by Sue Black
Recognition at last
In spite of the government’s seeming lack of concern about Bletchley Park’s financial situation, a great announcement came on 12th June 2009: Bletchley Park veterans were to be formally recognised by the UK government and given service medals “for their efforts”.
It was great that the Bletchley Park veterans were finally and rightly being recognised for the crucial work they had carried out during the war – even better that they were now being called “heroes”, which they absolutely are. Heartening news indeed.
Bletchley Park Enigma heroes to be honoured by Government
12 June 2009
James Kirkup
The Telegraph
Up to 5,000 surviving codebreakers and other staff who worked in top secret conditions at the centre and its outlying stations around the world will receive a service medal for their efforts.[ . . . ]
The decision will be a boost for Bletchley Park which is now run by a charitable trust but which has struggled to raise funds to prevent the buildings where the war was decided from falling down.
EuroPython
The campaign was continuing to garner attention, and I was continuing to speak at events and conferences whenever possible. On a very hot and sunny day in July 2009, Simon Greenish and I were invited to give a keynote talk about Bletchley Park at the EuroPython programming conference in Birmingham. It would be the first time I’d spoken in front of so many people – there were around 450 attendees in the audience.
Simon spoke first about the history and impact of Bletchley Park. I then spoke about my campaigning efforts to help save Bletchley Park. I talked about how Twitter had really made a difference to the campaign and how, although I had started the campaign using traditional media, I had realised quite quickly that with traditional news channels it was very hard to keep something in the public eye for long. Social media had given us the opportunity to find our audience and interact with them over a period of time, gradually building up a larger and larger presence and following. Social media had also given us the opportunity to connect with key influencers in a way that that simply hadn’t been possible previously. My aim was to get people to visit Bletchley Park, as I always kept in mind what Simon had told me: the site’s main revenue was from visitors to the Park. So I spoke about the campaign’s achievements to date, then highlighted some of the cool artefacts in the museum and urged everyone to visit.
I thought it was important to talk about the physical artefacts at Bletchley Park because it really underlined the importance of actually going to the site. I pointed out that there was a real Nazi swastika badge in the Toy Museum at Bletchley; I remember being amazed on seeing the Nazi badge for the first time. I had felt an immediate and direct connection with a time in history that had previously seemed very distant. Seeing the badge in the Toy Museum at Bletchley connected me viscerally to what had happened more than sixty years previously. In fact, that’s what visiting Bletchley Park did to me each time I went there. It gave me a powerfully strong connection to recent history. And it wasn’t just me that it had that effect on – every visitor described a feeling of “stepping back in time” or not wanting to leave. The amazing aura of the place just gets under your skin and won’t go away.
I hoped that I had managed to give the correct impression of what it was like to visit Bletchley Park. I was a little worried that people in the audience might misconstrue my enthusiasm for the Nazi badge – sometimes things that sound great in your head don’t always sound that great when they come out of your mouth, and I didn’t want anyone to think that I was pro-Nazi! – but everything seemed to go fine. At the end of our talk we unveiled an Enigma machine on stage. The audience loved it and asked questions for about an hour afterwards. It was such fun and encouraging to have such an enthusiastic audience.
Lady Geek – ah!
Things were really starting to move along with the campaign, and I was being asked more and more frequently to give talks about Bletchley Park, its importance, the campaign, and how social media, especially Twitter, was playing a large role in our success. Social media was just starting to become a hot topic in certain circles, and there was a dearth of good examples of social media being used in practice to make many kinds of constructive changes happen. This, along with the fact that Bletchley Park is such a fascinating and emotive place, helped to ensure that lots of people wanted me to speak at events and meetings across the country.
In May 2009 I was invited to give a talk at OpenTech (an informal, low-cost, one-day conference on approaches to technology, democracy and community) about women in technology. Here’s what I posted on my blog about it:
Last weekend I gave an invited talk at the OpenTech conference in London, this time about women in tech. I had a nice surprise when I introduced myself. I said as part of my intro that I campaign for Bletchley Park and got a round of applause and some cheers. Popular support for Bletchley Park and the campaign is growing :)
One of the most entertaining speakers of the day, in my opinion, was Ben Goldacre. He is so clever and funny and really knows how to work an audience. At the end of the day we all hung around and had a few drinks. I did my usual thing of asking everyone I spoke to if they had been to Bletchley Park, if they could help Bletchley Park and if they had any suggestions for ways to raise the profile of the campaign and garner support. I remember feeling a bit apprehensive approaching Ben Goldacre and asking him about Bletchley, but I needn’t have worried – it turned out he already knew about and supported what we were doing!
ben goldacre
@bengoldacre
@Dr_Black i love Bletchley Park, already linked campaign prevsly, happy to help, give me tasks http://savingbletchleypark.org
1:36 PM – 7 Jun 09
Our chat that night was unfortunately cut short, but I was delighted that, when prompted for his favourite female tech hero on Ada Lovelace Day, Ben named me his “top lady geek”. I was extremely honoured.
