McGillicuddy Serious Party | |
---|---|
Leader | The Laird of Hamilton, Graeme Cairns |
President | Paull Cooke |
Deputy | KT Julian |
Founded | 1984 |
Dissolved | 1999 |
Headquarters | None |
Ideology | Funism |
International affiliation | Jacobitism |
Colours | Red and Green, Tartan |
MPs | 0 |
The McGillicuddy Serious Party (McGSP) was a satirical political party in New Zealand in the late 20th century. Between 1984 and 1999, it provided "colour" to ensure that citizens not take the political process too seriously. The party's logo, the head of a medieval court jester, indicated its status as a joke party.
The party stood candidates in the 1984, 1987, 1990, 1993, 1996 and 1999 general elections and the 1986, 1989, 1992, 1995 and 1998 Local Body elections; [1] along with local-body and parliamentary by-elections and university student association elections. [2]
It gained its highest number of votes in the last first-past-the-post (FPP) general election in 1993, when it stood candidates in 62 out of 99 electorates and received 11,714 votes, 0.61% of the vote.
The party was formed in 1984 [3] in Hamilton as the political arm of Clan McGillicuddy (established in 1978). Members of the Clan had stood as candidates in the 1983 local-body elections in the Waikato, [3] and the party came together in time to contest the 1984 General Election. It had a strong Scottish theme, with the renaissance of a Jacobite monarchy being one of the party's main policy planks. Candidates included street performers, students, artists and members of musical groups such as the Big Muffin Serious Band.
The party selected its policies on the basis of their absurdity and their impracticality, but also how they tied into an over-arching grand plan. The features of this plan were: Funism (a doctrine of the most fun for the most people), The Great Leap Backwards (returning NZ to a medieval, subsistence, tribal economy) and replacing parliament with a McGillicuddy-style monarchy based on Jacobitism. A non-hereditary monarch would be appointed in a similar manner to that used to determine the Dalai Lama. The high number of NZers with (some) Scottish heritage was the reason given for creating a Jacobite renaissance in the south Pacific. [4]
Policies included:
The party attracted a surprising level of support, and became one of the larger parties outside parliament. On a number of occasions, particularly following the introduction of the mixed member proportional (MMP) electoral system, pundits[ who?] predicted that the party might actually win parliamentary representation, but this never happened. When the major parties boycotted the Tauranga by-election 1993 in 1993, the party's candidate Greg Pittams, who appeared in nationwide newspapers during this campaign wearing his "emperor's new kilt" outfit, consisting of only a shirt and sporran, finished second to Winston Peters. Votes for the party presumably most often represented protest votes, something that the party encouraged with one of its slogans: "If you want to waste your vote, vote for us."[ citation needed]
The party began to encounter the problem that often appears in joke parties—a debate about exactly how serious it should become. The founders of the party essentially saw it as "a bit of fun", aimed at providing humour and entertainment. This remained a major part of the party. However, later recruits to the party sometimes saw the party's satire in a more serious context, regarding it as a tool with which people could ridicule and challenge the political establishment. In particular a number of anarchists joined the party, seeing it as an antidote to the traditional order and intending to use the party as a vehicle to give anarchist policies a higher public profile. The dichotomy, in essence, grew between "satire for fun" and "satire to make a political point". Many of the party's original members resented what they saw as a usurpation of the party for more avowedly political and overdefined anarchist purposes, and felt that for the party to become openly "anarchist" would thus make some area of politics "off-limits" to satire. They saw this as an anathema. In addition they saw having a clearly identifiable stance as lessening the party's effectiveness as satirists. However other members had little problem with the expression of more openly anarchist viewpoints.[ citation needed]
In the 1996 general election the party put up 65 list candidates, and 45 candidates stood as an electorate candidate. [12]
The 1999 election campaign proved a disappointment. The party gained only 0.15% of the vote, a considerable drop. Shortly after the election, the party disbanded and the Electoral Commission officially deregistered it as a political party. [13] Party leader Graeme Cairns marked the event and did penance for the loss by placing himself in stocks in Garden Place in Hamilton in December 1999 as disgruntled party members pelted him with rotten fruit. [14]
The following table summarises the party's support in general elections.
Election | Number of electorate votes | Share of electorate votes | Number of party votes | Share of party votes | Number of candidates | Seats | Outcome of election |
1984 | 178 | 0.01% | - | - | 3 | 0 | Labour victory |
1987 | 2,990 | 0.16% | - | - | 19 | 0 | Labour victory |
1990 | 9,918 | 0.54% | - | - | 59 | 0 | National victory |
1993 | 11,714 | 0.61% | - | - | 62 | 0 | National majority |
1996 | 12,177 | 0.59% | 5,990 | 0.29% | 65 | 0 | National majority |
1999 | 3,633 | 0.18% | 3,191 | 0.15% | 64 | 0 | Labour majority |
2008 | 259 | 0.008% | - | - | 1 | 0 | National majority |
By-election | Year | Candidate | # votes | % of vote | Placing | Result | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tamaki | 1992 | Adrian Holroyd | 73 | 0.42% | 7th | National hold | |
Tauranga | 1993 | Greg Pittams | 271 | 2.15% | 2nd | Independent gain | |
Selwyn | 1994 | Tim Owens | 26 | 0.12% | 8th | National hold | |
Taranaki-King Country | 1998 | Paul Cooke | 76 | 0.38% | 11th | National hold |
A number of former members went on to stand as candidates for "real" parties. Former MP and co-leader of the Green party, Metiria Turei, [15] formerly held party membership, and was number 27 on the party list for the 1999 General Election. [16] Other prominent candidates from this first generation of electioneering included founder and Party Leader Graeme Cairns, the "Laird of Hamilton"; Mark Servian; KT Julian, a long-time Party Deputy Leader; Adrian Holroyd; Cecil G. Murgatroyd (who subsequently stood against Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke under the Imperial British Conservative Party banner); [17] Sam Buchanan; Steve Richards; Donna Demente; and Penni Bousfield.
Some of the party's original members became upset at the cancellation of their lifetime membership. In July 2005 a "McGillicuddy Serious Party" put out a press-release announcing plans to participate in the 2005 election, one initial policy involving replacing MPs with harmless jargon-generators. [18] A former member put out the press-release without the knowledge of the Clan McGillicuddy's senior members or of the party's former leadership.[ citation needed]
After intense discussions within the Clan McGillicuddy, no further press releases appeared, no official party registration took place, and neither the party nor any candidates appeared on the 2005 ballot.[ citation needed]
One candidate stood under the McGillicuddy Serious banner in the 2008 general election: Steve Richards contested the West Coast-Tasman electorate and received 259 votes. [19]
A member from the Party's early days, Richards had stood as a candidate in previous elections.
Despite the demise of the party, Clan McGillicuddy continued to hold regular public events for some time. A pacifist battle in Oamaru on 31 December 2007 saw McGillicuddy "Martians" take on Alf's Imperial Army in an enactment of The War of the Worlds. [20] YouTube hosts a video of this battle. [21] On 31 December 2013, there was a pacifist battle in Waitati in which the McGillicuddies defended Castle Almond (the castle-like home of one their members) against an "attack" by the local Waitati Militia. [22]
Videos