Category Archives: Policy proposals

Where Occupy London went wrong

Posted on 26 December 2011 | 2 Comments

Occupy London began with a splash worthy of every front page and a media junky’s wet dream. The John Wilkes of the 21st Century, Julian Assange, broke his house arrest and risked his neck to be there. 5,000 people rocked up and took over the most famous churchyard in the world in open, public and democratic assembly. When they voted to suspend proceedings to hear Assange, it was the biggest unanimous vote in history. Assange preached that we wanted, “not the destruction of law but the construction of law”.

This unusual outdoor sermon met with the congregation’s firm approval. The congregation itself met with the approval of the rest of us, with opinion polls in that first week showing support for the occupation averaging at 87.5%. Londoners poured physical and financial support into the occupation to sustain it and to nurture it.

Then came the tussle with the Cathedral. For a while the story became the Church of England’s iconic church giving account of itself. It was a sorry tale of muddle, indecision and incompetence. St Paul’s Cathedral successively took on each party’s position as if trying them all out for size. First it appeared to support the encampment, although in reality it had only supported their right to protest – that is Labour’s position with its striking members. Next it closed its doors and asked the Occupationists to leave – that was what its local authority, the City of London corporation, wanted. After that it reopened its doors, withdrew from legal action and began to talk to some of the Occupationists – that was what the Christians wanted. It squeezed in an offer to accommodate a tent on its own land – that was what the Occupationists wanted – before subtly siding with the City by giving witness evidence for it in its eviction proceedings – a nuanced approach to morality which met with the approval of the thieving Tory bastards.

Along the way, Occupy London spent increasing amounts of time justifying its own existence instead of consecrating its original purpose, the construction of law. Some of the most able protestors wasted inordinate amounts of time dealing with the Cathedral despite its eventual abandonment of the cause being utterly predictable. The Church of England sits on vast funds invested in the London Stock Exchange. The idea that it would shake off centuries old form for supporting the establishment for the sake of this temporary popular support is nonsensical.

For the first month of the Occupation, numbers at the nightly general assemblies remained impressive. They were frequently attended not by hundreds but by thousands. In the second month they were attended in the low hundreds still. Now, in the third month, they are rarely attended by more than a hundred – the usual figure is less than 50. That’s 1% of the numbers on 15th October 2011. This then is a 1% claiming to represent the 99%. What went wrong?

Mission creep has been the main problem. With a mission statement so simple it is easy to see how the rot set in. The original idea was to occupy public spaces, complain about corporate power gone mad, raise public consciousness and be there when the public at large decided to join in, thus the revolution would not be televised, it would be on YouTube instead. All that church chit chat was not part of the original agenda. It was meant to be an Occupation with a capital O, not tea and biscuits with the Bishop. Taking over buildings was also a new development. All other parts of the Occupy movement around the world had kept themselves to public spaces, whereby anyone could join in. Occupy London changed the game plan by making its visitors to its most exciting political work guests in a seized bank building. Consequently, only the bravest parts of the wider public attended. Although plenty did attend, London is a big place. These people were already on onside – Occupy London had begun to preach only to the converted.

Despite commencing as a campaign for the construction of law, Occupy London showed remarkably little faith in the concept. Most people in the camp were persuaded that violent crimes should not be dealt with by the police standing nearby at all times but by the camp itself. Consequently internal violence began to rise because no-one was able to contain it. Violence entered the camp from within and from outside. Predictably, the camp became a dangerous place to be on some nights. This state of regarding itself above the law was a mistake. A collective and complete error of judgement.

The central idea of the Occupation was mass civil disobedience. Here’s me spelling it out, on 21st October 2011:

Clearly I am not the greatest ever advocate for civil disobedience but I did command the attention of a few hundred and win all their approval. The winning idea behind civil disobedience is that you choose which law to break, to make your point, ensure your arrest and charge, obtain publicity and obtain public support. Ordinary civil disobedience is converted into the successful mass participation form when many people join in. It is peaceful politics. It respects the law of the land and proves that respect publicly. It doesn’t involve any private law breaking. The moment Occupy London went indoors, it turned public protest into a private matter. Seizing and squatting banks is a specialist affair. Anyone can set up a tent!

It’s notable that no-one in Occupy London argues the weather necessitates private squats. There are said to be dozens more lined up for the taking. The activists who take on this sort of thing are highly experienced and have been in the protest movement for a long time. They are now training other activists in the craft. Whilst their actions around London carries the mood of many others, it does not carry their personal enthusiasm. It does not convert them to disobedience.

Having raised our country’s consciousness, Occupy London must either be seeking to recruit others to mass civil disobedience or it must go home. What other purpose does it have? The massive public support it once enjoyed was not won for the prospect of an extended picnic in central London. Pointlessly pouting on the sidelines is not what Assange did. Since deciding, through inaction, to foster anti-police culture and also deciding, by dint of an accidental consequence of its co-option of bank property, to privatise its protest zones, Occupy London has crept some distance away from the business of mass civil disobedience. It did this most stealthily, so that none of the people involved (myself included) saw how far gone it was. Stealth implies deliberation but this is wrong. These errors of judgment occurred precisely because of a lack of deliberation. Had there been any form of political leadership involved, all of this could have been thought through. Almost everything that had happened has been completely predictable.

Occupy as a whole turned its back on leaders. In part this is due to the movement’s anarchic creed but mainly it represents the best interests of the fearful nature of its followers, the masked and anonymous. Refusing leaders is a convenient way of avoiding anyone getting the primary blame for subsequent criminal prosecutions. Yet, since the cause is just there is no shortage of people willing to pursue the risk and, by so doing, lead others into activism. Isn’t that exactly what Ghandi did?

Insisting that everyone is equal for every conceivable activity isn’t what democracy looks like, it’s an attempt to defeat conspiracy charges. Luckily, it also means that nothing much ever gets decided so as a defence it is strikingly successful. Easy as it is to state this particular version of the equality principle, hard to impossible it becomes to follow through. Inevitably direct actions and other recruitment activities are conducted only by those with the need to know because that is the only way to get anything done. Consequently, people who most want responsibility take it, rather than the people everybody most wants to take responsibility; the latter is what democracy looks like.

I lost faith with Occupy London some time ago. I stayed involved because I thought that the original idea deserved its day in court: that mass civil disobedience was a legitimate form of protest which potentially overwhelmed other competing rights, such as those belonging to the local authority in relation to a pedestrian highway.  That was why I recruited John Cooper QC to advise me personally on behalf of the Occupation on 15th October 2011. I took that responsibility because I was the only one present at the legal forum on the first day of the Occupation who knew how. (I had wanted to help with the shelter forum, as it happens.) I quit the scene shortly after the trial had commenced, having fulfilled my promise to set up a proper defence.

