[TUP] Iain Keers' History of TUP: Part One

Day 1,794, 13:08 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by ePocalypse


Dear friends,

It seems that I’m hijacking Dan’s paper today to bring you part 1 of the history of the party and all that it’s done. At a certain point in history this will converge a lot with a general history of the UK, since TUP was in government more or less non-stop from mid-2009 onwards, with only a few breaks. I also want to apologise for the egocentric nature of this article. It would be more accurately described as “Iain Keers’ history of TUP” since it’s all written based on my own perspective. A more rounded history would involve interviews with others, and if there’s a desire I’m sure we could dig up a few other old bodies to offer opinion. So again apologies if a lot of this is about me, that’s purely because the bits I remember best are the ones I was directly involved with.



I’m going to start with a little bit of background. TUP was born out of the 313 board of the GameFaqs forum. For those of you who don’t browse GameFaqs, the 313 board is a members only board for people from the UK. When eRepublik was in beta it was an invite only game for a long time, and when a member got an invite and posted their referral on the 313 board there was a huge “invasion” of players from that board. The invasion almost succeeded in taking over the country with the slogan “invade France, drink beer”, but fell at the last hurdle. After that it reformed from the People’s Front of 313 (and similar) to The Unity Party, took a more serious line and became a genuine party. Over the course of 2008 it gradually declined until by December it was 3rd place and had only one ex-President in their ranks.

At this point TUP was a soft-left party with a lot of moderate elements. The truth is that the UK has nearly always had a “soft” party (in today’s world ESO) which is more open and non-partisan, and in those days that party was TUP. It was the option for people who didn’t want to be in UKRP (hawks) or PCP (doves).

When I started in December 2008 I simply scanned the list of parties and joined the one that had my own RL political alignment (centre-left). The major players in the party at the time were Squiddy, Malta_1990, John Forseti and a bunch of other congress types. Of that period there aren’t many still playing (aVie is one of them!) but it was one of the most important in our history.

In February 2009 Malta_1990 was PP of the party when he suddenly went inactive. We found out later that he was suffering from pneumonia, but basically in the interim I took over leadership of the Party for the first time. I radically altered the party constitution, introduced mandatory voting lines (party whip) and national manifestos. We also added the famous “democratic socialist party” clause officially defining us as a party of redistribution.

When I first ran for congress I’d used mass PMs for the first time. The practice was mostly frowned upon in those days, and I’d got a lot of stick about it (and come first in the UK). As PP in April-May I brought mass-PM as mandatory requirements for the entire party, forcing all congress members to actively campaign both for themselves and for CP. As such TUP won the April 5th Presidential elections despite being a 3rd place party which had leaked a lot of members due to the nature of the reforms I’d brought.

At some point during my second term as PP we overtook PCP (then the second party) and started making significant headway against UKRP. In this period we attracted a lot of talented new members which began to dominate not just elections but debates on the UK national forums. After a few attempts we got our vote alignment skills up to scratch and began to win votes with strictly controlled voting policies. This made us very disliked, since people used to moan on about how TUP had no personalities or whatever- often comparing us to a dictatorial party. The truth was we ran on a national manifesto and if elected every congressman had a mandate to fulfil their promises. This was all the whip actually enforced.

In June 2009 John replaced me as PP and led for a month. This month was pretty famous as the month Kumnaa was elected as UK CP (Kumnaa owns the off-site forums). Kumnaa was part of a group of older players in the UK made up primarily of ex-TUP and PCP members called the “Cabal” which basically favoured major changes to UK foreign and domestic policy. Although with hindsight many of the Cabal’s changes were good, they were met with mixed opinion due to the general unlikeability of some of their members. Kumnaa’s main policy was moving the UK toward a proPEACE position, which effectively decided the UK’s foreign policy for the next 3 years.

In July/August Mr Woldy became PP. Mr Woldy is famous as “that guy who never loses” and as the King of the eUK (deceased). He was an immensely popular guy who wrote a lot of new player guides, spent a lot of time helping newbs and as a result catapulted the Party through the rankings until we were right up behind UKRP. At the same time Hassan Pesaran returned to TUP and ran as CP winning comfortably and formally entering the UK into PEACE GC. This had a major effect on the party- not initially but with time more and more TUP members were folded into the alliance command. The large supply of talented and active players put us into the fore of international politics and TUP has contained dozens of alliance leaders since that time. To this day a casual visit to #unityisstrength on rizon will reveal at least a dozen former alliance Secretary Generals, Supreme Commanders and so forth.

