Review of 2011

Every year when we submit our accounts to the Electoral Commission we are also required to provide a ‘Review of Political Activities’ covering the year just gone.

The 2011 Review has recently been forwarded to the Commission and here is what it says:

“With no General Election in 2011, activity was less intense than last year but momentum was maintained in a variety of ways.

More frequent meetings allowed policy development to be put in hand once again. Outcomes included specific responses to Coalition plans for education and health and agreement on more general ideas constituting an alternative vision for society, such as ‘economic change, not economic growth’ and opposition to uninvited intervention in the affairs of other countries. We continue to seek the indictment of UK political leaders for war crimes.

Many of these themes were further articulated on the Party’s blog, with record numbers of posts made and comments received. We responded to the consultation on future Parliamentary constituency boundaries, condemning the numbers-driven approach that will see shire communities dismembered. Representations were made on draft planning policy documents in Somerset (the Mendip Core Strategy) and Wiltshire (the South Wiltshire Core Strategy). However, it is clear from such involvement that local councils are being bullied into accepting suicidally high levels of development and their freedom to choose otherwise is continuing to be restricted. Our response to consultation on the draft National Planning Policy Framework, instead of trying to improve on it as others did, challenged the need for it. Genuine localism, not the ‘guided localism’ actually being implemented, demands a genuine hands-off approach.

The Party was present at the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival in July, with a stall in the main marquee selling our publications, the Wessex Wyvern flag draped across the front of the table. We were pleased to learn that the Wessex Region of the RMT union also has a wyvern on its banner.

Our President, Colin Bex, who also manages our London bureau, was active in the Occupy LSX campaign and featured in a YouTube clip wearing the WR party badge. Colin took every opportunity to make the case for local sovereignty and regional co-operation as part of a sane reaction to current crises. In May he secured a meeting with the Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman at her offices and passed copies of our publications to her. He also responded critically to a Ministry of Justice consultation on squatting, which proposed to further enhance the rights of property owners while doing nothing to address why it is that property stands empty as human needs go unmet.

Scottish independence, and possible alternatives to it, have continued to rise up the political agenda, posing ever more urgent questions about what form of governance best serves the interests of those who live in Wessex. Such questions remain central to our rationale as a party, though they stand alongside those problems engaging concerned citizens worldwide, including state-initiated violence, the legalised fraud that underpins the financial system, the lack of economic democracy and the degradation of our environment. For us, the solution is clear, to think globally, and act locally, yes, but also to plan regionally so that thought and action come together.”

Ardent for Some Desperate Glory?

George Galloway’s sensational win in the Bradford West by-election ought to be a wake-up call to all who have swallowed the line that there is no alternative to austerity at home and the waste of lives and treasure abroad. A one-off, it may be, but it demonstrates what can be done with sufficient commitment. Galloway is the first independent or smaller party candidate to have won a Parliamentary by-election from another party since Dick Taverne in 1973.

The new MP made it clear in his acceptance speech that he is above all a Labour politician, a Labour politician without the party he once knew, who wants to bring it back to its senses. He aspires to be Labour’s saviour, not its gravedigger. His ‘independence’ is a sham, his sham Respect party characterised by a total lack of respect for any long-term allegiance by its voters. His record as a constituency MP in east London was profoundly disappointing. There’ll be sound and fury enough, but what will be left when it ends?

Galloway’s anti-war rhetoric is commendable. What he has said needs to be said, and not only by him. Could he have won in Wessex? Probably not. We have a deep-rooted, unthinking sense here that the armed forces are a good thing, that their missions must be assumed to be for the best, and that any casualties are a cause for the nation to pull together and push on.

It’s an attitude we struggle to combat. Though almost everything else is cut, and cut hard, defence spending is justified to us on the grounds that it keeps the peace. So, judged against that stated purpose, every war, every shedding of blood, whether of British personnel or of their opponents, is a failed policy, one for which those responsible must be held to account. There is no victory in victory, where the opportunity for victory should never have been allowed to materialise.

The Infamous Five

In 1945, the Labour Party campaigned to destroy Beveridge’s 'five giants' of want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. In 1997 and each subsequent election it tried the same trick, the latest pledges being to “secure the recovery”, “raise family living standards”, “build a high tech economy”, “protect frontline services”, and “strengthen fairness in communities”. All a bit desperate really.

