Presi in Paris

“We know and we have seen that conferences are events which bring together important people who are unable to act on their own, but who together are always able to resolve that in fact nothing can be done...  Why is [Europe] unable to forecast and prevent one crisis after another?...  Today the European spirit and its people believe in superficial and secondary things...  but what does renewal mean?  A rule of thumb is that the depth of renewal must be at least equal to the size of the problem...  The task, therefore, Dear Friends, is not to do a few things better – we must do more than that.”

Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary, addressing his party’s congress, December 2015

The world is not short of problems, current or predicted.  One published list of converging catastrophes foresees a perfect storm brewing, reaching its zenith sometime around 2020 and built from the extrapolation of seven great trends that reinforce one another:

• Political and cultural stalemate, especially in an ageing Europe unsure of its place 
  
• Demographic replacement, including of skilled and productive by unskilled and unproductive populations  
• Social chaos in the global South as the effects of late industrialisation ('development') spread around the world 
• Economic collapse, brought about by physical limits to growth to which a speculative, debt-driven financial system has no answer  
• Armed conflict, a response to population growth against a backdrop of diminishing resources, inflamed by fanatical religious cults  
• North-South confrontation underpinned by ideologies of equitable treatment at odds with political reality in one direction and resource reality in the other 
• Ecological collapse, of which climate change is one component 

This month’s climate change conference in Paris was set up to tackle one important part of the last of these challenges, and only that, though its actual deliberations showed how inseparable they are all becoming.  That lack of joined-up thinking is the problem that may be the key to the rest.

WR President Colin Bex was in Paris, on the fringes of the conference, flying the flag and meeting other representatives.  Colin’s request for official accreditation, as the leader of a UK political party, was ignored.  The implication is that alternative politics has nothing to offer the world, even though it’s alternatives to the failed status quo that are most urgently needed.  Developing the links made at events like the Paris conference is vital to advancing our own alternative.  Colin reports that the demonstrators he met were very positive in their outlook: “Not least on account of atrocities visited on Parisians recently, the demonstrators are motivated by feelings of peace, love and respect for and in solidarity with all in the city, especially those who continue to encounter grief and other suffering as a consequence, and accordingly they are committed to generating an exclusively peaceful and friendly experience.”

It will take much more than this however if the world is to turn away from catastrophe.  Yes, there is a deal, and yes, it says world leaders will try to limit global warming to 1.5°C.  But there are no means to actually achieve this.  The collective reductions promised by world powers only head us closer to 3°C.  And even those reductions are not legally binding.  Governance is surely key, especially the decentralisation of power so that those who make decisions are surrounded by the consequences and cannot run from them.  This is bad news for those who would like to make climate change the cause upon which a campaign for lawyer-led world government can be built.  But it need not be incompatible with combining wider moral responsibility (thinking globally) with the vision of a co-operative community (acting locally).  Or with the notion of a bridge between them (planning regionally).

France has often been in the news this year, faced with terrorist attacks, a climate conference, and now elections for the country’s revised regions (their areas still largely botched by control freaks in Paris).  There has been much coverage of the fortunes of the far Right Front National in those elections but almost no mention of the result in the one Mediterranean region that nature prevents Paris from gerrymandering.  The island of Corsica – conquered by France in 1769 – has elected a regionalist government for the first time.  To much alarm in Paris, which has responded to demands for political and cultural concessions with the usual huffing and puffing about France's immutable constitution.  The new President of Corsica's Executive Council, Gilles Simeoni put things into a better perspective: "We want dialogue with Paris and political solutions but it is also an undisputed fact that we belong to the Corsican nation and Corsican is our language."

In Spain, pro-independence and pro-sovereignty parties made some intriguing advances in yesterday's elections, which also produced very bad results for the established Madrid parties.  In Corsica and Catalonia, as in Scotland, Europe is leading the way to a decentralised politics that also recognises the challenges of inter-dependence.  What is failing these places, what is failing Europe, and what is failing the world, is a system of old imperial states unable to manage the transition to a radically different kind of future.

All Washed Up

Andrew Parker, the head of MI5, told BBC Radio 4 listeners today that the service could do with new surveillance powers to tackle the terrorist threat.  That’s hardly surprising, according to the cynical view that you never let a good crisis go to waste.  If necessary, you create one.  We face a toxic combination.  On the one hand, the consequences of an aggressively interventionist foreign policy pursued for the benefit of US interests, not ours.  On the other, disaffected youth of south Asian heritage liable to identify strongly with at least some of the victims of that policy.  The Government is working on plans for ‘Extremism Disruption Orders’, to target not so much terrorists as anyone who exercises their supposed right of free speech in ways that this Government – or any of its successors – decides it doesn’t like.

We won’t let counter-terrorism measures interfere with our lifestyle.  Of course not: that would be letting the terrorists win.  Even though that’s precisely what’s happening, as the threats continue to proliferate and so too does the apparatus supposedly designed to contain them.  If we can feel that, on the outside of government, what’s the atmosphere like on the inside?

The Swiss Army has carried out two exercises in recent years related to migration and its consequences.  The first dealt with a stream of migrants that was out of control.  The second took things a step further.  It assumed a breakdown of public order in France, the fragmentation of authority into local fiefdoms and a consequent need to resist looting expeditions onto Swiss territory.

Why France?  France has a large population of North African and Middle Eastern extraction.  Religion is deemed irrelevant.  France’s secularism has moved on from being a policy to being a blindfold, so it doesn’t collect census information on religion.  For a true picture, consider that France’s top Mahometan official recently offered to take over the country’s redundant Catholic churches to meet a demand for 5,000 new mosques.  The problem facing the security services is not the proportion of his followers who may be terrorists.  That proportion may well be unchanged, year on year.  It’s that as the absolute number behind that proportion increases, so the strain on the security services also increases.  It’s a statistical certainty that militants with potential or actual Jihadi sympathies are entering Europe every day.  The security services now have far more potential Jihadis on French soil than they’re resourced to keep under surveillance.  Managing that risk is, well, risky.  It’s not polite to mention it, but it’s there nevertheless.  A spectacular 9/11-style attack on France is now regarded by some experts as inevitable.