As the Occupation progressed, I became increasingly concerned about the presence of the Freeman Cult inside the camp. Over half of all the enquiries I got related directly to their nonsensical deconstruction of law. Eventually I wrote a post mocking the main Freeman Cult member on the original site.  Inexplicably, the very next day whoever the Guardian allowed to take over Comment is Free decided to include an article by the very man I satirised, with the result that sensible minded Occupationists were made fools of. It looked like we took this legal woo seriously! A rearguard action was fought by sympathetic bloggers. They vigorously attacked the cult; one even exposed BNP involvement in it. This was a very damaging episode because all parts of what used to be called the intelligentsia were now badly misinformed as to the purpose of Occcupy London. We had gone from being a radical campaign for the construction of law to a camp which at that time had produced no serious proposals for law reform and only quasi-legal gibberish.

Occupy London’s media team established a close relationship with the Guardian. Certainly I was told about one or two stories that the Guardian had agreed not to print; whether that was true or not I do not know but the word was clear – the paper was on side. The paper agreed to abide by news embargoes, with the result that when Occupy London finally issued some political and economic demands beyond a general set of desires it was not reported until three days had passed from the decision being made. I know this because the Guardian accidentally busted the embargo and during the short window when the story was on early release, I spotted it on their website. I mentioned this to Naomi Colvin and the story was pulled immediately until she gave permission for its release. This news management goes far beyond the remit Occupy London’s general assembly ever granted the media team.

No doubt Occupy London’s media team will defend itself for including the voice of the Freeman cult by pointing to the new version of the Equality principle. As buckets to carry arguments in go, this is so leaky you’d only have to travel a couple of steps before all the water poured away! You cannot stand for the construction of law and simultaneously wish to abolish it. You cannot be completely open and transparent but at the same time hold stories back until it fits your agenda.

You cannot present the faces of the occupation to the world in masks. You cannot claim to offer a better society whilst making a worse one yourself. You cannot have any claim to public support whilst sheltering in private spaces. These are the hard facts of life for Occupy. Mission creep has gone too far too be recovered easily. The best method would be to pick an end date before judgment in the eviction proceedings, which will be on 11th January 2012 at the earliest. That’s Occupy London’s last chance to pitch their appeal to Joe Public: by making the Occupation suddenly due to end, more people will strive to catch it before it disappears. This sets it up for a sequel.

However the sequel plays out, it cannot be along the same failed line as this Occupation. Futile protests must be abandoned or else activists are being self-indulgent. The challenge is to see what it would take to muster bigger numbers. Encampments breed fatigue after five or six weeks. Starting well into the autumn was always going to be a bad move – a media crew get the blame for that as well: Adbusters kick started Occupy Wall Street with a date and a poster. Perhaps starting again in May might be more successful? If the movement is determined to avoid leaders, it will have to propose something much simpler, which does not require any organisation whatsoever. Perhaps standing around in a park every day rattling keys for a couple of hours? Plenty of people could join in with that. What worked for Vaclav Havel, might work here. I’m not holding my breath though. I’ve returned to being a Green Party activist. We’ve got over our childish dispute about whether to have a leader or not. We take responsibility for what we do, which currently includes running the grooviest City in the South – Brighton & Hove. Occupy London excited English politics for a while because there was a concentration of talent working cohesively. As the Occupation progressed, the various specialists in the camp pulled away from one another and, collectively, from their generalist comrades. They lost sight of their key objective – recruitment – and only began to see themselves.

 

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Posted in Bank of Ideas, City of London Corporation, Civil Disobedience, Demands, Eviction, General Assemblies, Occupy Everywhere, Occupy London, Occupy London Finsbury Park, Occupy London Stock Exchange, Occupy Movement, Police, Policy proposals, Politics, Politics in the Cave, St Paul's Cathedral

Occupy Brighton’s lesson for Occupy London

Posted on 17 December 2011 | 17 Comments

I didn’t have much to do with Occupy Brighton. On the day that Occupy London began I travelled up to London to be part of that instead. On twitter the talk was alive with what was about to happen in London. The boast that Block the Bridge had been a warning shot but that ‘they’ had seen nothing yet now seems more of a promise than some idle and ambitious tweet. There were Brighton twitterers chatting away. Most seemed on their way to London, having arranged to travel together already. Not knowing them, I travelled alone. There was some talk of setting up a Brighton camp but it wasn’t very enthusiastic.

A couple of weeks later, on 29th October 2011, a people’s general assembly was held in Victoria Gardens in central Brighton. The assembly decided to set up camp and Occupy Brighton was born. This branch of the international movement had a particularly easy ride because Brighton & Hove City Council is the only one in the country run by the Green Party. The Greens declared themselves supportive of the Occupy movement. Consequently, this camp faced no eviction threat, so long as they remained peaceful. The entire Occupy movement espouses peaceful direct action. The local thieving Tory bastards were outraged that something like this could be allowed to happen and issued press releases accordingly. The camp carried on, welcoming visitors and holding debates. I kept meaning to go but the few times I have been in central Brighton over the last two months, I was on my way back to Occupy London, so I didn’t become involved.

On 9th November 2011, Occupy Brighton released its initial statement. Here it is, for the record:

  • This is an Initial Statement but may be subject to change. It has been discussed at open meetings and consensus has been reached on each point.
  • We need an alternative to the current system which is unsustainable, undemocratic and unjust.
  • We are all unique people living on this planet. We stand together with occupations all over the world.
  • Abolish the interest charges on the money creation process.
  • We do not accept the cuts as either necessary or inevitable.
  • We seek an alternative to global tax injustice and our democracy representing corporations instead of the people.
  • We want regulators and watchdogs to be genuinely independent of the industries they regulate.
  • We support all actions to defend our services, welfare, education and employment, and to stop wars and arms dealing.
  • We want structural change towards authentic global equality. The world’s resources must be protected and only go towards caring for people and the planet.
  • We demand an end to the unjust wars and oppression supported by our government.
  • We demand an end to the police and military brutality both here and in other countries.
  • This is what democracy looks like. Come and join us!

This statement is actually quite a lot bolder than the initial statement of the biggest encampment in the UK, Occupy London Stock Exchange. It specifically calls for the abolition of interest charges. Occupy London’s initial statement ended with the same words, the general invitation to join in. Whereas in London a large number of all sorts of people did join in, in Brighton most of the joiners were local people with severe drug and alcohol problems. Many of them were homeless. They had, after all, been invited to a camp where food, shelter and companionship was offered. Over time, the numbers of these completely disenfranchised people overwhelmed those who had actually set the camp up.

Eventually I did find myself passing, on 3rd December 2011. I had intended just to take a gentle stroll around and then go home but their general assembly was in progress and a friend from Occupy London spotted me. At that assembly there was a fundamental schism. Essentially the Occupation divided into two parts that evening. On one side there were the genuine activists who wanted to keep the camp a purely political affair by banning the public consumption of drugs and alcohol. On the other side were those who thought nothing of sitting around all day getting wasted and calling that a political protest. Occupy London has had similar debates. In London the general assembly’s decision was clear: drinking and drug taking would be banned but unfortunately no decision was taken as to how to enforce the ban. That evening in Brighton was the watershed moment, when the active got up and went to set up an occupation somewhere else. I never heard where they went. I’ve had a look but they are currently nowhere to be found. It looks like they just got up and left to do something else.

