Open Unionism is going to be at the Political Innovation meet up tomorrow at NICVA. Ticket booking & event details are here.
Here’s our idea pitch:
Open Unionism was created to be a forum to get unionists talking and to promote their ideas. But how can the blog stop being a publisher (of comment) and start to become an active player? There is a gap for unionist think tank that can agenda set via grassroots engagement. Can a blog fill that gap, and if so how?
But we need votes to bump us up the agenda. Please click here and vote for us. If you can, come along on Saturday and contribute!
Filed under: political innovation
Open Unionism 
Maybe an exclusive discussion/dining club would do the trick. By exclusive I mean unionist-only.
Political think tanks *work* when their targets are narrowly specified and are capable of being achieved. There also has to be a level of commonality in the think tank which permits a concerted effort towards the setting and achievement of those goals. Do we have that level of commonality across the different strands of Unionism?
In many cases, the only common strand evident is our belief in the Union and even that is derived from differing motivations.
A think tank would, if it were to incorporate all strands of Unionism, therefore be too unwieldy and internally combative to achieve any meaningful result in my opinion.
I think in contrast Open Unionism works as an outlet for different ideas and opinions because in a blog format it does not restrict the clash of opinion which are presently all too apparent within N.Irish Unionism. Perhaps building stronger direct connections to the movers and shakers can increase its influence but if that’s at the expense of restricting the present freeflow of ideas and suggestions then I think it would be a retrograde step
Think that about sums up the conversation this afternoon.
Would a useful place to start, and something that the blog could achieve, be to aim to put out a pamphlet or a small book (available on PDF too), drawing together various strands of analysis about a particular topic? That seems like an immediate achievable objective.
Great – nice ideas. Will catch up with you all shortly on this…