Government-by-advertising is starting to fail.  The idea that well-placed words and pictures can get us out of the domain of reflection and into that of sentiment has worked in every previous crisis, but…  An increasing number of people are now questioning whether their ruling elites are taking care of their best interests, and whether the taxes they collect are legitimate.  Psychoanalyst Sally Weintrobe described the legacy of the failed 2009 Copenhagen summit on climate change as the realisation that our "leaders are not looking after us... we are not cared for at the level of our very survival".  No, you guessed right there and don't sound so shocked.  So do we want a State that from Brussels downwards regulates everything but the fundamentals, neglecting the real issues of movement and resources and ideology that underpin our security?  A lot is written about the accumulating critical mass of terrorists in Europe but much less about the accumulating critical mass of ordinary folk who are asking such questions.  Once it forms, things could get perhaps too interesting.

Military exercises cost money.  Even if your priority is to spend the budget rather than ensure it’s spent well – and that’s an insider criticism of the Swiss military – you’ll still pick exercises that usefully focus minds over ones that don’t.  So if the Swiss think a scenario in which France falls to pieces is worth considering, so should we.  (It’s an off-the-shelf scenario, by the way, which anyone can read in Guillaume Faye’s Archeofuturism: European Visions of the Post-Catastrophic Age.)  In which case, while we’ve been pondering the fate of boat people with names like Yusuf or Maryam, we may be failing to spot the longer-term possibility.  Which is that communities on the south coast of Wessex should get ready for boat people with names like Joseph and Marie.

Live and Let Live?

Welcome publicity was received this week from the National Secular Society, the result of a survey of the views of minor parties on secularism and religion.

The NSS focused-in on our policy of phasing-out religious involvement in publicly-funded education.  Ironic, given King Alfred’s victory for Christianity over paganism?  Well, that was the accusation in one tweet that followed.  The fact is of course that we’re the party for the Wessex of today and tomorrow, not the Wessex of 878.  We’ve described before how our ruralist outlook, coupled with a radical distrust of privilege, cannot reconcile the London parties’ rhetoric about choice in education with the reality in many villages.  That is to say, the long shadow cast by Victorian aristocratic patronage of the Anglican cause.  In some counties, well over half the primary schools are Anglican-run.  Some choice.

Our schools policy sits alongside other policies – such as disestablishment of the Church of England within Wessex – that stem from a belief that in a successfully pluralist society the State must always strive to be impartial.  Defenders of the status quo routinely condemn any move to strip away religious privilege in the UK as ‘persecution’.  No, it isn’t.  Persecution is what Christians are suffering in the Middle East.  That persecution – and the corresponding privileging of a brutally intolerant brand of Mahometanism – is more easily countered if our own conscience is clear.  Are we truly different from, say, Iran?  Not while the UK is the only other country in the world to have clerics sitting in its legislature as of right.

Among the leading London parties, the cross-party consensus is now well established: public services are not to be provided by public bodies.  Instead, public money is to be given to private interests, with few if any conditions, to enable them to stoke the fires of sectarianism.  Faith schools today, faith hospitals tomorrow?  With faith welfare to follow, complete with tests of proper religious observance for the poor and needy?

If Ed Miliband can see no problem in deepening the consensus then his long-distance vision may need correcting.  A favourite scenario on the far Right is an England that has descended into civil war as immigrants battle it out with the English.  Bradford and Birmingham become Baghdad and Beirut.  As scenarios go, it may not attract a high degree of probability.  High enough though to ask whether policy-makers know what they’re doing when they hand millions from our taxes to those with a vested interest in the cultivation of mutual suspicion.

The Great Burh

“Paris…  A city that must have been magnificent in the Twentieth century, Dimitri thought.  He had few memories of it.  He was only ten in 2016, when his family had fled the city plagued by anarchy and hunger to return to Russia.  Most of the monuments had been burnt and destroyed, and its museums and treasures had been pillaged during the civil war that had broken out before the Great Catastrophe.  Today, the autonomous state of Ile de France was carrying out restorations and reconstructions, but Paris was unlikely to ever return to its former glory.  The only way to learn what the Mona Lisa, Sainte-Chapelle, the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre looked like was to visit virtual Websites with 3D images.  Dimitri Leonidovich sighed in sadness at these unpleasant thoughts...”

French writer Guillaume Faye’s 1998 book, recently translated as Archeofuturism: European Visions of the Post-Catastrophic Age, is part novel, part polemic.  Politically on the European New Right, Faye casts conceptual fireworks capable of illuminating anyone’s perspective.  You don’t have to agree with every word to reel at the deepest insights.  He is no optimist but rather the most rigorous realist:

“Deprived of its quasi-religious basis – belief in progress as a historical necessity – the present civilisation has started its decline…  The ascending line of progress, which was meant to lead to the redemptive eschatology of a heavenly end of history, is now being replaced by the winding, unpredictable and mysterious flow of this very same history.  An intellectual revolution is taking place: people are starting to perceive – without daring openly to state it – that the old paradigm according to which ‘the life of humanity, on both an individual and collective level, is getting better and better every day thanks to science, the spread of democracy and egalitarian emancipation’ is quite simply false…

It will take twenty or thirty years for the pernicious effects of growth to manifest themselves, but after a deceptive phase in which living standards appear to be improving (and which is now coming to an end) they will certainly hit hard.  The increase in production and trade leads to new forms of cooperation, but also multiplies the causes of conflict and expressions of nationalistic chauvinism – and everywhere feeds the counter-fire of religious fanaticism.  Communication is branching out across the world, while solitude plagues individuals and a sense of despair takes hold in communities.”

Europe’s place in this world is a highly vulnerable one, open to ‘cultural cleansing’ by once-colonised peoples now demanding their turn at dealing out domination, death and destruction.  An effective response cannot just be about defence but must embrace collective security in every sense.  Doing nothing is not a viable option: less than 40 years ago, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria were all relatively stable societies, to which the saying 'stranger things have happened' would simply not be applied.  Faye’s solution is the European Union, but not as we know it:

“The solution to help us defend ourselves must be a radical one: a ‘good’ federation (one I believe should be based on autonomous regions) capable of imposing itself as a genuine state and exercising a weighty influence on the international scene as a real world power.  A federation of this kind could only emerge after a shock, once the pseudo-federation we have now has shown all its impotence and noxiousness.