They left the camp in the charge of the wasted and it muddled through, with its protest signs but not really organising itself, until a big storm hit Brighton. It wrecked the camp and broke the spirit of the remaining Occupants, which was hardly surprising since their organisational strength was restricted to tending to their own personal proclivities. Local council workers turned up on 14th December 2011 to clear the debris away. Some of camp’s Occupants helped with the clear up. Unfortunately some of the others set fire to the debris. The fire brigade attended to put the fire out and someone assaulted a fire fighter, pushing him to the ground! The assailant ran off. The violence triggered a change in the local council’s policy on the Occupy encampment, with the council leader Bill Randall declaring that consequently Brighton & Hove City Council would not tolerate another similar camp being set up again. This was pretty much exactly what was predicted by the activists at the general assembly I attended.

The central problem at Occupy Brighton was the failure to exclude anyone. Occupy London has precisely the same problem. A key component of the Occupy movement is that no-one is excluded. This is what distinguishes it from a political party. All over the world, the Occupy movement has boasted that its particular take on direct democracy, using consensus as the method for decision making, is what democracy looks like. In fact, this is not true at all. Democracy requires a defined citizenry. All ancient systems of democracy involved knowing exactly who could vote and who could not. Most of these ancient regimes severely restricted who could vote. Modern democracies allow pretty much anyone to vote but even then there is always a clearly understood mechanism for registering to vote. The universal franchise works because registered voters cast votes for representatives to make informed choices after they’ve had their varying degrees of rational debates.

The current problem with our political democracies is that they are apparently restricted to decision making on purely political and social matters. We have lost control of our economies. That is where the Occupy movement stepped in: the central complaint has been that we have no democratic control of the way in which our economy is run. That was why the first camp was set up close to Wall Street. That was why Occupy London wanted to set up in Paternoster Square, the home of the London Stock Exchange, and settled (rather than fight the police) for St Paul’s Churchyard instead, which is immediately next door. Occupy wants to extend democracy from the purely political sphere to the economic one. Occupy recognises that the financial institutions which run the planet all have headquarters. The key idea that Occupy brought to the political debate was that we should physically protest in the land around these financial powerhouses, rather than outside the political vacuum filled only by politicians arguing about education policy and other issues of little interest to the bankers.

The particular method that Occupy uses for decision taking – consensus – is brilliant for generating cohesion amongst a disparate group of people drawn from many backgrounds but rubbish for taking tough decisions. Decisions taken by consensus are only agreed when everyone either agrees or everyone agrees and no-one vetoes (or blocks, to use the jargon) the decision. If someone blocks the decision, the discussion continues. This system can be wonderfully effective for generating individual responsibility within a precise society organised by consensus. Witness Christiania, the self-proclaimed autonomous neighbourhood of about 850 residents in Copenhagen which has run on consensus for over 40 years. The political meetings there are said to be very long winded and tedious but the community has held together precisely because everyone has agreed with everything decided. Another by-product of this political system, is that very few decisions of any sort get made. Christiania is the paradigmatic example again: after four decades, there are still only no more than a dozen rules, each of which has arisen to deal with a specific problem. To the outsider this might appear wonderfully simple but in reality, there are many rulers instead. For example, to join Christiania and build a house to live in there, you must obtain the consent of everyone. Consequently, there is much unused land, for the Christianians to meditate in.

Whether this is fair or not must remain a matter for debate. Whether it is the best way to run a country the size of the UK must be severely doubted. The fact is that all large scale democracies require some type of majority voting system. The system must respect minority rights but that does not need to extend to winning their agreement to everything. Although Christiania’s policy making meetings are very much larger than all but a few of Occupy London’s, they do have a defined citizenry. In other words, they do not just allow anyone to wander in and block decisions.

Occupy London has been successful because of its location, its scale and the urgency of the problems visited on the world by the London Stock Exchange, which have triggered an ambition not hitherto seen amongst the UK’s foremost political activists. The movement in London has been neither short of energy nor commitment from some extremely capable people. Together we have generated one of the biggest challenges to the economic hegemony seen in my lifetime. We have created a community space in which genuine debate and conversation has occurred between all the key players. However, despite all that, the movement has to recognise its failings and learn from them, if it doesn’t want to endlessly suffer them. Occupy Brighton’s problems are much the same as Occupy London’s. The longevity of both camps will be decided by external factors because using consensus without a defined citizenry means that no decision to scatter the camp could ever get taken – there would always be someone whose best home was right there. Both camps are being consumed by those whose immediate problems are well below the political and economic barricades; dealing with them exhausts the activists’ resources.

Occupy cannot continue forever. None of the original activists intended it to. There has been much talk of the Spanish camps, which did pack up and leave, but no serious proposals to leave have been made in London. In Brighton, the genuine activists realised that they could not exclude those that they had invited and left themselves. The departure rate of genuine activists in Occupy London has remained a trickle for some time. To some extent the departed have been replaced by newcomers but with the British winter coming, the trickle will turn into a torrent. Occupy London needs to set an end date so that it can hold the politically moral high ground. The trial of the eviction case begins on Monday 19th December 2011. It looks set to continue for longer than the Judge’s time estimate of three to four days. There are two litigants in person who have joined the proceedings, doubtless they will slow the proceedings considerably. However, this extra time does not auger well for Occupy London because of the difficulty of taking decisions according to the chaos of whoever turns up to talk.

As with the camp in Brighton, the London activists need to realise that they are facing a stark choice: to either quit while they are ahead, recoup over the winter and come back in the spring or to get violently evicted. There’s no honour in the violence. Without honour, there can be no real political persuasion.

We already know that various violent groups are planning to join in ‘to defend’ the camp they have not been part of. There will be undercover police officers doing much the same thing. The result of this is that all the people who didn’t join an Occupy camp will see ‘us’ apparently resorting to violence as a last, futile gesture. There is nothing to be gained by sleepwalking into that situation. With the trial about to begin, Occupy London will be praying for a violent storm instead of a stormy eviction.

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Posted in Brighton, City of London Corporation, Eviction, General Assemblies, Occupy London, Occupy London Stock Exchange, Occupy Movement, Occupy Wall Street, Policy proposals, Politics, Politics in the Cave

Debating law with a lover of fairy tales

Posted on 16 December 2011 | 14 Comments

This post is turned over to the most coherent comment yet received from the Freeman cult, whose supporters have taken umbrage at my deconstruction of their nonsensical legal woo. They’ve also organised themselves into trolling parties, with the result that I adopted a comments policy, requesting that comments stay on the topic of what the post was about. Since they like to keep harping on about their belief system, here’s a place for them to do it and a place for me to reply. The debate below takes the form of a comment – in italics – from one of the cult followers with my answers to the points made. You can find the whole original comment on another post.

