We’ve been hearing quite a lot recently about Ponzi schemes, as the financial chickens come home to roost. A Ponzi scheme is an investment scam that promises investors a high rate of return but in fact is paying earlier entrants out of the money collected from later entrants. Eventually, for whatever reason, the scheme will be unable to go on expanding, at which point the game is up.
The United Kingdom has an ageing population, with Wessex, as the centre of the retirement industry, having a particular interest in the matter. Three out of the five ‘most aged’ local authority areas are in Wessex and the statistics reveal something of a ‘retirement belt’ stretching across the south of our region from Exmoor to the Isle of Wight and beyond.
It is generally asserted that immigration is needed to sustain a working age population capable of supporting this mass of greybeards. The problem is, of course, that everyone who survives long enough gets old, and immigrants are no exception. The population equivalent of a Ponzi scheme is the belief that you can deal with the economic consequences of ageing simply by having an ever-expanding population. The reality is that this is simply not sustainable in environmental terms. Once ecological capacity is exhausted, the result is collapse. To maintain the ratio of 15-64 year-olds at its current level, the UK population would need to rise from about 61 million today to 136 million by 2050. Pro rata, the figures for Wessex would see a rise from about 8 million to over 18 million. Bristol, for example, would need to become a city of over a million folk.
The available data suggests an almost totally misplaced concern about ageing, and that concern needs to be refocused elsewhere. The UK spends about 6.2% of GDP on State pensions, rising to 8.5% by 2050. But if the retirement age were to be raised proportionately in line with life expectancy, the rise is only to 7.75%. So a third of the problem simply disappears.
Low population growth actually brings massive economic, social and environmental benefits. Productive work can be aimed at improving the quality of life, instead of building ever more infrastructure and housing. Less money spent on rearing children and on education means more to spend on pensions. In the UK 43% of young folk go into higher education and can be dependents well into their twenties. Young folk are also disproportionately reflected in crime and unemployment statistics. Conversely, many retired folk remain active in developing the social capital of their communities, giving time to voluntary organisations, in effect free labour that might otherwise have to be paid for. In 2007/08 the UK spent £76 billion of public money on support costs for young folk, compared to £71.5 billion supporting the over-65s. Financial assistance is given down the generations – not up – on average until the age of 75.
Smaller families can mean that folk inherit more housing capital: two children each inherit half the parental home, three children only inherit a third. The potential importance of housing equity – which can be freed up to part-fund consumption in retirement – is huge. The value of housing assets in the UK, even after mortgage debt, is considerably larger than all pension funds combined. (How much of this money really exists is, of course, another matter!)
Economist Phil Mullan, author of The Imaginary Time Bomb, has suggested that the obsession with a looming pensions deficit has less to do with demographic fact and more to do with a political agenda to cut back the welfare state. Countries with much older age structures have out-performed those with younger ones, while a report for the Institute of Public Policy Research confirmed that “there is little correlation between ageing and increased health care costs”.
In short, the way we relieve the ‘burden’ of an ageing population is that we draw upon the money that would otherwise have been spent on the extra housing, schools, hospitals, roads and other infrastructure needed to accommodate population growth. Energy infrastructure is one very significant part of that package. So too are the additional costs of growing a population through immigration, such as translation costs, along with those that stem from inter-communal tension and divided loyalties.
The alternative to population restraint is a planet confronting unsustainable trends, where each new child will likely produce more than 20 tonnes of greenhouse gases every year and where civilisation everywhere is in imminent peril as a result.
If we go on building, we are sure to find ourselves living in a house of cards, miserably waiting for the wind to blow.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Hands Off Our History!
On Monday a letter appeared in the Bristol Evening Post advocating a radical overhaul of local government in Wessex, linking this with the name of our Party. The proposal was to sweep away both districts and counties in favour of Jacobin-style ‘cantons’:
“the Canton of Oxford would include much of Berkshire, parts of Buckinghamshire and parts of Wiltshire. Kingswood and Long Ashton would come into the Canton of Bristol...”
Needless to say, the truth is that these views are not those of the Wessex Regionalists, a party that values our heritage most highly. We oppose the Prescott zones of ‘The South West’ and ‘The South East’ precisely because they are soulless, a dull denial of the richness that life in an old country offers. Wessex suffers economically, socially and environmentally because its identity lacks institutional, democratic expression. It is not animated by power, nor is power over the region reined-in by a deep sense of civic duty to it. It would be the height of caprice were we to take the very opposite view of local government. Anyone who has examined the evidence will see that where historic shires cease to be the focus of political power they wither away, largely because map-makers and the media then cease to make use of them. If we want our shires to live on, then we must use them.