I believe the right strategy would be to lead a revolution within the European Union, in such a way as to radically transform it – and not make a backward-looking return to the nation-states system, which in any case would be incapable of defending us.  In history, only structural changes can reverse what exists and bring revolutions about – not circumstantial changes…

The only hope for salvation in this dark age of ours lies in the attempt to build a federation – the great federation Nineteenth century visionaries had foreseen: the United States of Europe.  A federation of this kind would be capable of standing up to the American one, of creating a protected and self-centred continental economic space, and of curbing the rise of Islam and demographic colonisation from Africa and Asia…

Despite all its defects, I believe the present European Union will be the prelude to a genuine federation, according to a dialectic process: for when catastrophe hits, the present Union, in its impotence, will have to undergo revolutionary change (this, and not any dangerous restoration of the nation-state model is the path we will have to pursue)…  a powerful Europe, in my view, cannot but derive from the federation of autonomous European regions, as the great differences in size between European nations prevents the building of any viable federal and political union (as shown by the current, stupid attempt to do so).

For this reason, we must approach the European Union of today with Machiavellian cynicism in order to subvert it from within…  Quite simply, this appalling Union has the simple yet great merit of making the whole world reason in terms of Europe.  It also has the advantage of assigning a greater significance to regions, the future bricks of a federal empire, which are connected to the kind of ethnic identity the cold and crisis-ridden states of today have lost…  The future regions must be granted large powers with respect to internal matters (cultural, linguistic, educational, etc.), as a return to regional identity on a European level would only contribute to our common strength.  Different but united: for united we stand, divided we fall.”

The Management of Savagery

“You know of course that no-one can make known any skill, nor direct and guide any authority, without tools and resources; a man cannot work on any enterprise without resources.  In the case of the king, the resources and tools with which to rule are that he have his land fully manned: he must have praying men, fighting men and working men…”

King Alfred the Great, commentary on Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy

In 2012, Oxford don David Priestland published Merchant, Soldier, Sage: A New History of Power.  It takes up the very theme familiar to Alfred in the 890s, that a society’s leaders are a combination of the three estates, those who get what they want through transactions, those who do so through violence or the ability to threaten it and those who do so through wisdom.  The balance between them changes over time, defining the character of one society in comparison with another.

The neo-liberal project underway since the 1970s has been very much a matter of ‘all power to the merchants’, whose freedom of action is defined as the essence of freedom itself, trumping even democracy.  Which means a world unprepared for the re-emergence of other ways of thinking.  It means, for example, a world accustomed to the idea that violence is wrong, unless clothed perhaps in a claimed humanitarian intent.  Such a world imagines that denouncing savagery as savagery is an anathema capable of having a real impact.  What if the savagery is a very deliberate choice?  A drive to power through fear?  You wanted ‘shock and awe’?  Well, you got it.  Up against a liberal – famously defined by Robert Frost as someone too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel – who’s going to win?

The collapse of political or economic stability is usually followed by authoritarian rule of one kind or another.  Chaos breeds a craving for order: good order if possible, evil order if necessary.  Nature abhors a vacuum.  And the whinier anarchists change their minds fast once their dole money stops.  So let’s ask the question: if central government failed, if the debt economy imploded, if as communities, locally and regionally, we were thrown back upon our own resources, how would Wessex fare?

It’s not an unnecessary question but a prudent one, given what the demographic, environmental and geopolitical trends tell us about the changes coming over the course of this century.  So far we have shown only our chronic unwillingness even to resist the impositions of a relatively benign London regime.  The merchants continue to batter down the barriers that democracy has erected, while the globalised society they have advocated offers no protection against importing to our shores the consequences of other nations’ actions.  Trade and war alike are threats to our way of life; those in more empathetic and far-seeing occupations have a vital role in keeping both equally at bay.

I See No Ships

Horatio Nelson is often misquoted as saying these words; relying on the London media might leave you equally in the dark about the ways in which the governance of Wessex is changing.

On Friday, the Coalition announced yet more devolution to Wales.  An extensive package in fact, even though, as Plaid Cymru have noted, it falls short of the ‘going rate’ for devolution in the UK.  Compared to Scotland or Northern Ireland, they’re right about that.  Meanwhile, England continues to bring up the rear.  Channel 4 News reported this week on the devolution of NHS funding to Greater Manchester, worrying itself over whether letting local folk make their own decisions marks ‘the end of the NHS’.  Presumably because Scotland and Wales, with their devolved health services, are self-evidently national but Manchester is not.  And presumably having forgotten the extent to which the NHS was delivered through local councils until 1974.

Confused by it all?  With good reason.  There’s no overall plan, and it’s easy to claim that failing to plan is planning to fail.  The wrong plan though is worse than no plan, and we’ve seen in the Prescott zones what the wrong plan looks like.  Giving folk what they ask for and not trying to rush them into accepting more makes sense.  But that will result, imminently, in a great deal of disappointment when local politicians ask for too little and their neighbours pull out in front of them.  Cardiff – and all of Wales – can benefit from the higher ambitions that national sentiment has inspired.  Bristol – and all of Wessex – will continue to worry about such things as whose are the wheelie bins on the opposite side of the street.

So we should raise our sights above mere localism.  Partly because ‘localism’ has clearly failed.  The promise of real localism made by the Coalition has been comprehensively manipulated, redefined and betrayed.  It’s one of the greatest of the lies for which the Blue Tories and the Yellow Tories deserve to be punished in May.  Not, of course, by backing the Red Tories, for whom real, unbridled localism is the very opposite of their own ideals.

Localism would seem to be the opposite of centralism.  Yet paradoxically, local power can, under pressure from tight budgets, rising expectations and the opportunities and challenges of new technology, sometimes lead to more centralisation.  We’ve seen that in the fire service, where this week Wiltshire voted to merge its brigade with Dorset’s.  Devon and Somerset have already merged theirs and all four counties are now involved in joint working with Hampshire.  North of the border, the SNP government has created a single fire brigade and a single territorial constabulary for the whole of Scotland, with effect from April 2013.