Thanks for your long comment. More of a blog post on its own right though isn’t it? Perhaps you’d have been better off writing your own blog and then inviting me to comment there or here by way of a pingback? I’ll have a quick go at responding to some of what you’ve written, “*”. A shame that you couldn’t make up a better name, although I suppose it does have the benefit of brevity.

According to some, all is illusory, even time.

That doesn’t really take us anywhere does it?

I enjoy reading about the freeman movement because I enjoy anything which can, or has the potential, to empower people, even if it is illusory or fairy tale. Perhaps this can be accomplished through proper civil procedure but one must ask oneself if this is truly effective, which is probably the reason the freeman movement exists at all, because the proper civil procedures has perhaps failed, in some respects. If the proper civil procedures were perfect, or even adequate, I doubt the freeman movement would even exist at all.

The freeman thing is a cult. Cults exist not to fill the voids in an imperfect world but to take advantage of human vulnerabilities. They perform much they same function as religion.

I also enjoyed the article written against the movement, because it brings to light possible flaws. My question is, is it all simply woo, is there nothing that is true, which the movement advocates or brings to light, or offers as truth? Can nothing of what they say be potentially effective? For instance, I like the oath technique where the judge is made to produce his oath before proceeding. Is this not a viable strategy?

It is all nonsense. Nothing of what they say is effective in law.

Also, is it not also true that in fact there is such a thing as a corporate fiction, and that fiat currency is not real “money”, that pretty much every country in the world is bankrupt and operating as such? Is it not also true that there are too many laws and restrictions in the form of statutes and codes which are primarily there not for safety but for profit?

Corporations were created and given legal status by laws around the world. Therefore, they are not fiction. They are bodies corporate, rather than bodies corporeal. Fiat or paper money has been the vast majority of money everywhere in the world for a long time. As to whether anybody or thing is bankrupt, that simply comes down to an accountant’s opinion. Your last question is so open as to be meaningless. You’d do better to start citing laws rather than mentioning them enigmatically. I’m not saying whether I agree or disagree with you, I’m saying that the question appears rhetorical – it is impossible to answer, unless you state which laws you are including. You don’t even say which sources of law you are talking about?

I believe common law is simply common sense or natural law which every person is simply born knowing.

You can believe whatever you want. Ordinarily, common law is the name given to the appellate judgments which become authorities for subsequent cases in lower courts. These authorities are what lay people call precedents. All common law is written. You appear to believe in some other kind of law of, at best, dubious historical value, which you borrow the phrase ‘common law’ to describe.

Written law, such as constitutions, statutes and codes, are supposed to reflect common law, which can also be seen as divine law.

If you wish to see them as such you may do. Again, there is your personal belief stepping in. However, many countries’ constitutions were written on behalf of the people having overthrown a monarch who claimed the divine right to govern. In England Statute is not supposed to reflect anything except the will of Parliament. Sometimes it is deliberately drafted to fit with existing common law, sometimes not. The real problem here is that you do not appear to understand the structure of law. You need to understand where law emanates from – there are various sources – and how it all fits together. I certainly I am not proposing to educate you but I would suggest buying a simple academic text book to learn this. A-Level is probably good enough. There’s really no point talking about law if you haven’t learnt anything about it. Don’t read stuff with a political axe to grind unless you’ve studied the law we actually have to deal with first.

I mean, does not everyone already know that murder, stealing, lying, or harming another without just cause, which is usually in self-defense or in the defense of others, is wrong?

Yes, but does agreeing about this actually lead to any valuable conclusions? It has about as much merit as pointing out the colour of the sky, which is grey as everyone knows.

To say that written law. or a law created and imposed externally by another or a state, is the primary authority, takes away that power from the individual, turns the individual into something which must be led out of necessity because it assumes the individual cannot govern themselves, and in essence denies their god-given sovereignty, or right to rule themselves.

Not all law takes away power from an individual. Some of it grants powers. Much law specifically expects people to govern themselves, by expecting them to tell the difference between right and wrong and to make the good decision. If you are opposed to all written law, then say so. All law is written. It has to be. The alternative is rule by decree, which allows dictators to constantly change the nature of their rule. This leads to nightmarish confusion, where you never know what will happen next, whether you will be arrested and executed for something you did the week before to comply with a previous decree. You can’t even work out the price of bread because taxes become liable to jump around all over the place. Witness Mugabe’s rule in Zimbabwe or the monarchical regime in pre-Revolutionary France.

I believe this is where the freeman (or sovereignty) movement originates from. That divine law, natural law, or common law, is above man’s law or any law man creates, or believes he creates or has created. I believe freeman, or sovereigns, feel man’s law is illegitimate as it places man above their creator, as well as imposing an excessive amount of restrictions in the form of statutes and codes which severely curtails his freedom, which is more of a convenience for those already with power than those who have none, or very little. Is this not a viable complaint? Why do I need a permit to carry a gun, which imposes a limitation on my god given right to protect myself, why do I need a license, and insurance, to drive, which imposes a limitation on my god given right to travel, why must I have I.D. and a S.S. card to get a job, which limits my god given right to provide for myself, why are there still laws which make it illegal to alter my conscious experience of reality when numerous credible studies prove they are safer than most, if not all, legal mind-altering substances? Why do we still rely and depend on non-reusable and dirty forms of energy when technologies exist that can make them obsolete?

You do seem to oppose all laws. Fine. Why not say so? Presumably you would grant anyone the right to trade arms, fossil fuels and child prostitutes because a written law to stop them would be bad. You would also do away with all taxation, because it requires writing to make it work?

Human societies make laws to govern themselves. The issue is what these laws are, not whether law in itself should be abolished. Have you been to Somalia recently?

I believe it is the search for these answers, as well as the search for truth in general, and the desire to make the world better, that fuels movements such as these in the world, and should not be dismissed so cavalierly. It is merely the desperately powerless attempting to empower themselves as peaceably and civilly as they know how, or even can know. They should be shown compassion, not condemned. Perhaps offering them a viable and effective alternative superior to the one they have found would be the best idea.

Of course we should pity people but that doesn’t mean we should refrain from pointing out the flaws in the argument. As well as abolishing law, you seem to want ban debate too! How would you manage that though, without any law? Debate tests ideas. Without debate, our ideas are worthless. Here I am defending my idea of law from yours and you from me. I think I’m getting the upper hand, you may agree or you may feel otherwise. I welcome your attempt to debate this with me. However, you don’t seem to welcome the debate at all. Why not? If something is nonsense, we should say so. Otherwise nonsense is allowed to continue. There isn’t a ladder of respectability of arguments. Some arguments are just nonsense and don’t hold any water. We should discourage people from taking them up and messing up their lives with them. It would be different if we all lived for ever but human life is too precious to let cult leaders take control of people’s lives by preaching nonsense. This is what the freeman thing is: a cult which takes advantage of vulnerable people by giving them false hope.