In September the cabal came crashing down as GLaDOS (TUP, Cabal) ran directly against Glorious Failure/Necrosis (UKRP, Cabal) and won. Although GLaDOS wasn’t hugely TUP in his attitude he was realistically the best option at the time. Mr Woldy, the other main candidate, voluntarily stepped aside to allow GLaDOS to run. GLaDOS was an important player in PEACE, having formerly led the alliance, and it was seen as important to cement the UK’s position in the alliance. Necrosis was seen as a strong leader but wasn’t liked and was very unstable. He later became a game mod and leaked his administration panel details (the infamous GF Day) causing hundreds of players to be banned.

Midway through the month however GLaDOS decided to move back to the remnant of the Cabal Party (FDP I think at the time) and when he ran for re-election he ran against Mr Woldy backed by TUP and was defeated by a margin of more than 250 votes, making him one of the few incumbent CPs to ever lose re-election. Mr Woldy started his career as a Minister of Home Affairs (basically new player care) and he was followed as PP by Karacticus who followed the same career path. Under Karacticus TUP finally overtook UKRP becoming the UK’s largest party.

It was during this period that the main battles over the House of Lords was fought. At the time few people had issues with the idea of an unelected, self-selecting second chamber effectively blocking any actual laws from passing through congress, though it seems silly now. Consider the fuss kicked up by the likes of UKPP and New Era about forum role-play. What we have now is minimal compared to the mess we had back then. Over a period of about a year TUP purged most of this from the statute books.

The next period of TUP’s history was a bit dingy, and I’m not going to lie. Stefan_1990 was elected as PP in November 2009 and due to a mix of low activity and poor leadership the party suffered for two months. Although the procedure was there the parties morale sank, and despite a growth in members the party was defeated in two congress elections, going from 40%+ of the seats to a mere 20-25%. Despite this Woldy was elected twice more, making him the first CP since beta to serve three consecutive Presidential terms. However by December poor leadership was really taking its toll and TUP barely scraped victory over an allied coalition of the other parties.

In January something finally gave and TUP lost the Presidential election. TUP was tired and our candidate (Nice Guy Eddie) represented the last of the “soft” left breed. He wasn’t very active and although popular on the forum he was comfortably defeated by veteran player Dishmcds, who became President for two months. In light of this defeat I ran again for Party President. During my two terms I focused mainly on recruitment and winnowing out the various crap that had crept in between my terms. We went back to basics and prepared ourselves for March 2010. At this point TUP reached it’s historical high water mark of 821 members, which represented around 40% of all people in political parties.

In March jamesw (yes THAT guy) replaced me as PP and did a decent job of revitalising TUP resulting in a big improvement in congress elections. Jamesw has always been an effective organisational player and he did a lot to help the party over this period. He elected Karacticus as CP, who served for one term and did a passable job despite not being very active.

I want to insert here one of the big changes TUP made from Hassan’s term onward. In April 2009 I had (as Minister of Finance) bought the first military company from Lotfire for the use of the Para regiment. Under successive TUP governments the size of the state grew. By the time Karacticus’ term ended there were more than six hundred players working in a full nationalised military and the supporting industrial complex. It was one of the greatest achievements in the eWorld and became a model copied by almost all other countries. To this date it is one of our proudest achievements, since it took a sustained effort for over a year to build.

The last bit of this part 1 of TUP’s history is going to be the election of Dan in April-May 2010. I think it’s fitting that we finish there, since that’s kind of where we are again now. It’s significant perhaps that TUP lost the April elections with Pensive coming second. Pensive wasn’t a very strong candidate and he ran against GLaDOS who was an ex-TUP heavyweight with a term under his belt already. But the real reason TUP lost was because TUP had been weakening for months and membership was bleeding away where it counts- activity. Although TUP was reaching a historic peak, the number of members as a % to make it to the forums and IRC was quite low- and a forum and IRC active population is essential for organisation.

Dan’s election resulted in a major party shakeup. His main goals were to rally our ingame population and get them voting and get them involved. Over the course of two months we had some historic victories in congress and elected jamesw for his first term as CP. He proved to be a competent leader and went on to four more terms. Dan’s work brought through many of the party’s key players for the next two years, many of whom are still active and involved within the party at the top level today. We’re all hoping he’ll repeat his earlier success!

Anyway I’m going to draw the article to a close there. It’s just shy of 2000 words and I feel like I’ve missed out so much, basically just going through the key players and Presidents. But even now I’ve missed so many players who made a huge contribution. Asher, SKQ62, BFSte, Wallyboy, DillTheDog, Eadie - I could go on all day. The party has been built over the hard work of literally hundreds of players, and in it’s long four and a half years of life it’s never slowed down in it’s determination to improve and build the UK.

I’m writing part two now, which will deal with the period from the end of Dan’s Leadership in May-June 2010 and finish at the beginning of 2012. I’ll do a final third part covering the last year and the future of the party in time for Dan’s Presidency ending. Join TUP and be part of that future 🙂

Iain





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