Instinctively, our own sympathies are with those who wish to keep things local and we won’t be fooled by arguments that are artificially constrained by a poor financial settlement from London.  Reducing the cost of public services shouldn’t be confused with increasing their cost-effectiveness.  We don’t want poorer services so that some financier can go on a binge with the ‘savings’.  But we are all about subsidiarity – if some things work better over a wider area then let’s look at the pros and cons.  Between 1941 and 1948, Great Britain had a single National Fire Service, a temporary response to the Blitz and the consequent need for unified direction and inter-operability of equipment.  Today’s challenges, ranging from terrorist attacks to climate change, will also call into question the right scale for organising a response.

What we are seeing – something to which the Coalition’s anti-regionalists are determined to turn a blind eye – is the emergence of a new tier of governance that is larger than the county.  In Devon and Somerset it isn’t just the fire brigades that have merged.  There is a joint Local Enterprise Partnership – ‘Heart of the South West’.  In November 2014, the archives and museums functions passed out of county hands to a new charity, the South West Heritage Trust.  Along with the privatisation of English Heritage in April 2015 this is also part of a trend, as our past ceases to be recognised as the root of our common identity and returns to being the plaything of wealthy philanthropists.

Some may see all of this as a softening-up of the county councils for abolition in favour of smaller unitary councils.  It certainly works in that direction, floating off those constraints of history and larger-scale operation that might get in the way.  Specifically in the case of archives, there is a national drive for larger, more resilient organisations able to make the most of changes such as digitisation, while still being able to offer a community-focused service from one or more outlets per shire.  The leading local archæological societies remain shire-based and will presumably continue to act as a safeguard of shire identity.  The politics of other services, such as transport or education, often seems to have a different focus as towns compete for investment.  Party politics also comes into it: the FibDems are stronger in the east of Somerset than in the west, which in the past has given them cause to demand a break-up of the county council along party lines.

We’ve pointed not once, not twice, but thrice, to the evidence that regionalisation is continuing despite Coalition denials.  County-level services are being passed up to a wider tier that has no direct democratic accountability.  Regional assemblies could give it that accountability, while also providing the framework for devolving substantial powers now hoarded by Whitehall.  Just as national devolution has done in Scotland and Wales.  Failing to anticipate this and to plan for it isn’t just planning to fail.  When we look ahead we may be tempted to think that we’re planning for change.  The reality is that we’re planning in change.  It’s happening all around us.  Our claim to the future has to be staked now.

Jeux Sans Frontières

Events in Paris this week have exposed Europe’s anxieties to the full.  Let’s consider some of the possible reactions.

On the far Right, and among the not-for-prophet movement generally, this is I-told-you-so time.  Even those who disagree with the politics must find recent analysis strikingly prescient.  And at least it’s an opportunity to highlight some double standards.

Then again, cui bono?  Who benefits?  Will Le Pen prove mightier than the sword, deepening the backlash?  About the only certainty is that there will now be further restrictions on civil liberty in order to intensify the ‘war on terror’.  Threats to national security will be enumerated, movements for autonomy doubtless among them.  Those who like the theory of a false-flag operation – a few fanatics supplied with guns and training by the security services and then shown the direction to go – will point to other conspiracy theories that turned out to be at least partially true.  The humanitarian catastrophes that have resulted from intervention across North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia are too systematic and repetitive to be put down to incompetence.  Those in charge know what they’re about.  The challenge for anyone else is to say what that is, though for starters what do the letters O.I.L. spell?

That sense that there isn’t a trustworthy narrative is bound to be destabilising.  Its consequence is fear and more fear, coupled with appeasement as a means to restore breathing space.  Freedom of expression will not be defended (if anything, the pressure will be to remove freedom of non-expression in the hunt for the non-conforming).  Liberals and anyone to the left of them will certainly not defend it, because it’s a fixed principle and liberal power depends on being able to manipulate a debate and steer its unfolding, contradictory development.  Power, for them, depends on the ability to set, and to arbitrate on the setting of, social and cultural boundaries.  An uncompromising defence of free expression is a nuance-free zone in which born control-freaks can make neither mischief nor money.  There can be no political correctness where nothing’s incorrect.

Migrants, and perceptions of migrants, play a relatively small part in what’s essentially a struggle for hegemony between the elites of Left and Right.  That being so, we cannot expect measured but steadfast leadership from either side.

The closing of the European mind is a mark of Europe’s lost place in the world.  You don’t annoy the oil sheikhs.  You rant against the terrorists, not their funders in the Gulf, whose wealth you court.  Does the Royal Navy’s new base in Bahrain serve any credible military purpose, or is it a taxpayer-funded shop window for the UK arms trade?  The BBC’s Robert Peston last month suggested that the dramatic slide in the oil price has been deliberately engineered to put high-cost oil extraction – fracking, deep sea, etc. – out of business.  And after that, the price will again rise.  It’s all a game, mes amis, c’est tout un jeu.

The Spirit of ‘15

Last year’s commemorations of the First World War were a good excuse to re-open old wounds and close our eyes to modern Europe.  Now consider that 2015 marks the 200th anniversary of Waterloo and the 600th anniversary of Agincourt.  In 2014 the French were our glorious allies against the Hun.  This year, it will be their turn to feel the cold shoulder, if not exactly the cold steel.  Better still, we shall be marking the 750th anniversary of Simon de Montfort’s first Parliament and the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta.  That will be a splendid opportunity to overlook historical niceties.  Like the European context in which the first English Parliament arose.  Or the inconvenient fact that while the English (in 1215) and the Irish (in 1216) each had a Magna Carta to defend their threatened liberties the Scots never did (they still manage well enough without one).

London’s Lefties will be all frothing uncontrollably about the need for the modern UK to have a written constitution.  There will be conferences and seminars, websites and book launches.  No-one will ask whether ‘modern UK’ isn’t a bit of an oxymoron, or why for 800 years we’ve obsessed over keeping our rulers in check instead of challenging their assumed right to rule.

This time in 2013 we predicted that that would be the Year of the Wyvern.  We were a year out.  In 2014, the Wyvern made its mark, with local councils endorsing the flag, flying it proudly for St Ealdhelm’s Day, and our Secretary-General unfurling it for the BBC as part of their debate on devolution.  So what of 2015?