I am not arguing for or against religion or theism but simply that there is something in nature which makes it unnecessary for there to be externally imposed law, which statutory law is, is it not?

All law, by its very nature, is externally imposed. Otherwise it wouldn’t be law. You make a distinction between one type of law and the others but they all have equal force and none of them were in our hearts and minds when we were born.

That people are in fact born already knowing a certain degree of right and wrong, which can be refined through environment and experience conducive to such ethical and moral values. We can call this instinct or human nature, something inborn or inherent in the evolutionary makeup of man, which allows him to better discern what is proper or improper, or what is fit or sound, in a context of survival. To deny this is to deny or fail to appreciate, fully, the extent of complexity, sublimity, grandeur, and majesty, of man.

People are not born knowing what right and wrong is. They learn it from their culture, which is why some cultures think one thing and others the opposite. We call many things instinct, or human nature, usually according to some specious convenience in our selfish argument, which is pretty much what you have done here. You wax lyrical with your words but very little meaning flows out of them. You are using a badly constructed rhetorical flourish to found your next argument, so that the reader thinks having agreed with your words, s/he ought to agree with the next. This crude trick doesn’t work when someone else gets a turn at speaking.

That man is in fact a unique species,

Are we? How do you know? I certainly don’t think we are. Most scientists seem to agree that we share most of our genes with other animals, which makes us far from unique.

evolved to simplicity, or in order to simplify our existence and ability to survive. The elegance of our evolution can be seen most obviously in our capacity to create, as well as in the innocence of a child.

Did you read through this before submitting it? A moment ago you were suggesting that babies are born “already knowing a certain degree of right and wrong”. Now you are saying they are born innocent. Either they are properly innocent or they are not. Perhaps this is another one of your rhetorical set pieces?

So, I suppose, the question would be, are so many laws and regulations necessary, particularly in the form of statutes and codes, if we already have such an elegant law built within ourselves?

Is that the question? I’ve got another question, were you under the influence when you wrote this guff? You’re spinning on the spot! First we are born with knowledge, then we’ve evolved for simplicity, next we are born innocent and now we “already have such an elegant law built within ourselves”!! If you’re going to make an argument, whatever it is, it will need consistency of perspective. You jump around like a religious preacher whose congregation is already persuaded of his truth. In other words, you’re not trying to persuade anyone of anything here, you’re talking to your converted crowd. It’s always easy to play to the gallery. It’s much harder to take on an argument you disagree with and properly deconstruct it. However, if you can’t manage it, don’t pretend to.

I suppose a counter argument against this would be, what about those who are the exception? The ones who seem to be born without this inherent tendency of self-governance? They are just that, exceptions, and usually make up a very small percentage of a population, and are usually the reasons why we even have statutes and codes in the first place. For instance, just because one person goes on a killing spree in a school does not mean everyone will or is even capable, nor should it be a reason to infringe on a person’s right to own and carry a gun or weapon for self-defense, because who will police the police, if not the people, and who will defend our ourselves and our family from imminent danger, the police, or some other external authority? I do not believe so, because try as they might, the governments, states, external laws and authorities are not superman and most certainly not God. Also, just because a few terrorists in planes decided to destroy a couple of buildings and murder thousands of innocent people does not mean every single person in the world is now a terrorist or even capable of being one, legitimizing the passing of draconian legislation which would otherwise have never been passed.

‘Yeah!!! We should all be allowed access not only to the cockpits of planes but also to the pilot’s seat and the controls. Anyone who tries to stop me is infringing my personal freedom to pay an airline company to allow me to crash their plane into a building or masturbate in public or carry atomic waste around in the boot of my car. I should be allowed to do whatever I want, wherever I want, without reference to anyone else. I don’t cause any harm and most people don’t either, therefore we can just put up with the ones that do because they would never intimidate me or anyone else….’ just listen to yourself! You could have made a serious point about how to achieve the best balance between civil liberty and curtailing the freedom of mass murderers but instead you ramble on incoherently.

Legislation and acts which are illegitimate in the first place.

That’s a bare assertion, slipped into your argument as if it would go by unnoticed. You’ve made no attempt to establish this claim. In an argument, you have to at least establish your premises. Let’s say that I disagree that Statutory Law is illegitimate, if they are made by a parliament elected by democracy. It would have been safer for you to assume, since you are posting this on the internet, that many people might take my position on this. Therefore, you have to establish the grounds for this argument. You have to be able to say why they are illegitimate. You don’t necessarily have to win that particular argument but you do have to at least have a go. Bare assertions relating to matters in dispute can never win any argument, as the City of London Corporation is about to discover in the High Court…

Just because of this they now have an excuse to demand identification on sight or suffer consequences like being thrown in jail or fined. This is also very wrong, unconstitutional, and a violation of civil and human rights. But this is not the fundamental problem. The problem is how do these acts and legislations get passed in the first place.

It might be politically wrong but it doesn’t appear to be legally unconstitutional. Again, you are throwing in bare assertions. However, perhaps I have been a bit hard on you and you are now going to justify your first bare assertion.

If you wish for a solution it must come from oneself, the individual, not a party, state, policy, or man-made law, which are all externally imposed forms of control, and highly coercive, which is patently anti-freedom and anti-individual as it assumes the individual is incapable of self-governance, which is patently absurd. What people need is not more laws or law enforcement or forcefully imposed constraints, but information, knowledge, wisdom, understanding, appreciation, compassion, empathy, and love, as well as the freedom to choose for oneself. People are not children, and if they are mentally unsound or incapable of defending themselves or understanding then they should be helped and protected, not taken advantage of or exploited, which is what many feel the legal, governmental, and state systems have done, is doing, and will continue to do.

No easy way of identifying and protecting all those who are vulnerable though is there, in your preferred system, with no law whatsoever? I guess they could all join the freeman cult?

I am of the opinion that these institutions, the state and legal systems, are tools that men have created in order to make their life easier, not worse. They are man’s creation and so hence if a flaw or problem is perceived in them it is one existing in man, not something soulless or immaterial like a system or a corporation. Analogously, is it the man’s fault or the gun’s when a murder is committed?

You do like the rhetorical bits, don’t you? Nothing much can be gleaned from this last passage. It is neutral for your line of argument. Whatever next?

So if one wants change or a solution, then it must come from within, then it will appear externally, in the systems we have created.