And live on they must. We need to nail the lie that county government is an invention of the Victorians. Their achievement was to democratise what was already over a thousand years old. When the new unitary ‘Wiltshire Council’ comes into being it will be as the successor to Wiltshire County Council, which in 1889 took over the administrative powers of the county justices sitting in quarter sessions, themselves the successors to the mediaeval sheriff’s court. And so on back to Alfred and Ine. It was in Wessex that the first shires were created, around 1,300 years ago. Nowhere in the world can claim such a pattern of continuity. English county government is part of humanity’s common heritage, no less precious in its own way than the Pyramids of Giza or the Great Wall of China.
To attack this heritage as so many ‘relics’ or ‘fossils’ is empty cant. The antiquity of the counties is actually neutral as a fact. It is the interpretation placed on their survival that is crucial. To the ideological moderniser, it is self-evidently time to sweep them away. To other minds, their very resilience points to something worth a closer look. If the counties have already survived a millennium of social upheaval and technological change it is important to understand their strengths and at least to demand the proof that radical change is now, suddenly, justified. The ‘experts’ have their own agenda and their claims should never be taken at face value.
The metaphor of ‘sweeping away’ is always revealing, because it suggests something unhygienic about the status quo, something untidy, something that gets in the way of doing some other, unstated thing. It is no accident that demands for the reorganisation of local government on the lines of ‘city-regions’ or ‘metropolitan areas’ emerge at times of development stress. One such period was the late Sixties, when so much of our heritage was ‘swept away’ unthinkingly, leaving us to regret its loss at our leisure, bewailing the short-lived bag of beans we received in return. ‘City-regions’ are always a developer’s charter because they place the land around cities under the political control of city-based authorities, allowing the destruction of the countryside to accelerate. They are singularly inappropriate in Wessex. We are a rural region where cities know their place. And it is not lording it over the rest of us.
Like counties, cities, as we have known them, are under attack. Both major parties are enthusiastic about elected mayors. We are not. Our aim is a widening of local democracy, not its contraction, and Mafia-style ‘boss’ politics is no part of our vision. Democratic debate and voting in open meetings should not give way to dodgy deals in the privacy of the mayor’s parlour. The eclipse of our once-vigorous civic life by new, secretive models borrowed from business is one of the great tragedies of our time and must be reversed if local democracy is to be renewed. Advocates of these ‘Mafia mayors’ tell us that the powers of local councils need to be concentrated if they are to be effective. That, it must be pointed out, is because there are now so few powers. The job of a local politician is no longer to help make decisions but to talk to other people, elsewhere, who wield the real power. That is why the ‘new Caesarism’ is rampant and folk have stupidly let it happen by voting for one or other of the London parties.
Hand-in-glove with the structural turmoil has gone a new vocabulary. Emblematic of this was the creation of ‘De-clog’, the Department for Communities and Local Government, currently headed up by Bleary Hazel. Its remit is to promote ‘community cohesion’. Since real communities cohere naturally – by definition – it is clear that the control freaks have been exceedingly busy on this one. First, destroy real, stable communities. Then create new, unstable ones by decree, like the Prescott zones or local city-regions. Then help yourself to a job for life using State coercion to hold them together.
Our solution is simply to put right the damage. Our Party’s policy is to restore traditional local government areas and status, including Berkshire County Council (abolished by the so-called Conservatives), the traditional county boundaries, and borough status to charter towns. Structures should be accountable for the use of their powers at the smallest practical level, with nothing done by a wider area that a more local area feels it can do for itself. We demand committees, not cabinets. We seek the formation of new, smaller districts, based on the old, ecologically-sound hundreds and run by parish delegates. We oppose area boards that deny voting rights for the communities being ‘done to’. We have a wonderful tradition of local self-government that is slipping through our fingers. It is time to seize it back, to make it truly local – and to ensure that it really is all about government and not the costly smoke-and-mirrors act we endure today.
“the Canton of Oxford would include much of Berkshire, parts of Buckinghamshire and parts of Wiltshire. Kingswood and Long Ashton would come into the Canton of Bristol...”
Needless to say, the truth is that these views are not those of the Wessex Regionalists, a party that values our heritage most highly. We oppose the Prescott zones of ‘The South West’ and ‘The South East’ precisely because they are soulless, a dull denial of the richness that life in an old country offers. Wessex suffers economically, socially and environmentally because its identity lacks institutional, democratic expression. It is not animated by power, nor is power over the region reined-in by a deep sense of civic duty to it. It would be the height of caprice were we to take the very opposite view of local government. Anyone who has examined the evidence will see that where historic shires cease to be the focus of political power they wither away, largely because map-makers and the media then cease to make use of them. If we want our shires to live on, then we must use them.