If last year remembered the start of the First World War, this will recall the end of the Second (as well as the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain and the 50th anniversary of Churchill’s death).  It sounds like an opportunity for Labour to put Blairism behind it and rediscover the spirit of ’45.  Last month saw the death of John Freeman, the last man alive to serve as a minister in Attlee’s government.  That was the death not just of a man but of the memory of an idea.  There is no way that Labour can rediscover its past, because its front bench is corrupted beyond redemption by the Blair and Brown years.  Labour in 1945 offered a different world.  Labour in 2015 will struggle even to cobble together a markedly different vision.  When it’s seriously suggested that they might prefer a coalition with the Tories to working with nationalists you know the game’s well and truly up for them.

Common Wealth, the wartime socialist party to which we owe much of our thinking, was sceptical even at the time that Labour would deliver.  John Freeman resigned as a minister in 1951 over the introduction of NHS prescription charges.  Under Blair and Brown, Labour went on to set the NHS up for privatisation.  When David Cameron promised that ‘the NHS will be safe in my hands’, it was a claim he needed to make, even if he didn’t believe it and few believed him.  But is the NHS safe in Ed Miliband’s hands?  In Labour’s case it might be thought that past actions speak louder than present words.  Voters in at least one Wessex constituency this May can expect to have an alternative they can rely on.

A Taste of Wessex

Political fiction has a long and influential pedigree, from More’s Utopia to Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.  One of our aims is fun: to make politics relevant and enjoyable.  So here’s a brief glimpse into one possible Wessex of the future.  A very Happy Scottish Referendum Day tomorrow to all our readers: may all be inspired by the dream of freedom.

“’Ark ee all a-I.  Train now standen a’ Pla’vorm 3 be th’ 08:49 Wyvern Ways service gwain vrammards Bris’ol Temple Meads t’wards Bournemouth Central.  Thic train d’call at Nailsea an’ Backwell, Yatt’n, Winscombe, Cheddar, Wells, Shep’n Mallet, Evercreech Junction, Wincant’n, Templecombe, Stalbridge, Sturm’ster Newton, Blan’vord, Broads’one Junction, Poole an’ Bournemouth Central.  Jange at Yatt’n vor inbetwix stations to Templecombe.  Jange at Wells vor Glas’nb’ry an’ Street.  Jange at Evercreech Junction vor Yeovil an’ stations to Bath Green Park.  Jange at Templecombe vor inbetwix stations to Poole.  Jange at Broads’one Junction vor Swanage an’ Wimborne.  Jange at Poole vor Drakkar Verries sailens to Britt’ny an’ Norm’dy.”

Great to hear at least some of the old accent making a comeback, thought Edwin as he ran up the steps to the platform.  It’s not quite what it was, but so much of an improvement on that ghastly Estuarine whining that filled the airwaves when I were a dapper.  He paused to run an engineer’s perceptive eye over the elegant lines of the freshly delivered locomotive, resplendent in red with its name in gold lettering on the side.  Eric Pickles.  One of the new Alexander Thynn class, 30 electric locomotives named after individuals who played a pivotal role in the renewal of Wessex.  Eric Pickles – nicknamed The Fat Controller – finally had an engine to call his own.  Of course, it was his actions in support of the Wessex flag that had earned him a place in history and not his I-know-best attitude towards local autonomy.

Edwin settled down in his seat and opened his briefcase to take out his complimentary copy of The Times.  He could see by the headline why it was given away free these days: ‘Wessex show trials: confessions mount’.  It was such a shame the Marnen Post had sold out today; he always relied on that for accurate coverage of happenings outside what was left of London.  Show trials indeed.  Nobody was on trial.  These were simply the hearings of the Truth & Restitution Commission and all those who appeared before it did so voluntarily.

Ably chaired by the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, the Commission was at last uncovering what really went on in the last days of the London regime.  Former politicians from the London parties were queueing up to spill the beans.  A recurrent theme had been their sense of helplessness as they tried to run a ‘democratic’ form of politics in which property developers and financiers were the ones who really called the shots.  They seemed genuinely relieved now that all that was over and done with.  As for the restitution part, they were putting their names down for community and environmental work not just in their home areas but right across Wessex.  There was a waiting list for those wanting to go to Twyford Down to dig up the remains of the M3 motorway and help with the re-landscaping work.

Most of The Times was advertising, for things that didn’t interest Edwin.  The sports pages included some reasonable coverage from the English inter-regional competitions, in which Wessex was currently in second place, behind Northumbria but ahead of East Anglia.  Edwin folded the paper and reached for his briefcase again.  He checked his phone for messages.  Two.

Tilly Hibbs, Development Manager at Wyvern Ways in Exeter, wanted to discuss the energy implications of some ongoing schemes.  Phase II of the repair workshops at Yeovil.  Was Edwin being unreasonable to demand a bigger contribution from on-site renewables?  He didn’t think so, if the alternative was a major upgrade to the local distribution network.  Electrification west of Okehampton.  Could he support the use of surplus power from Cornwall?  On a small scale perhaps, if a continuing supply could be guaranteed and if the imports could be offset against exports to Mercia.  He’d phone her once he reached Poole and wasn’t constrained by the ‘noise-free’ rule on trains.

The other message was from LAMMAS, the Land & Marine Management Advisory Service in Southampton, confirming the date and time of a video conference call early next month.  It would be a link-up with all the Wessex county councils to discuss the balance between food crops and fuel crops in their areas.  Afforestation was moving up the political agenda again, after the recent heavy flooding.  Edwin would insist that everyone think long-term, planning for needs 100 or 200 years ahead.

A steward entered the carriage, pushing a refreshment trolley.  Edwin asked if there was any coffee today.  No such luck.  Tea and coffee, once everyday items, had reverted to the luxuries they’d been a couple of centuries ago.  Africans didn’t grow crops for the European market now.  They had their own millions to feed.  As well as those of their Chinese masters.  Yet the English still had ‘tea-time’, even without their tea.  One of the functions of language is to reassure us that things haven’t changed all that much, even as meaning imperceptibly shifts.

Edwin settled for an apple juice and a sandwich.  Cheddar cheese and Wiltshire ham.  At least there were some things you could always rely on in Wessex, always provided that London wasn’t allowed to mess it up again.