It sounds like you believe only a change in our collective consciousness will create political change. How very convenient. This certainly excuses you from actually doing anything to bring about change. For example, you could campaign for a certain law reform. Let’s take a random example: you could campaign for the Tobin tax. You could say that it won’t by itself solve every problem but it could go a long way towards curtailing the corporations which don’t pay their full tax bills. You prefer not to do this but to wait, until we are all just as stoned as you…

For instance, the judge and police officers, or man, have free will and choice, yet choose at times to harm others and then use the excuse of law or blame the system for their choice, which is also patently absurd. The judge or police man must see themselves as a man first and foremost, there to aid his fellow man. I think therein lies the problem, they see themselves as separate when in fact they are not. Help them to see this fact, this truth, and they will soon become conscious of the accountability of their actions and choices as free thinking individuals like everyone else. They are simply victims of a particular form of indoctrination and propaganda, just like those in the military and others trained to kill, and trained in the use of externally imposed force, control, and order. Some believe they are victims of even more subversive forms of propaganda and indoctrination which I will not bother speculating on at this time, but derive their origins in masonry or other occultic systems of knowledge. We must help them deprogram, and give them back what was taken from them, namely choice, free will, individuality, and sympathy for their fellow man, as many are being conditioned to believe we are subhuman and undeserving of mercy or compassion. Is this not true also?

Who will be running the deprogramming? Mao Tse-Tung back from the grave? I don’t think there’s much wisdom in what you say here. I dare say some people hold views the opposite of yours or mine, for that matter. Many people make difficult choices under difficult circumstances. Do I hold avowedly left-wing views because I know the truth of them or because I came from a left-wing family? The best explanation I have ever heard was Rawl’s Rings of Socialisation, which I believe (it was a long time ago I read it) was concerned with why some people were more likely to vote Labour than Conservative but principally is concerned with why we act the way we do, politically speaking. Basically, you are saying that we should stop arguing with those we feel we disagree with, we should offer them a better option, we should wait for their consciousness to rise and then everything will be pretty much okay. It’s an attractive argument and very similar to the Rastafarian creed. How long do you think we will have to wait for Babylon to fall into the sea? What’s that? I can’t hear you, because I died waiting for the answer.

I believe the main problem is the problem that has plagued us for millennia, namely money, but also power and competitiveness, which money begets, reinforces and nurtures. Can one imagine a world without it? I think that in order to solve many of today’s and tomorrow’s ills we must do away with this insidious form of corrupting influence. It is what is poisoning the tree, as it is the root. Instead of focusing on the branches we must concentrate on the root, which is, not money itself necessarily, but humanity’s perceived need and desire for it. The love of money, in other words.

Yeah! Get rid of money! All the problems will be solved. What’s this? Gold turns out to have intrinsic value because of its seven exceptional properties? That chap over there, with the best farmland, has been exchanging all his stuff for gold? He’s got all the gold. He exchanged some of the gold for armed guards, who come into town each night to do whatever they want! Whatever we do, let’s deny this existence of commodity trading lest we acknowledge human frailties! No way do we want to tax him any of his gold to pay for civil amenities and no way do we want to make written laws which everyone could understand governed who could carry guns. It’s only one person! What’s that? He’s calling himself the King!! Whatever next?!!

If law must exist, in the form of statutes and codes, or written form, which common law is not, it must be a form all consent to, or at least the majority, in the form of people not of those who possess the most money, and if it is not agreed upon or if the majority finds it to be an unjust law, then it should be removed and not obeyed.

Make up your mind, do you want democratic law making or not?

The occupiers, in my opinion, should be filing lawsuits against the corporations which have stolen our wealth, along with the federal governments.

Why not file the lawsuits yourself? Occupy London is working hard to raise the consciousness of the population, which is what you want. Now you want them to abandon this cause and just become litigants in person, even though we know that this wealth has been robbed from us by legal means. The solution is to work out the best law reform. Perhaps a Tobin Tax?

The occupiers should be demanding that the mayors and governors which have authority over the police and state legislation resign and should be sued as well if it is justified, perhaps even jailed themselves. They should be occupying city hall as well as the state capitol and demand that they rise up against the federal government, which is the true guilty party as they allowed wall street and the banks to have all of our money in the form of bailouts. A nationwide boycott and occupation, as well as a nationwide outcry and protest in the form of lawsuits against those primarily responsible, would be one solution in effecting change.

Perhaps you are an American? Over here in England our Mayors don’t have the same power over the police. My arguments with the freeman cult has been purely with English people. The point about the Occupy movement though is to take the arguments to the centres of fiscal power, rather than political power. That is why I have been involved with Occupy London Stock Exchange. Occupying our equivalent political headquarters is a largely pointless exercise because real power does not reside in them.

The occupiers should be demanding their wealth back from the banks and the government, which have been wholly misappropriated, demanding a reduction of militarization, repeals of draconian or/and repressive legislation, greater protection and defense of human and individual rights, an end to governmental secrecy, an end to useless and exploitative institutions which have been proven to cause more harm and ill than good, namely the IRS, Federal Reserve, World Bank, and IMF, and demanding legislation that will help all peoples not just the richest with the most money, like FDR’s second bill or rights, tax cuts for the poor not the rich, as well as legislation to greatly increase regulations for corporations, making them accountable to the people, and making them into what they really are, businesses not human beings, persons, or people. It is not the money, but the time and labor we have invested in the money to give it its value. That is what we want back.

Your conclusion is as clear as is it completely at odds with everything else you’ve written! You argued against written law but you now demand increased regulation for corporations. If this is not to be written down, is the idea to use a chap with an excellent memory who recites everything from time to time? That would be a dry evening, methinks. Also, it isn’t a very convenient way of access the anti-corporate regulations, is it? Writing is the best way because it can be read by anyone and easily distributed.

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Posted in Freeman Cult, Occupy London Stock Exchange, Police Violence, Policy proposals, Politics in the Cave

The Ten Demandments

Posted on 1 November 2011 | 2 Comments

Occupy London has been distracted, by spurious theological objectors, from producing solutions to the world’s economic and political misfortunes. Here’s me getting the ball rolling. Being not yet adopted, these are not official demands. Instead, they are demandments.

1. In courts of law, bodies corporate must be placed under exactly the same burden of proof as bodies corporeal.

Presently, courts of law accept evidence from witnesses appearing for corporate bodies who have had very little or no previous personal experience with the documentation in question or its provenance. Very often a solicitor will simply swear a statement to confirm evidence on a corporation’s behalf. Outrageously, courts often accept claims from corporations without any witnesses at all. These tolerances are not permitted to us ordinary mortals. The law should be the same for all bodies, whether living or paper. If a witness does not have direct personal experience of the documentation they present or testify to, their evidence should be given very little weight.

2. Corporate bodies must pay full tax on all the profits they generate, in land they have collected their revenues in.

Corporations run rings around the peoples of the world by moving their revenues around and hiding their profits. Yet they pay vast profits to shareholders, most of whom are institutional. They should declare in which jurisdictions these dividends were generated and pay the full legal tax on those figures in those jurisdictions.

