During the 1997 British general election campaign, most candidates did not have the knowledge, technical know-how or inclination to make the best possible use of the Internet.

Speculation is rising that the British prime minister, Tony Blair could call an election as soon as May. (Unlike the United States, there is no fixed term of office, so Blair can choose to go to the polls any time within his five-year term.)

More than half of Britain's adult population will be using the Internet regularly by June, according to independent research agency Mori and the online bank Egg. The upcoming election, whenever it is held, could be the acid test of whether the Internet has become an effective campaign tool and a vital way for voters and the media to find out about the candidates and the parties' campaign pledges.

In the first of a three-part series, I will examine how individual British Ministers of Parliament and political parties are approaching the upcoming election online, and consider whether they -- as well as the journalists and voters -- are beginning to use the Internet as a medium for political communication, a forum for debate and an information provider.

In 1997, I surveyed MPs' Web sites as part of a research project for the Open University. I found that an estimated 7 percent of MPs had their own site. Most of those were pretty amateur. Broken links, pointless animated graphics, pictures overlapping with text, and a lack of email addresses were just some of the Web sins frequently committed by these sorry sites.

Fast forward to 2001, and the situation is a little -- but not much -- better. David Walker, a journalist at the Guardian and author, recently calculated that the number of Westminster MPs with their own Web site to be 16 percent, but he admits that it's probably an underestimate.

Survey results published by the New Statesman in January wildly overestimate the number at 71 percent, probably because only 11 percent of MPs -- likely to be those most interested in the Net -- bothered to respond to the survey.

The most accurate count seems to come from Epolitix, who not only host microsites for politicians but also keep an up-to-date list of MPs' sites. By their reckoning, 198 of the 659 House of Commons members have their own sites or Epolitix microsites, or just over 30 percent.

MPs' Web Sites

The general wisdom remains that few MPs have well designed Web sites, with many showing their ignorance of the Internet by creating poorly designed, badly written or just downright ugly homepages. As the Economist put it so succinctly, 'The typical British MP -- if he or she has a site at all -- offers an out-of-date curriculum vitae and a recycled harangue from the hustings.' This does not bode well for those who dream of an election run over the Internet.

Tom Steinberg, a researcher and IT manager the Institute of Economic Affairs, found that very few MPs who do boast sites use them to communicate effectively with the people they represent. 'Normally, the party machines leap at the chance to put across a message to voters,' he writes. 'In the field of MPs' Web sites, they have been curiously hesitant.'

Steinberg believes that the problem is politicians' misconceptions about the usefulness of the Web. MPs think that they are better off spending their campaign funds on printing leaflets and stickers and targeting their constituency area rather than putting information out into cyberspace where 99 percent of the potential audience are not their voters.

But as Steinberg also points out, having a poor Web site or no site at all can be an electoral liability. While MPs won't surge in the polls the day they go online, they could encourage voter loyalty and grassroots activity among constituents who do visit their sites.

As Guardian writer Walker says, 'There is pressure on MPs at least to present as 'modern' in terms of communications'.

However, it could take constituents until polling day to track down the candidates' sites, because there is no reliable official central list. Go to the dull Parliament site and you are faced with a catalogue of MPs that gives only a smattering of Web sites and email addresses. The parties' sites are also poor at linking to their own MPs' pages, and the only sites that get close to a current list are unofficial.

All this does not bode well for the election. No doubt some new candidates and existing Commons members will see setting up their own virtual presence as another way of getting crosses on ballots, but they will have a job to get them noticed in the short, four-week period of the British general election campaign. It will be those candidates with longstanding sites who will reap the rewards in the form of voter loyalty.

Roseanna Cunningham runs one of the best MP sites around.

Cunningham's site must serve a double purpose, as she is both a Westminster MP and a member of the new Scottish Parliament (an MSP) for the Scottish National Party. Hers is one of the rare sites to include a forum for her constituents to have their say on political issues.

'The online forum hasn't really generated much in the way of debate I had hoped for apart from a few outbreaks,' Cunningham said. 'Like many of these things, you end up with North Americans leaving bizarre messages which suggest they don?t have much of a handle on Scottish politics.'

Political Party Web sites

What about the political parties' sites? I also examined them back in 1997 and it was apparent that they did not have much to offer voters or journalists. The main parties just about managed to get crude versions of their manifestos online. Meanwhile, only the Labour party had a site search engine, and none of them had a site map.

Some showed a laughable naivet? about the Net. For instance, Plaid Cymru, the party of Wales, offered a form for donations, but you had to print off the form and send it in via snail mail. So much for interactivity.

Since then, all the parties have made great strides forward, changing from political billboards to shop fronts with plenty of useful information on offer once you get past the first page. Their sophisticated sites provide everything from Web casts, news sections updated daily, PDF documents, MP searches, registration and online donation facilities.

The best thing about Web sites from the parties' perspective is that the information comes free from filtering by what they see as the cynical press pack. For smaller parties such as the Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru, who are unlikely to receive the kind of multi-million pound donations given to the two main parties, it's a cheap way of disseminating information such as manifestos to interested voters, thus saving on printing costs.

But the Internet will probably not play as big a part in the election strategy of the Labour party. As political commentator John Kampfner says:

'As for the party strategists at Millbank [Labour's media HQ], while the Internet is a useful means of communicating to the converted, their targets in the election campaign will be the waverers and the apathetic ... So the party will fall back on mailshots, billboards and TV and newspaper advertising in the hope of securing victory.'

But will the parties who do invest in Internet campaigning -- by providing a user-friendly site packed with information -- gain any more votes for their efforts compared to those that ignore the Web and pour all their campaign cash into traditional methods?

It's doubtful, says Parliament member Cunningham. Although she hopes to use her site as an electioneering tool, she is downbeat about the Net's potential impact on voters. 'I think very few people go to the Internet, even at election times, to find out day to day information about what MSPs/MPs are up to,' she says.

Cunningham may well be right, if the U.S. election is anything to go by. There, the e-Voter Institute found that despite seeing Gore's advertisements, Republican voters stuck with Bush, and vice versa -- voters' political preferences are hard to shift.

Only the party faithful, who have Internet access and sufficient knowledge of the Web, are likely to drum up the enthusiasm to seek out political sites. It remains to be seen whether this group has grown big enough to warrant candidates spending time and cash wooing them online.

The Politicians and the Press

The main visitors to MPs' and parties' Web sites may be journalists looking for stories. Cunningham explains: 'I know that journalists keep an eye on [my site], mainly to see if there is anything on it which would create a news or diary story -- which means that it has to be regularly checked and any embarrassing or offensive stuff taken off.'

The Daily Telegraph's political editor George Jones says he plans to keep a close eye on the parties' Web sites because he thinks they could begin to be a valuable source for stories.

However, the public is increasingly demanding 'raw' news that has not been passed through the media's filters. The most visited page on the Prime Minister's Number 10 homepage is the one containing lobby briefings traditionally given to journalists in private.

Guardian Unlimited's The newslist, offers readers links to 'raw' news sources in the form of source documents and press releases, including those from individual MPs' and the parties' Web sites.

Whether journalists or members of the public, visitors to party sites can leave behind a valuable resource without realising -- their email address. Parties can gather an email database (via cookies, online feedback forms, site registration or online donations) that can prove a valuable campaign resource.

Earlier this month, Conservative Party officials sent out around 20,000 emails featuring a talking virtual version of their leader, William Hague, rallying support for his 'keep the pound' campaign.

This was the first e-vert to be used in the United Kingdom, although the idea hails (as do most new British trends) from the U.S. No official word yet on how it was received, but it may signal the beginnings of a different kind of Internet campaigning, popular for its low cost and ability to spread like wildfire, given the right content.

The flip side is that many people do not like getting unsolicited email, and a badly targeted mailout may do more harm than good. As the Conservatives' chief Internet planner, Jonathan French, recently told the Guardian: 'There are inherent dangers in an unabridged or unedited email list, attractive as it may be in terms of the number of subscribers.'

A recent Daily Telegraph article illustrated the dangers of failing to keep a close eye on the content of political sites, as you never know who could come visiting -- even another politician. Nigel Hastilow, a prospective Tory Parliamentary candidate, found himself the subject of the Prime Minister's question time when Tony Blair quoted an article found on his Web site stating that: 'For many voters and most of the media, the Conservative party is a lost cause.'

Oops. Of course Hastilow claims that the article was posted accidentally and says, 'I thought no one looked at our site.'

But as the big day approaches, this is a salutary lesson to any candidates who mistakenly believe they can put any old rubbish on their site and get away with it. The journalists are watching, and so is Tony Blair -- but are the voters?

In the second of this three-part series, J.L. Perrone will look at how both traditional and Web-only media outfits are covering the campaign. Updated: March 1, 2001.