Twitter is not action

Engaging with voters beyond your peers is hard for young political candidates, but it's better than doing nothing, writes DYLAN HASKINSof his unsuccessful election campaign

THROUGHOUT LAST MONTH’S general-election campaign, in which I ran in Dublin South East but wasn’t elected, people asked why I wanted to enter the discredited, thankless world of politics. My response was always the same: what’s the alternative? To vote for the same parties and their stale policies?

This, like so many other aspects of the campaign, echoed my experience of starting projects and organising events over the past eight years. I didn’t begin to run non-profit all-ages concerts when I was 15 because I felt charitable: I did it because no one else was going to.

Nothing changes unless people change it. Access to media like Twitter can give a counterproductive sense of satisfaction, a feeling that putting a hashtag before the issue of the day and making a 140-character comment about it is taking action. It’s not. Protesting is action. Voting is action. Running for election is action.

It’s ironic then, that one of the most noted aspects of my campaign was my use of media like Twitter. Although there was praise for it, there was also criticism: one person remarked that “Twitter is not a constituency”. This is the first challenge for a young candidate: how to engage with a majority of voters beyond your peers.

Canvassing was, surprisingly, one of the most enjoyable aspects of the campaign. After knocking on the first few doors I realised the difficulty would lie not in approaching strangers but in managing time and meeting as many people as possible. When you knock on people’s doors to ask for their votes they instantly open windows into their lives; there’s no small talk. It was an education to hear first-hand why an entire family might have to emigrate, to see the embarrassment of a father who can’t provide for them or to witness the loneliness of a single mother whose three children have left the country, unlikely to return.

To knock on the doors of a senior citizens’ social-housing scheme and hear the fear as they ask who’s there from behind bolted doors made me want to represent those people who, just like the youth of this country, have been failed by a self-serving political establishment.

Politics in this country has been monopolised for too long by people many of us find it impossible to relate to. This isn’t about a younger generation rejecting an older generation’s values, akin to the spirit of the Paris protests of 1968; this is about articulating a set of values in the apparent absence of any.

During and after the election I received a lot of messages – many from people I hadn’t met, telling me that, regardless of the outcome, they had been inspired by seeing that it was possible to do something. It took me a while to figure out what was inspiring about an unsuccessful campaign; now I think it was because I was stepping into a domain that seemed impenetrable, as if it didn’t belong to us. That foray into politics, even if unsuccessful this time, was a statement of intent. It’s not like a child tentatively reaching into the fire: it’s more like turning a hose on the inferno.

Some of the established parties’ responses to my campaign were positive, others were not. Fine Gael was perhaps the most patronising, telling me and another independent candidate that we “brought a bit of colour into the campaign”, as though it was some sort of act to entertain people. The comment is telling of how dull that party must be.

At the RDS on count day non-parliamentary members of Labour, Fianna Fáil, the Green Party and, yes, even Fine Gael said they had been impressed by the campaign and the result. Unfortunately, a third preference is of little use to an independent when no party candidate passes the quota until the sixth count and there is no chance of surplus transfers.

On the Monday after the election I drove to Clogher Head, on Dingle Peninsula. I sat on the edge of a rocky perch at the tip of the head for two hours, savouring every second. It was the perfect antidote to the chaos of the preceding month. No flyers. No microphones. No cameras. No doors. As I sat there I was overwhelmed by the feeling that this is a stunning country. If, as is quite likely, we do go bankrupt some day in the near future, the next day we will still be breathing, and the astounding culture and beauty of this island will stay the same. They are the only things that ever have.