McGillicuddy Serious Party: Encyclopedia II - McGillicuddy Serious Party - Decline and plummet

McGillicuddy Serious Party - Decline and plummet

McGillicuddy Serious attracted a surprising level of support, and became one of the larger parties outside parliament. On a number of occasions, particularly with the introduction of the MMP electoral system, it was predicted that McGillicuddy Serious might actually win parliamentary representation, although this never happened. When the major parties boycotted the Tauranga by-election 1993, McGillicuddy Serious candidate finished second to Winston Peters. A very, very distant second. Votes for McGillicuddy were most often protest votes, something that the party encouraged with one of its slogans: "If you want to waste your vote, vote for us."

As time went on, McGillicuddy Serious began to encounter the problem that often appears in joke parties—a debate about exactly how serious it should be. The original founders of the party essentially saw it as "a bit of fun", aimed at providing humour and entertainment. This remained a major part of McGillicuddy Serious throughout its history. Later recruits to the party however, sometimes saw the party's satire in a more serious context, believing that it was a tool by which the political establishment could be ridiculed and challenged. In particular, a number of anarchists joined the party, seeing it as an antidote to the traditional order. The dichotomy, in essence, was 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 anarchist purposes. They believed that even anarchists are not immune to being satirised, and that for the party to be openly "anarchist" was to thus make some area of politics "off limits" to satire. This was seen as an anathema. In addition they saw having a clearly identifiable stance as lessening the party's effectiveness as satirists. Other members however saw no problem with the more openly anarchist viewpoints that were expressed.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Decline and plummet", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki