So I find myself in a Twitter discussion about the current petition to stop Uganda’s rather horrific anti-gay bill passing into law, provoked by my seeing countless friends exhorting the Twitter community to ‘sign’ said petition. “Why on earth,” I twote, “do people think that signing an online petition will stop Uganda’s dreadful gay execution law? It’s good to speak out but …”

The answer that generally came back was “because it worked last time”, which seems a fair response. But something in me is convinced that the Ugandan government will this time blithely ignore it, a thought that this morning set in train further musings about the whole value of ePetitions, leading me most pretentiously to tweet that I saw them as the new opiate of the masses (and I even said ‘web 2.0’ for good measure).

So here’s my thinking. I don’t normally blog but I can’t put this into 140.

First of all, on the specifics of the Ugandan bill: there is a long history - in military, political and corporate aggression - of making a first sortie to draw out the opposition and see what it’s made of, before withdrawing and planning the ‘real’ campaign. Is that not what’s happened in Kampala?

British politics saw this approach used most famously by Margaret Thatcher in her battle with the miners. The Tories’ first attempt to ‘bring down the miners’ was deemed to have failed: Arthur Scargill led his brave subterraneans out to the fight he’d always sought, he became a hero and the NUM (National Union of Mineworkers) claimed victory. But history now shows how Thatcher & Co, far from being defeated, used this valuable ‘first foray intelligence’ to calculate how much coal needed to be stockpiled, which strike and picket laws needed to be changed, how much armed force should be deployed against picketers and how many miners didn’t really have the stomach for conflict-to-the-death. The second time the two sides locked horns, there was plenty of coal in storage, the police were armed and ready, and a large number of non-militant miners defected to the new, more moderate Union of Democratic Mineworkers. Scargill & co famously failed to see how they’d been outsmarted and, frankly, lost ignominiously.

I’m no military strategist (god forbid) but I believe a great many battles over the ages have been won by similar tactics, as have many corporate takeovers and, in everyone’s back yard, planning applications for unpopular building developments.

This, I think, is what’s happening in Uganda. Those who claim victory for the previous defeat of the anti-gay legislation do so hollowly. If it were really a victory, why is the bill back on the table? And does Uganda really care that 1.2m people across the planet took 30 seconds to sign an ePetition? As a government, it probably has more opposers than that in Kampala alone, and its opposition there, if it didn’t feel so threatened, would like to do rather more than click a mouse a few times.

Which brings me to my ‘opiate’ line and my general concern about ePetitions.

Every time we twitterati, we first world web addicts, see something we really don’t like, we sign a petition. Well, we follow a link, complete a few fields and there: we’ve had our say. Maybe we even feel good: our desire to oppose is sated, we’ve spoken out from the frontline of our keyboards and we’ve stood up and been counted.

But we didn’t stand up, did we? And we certainly didn’t leave the room, much less take to the streets, hold placards and REALLY make a noise. If 1.2 million people were today standing outside Ugandan embassies in the first world’s capital cities, the news cameras would be on them, the ‘top table’ UN leaders would be seeing a need to say something strident and the Uganda government might just take notice.

But that 1.2m people are instead safe at home or at work. And the Ugandan government knows full well that if there were an attempt to bring them out onto the streets, only handfuls would actually turn up.

I’m not saying we Brits never take to the streets. London, Brighton and other cities have seen their massive anti-cuts marches, coupled with minority acts of aggression. But these were hardly threatening to our government and they certainly weren’t spontaneous outpourings of outrage: they were highly organised, centrally, by trade unions which had deeply vested interests, and they felt more like jolly family picnics than the product of deeprooted fury.

So where are the other marches and demonstrations of old? Where are the spirits of Jarrow, Aldermaston and Greenham Common? We’ve recently, potentially started our latest Iraq- or Afghanistan-style war, with narry a trickle of protest. We’ve just had the world’s worst ever nuclear disaster, but where are the anti-nuclear marchers of the 60s and 70s?

Safe in their comfortable 21st century homes, clicking on ePetitions.

Marx described religion as ‘the opiate of the masses’. The Marquis de Sade said something similar, rather earlier, of this drug which dulls the senses, axes anxiety and suffuses suffering. While we have ePetitions, what need have we to feel our rage more strongly, to be driven to our feet by the adrenalin of indignation, to stand up in a literal sense, make a genuine effort, take to the streets and be truly counted before the eyes of the world?

Why should we? We’ve clicked, we’ve made our views known - well virtually - and it’s cost us nothing.

Should not real protest, real “mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more” expression of fury, cost us something in order to be real? In order to make a genuine difference to the world?