It has been said that Labour deserved to lose last May, while the Conservatives did not deserve to win. That’s how it turned out, though happily for David Cameron the third party was waiting in the wings, to hand him the keys to Number 10 anyway. Since then, nostalgia for Labour has been growing daily as memory decays. Here then is a reminder of what we have lost, five reasons why we should detest the whole lot of them, five reasons to vote only for parties that advocate real change worth having.

1. Labour took power promising an ethical foreign policy. It left power embedded in American-led wars for oil. Illegal wars sold on the basis of lies. Tens of thousands have died needlessly, deaths for which Labour’s leaders, no less than their Conservative collaborators, must stand trial. A by-product has been the increasing re-militarisation of our own society, with death in war now once more normalised and any criticism of armed intervention smothered in the name of patriotism. Meanwhile, our arms trade continues to make a killing.

2. Labour’s onslaught on civil liberties was relentless. Historic freedoms of expression, association and assembly have all taken a terrible mauling, along with many guarantees of due process. The icing on this loathsome cake was a hideously expensive identity card scheme, expressing Labour’s view that the People belong to the State and not the State to the People. Overall, Labour’s actions, at home and abroad, have increased, not reduced, the terrorist threat.

3. Labour’s contempt for the environment has been a badge worn with pride. The challenges posed by runaway population growth have been met with reckless indifference. Only the collapse of the mortgage market, High Court challenges under European law, and finally a change of government have prevented the destruction of tens of thousands of acres of Green Belt and other protected countryside in Wessex. Half-hearted attempts at a sustainable transport policy, all stick and no carrot, provoked a predictable backlash.

4. Labour’s piper-payers called the tune. Propped up by rich donors as an insurance policy against the declining popularity of John Major’s Tories, New Labour continued the policies of privatisation and debt-based public finance that have got us where we are today. It did nothing as vital industries passed into the hands of international investors devoid of local loyalties. Labour’s leaders would sell their own grandmothers; they already have sold everyone’s grandchildren.

5. Labour once again bungled devolution, just as it did in 1979. This time it got Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London away but this was always the limit of its enthusiasm. It hitched itself to a set of unworkable regional boundaries inherited from the Tories, then deliberately obstructed grassroots movements in Cornwall, Mercia and Wessex pointing to a more promising way forward. In local government it refined the Tory policy of arrogant interference and dismantled public debate, substituting executive members and elected mayors for meaningful scrutiny and collective decision-making.

We attack Labour not because we are happy to see Wessex under Coalition rule. We are far from happy. We attack Labour, as we attack all the London-based parties, because each falls short of our vision for Wessex. We attack the other two for what they are. We attack Labour for trying to fool folk that it is what it demonstrably is not.

Remember, Remember

Certain MPs – and former MPs – who voted for the conquest of Iraq are likely to seek extra security after their names were again publicised on the Internet yesterday.

We do not condone illegal and arbitrary attacks on the innocent. Nor on the guilty. The mass killing of MPs who voted for mass killing is a rough kind of justice that some would impose but we would rather see justice meted out by a court qualified to try the very real accusations of war crimes that Westminster parliamentarians must face. It cannot come soon enough.

Let today’s unseating of Phil Woolas - for his exercise of the self-assumed ‘right to lie’ - be just the beginning of the retribution they have all so assiduously earned. The fireworks have started. It's time to enjoy the show!

Nothing Left Out

Colin Bex has defied the sceptics by conducting his campaign almost wholly by public transport. Today he did need a lift, to fit in three towns in as many hours after an emergency change of plan.

Colin arrived by bus in Banbury this afternoon to be interviewed by Banbury Sound, the local radio station covering north Oxfordshire, including the northern part of the Witney constituency. The presenter was pleased with the recording, and disappointed that few other candidates had taken up the offer to air their views. The interview is planned to be broadcast on Tuesday, 4 May.

From Banbury it was on to Witney, to collect more election leaflets from the printers, then to Woodstock for a public meeting at the Town Hall. Organised by Woodstock Churches Together, this was an opportunity for voters to meet the candidates and ask questions of them. Candidates for the Greens and the Liberal Democrats were there in person, as was one of the Independents standing; the Conservative and Labour candidates were represented by local party spokesmen. Two Independents and the Loony and UKIP candidates did not attend.