I was noticing a real change. In just a year the audience response to a mention of Bletchley Park had gone from one of quiet interest to one of active applause. People were starting to hear about Bletchley Park more frequently and appreciate its fundamental place in our history.
That month I also met up with the wonderful Professor Barry Cooper from Leeds University, who was planning a year of celebration for the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing’s birth in 1912. Barry had kindly invited me to join the Turing Centenary committee, and I happily accepted. We chatted about Turing and his impact, and I told Barry how successful social media had been in our campaign. I had become such a massive fan of Twitter and couldn’t stop talking about the amazing impact it was making. I talked about what we had done with Twitter and urged Barry to use it too.
It’s early days
On one of my usual scouts around on Twitter I ended up following a chain of tweeters that led me to Phil Willis MP. At that time he was Minister for Universities and Science. I looked at his Twitter profile and thought to myself that he might be interested in Bletchley Park and would therefore be a good person to start tweeting with. He was reasonably new to Twitter and didn’t have that many followers, so there was a reasonable chance that he might actually respond to me.
I was starting to notice something that probably is common sense: people with loads of followers and who had been on Twitter for a long time were much less likely to engage with me than those who did not have that many followers and were quite new to Twitter. I was always on the lookout for influential people who might have some relevance to Bletchley Park and the campaign, especially those who were new to Twitter and didn’t have many followers yet – I was learning that that was the profile of someone most likely to engage in a discussion with me. That doesn’t mean to say that you can have a chat about just anything. You need to tweet on a topic that is relevant to you both, in a friendly way. It’s actually just like being at a party – we’ve all
met those people who start talking and are only really interested in themselves. It’s easy to spot these people on Twitter because they won’t be engaging with anyone. If you look at their tweet stream, you can see that they are just broadcasting stuff about themselves and they don’t @ reply anyone.
Imagine a different person at a party, someone who comes over and starts chatting to you about stuff that you are both interested in. After a while you forget that you have only just met because you have had such an interesting discussion. It’s the same on Twitter.
As I got more comfortable with using Twitter as a campaign tool, I realised that there were certain ways of approaching people that were much more effective than others. In my experience, if you want to be successful at finding and engaging with interesting people on Twitter you need to be:
Authentic – first and foremost, you need to be yourself;
Friendly – don’t be overly pushy or reticent, just imagine what you would say if you were approaching someone in a relaxed and friendly environment, like a drinks party;
Engaging – there’s no point chatting to someone if you don’t really have anything to say to them;
On topic – look for common areas of interest and start there. If you get along, the conversation will develop naturally;
Cheeky – OK, you don’t have to be cheeky, but if you have a sense of humour why not use it? Many of the wonderful friends that I have met through Twitter are people I have really bonded with through a shared sense of humour and just having a bit of fun. It goes such a long way in terms of discovering shared interests and making the getting-to-know-you process enjoyable.
I realise, too, that I’m really lucky in that I absolutely love meeting and talking to new people. I enjoy finding out all about other people’s lives, what they are interested in, what they have done, and what makes them tick. I think that’s partly why I love Twitter so much: it allows me to look for new friends and people to chat to whenever and wherever I am. I love knowing that there is always someone to talk to. I was pretty nerdy when I was younger, and also painfully shy. This meant that for most of my life, until I was in my 30s, I didn’t have many friends – and therefore not many people to talk to. I’m really making up for that now, though. Things started to change when I went to university in my late 20s; later, being encouraged by Professor Robin Whitty, my PhD supervisor, to talk to people at conferences, I gained more confidence and gradually overcame the fear of speaking to strangers. In fact, I actually started enjoying talking to strangers, and now I actively look forward to meeting new groups of people. I guess that just shows that your character can change as you get older. Some of the things I do these days, like speaking in front of hundreds of people or appearing on live TV in front of potentially millions of people, are things that not that long ago I wouldn’t have dreamt in a million years that I would be able to do.
So . . . back to Phil Willis. When I saw that he was quite new to Twitter, and that his tweet stream showed that he did tweet with people that he didn’t already know, I decided that there was a good chance he would engage with me. It was worth a try, at least!
I sent him a few tweets about Bletchley Park, its importance, its financial situation – the usual stuff. I was hoping that he would be interested and might possibly be able to give some advice or open some doors for the management at Bletchley Park. Thankfully he responded and we had a nice chat. I asked him if I could have a ten minute appointment with him at his convenience to tell him more about Bletchley Park and the situation they were in.
Bingo! He agreed.
The next week I went along to meet Phil at his office in Portcullis House. I had a great chat with him and one of his researchers. I explained the situation and asked them if they had visited Bletchley Park. When they said no, I asked them to visit. Phil said he could visit in a few months’ time and got his researcher to add it to his schedule.