Spetisbury.  The station nameboard flashed past as the train raced for the Dorset coast.  The Bristol to Bournemouth service – often jokingly referred to as the Spine Express – linked two of the main urban areas in Wessex without having to rely on routes directed towards London.  Its very existence would have been laughed at in the days when London ruled Wessex.  Back then, regionalists had been used to hearing themselves described as dangerous men and women, plotting constitutional experiments unprecedented in modern times, dabbling in ideas that could undermine the priceless nonsense of national cohesion.  ‘Unity’ is such a pleasant-sounding word, when you live in London and expect your lead to be followed without argument.

Edwin was reading through his speech, making final adjustments.  At Poole he would catch the ferry to Cherbourg, where his Norman hosts would collect him.  He hoped they’d forgive his French; Norman was now the official language of Normandy.  French was despised there, as in most of France, as the favoured tongue of the Jacobin oppressor.  Norman was now an option in Wessex schools, along with Welsh, Cornish and Breton, but those of an older generation were disadvantaged by speaking only the languages of the former imperial capitals.  Edwin consoled himself with the thought that at least everyone at his level would understand Latin, even if their accents differed wildly.

Tonight there would be a buffet reception at the hotel and then the conference tomorrow.  Having decided to decommission the nuclear power plants they’d inherited from the defunct French State, the Normans were keen to compare the approaches to renewable energy embraced by different regions across Europe.  Edwin was the star attraction.

‘Tidal power and the Severn Estuary: challenges and solutions’.  That would define the subject nicely.  By Edwin Brimble, Director of Strategy, Wessex Energy.  Edwin thought about Trydan Cymru and the work they were doing on their side of the estuary.  He ought to acknowledge them.  Perhaps a brief mention, after the discussion of why a Severn barrage was a bad idea, compared to alternative technologies with less impact on wildlife, navigation and national/regional identity.  He could refer to the joint meeting in Gloucester of the Welsh Senedd and the Mercian and Wessex Witans that had agreed the way forward.  Should he mention Project Olympus as well?  His audience would be familiar with the plan to strengthen the Europe-wide interconnector network and develop pumped storage, to even out the peaks and troughs that inevitably came with reliance on intermittent sources of supply.  Then finally a word or two about some of the major users of the power generated.  The railways and tramways in Wessex and Mercia, without which he would have had great difficulty in being where he now was.  The Wessex canal system, even after the recent re-openings, was much smaller than Mercia’s and, like the cycleway network, it wasn’t the way to travel any great distance in a hurry.

The speech read fine but there was something missing.  Perhaps he’d said too much about the technical issues and failed to mention the frame of mind that was crucial to addressing them.

First of all, the holistic management of resources and infrastructure in Wessex, wary of what’s lost by compartmentalising specialisms.  Transport depended on electricity, which came from renewable sources, with water a crucial contributor to generation and storage.  Joined-up thinking was what Wessex did best.  Partly this was because so many environmental organisations and their associated research teams had based themselves in Wessex, ensuring that connectedness had become a way of life.  Networks, not hierarchies.  Thinking globally, planning regionally, acting locally.

Then there was the commitment to maximise self-sufficiency in energy, nutrition and all essential manufactured goods.  From the beginning, there had been a consensus in the Witan that this was the way to go, the only alternative to having terms dictated by despots and markets.

The corollary was that ‘living within environmental limits’ really had to mean what it said.  It was why no new houses had been built on farmland in Wessex for over a decade and why it was unthinkable that they would be ever again.  The London regime had ordered that they be built in their millions, mindless of the consequences.  Now new houses were built at the rate of a few hundred a year and then mainly to replace old ones conclusively shown to be structurally unsound.  In some of the most heavily overdeveloped areas the housing stock was at last going down, allowing the environment to recover, and there was talk of rewilding, even of eagles returning to Wessex skies.

One question that used to be heard quite often was ‘where will my children live if we won’t trash fields to build more homes?’  It was a question that it would now be embarrassingly stupid to ask, given that births and deaths were roughly in balance and net migration was zero.  The Witan had issued a stark warning that if everyone attracted by history, beauty and tranquillity were to move to Wessex then these were the very things that collectively they would surely destroy.  Consequently, the housing market was tightly regulated to prioritise local needs.  No-one from outside could buy that old widow’s cottage as their weekend getaway while village newly-weds were confined to mum and dad’s spare room.  The parish council wouldn’t register the sale, and the parish council was the ultimate law.  Its power to commandeer empty property was one it didn’t shrink from exercising.

So lastly, there was the core belief that the territory and resources of Wessex belonged to the community of Wessex and were not for sale to outlanders (or anyone else) who wished to exploit them for private gain to the disbenefit of the community.  Except for the shire-based savings and loans co-operatives, which only dealt with individuals, the ‘financial services’ sector had been largely abolished.  Any need for it had been eliminated by the introduction of a guaranteed basic income for all.  If any good had come from the British armed forces presence now receding into history it was the view that control over the use of real stuff is what makes the difference and that money is just a means to one of many possible ends, not a few of them contradictory.

It hadn’t been easy.  Democracy’s struggle against continuous global robbery had been worldwide and prolonged.  It had been a rough ride for everyone but the world was a more settled place at the end of it, finally convinced, in John Ruskin’s words, that there is no wealth but life.  Today a ‘moneyic’ – a combination of ‘money, ‘maniac’ and ‘alcoholic’ – could be diagnosed early and treatment for their addiction was available.  Free of charge, obviously.

There was now an acute sense among Wessex folk that all the good things arising from self-government could easily be lost again by taking a wrong turn politically, from which it would be difficult to recover.  Ideas like centralised rule from London or by ‘free’ market corporations were treated as toxic by all those elected to protect the community-benefit State.  Only obvious charlatans on the political extremes still advocated them and those who bothered to listen were generally regarded as a bit odd.

Edwin struck through the earlier passages.  He’d use the material in answering questions if they arose and put it on online later.  The philosophy was the thing to impart.