Issues raised ranged from early-years education to the West Lothian question. Colin skillfully steered his answers to the case for parish power and regional self-government. A gasp of realisation ran through the audience when he proposed punitive taxation of the 5-10% of people who own 90% of the wealth, the money to be allocated to parish councils in proportion to their population to spend as they see fit. It had clearly dawned on many that here was a serious political party with truly radical plans for revitalising our local communities. In a week when the annual Sunday Times Rich List showed the richest 1,000 getting richer by £77 billion over a year that has been made so difficult for ordinary saps now facing service cuts of a similar magnitude, it was a message well-received.

Given the circumstances of the constituency, it was perhaps to be expected that the debate would line up as Tories versus the rest. David Cameron’s party came under sustained attack for its attitude to a hung parliament. Listening to the Tories, one would think such an outcome must lead at once to general economic collapse, perpetual barrenness of cattle, crops and women and the imminent arrival of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. If an anti-Tory coalition succeeded, not merely in dashing Wisteria Man’s hopes for five years of elective dictatorship but in finally banishing our mediaeval electoral system (last fit for purpose circa 1832), one can see why they might very well think that. ‘Hung parliament’ is a loaded term; Alex Salmond is right to prefer the term ‘balanced parliament’, though that does not go nearly far enough. What is actually needed is a ‘rainbow parliament’ representing the true diversity of public opinion in these islands. Just make sure that any coalition isn’t a government of ALL the talents or there’ll be no-one left to speak the truth.

At the end of the evening various candidates and spokesmen shook hands amidst the usual bonhomie. The Tory spokesman offered his hand to Colin, who pointedly refused it. A lack of due civility? Not at all. The major parties, dealing death and devastation in the name of money, are no better than criminal conspiracies. We live in hope that their leaders will one day – soon – be brought to justice.

Organising Murder

"War is organised murder, and nothing else."
Harry Patch

And so the extraordinary life of Harry Patch, the last Tommy of the First World War, has ended at his home in Wells. His years as a centenarian were spent as an eloquent spokesman for the Lost Generation of 1914-18, imparting what he could of experiences beyond the comprehension of his listeners. There were no illusions: the war was "a family row", Remembrance Day "just show business".

The terrible irony is that as Patch’s past is laid to rest, so lives are still being lost in wars of choice. As the coffins pass through Wiltshire’s streets, Brown, Cameron & Co. conspire to whip up war fever, like music hall acts applauding ‘the soldiers of the Queen’. There is talk of ‘a 30-year haul’ in Afghanistan, in this, the 30th anniversary year of the Soviet invasion. The more soldiers die or are wounded, the greater the emotional investment at stake, the lesser the chance of a rational answer to the question, why?

The argument that blowing other countries apart protects us from terrorism is too silly for comment. And while the main party leaders drag us back to the days of Empire, when the Union flag was earning its nickname of ‘the Butcher’s Apron’, they might consider the record of all who have messed with Afghanistan before. The British lost the First Afghan War. They withdrew after the Second. And the Third, tactically a British victory, was strategically a lasting win for the Afghans. The Soviet Union too left humiliated, its whole empire imploding. Not the most encouraging set of precedents. On the first occasion, in 1842, Britain's expeditionary force was all but wiped out. Supposing himself the sole survivor, Dr William Brydon finally made it back to the gates of Jalalabad, he and his horse exhausted. The scene is depicted in Lady Butler’s great canvas, The Remnants of an Army, which hangs in the regimental museum of the Somersets at Taunton Castle.

The prospects of an oil pipeline from central Asia to the coast? Now that’s more like it. A far more convincing explanation of why lives are being laid down for ‘freedom’. Such is the curse geology has laid throughout the Mahometan lands. And as the oil runs out, so instability will worsen. Still more lives will be lost or shattered until we embrace the principle of economic subsidiarity: that nothing should be produced further away from the user than is absolutely necessary. The key to peace does not lie in a global economy micro-managed by totalitarian liberals but in living within environmental limits, regionally and locally. We can have prosperity without growth. But we cannot have growth without conflict.

Meanwhile Brown, Cameron and the rest of them responsible for organising murder in the 21st century must stand trial for their crimes.