3. All tax avoidance schemes must be criminalised.

Tax evasion is a criminal offence but tax avoidance is declared to be a duty. Practically speaking, this gives corporations a licence to hide their true profits for tax purposes and flout the tax regimes in the lands they make their profits in. The burden of proving that the proper tax has been paid must fall on the corporation concerned, with reference to the profits declared to its shareholders. Tax avoidance is a fraud against the people. The criminalisation of tax avoidance schemes must be backed up with serious penalties (custodial sentences in proportion to the normal terms for fraud on a similar scale) for the directors of corporations found to have indulged in them. Public bodies, under democratic control, must be established and given full powers to investigate and prosecute errant corporations.

4. A maximum wage of no more than 10 times the minimum wage.

Bonuses, commissions, payments in kind and other benefits to be valued as pay. Public bodies, under democratic control, must be given full powers to investigate and prosecute errant paymasters. Self-employed people and corporations with less than 20 employees to be exempted. This exemption will generate much business activity.

5. Everyone must have access to a Health Service, free at the point of treatment, which must be controlled directly by and accountable to a democractically elected body with no power to delegate this function to any undemocratic bodies.

The UK government is about to create a law which substantially privatises the National Health Service. This only came into being because the governing parties lied to the people before the election. This new law must be abandoned immediately. Its enactment will be a flagrant breach of the social contract.

6. Free education for all to be provided by the state.

All private schools should be abolished. Every school, every college and all universities should be managed and funded by democratically controlled bodies. Private education, often under the guise of religious care, has been the method by which the obscenely wealthy have maintained barriers to social freedom and maintained their oppression over the 99%

7. All sovereign bodies must be democratically elected.

The UK’s democracy is a disgrace. The House of Lords is not elected at all. The head of state should be an elected post too, with no power to intervene in the people’s political processes. With a purely ceremonial head of state, the post will attract the best ambassadors we, the people, have to offer. The head of state should be separate from the government.

8. Military actions involving more than 10 troops to be formally declared as wars. All wars to require full parliamentary consent.

Many nations have engaged in illegal wars. These have been conducted without the consent of their people. War criminals hide in plain sight. The UK’s recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were conducted without war even being declared. The power to declare war must lie with all of the elected representatives of the people.

9. The state to have no established religion.

History teaches us two things about religions. Firstly, any intolerance of it leads to oppression. Secondly, the state should not prefer one religion over another. The state’s role is to protect all the people and favour none.

10. The Corporation of the City of London must be abolished.

The City of London is a profoundly undemocratic state which has no place in the modern world. It wields enormous power and influence over the land it sits in – the UK – and around the world. It permits the worst imaginable excesses by the corporations which trade from its land. There is no justification for this predatory creature to exist. Whatever happens in the square mile can be properly regulated by democratically elected bodies, whether they be in the UK parliament or simply the people of London. The continued existence of the Corporation of the City of London insults civil society.

These proposals do not aim to be complete. Notably, they do not include any prescription for thorough banking regulation. Doubtless the Occupy movement will adopt its own proposals which I hope will include democratic control of the banking sector.

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Posted in 10 Demandments, Civil Disobedience, Occupy London Stock Exchange, Occupy Movement, Policy proposals, Politics, Politics in the Cave, Protests

Green boots on the ground can shape policy in the Occupation movement, being a conventional politicians cannot.

Posted on 23 October 2011 | 1 Comment

A new political movement

Thus far the Occupy movement in London has been ambitious, punched above its weight and seized the moment beautifully. The sight of a mighty Cathedral closing its doors whilst campaigners for the poor sleep on its steps has been a troublesome moment in the relationship between the English Church and people. What on earth would the venerable Bede make of all this? What on earth would St Paul himself make of it? Before his famous journey to Damascus, he had been a tent maker.

Cathedral is a bankrupt business

The Occupy movement was a beautiful gift for the Church of England. An entirely peaceful campaign, comprised of the widest possible demographic, landed on its doorstep with plenty of warning as to what it intended to do on the ground. A distinction needs to be drawn been the Church of England and St Paul’s Cathedral. The latter is running a business. The purpose of the business is to facilitate prayer to a specific God but it is a business nevertheless. It claims to require £20,000 per day in running costs and to receive approximately £16,000 per day in donations normally. Therefore, it is a bankrupt business and must be relying on subsidy from elsewhere. The Church of England is a religious organisation led by a cleric said to be on the verge of early retirement because he cannot cope with the muddled nature of his flock and their confused purpose in the modern world.

Occupation movement expanding rapidly

The Occupation movement has an international reach that all organised faiths would be very proud of. We are ambitious, determined and sophisticated in our organisational strength. Last night, one week after the Occupation in London began, we set up a second camp in Finsbury Square which is a stone’s throw from the Headquarter’s of the Royal Bank of Scotland. The Royal Bank of Scotland has been a major criminal in the international fraud committed on the people. They have deliberately created a debt crisis, held the country to ransom, had the ransom money delivered and still have not done anything to assist with solving the economic structural problems which allowed them to commit these crimes.

Passive aggression by St Paul’s Cathedral

St Paul’s Cathedral began the week well by ordering the police off its premises. I caught the precise moment Giles Fraser told the police to leave on video (4 minutes, 20 second into the video at that link) Doubtless they were concerned about the international image of their impressive frontage guarded by police from the people. The Occupation commenced a dialogue with the Cathedral. The Cathedral has been secretive and uncooperative in its approach. They have publicly announced that they have closed their doors but then they were quietly reopened for paying guests. A wedding was held and the happy couple’s guests lent their support to the Occupation. PR company account manager Natasha Ighodaro married Nick Cunningham declaring afterwards that it had been “wonderful, really amazing” and that there “hasn’t been any disruption at all”. The current position is that the Cathedral is citing Health & Safety reasons for the closure but has not yet revealed the details of the perceived problem. OccupyLSX sent the following open letter to the church:

Open Letter from OccupyLSX to Cathedral authorities

To the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s Cathedral,

We are grateful to the Reverend Canon Dr Giles Fraser, Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, for reassuring us that our activities are not harming the Cathedral’s commercial concerns – that has never been our intention. Our intention was to highlight the iniquities of the global economic crisis, in a peaceful manner, especially as the Cathedral has been so hospitable.

We have endeavoured to clarify perceived health and safety issues and continue to place these as a priority for the health and safety of everyone, both inside and outside of this historic Cathedral.

Unfortunately, despite our requests of the Cathedral, they have not provided us with details and information as to how we are perceived to be threatening health and safety. We once again urge the Cathedral to bring to our attention, immediately, the particular details of the health and safety issues to address them. Our concern is if there are health and safety issues (which we in any event refute) by the Church failing to tell of them, they are exacerbating any perceived dangers.

Due to the urgency of the situation you have raised, we would appreciate your immediate response so that we can deal with these concerns.

Regards,

Occupy London Stock Exchange

Whose side is the Cathedral on?