When I asked Phil what he could do to help, he told me that he would set up an EDM – he was very happy to do so, and he thought it would have a good effect. I said:
“That’s wonderful! Thank you so much.”
And then, slightly sheepishly,
“So . . . what’s an EDM?”
We all laughed and then Phil explained that an EDM is an Early Day Motion – a standard government process for drawing attention to particular issues and finding out who is interested in the same issues as you. A statement is made which MPs across all parties can sign to show support. Phil said that it was a good way to make MPs aware, if they weren’t already, of the situation at Bletchley Park. He asked me which particular issue at Bletchley Park it would be best to focus on. From my recent discussions with Simon Greenish, I knew that they needed a contribution towards operating costs. Simon had said that the operating costs were around £250,000 per annum and that if we could raise that amount through external funding for the next 5 years, he would no longer be worried about Bletchley Park being able to survive financially. It wouldn’t solve all the problems there, but it would mean that there would no longer be a threat of Bletchley Park having to close. I told Phil about this; he agreed it was the right sort of thing to focus on and asked me to write a few sentences that he could use as the statement for the EDM.
My ten minutes went very quickly, but I was happy: I had a result. I went home that day feeling that I’d achieved something, and just a week or so later the EDM was up! I was delighted and of course tweeted about it to everyone asking them to encourage their MP to sign it – in the UK everyone has access to their local MP through the “Write to Them” website. I also blogged about the EDM, giving instructions on what to do and how, pointing at the relevant websites. I really wanted the EDM to get as many signatures as possible.
The women of Bletchley Park
I’ve met some really great people during my campaign – people that I never would have met if I hadn’t followed my heart and started doing what I felt I really must do. Suw Charman Anderson is one of those people.
I met Suw on Twitter, where else? We hit it off right away. We both care passionately about women in tech, amongst other things, so had lots to talk about. Suw is the person responsible for setting up Ada Lovelace Day, which celebrates Ada, who worked with Charles Babbage on the analytical and difference engines and is known as the person responsible for the idea of software. Ada Lovelace Day is also more generally a day to celebrate women in computing and their achievements, so as you can imagine that’s something I’m totally up for doing!
John Chapman speaking outside the Bletchley Park Post Office Jean Valentine with Colossus In August 2009, Suw organised a Women of Bletchley Park Day at Bletchley Park as a follow-up to Ada Lovelace Day that year. Suw and I both gave talks, as did the amazing Jean Valentine, a Bletchley Park WWII veteran who was also our guide around the Park. Jean was the absolute star of the day, as she always is. She was a Bombe operator at Bletchley during the war and went to Sri Lanka after the war to carry on with her work. She is such an inspiration.
In the Bletchley Park cinema, we watched the Women of Station X film, which had been produced by BCSWomen in 2007. It was a really heartwarming and emotional experience for me, as the film was one of the main outputs of the Women of Station X project, which I’d got funded after my very first trip to Bletchley Park.
The cinema itself is incredible. It seats about sixty people in an intimate setting and boasts a plethora of film and camera equipment in showcases at the back. I spent some energy when I was campaigning trying to get Secret Cinema and other clubs to do some screenings there, as there’s a definite atmosphere of history and excitement about the place.
It was a great day of celebrating women, technology and Bletchley Park, three of my passions. But at the end of the day, on a sobering note, I took a photo of Hut 6, the hut that I’d stood outside in 2008, a year previously when I was interviewed by the BBC, right at the beginning of my campaign. Hut 6 was de
teriorating rapidly.
Time was running out. Bletchley Park must be saved. I blogged, asking everyone again to “donate, talk to everyone you know, write to your MP, support the campaign in any way you can. Thank you.”
A slap in the face
A couple of weeks later, in August 2009, the government responded to the Save Bletchley Park petition, which had been signed by almost 22,000 people. The government acknowledged the contribution made by Bletchley Park, but failed to offer financial help to secure its future. I was disgusted by the response, as my blog post from the day, “Government response a disgrace”, shows. But far from making me want to give up on the campaign, I was spurred on to keep trying to find a way to save Bletchley Park.
Government response a disgrace
Thursday 27 August 2009
10 Downing Street’s response – or lack of response – to the Save Bletchley Petition, signed by almost 22,000 people, is a disgrace and a slap in the face to the thousands of people that worked there. Bletchley Park not only saved countless British lives and shortened the war by two years, but it is also the birthplace of modern computing and a vital site in the UK’s 20th Century wartime and scientific heritage. If the Government truly acknowledge the contribution made as significant why are they failing to help secure its future?
The funds already allocated to the park will go some small way to fixing a tiny number of problems, but the whole site, and particularly the huts where the most important work was done, are in a dire state of repair. This setback will not stop us campaigning – despite this response, we still believe that investment in saving Bletchley Park would be hugely beneficial to the UK, in terms of saving incredibly important history, knowledge and fantastic stories for the nation.