (what a year that was), and put the money in to politicking. What is it with these confectionary magnates?
I think there are a lot more links to be dug out yet, I will admit that I partly stopped because it was getting late and my brain was starting to hurt. As you say very easy to reach for the tin-foil hat, and so many of them using the same “media campaign” firms could be entirely innocent but it certainly presents a very chummy picture.
I’m utterly with you on those three questions, as it does seem to look more and more like a stitch up the closer it’s looked at.
Thanks for the 38degrees info, looks like I may have to start mapping the company data over the weekend, as I think I saw quite a few links but couldn’t keep track of that at the same time as well.
I caught the “sky silencing the voice of protest” side of things, so thanks for that extra background. As you say if he was there coincidentally then that’s one thing but…
Also sounds like the 38degrees supports list could be worth a closer look as some of those names are definitely on the supporters/members list of some of the groups I’ve already looked at. There really is a terribly tangled web and with seemingly not much genuine outside support. Still that does make for a wonderful lesson on how to create a fake popular movement.
And have found another interesting link 38degrees are yet another customer of… BlueStateDigital
Received: from maillist-b
by bounce.bluestatedigital.com with local (PHPMailer);
Fri, 21 May 2010 06:39:01 -0400
Date: Fri, 21 May 2010 06:39:01 -0400
From: David Babbs – 38 Degrees
Subject: How are we doing?
I love mail headers :)
Well spotted.
I therefore looked a little more closely at some search results on the the terms “Bluestatedigital” “David Babbs”. Note the URLs. These are the results lists from Google.
#
38 Degrees The Team
David Babbs – Executive Director. David works with other groups, charities and individuals to build our peopled powered movement. Sometimes he talks about …
38degrees.bluestatedigital.com/pages/the-team/
#
38 Degrees Frequently Asked Questions
David Babbs is the Executive Director, and Nina Kowalska is Operations Director. Warren Puckett runs our online presence. David was former Head of Activism …
38degrees.bluestatedigital.com/pages/faq/
My bold emphasis.
If you go to 38degrees direct, you get the pages from the org.uk website http://38degrees.org.uk/
but it looks as if the material might have been built at
38degrees.bluestatedigital.com
and then ported over to the org.uk
The same applies for takebackparliament. If you go direct to their website you go to http://www.takebackparliament.com/
but if you search on “bluestatedigital” “takebackparliament” you get
Search Results
1.
Take Back Parliament
Take Back Parliament will be keeping up the pressure to demand a fair choice on fair votes. … Take Back Parliament For Real This Time Liverpool …
citinq.bluestatedigital.com/…/takebackparliament/…/clegg-challenged-to-wear-purple/ – Cached
2.
Take Back Parliament
Let’s Take Back Parliament on Saturday. There is no doubt that we are living through some extraordinary moments in politics. …
citinq.bluestatedigital.com/…/takebackparliament/…/lets-take-back-parliament-on-saturday/ – Cached
There might be other reasons for the BSD versions – perhaps it is going the other way and BSD are operating an archive and backup service for 38degrees and takebackparliament.
Another old document which floated up from the history files was that in Feb 2003 Babbs was still at college and correctly predicted the shambles which became the Iraq war.
David Babbs, a member of the Cambridge Students Against War group, said: “I think it is a sophisticated argument that you can’t simply dismiss. It probably is true that some sections of the peace movement haven’t engaged with what’s going on in Iraq. I think we have had quite a lengthy, vibrant discussion of this. She has a strong point, but I think she’s wrong. This war wouldn’t be an experiment in democratic state building, this isn’t what America is talking about.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2003/feb/17/highereducation.uk3
By February this year a concatenation of campaiging groups – even though some of them might be described as duplicates of each other – had put pressure on the government and Gordon had admitted a vote on AV as part of his election campaign. 38degrees seemed to think this was a reliable election promise.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/16/move-on-to-a-new-politics
IanB’s analysis looks right to me. They expected to have this deal done up with Labour, and therefore in the election campaign they continued to put pressure on the Conservatives. Babbs, for example, did his best to keep the links between MPs and lobbyists in the public eye. Only not if they were Labour MPS.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/mar/14/david-cameron-embarrassment-over-tory-candidate-lobbying-links
Then, at the last moment, the Conservatives nosed ahead and he had to re-think the strategy.
This is all fascinating!
For 38degrees, BSD are hosting the website it seems:
$ host 38degrees.bluestatedigital.com
38degrees.bluestatedigital.com has address 69.25.201.226
$ host 38degrees.org.uk
38degrees.org.uk has address 69.25.201.226
As is the case for TBP though this time it’s not in the DNS, but:
$ host takebackparliament.com
takebackparliament.com has address 70.42.57.100
if you then go to that IP address (i.e. the address of the server TBP lives on – http://70.42.57.100/ ) you get this error message:
Invalid URL
We’re sorry, the site you were looking for does not exist.
If you feel you are receiving this message in error, please email
support@bluestatedigital.com with any relevant information including the URL in question, and any site that may have linked to this URL.
We apologize for any inconvenience.