He was looking forward to hearing the other speakers too.  Hints had been given that Catalonia and Lombardy had interesting things to say about energy-from-waste and the Silesians would be sure to have something new to report on district heating.  Conferences like this – real face-to-face meetings – were so rare now that energy was scarce yet so useful when they did happen.  And then it was back to Wessex, where he’d promised his daughter that for St Ealdhelm’s Day this year he’d take her to Windsor Castle: “a well-arranged store of antiquities of various kinds that have seemed worth keeping.”  Maybe they could fit in a day trip across the border to explore some of the fields and forests that were slowly taking the place of London as its villages re-emerged.

He made a mental note to get her something by William Barnes for her birthday, now that she was interested in his poetry.  Views of Labour and Gold, perhaps.  It was never too early to think politically.  Without politics, Edwin thought with a shudder, without the Revolt of the Regions, Wessex and its heritage would long ago have been washed over by the suburbs of disdainful, global-hub London.  Even in deepest Devon you wouldn’t have found a native, not with the second home problem being as it had been.  If the Wessex Regionalist Party had given up the fight, that’s exactly what would have come to pass.  It was everyone’s good fortune that it hadn’t.

Not Gingerbread Houses

What have we been saying?  That the range of demands increasingly being placed on our countryside could soon exceed the supply of rural land.

Now it’s been confirmed.  Cambridge University’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership has published a report – The Best Use of UK Agricultural Land – quantifying the UK-wide shortfall at up to 6 million hectares, or 15 million acres, by 2030.  (Wessex covers 3 million hectares or 7 million acres.)  You can read the headlines here and download the report here (right-hand column).

Some of the difficulty can be overcome by making multiple use of the same land – a woodland can be used for timber, biomass feedstock, water retention, carbon storage, wildlife habitats and recreation – but there are limits to this.  Our houses aren’t edible, so the land they occupy is land lost to food production.  In Wessex we have the added burdens imposed by London overspill housing, second and holiday homes and other external demands on our land area, for water-gathering, power generation or waste disposal.

As the report points out, the UK Government is failing to provide any leadership on the issue of land use in its broadest sense, not just development.  Scotland has a better grasp of the issues, but that’s just Scotland.  Many ecosystem services have no market price, so leaving things to market forces won’t deliver a sustainable solution.

The report makes interesting reading from a Wessex perspective.  It argues that the UK imports foods it could grow for itself, including foods in which it has a competitive advantage and could therefore also develop an export market.  Examples include apples – all those orchards grubbed up! – pears, plums, summer berries, pig meat, and processed products such as yoghurt and ice cream.  Wessex agriculture could have quite a future, if the policy framework is a supportive one.  But with no sign of joined-up thinking in Whitehall, it’s clear that Wessex will have to do its own planning and make its own decisions.

Digital Devastation

As the implications of the Heartbleed bug continue to be revealed, it becomes clear that while a digital society, including a digital economy and digital government, delivers many benefits, many of these are exceedingly fragile.  Two items from the press last month further illustrate the point.

The first is from Metro, which reported on the launch of the London regime’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UK), tasked with fighting cyber attacks of national significance.  Cyber-security doesn’t come cheap and is never 100% guaranteed.  Scenario-writers are increasingly highlighting the threat that hackers pose to the operation of vital infrastructure, particularly where manual back-up has been scaled-down for reasons of cost-cutting.

On the same day as the Metro story, the London Evening Standard ran with a report on HFT – high-frequency trading – in short, the use of computer algorithms to drive stock markets.  So intense is the competition that even the use of microwave radio rather than cables to send the signal can shave off the crucial nanoseconds needed to close a deal.  Machines don’t think, so while the alternating euphoria and panic of the market are self-correcting with human intervention, they can easily get out of control in its absence.

The article was written by James Rickards, author of The Death of Money – The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System.  It takes the form of a review of work by another financial journalist, Michael Lewis, author of Flash Boys.  Rickards is no optimist:

“The gross notional value of derivatives of all kinds owed by banks is already greater than 100 per cent of global GDP.  Complexity theory tells us that the worst catastrophe that can occur in a system is an exponential function of the scale of the system.  This means that when you double the system scale, you increase systemic risk by a factor of 10 or more…  The collapse is already on its way but HFT will make it bigger, faster and impossible to stop.  The solution is to ban HFT and most other derivatives.  Don’t expect that to happen.  Instead, get ready for the avalanche.”

So, what does this mean for Wessex?

Firstly, that the free market is about to eat itself.  All that deregulation, explained away as promoting beneficial economies of scale, is revealed as the piling-up of system instability through removing barriers to growth.  Barriers to growth are an essential part of a sane, self-governing society that is not at the mercy of unaccountable forces.  They are unfair only in the sense that having a skin is unfair to diseases.

Secondly, that, since the UK is, politically-speaking, owned by the City of London and regularly robbed by it, reform driven from above is impossible.  Only the building of a resilient regional alternative makes any sense.

Thirdly, that progress towards building such an alternative needs to be stepped up.  That includes demanding, ceaselessly, the return of our taxes from London, to be spent in future on local and regional priorities.  In Sweden, 36% of the tax take is raised and spent locally and regionally.  In federal Germany, the figure is 29%.  The OECD average is 26%.  The UK figure?  5%.  Our paranoid Norman rulers still don’t allow us even to have a regional tier in the first place.

Times of Tension

It was good to hear Nick Clegg last week distancing himself from the PM. We’re all Thatcherites now, claimed Cameron. Oh no, we’re not, insisted Clegg. Any reminder that the man is Deputy Prime Minister and not Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party is very welcome.

So too was another breaking of ranks last week, when agriculture minister David Heath drew attention to the looming disaster that is food security, or rather the UK’s lack of it. Heath, the LibDem MP for Somerton & Frome, may have been voicing his own views. Or those agreed by his party’s leadership. Certainly not the views of his Coalition partners, notably Osborne and Pickles, who remain desperate to destroy as much farmland as possible in the search for that strangely elusive growth they keep telling us that we need. Meanwhile, those who look ahead are buying farmland and laying the foundations for the new feudalism. The more land in others’ hands that is lost to development, the higher their own profits will in due course be.

Missing from Heath’s statement was any acknowledgement of the fact that WR have been making an issue of food security for years, while all the London parties have had their heads well into the sand. Just read this blog. Maybe Heath does. If so, he’ll know it won’t be the first time we’ve been proved right. We were right about the need to fundamentally restructure the financial sector. We were right about declining public enthusiasm for elected mayors and the whole ‘cities first’ agenda. We were right that localism, Coalition-style, would be a con. We were right about the resurgence of interest in public ownership and industrial planning. So what else are we right about? Peak oil? The need to rebuild the rural rail network (making substantial progress in Scotland and Wales but little in Wessex)? The need to stabilise our population and move towards a truly sustainable society?