Within a week the Cathedral has gone from obtaining superb publicity to appearing disorganised and hostile to poor people’s concerns. They have squandered the gift. All the nonconformist Christian churches in the country have given their support to the Occupation but the Church of England has remained silent. Our beef is not with the Church of England. We would have been happy to have them as friends but if they wish to side with the financial institutions against us, we are big enough to cope.

Village life

Our encampment now includes several residential districts, a tea tent, a legal tent, a media tent, a tech tent, a piano tent, a prayer and meditation tent (somehow the Cathedral did not seem appropriate for us), a Sukkah, an extensive field kitchen (which receives daily food donations from Londoners and serves nutritious food to the occupiers), a library (to nourish the mind), a university (which will also serve as a school for extra-curricular lessons during the forthcoming half-term week), a medical centre and an information tent for visitors. Our waste disposal is a tightly organised system, with the focus on separation and recycling, although of course we prefer not to have to recycle at all but to reuse instead. We have our own portaloos for our night time calls of nature. All this has been achieved in adverse circumstances on the cobblestones between an historic church and the London Stock Exchange. We hold our own parliaments, called General Assemblies, at least twice a day and countless other workshops so that we can learn new skills to further the occupations.

Speakers

In one week we have created a space for hitherto unknown debate. The great and the good have queued up to speak at our encampment. Julian Assange may have been the first high profile speaker but he certainly hasn’t been the last. We’ve set up a ‘university’ to hold lectures, debates and seminars in. Having been busy with legal work, I’ve missed all of these lectures. Hopefully I’ll catch some soon. John Cooper QC, who leads a team of barristers giving legal advice to the camp, has requested that he might be able to give a law lecture. Britain’s leading expert on the French Resistance, Professor Rod Kedward, has asked to speak. This new engagement in intellectual and policy debate blows the dusty political establishment away. We have only being going for one week yet we have set up a fully functioning community which can now facilitate policy making and further direct action. Our campaign of mass civil disobedience has only just begun.

Movement not manifesto

 The only substantial criticism of our occupation movement is that we have not turned up with a neatly packaged manifesto. The press and the right-wing institutions want to know what we want. Our point has been that we want everyone to start talking about this properly. If we were still in occupation in six months without having crystalised our thoughts into any declared policies that might be a valid criticism. At this stage in the game, it is not. This is not a protest, it is the resistance. We know we are in for the long haul. Our movement will continue to grow. Expect us.

Green Party support missed the point

Politically speaking, it is notable that only one party has stepped up to the plate and declared unequivocal support: the Green Party. I doubt that you could get the proverbial cigarette paper between the views of the occupiers and the Green Party’s policies. Certainly almost everyone I have spoken to in the camp has been voting Green, if they vote at all. However, there are precious few Green activists on the ground. Turning up with a stall or a pamphlet would be inappropriate; this crowd’s sophisticated sense of smell would detect such blatantly patronising behaviour a mile away. Predictably the Socialist Workers’ Party tried to do precisely that and we told by a General Assembly to fuck off. However, when the time comes to set policy, to formulate demands, the Green Party could be in the position to provide leadership. There is a major obstacle though. Green Party activists need to be on the ground now. Physically. They need to be helping with the practicalities of camp life, with gaffer taping tents down, helping with our night time security patrols, becoming legal observers, washing dishes in the kitchen. Being actually in occupation in numbers would give Green Party activists considerable air time when the policy debates begin, as they will. Turning up as Caroline Lucas did, for a few hours, betrays more alienation from the movement than it lends support. Had Caroline Lucas chosen to stay overnight, even only for one night, that might have counted for something. Most people in the camp remain blissfully unaware of her support. They are aware of the support from the trades union activists in London. Unite made a big noise when they turned up. Links have been built with the electrician unions. These emerging relationships between activists old and new is something the Green Party has been cumbersomely slow in obtaining. Had Green Party people been on the ground this week, they would have been in a better position later on to capitalise on these new relationships. This is a simple plea to my fellow Green Party members: get yourself involved with the Occupation movement! Do not preach, do not canvass. Just help out and become part of this new movement. There is a window of credibility which is going to close. If you don’t get in when that window is still open, you’ll blow your chances. Here’s a whole new generation of political activists, ready to be recruited and largely in agreement with Green Party policy but completely cynical about any of the established political processes. Only by being on the ground in occupation with them will you manage to break down that mistrust.

Positive Policy Proposals

Rather than end there for today, I’m going on. I’m aware that my blog is read by Green Party activists and also by those in Occupation. Here are the Green Party economic policies for the occupationists to mull over. Pretty soon we are going to have to get real. We are going to have to be completely positive about what we want, rather than complaining about what we don’t want. We are going to have to publish a list of demands to campaign for. That time has not yet come but when it does, we’ll want our position to be reached by consensus. Here is a ready made set of policies which covers every branch of economic life. They have been developed over many many years. Doubtless they can be improved but they are an excellent starting point.

I’m going to publish here an extract from this policy document. It contains the Green Party’s short term aims (as opposed to the party’s long term aims). Here goes:

  • To undertake urgent research into developing transitional strategies to move trade into new regional patterns.
  • To introduce import and export controls on a national and/or regional bloc level, with the aim of allowing localities and countries to produce as much of their food, goods, and services as they can themselves.
  • To introduce into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) a social clause, based on ILO standards, establishing minimum labour rights and conditions for participation in the multilateral trading system, together with new rules to prohibit countries from weakening existing social and environmental regulations to attract, or retain, foreign investment.
  • To establish new international trade rules to reconcile conflicts at national and international levels between free trade and sustainable resource management, which would place environmental protection and sustainable development above the pursuit of profit. These would include rules to enable countries to internalise the full environmental costs of international trade, including the true costs of transport. Trade rules would permit legitimate border tax adjustment to compensate for energy or pollution taxes imposed on domestic industries, and enable countries to discriminate between products on the basis of the way they are processed/produced. Obligations on developing countries to comply with higher standards should be linked to the provision of transitional technical and financial support.
  • To incorporate into trade policy making the commitment given at the UN Beijing Women’s Conference (1995) to mainstream gender analysis into all levels of policy making, and in particular to incorporate a gender impact assessment into all trade policy making and policy reviews.
  • To integrate the WTO more closely into the UN system. The WTO should be answerable to the UN through regular reports to the Secretary-General, the General Assembly, and the Economic and Social Council.
  • To ensure expanded and timely public access to all WTO documents, and access for representatives of civil society to WTO meetings.
  • To introduce into the WTO a food security clause, which would allow developing countries to protect their food systems up to the point of self-sufficiency for social, ecological, and economic reasons.
  • To prohibit subsidised agricultural export dumping, and to redesign the agricultural policies of the industrialised countries to encourage less intensive production, and to redistribute income support from the largest producers to the small-holders.
  • To introduce an international tax on currency speculation, both to raise revenue for development, and to deter a form of financial activity which is deeply, destabilising for all countries.

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Posted in Caroline Lucas, Green Party, Occupy London Stock Exchange, Policy proposals, Politics, Politics in the Cave