McGillicuddy Serious Party

McGillicuddy Serious Party
Leader The Laird of Hamilton, Graeme Cairns
President Paull Cooke
Deputy KT Julian
Founded 1984 (1984)
Dissolved 1999 (1999)
Headquarters None
Ideology Funism
International affiliation Jacobitism
Colours Red and Green, Tartan
MPs in the House of Representatives 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.

Origins

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 kilt considered one of the its symbols. Candidates included street performers and comedic musical groups such as The Big Muffin Serious Band.

Challenge for the Crown

After discovering that he had some (rather obscure) relationship to the Stuart pretenders, Bonnie Prince Geoffie the Reluctant was advanced by Clan McGillicuddy in 1979 as replacement for Queen Elizabeth II.[4] The Clan's armed wing, the McGillicuddy Highland Army (McGHA), attempted to settle the matter by trial by combat, challenging the New Zealand Army to a winner-takes-all pillow-fight; the army declined the offer. Armed "pacifist" insurrection using harmless weapons having failed, the Clan reluctantly turned to the ballot-box, contesting general elections from 1984 to 1999. The Clan has not totally given up the fight, as it continues to occasionally battle the loyalist forces of Alf's Imperial Army,[5] a pro-British pacifist-warfare group that supported the Wizard of New Zealand and promoted the McGillicuddies rival for the silly vote, the Imperial British Conservative Party. The two groups' most recent battle was on Sunday 15 February 2015, in Wellington.

The party sometimes became the subject of aggression from unexpected quarters — in 1990 Green Party candidate Warrick Pudney challenged his Te Atatu rival to a paper-sword fight in Aotea Square. The fight ended in a declared draw, with both combatants treated for paper cuts.

Selecting candidates

At one point the party selected its candidates through trial by combat, with newspaper swords and water-balloons, the loser of the combat becoming the candidate. In 1996 a giant game of musical chairs took place in Cathedral Square, Christchurch to select the Canterbury electorate candidates. Whoever remained sitting on one of the labelled chairs when the music stopped became the candidate for that seat. Potential candidates for proportional representation (list) seats vied Cinderella-style by trying to fit into labelled shoes.

Policies

The party selected its policies on the basis of their absurdity and their impracticality.

Central policies in every election included a return to a mediaeval lifestyle, known as the "Great Leap Backwards"[6] and (superficially) the restoration of a monarchy supposedly based on the Scottish Jacobite line, in the name of Bonnie Prince Geoffie the reluctant. At a deeper level the party invoked the political system of Tibetan Buddhism, with "stspm" (singularly transferable spirit possession monarchy) used as justification for the selection of Bonnie Prince Geoffie as the undeniable head of the McState. This embodied the principles stated by the ancient Greeks that "no-one who seeks power should be allowed it." Bonnie Prince Geoffie refused consistently and permanently to have anything to do with the authority that this position gave him, and ran for all he was worth and never had anything to do with party again, thus proving his indisputable worthiness for the position.

Other policies included:

Decline and plummet

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 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."

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.

In the 1996 general election the party put up 65 list candidates, and 45 candidates stood as an electorate candidate.[14]

Disbandment and deregistration

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.[15] 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.[16]

Electoral results

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 Party victory
1987 2,990 0.16% - - 19 0 Labour Party victory
1990 9,918 0.54% - - 59 0 National Party victory
1993 11,714 0.61% - - 62 0 National Party victory
1996 12,177 0.59% 5,990 0.29% 65 0 National-based coalition government
1999 3,633 0.18% 3,191 0.15% 64 0 Labour-based coalition government

McGillicuddy candidates

A number of former members went on to stand as candidates for "real" parties. Co-leader of the Green party, Metiria Turei,[17] formerly held party membership, and was number 27 on the party list for the 1999 General Election.[18] 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);[19] Sam Buchanan; Steve Richards; Donna Demente; and Penni Bousfield.

Younger pretenders

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.[20] 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.

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.

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.[21]

A member from the Party's early days, Richards had stood as a candidate in previous elections.

Current status

Despite the demise of the party, Clan McGillicuddy still holds regular public events. 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.[22] YouTube hosts a video of this battle. 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. There is a video here: http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/286986/video-militia-mayhem-and-madness-waitati

See also

References

  1. New Zealand Election Results
  2. Salient, magazine of the Victoria University of Wellington Students' Association, 17 August 1987
  3. 1 2 "10 Years of Taking the Piss" in Metro magazine February 1994
  4. http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/bernard.smith/manifesto/jacobitism_3.htm
  5. "Angry Clan Wages War on Alf's Army" Evening Post (Wellington) 3 June 1988
  6. http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/bernard.smith/manifesto/great_leap_backwards.htm
  7. "Capital's Central Candidates Clash" Evening Post (Wellington) 28 September 1990
  8. "McGillicuddy Candidate Has Bone To Pick With Meurant". Northern Advocate (Whangarei) 5 October 1993
  9. 1 2 3 Candidate Profiles Daily Post (Rotorua) 27 October 1993
  10. "Electioneering Begins In Jest In Franklin", Franklin County News 3 August 1993
  11. "Serious Party Fun", Johnsonville Independent Herald July 1987
  12. Election policies
  13. "Serious Pledge For Place In The Sun", Dominion (Wellington) 26 August 1986
  14. New Zealand Official Yearbook 1997 p62
  15. Scoop: McGillicuddy Serious Announces Deregistration
  16. "Tar for the Memory" Waikato Times (Hamilton) 3 December 1999
  17. Green MP's - Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand Members of Parliament
  18. McGillicuddy Serious Party List Announced
  19. Results for Wills
  20. "The Secret Alliance With Labour is Over". 22 July 2005. Retrieved 12 November 2007.
  21. "Official Count Results -- West Coast-Tasman". 22 November 2008. Archived from the original on 11 December 2008. Retrieved 7 December 2008.
  22. "Alfs Beat Martians in Battle" Otago Daily Times 2 January 2008, Page 15

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