It won’t give us any satisfaction to say we told you so. (Welcoming you to membership of WR would be far more constructive.) We do sense that change is coming. Not all of it positive by any means. Earlier this month we received news that West Dorset District Council, under pressure to meet London’s demands for ever more housing, has proposed 1,000 homes on land south-east of Dorchester at Winterborne Came. There is concern that the countryside setting for the homes of two Wessex literary giants – William Barnes and Thomas Hardy – will be destroyed by the development. The lies of London party politicians – that any number of houses can always be accommodated without harming our heritage – just go on getting bigger. But it’s what local folk should expect. So long as they go on voting for this, then this, of course, is what they will get. They will get something different when Wessex Regionalist councillors and MPs are elected to give London diktat its marching orders.

The fact that localism is failing to deliver on its promise of parish democracy will continue to pit Coalition councillors against Coalition ministers until the day they too realise that those in power in London truly don’t care what the yokels think. We who live here are an irrelevance, an irritation, an impediment to their careers. Yet we have it in our hands to destroy those careers by refusing to return these folk to Parliament. We won’t take that step, yet, because we are an essentially deferential society. We really do seem to believe that the big man in London must know what’s best for us. The vicious circle of deference and defeat will continue to repeat down the generations unless we say ‘no’. And follow through on that ‘no’ by building the regionalist alternative.

The Moody’s Blues

“Growth is the disease for which it pretends to be the cure.”
quoted by Australia’s Stable Population Party

Two pieces of news this week illustrate the contrasting worldviews of today.

The credit-raters have spoken. The UK is no longer AAA. While the Tory Chancellor bows deeply before the infinite wisdom of the Markets, Labour calls for more to be done to stimulate growth. Borrowing more money. Or printing more money. Which ends in hyper-inflation.

We have a financial system designed for infinite growth. Without growth, which must end as resources expire, that financial system must implode. Which is why transferring our personal and societal stores of value out of paper (or electronic) assets into real ones that can be of sustainable benefit to us is a sound long-term move.

In a real free market, politicians would shut up about growth. Their track record isn’t good. Labour claimed to have abolished boom and bust, when in reality their debt-fuelled ‘growth’ was all smoke and mirrors. Is it the Government’s job to promote growth? If folk don’t want to buy and sell as much as they did, is that anybody else’s business? If they actually prefer to work less, borrow less, waste less, where’s the problem?

Keynesians demand higher spending, on things that aren’t always agreed to be needed, just to get those wheels turning. (John Maynard Keynes himself used the analogy of burying banknotes, then leasing the right to dig them up again.) We live in an odd sort of world where macro-economic policy is detached from the idea that work should be directed towards meeting human needs and no further.

That’s not to say that there aren’t things that need to be done. Local folk can list them easily. They’re just not the priorities of big government, locked into a nefarious conversation with big money. Getting things done doesn’t need growth. It just needs less waste, less chasing after the wrong priorities. It seems we are now moving into a no-growth, steady-state economy, which is where, ecologically speaking, we should have been a long time ago. This is painful not because it shouldn’t be happening but because growth junkies and depletion deniers are making it painful by clinging to their old worldview. To remove the pain, we need to remove them from power and attack the instruments of that power – global capital, militarism and centralist diktat.

We need to do it soon. The second piece of news this week was the publication of the latest issue of Population Matters Magazine. In a hard-hitting lead article, Simon Ross writes:

“In March 2009, the UK Government’s Chief Scientist, Professor John Beddington, said that ‘a perfect storm’ of food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources threatened to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration. He attributed the causes to population growth and success in alleviating poverty and concluded that ‘We head into a perfect storm in 2030 because all of these things are operating on the same time frame’.

Resource depletion is now clearly beginning to bite as rising demand hits limited supply. Successful financier Jeremy Grantham warned last November of soaring commodity prices and impending shortages… He noted that rising food prices and likely fertilizer shortages were particularly serious. A recent Chatham House report stated ‘The world is undergoing a period of intensified resource stress, driven in part by the scale and speed of demand growth from emerging economies and a decade of tight commodity markets’ while another report, this time from US intelligence agencies, concluded that ‘New technologies, dwindling resources and explosive population growth in the next 18 years will alter the global balance of power and trigger radical economic and political changes at a speed unprecedented in modern history’.”

We’re ready for this, aren’t we? Not according to Ross, who cites “the lack of political agreement on action on sustainability at the Rio and Doha conferences, with governments instead focussing on how to reinvigorate struggling economies and restore public finances.” Fiddling while Earth burns then.

If we cannot rely on London politicians to detach themselves from the grip of high finance and re-attach themselves to the real world, then we have to look to ourselves. Finding the right mood for that to happen has never been straightforward. Philip Larkin wrote ‘Going, Going’ in 1972, a poem lamenting over-development and environmental destruction in England and how, instead of challenging things about which they’re uneasy, folk reconcile themselves to the inevitability of it all. There’s a particularly fatal habit we have here of trusting the powers-that-be to ‘look after’ us and the things we hold dear, as if that’s any part of their plan. Another work that appeared in 1972 was the Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth. One of its authors, Professor Jørgen Randers, recently advised ‘Don’t teach your children to love the wilderness.’ Because it won’t be there much longer.

The kind of politics worth having doesn’t worry about a lack of growth. It celebrates it as a respite from centuries of foul madness. But if the consequences of past growth – and continuing growth elsewhere on our planet – will hit us just the same, then we need to be prepared.

We need to plan for the best future we still can. It won’t be one we recognise today. Many of the most familiar aspects of our lives will need to adjust to the challenge – the use of our housing stock, the production and distribution of energy and food, our communications networks, our security arrangements and even the nature of our democracy. We need to look beyond the brief blip that is the five-year electoral horizon. We need to research and manage change regionally for a better Wessex in an increasingly volatile world that will seek to manipulate us for the benefit of others. And to do all of that we first need self-government.