And live on they must. We need to nail the lie that county government is an invention of the Victorians. Their achievement was to democratise what was already over a thousand years old. When the new unitary ‘Wiltshire Council’ comes into being it will be as the successor to Wiltshire County Council, which in 1889 took over the administrative powers of the county justices sitting in quarter sessions, themselves the successors to the mediaeval sheriff’s court. And so on back to Alfred and Ine. It was in Wessex that the first shires were created, around 1,300 years ago. Nowhere in the world can claim such a pattern of continuity. English county government is part of humanity’s common heritage, no less precious in its own way than the Pyramids of Giza or the Great Wall of China.
To attack this heritage as so many ‘relics’ or ‘fossils’ is empty cant. The antiquity of the counties is actually neutral as a fact. It is the interpretation placed on their survival that is crucial. To the ideological moderniser, it is self-evidently time to sweep them away. To other minds, their very resilience points to something worth a closer look. If the counties have already survived a millennium of social upheaval and technological change it is important to understand their strengths and at least to demand the proof that radical change is now, suddenly, justified. The ‘experts’ have their own agenda and their claims should never be taken at face value.
The metaphor of ‘sweeping away’ is always revealing, because it suggests something unhygienic about the status quo, something untidy, something that gets in the way of doing some other, unstated thing. It is no accident that demands for the reorganisation of local government on the lines of ‘city-regions’ or ‘metropolitan areas’ emerge at times of development stress. One such period was the late Sixties, when so much of our heritage was ‘swept away’ unthinkingly, leaving us to regret its loss at our leisure, bewailing the short-lived bag of beans we received in return. ‘City-regions’ are always a developer’s charter because they place the land around cities under the political control of city-based authorities, allowing the destruction of the countryside to accelerate. They are singularly inappropriate in Wessex. We are a rural region where cities know their place. And it is not lording it over the rest of us.
Like counties, cities, as we have known them, are under attack. Both major parties are enthusiastic about elected mayors. We are not. Our aim is a widening of local democracy, not its contraction, and Mafia-style ‘boss’ politics is no part of our vision. Democratic debate and voting in open meetings should not give way to dodgy deals in the privacy of the mayor’s parlour. The eclipse of our once-vigorous civic life by new, secretive models borrowed from business is one of the great tragedies of our time and must be reversed if local democracy is to be renewed. Advocates of these ‘Mafia mayors’ tell us that the powers of local councils need to be concentrated if they are to be effective. That, it must be pointed out, is because there are now so few powers. The job of a local politician is no longer to help make decisions but to talk to other people, elsewhere, who wield the real power. That is why the ‘new Caesarism’ is rampant and folk have stupidly let it happen by voting for one or other of the London parties.
Hand-in-glove with the structural turmoil has gone a new vocabulary. Emblematic of this was the creation of ‘De-clog’, the Department for Communities and Local Government, currently headed up by Bleary Hazel. Its remit is to promote ‘community cohesion’. Since real communities cohere naturally – by definition – it is clear that the control freaks have been exceedingly busy on this one. First, destroy real, stable communities. Then create new, unstable ones by decree, like the Prescott zones or local city-regions. Then help yourself to a job for life using State coercion to hold them together.
Our solution is simply to put right the damage. Our Party’s policy is to restore traditional local government areas and status, including Berkshire County Council (abolished by the so-called Conservatives), the traditional county boundaries, and borough status to charter towns. Structures should be accountable for the use of their powers at the smallest practical level, with nothing done by a wider area that a more local area feels it can do for itself. We demand committees, not cabinets. We seek the formation of new, smaller districts, based on the old, ecologically-sound hundreds and run by parish delegates. We oppose area boards that deny voting rights for the communities being ‘done to’. We have a wonderful tradition of local self-government that is slipping through our fingers. It is time to seize it back, to make it truly local – and to ensure that it really is all about government and not the costly smoke-and-mirrors act we endure today.
Friday, February 20, 2009
A Smaller World, Please
Think globally, act locally. The sentiment is sound but the first instruction requires a lot less effort than the second. A lot less effort, because successive centralist governments at Westminster have made the second instruction well nigh impossible to carry out.
Take the example of planning, where local discretion has now been all but abolished. When the 2004 ‘reforms’ were pushed through at the behest of the power of money, community groups naively fell in behind them. The package included a requirement that councils bind themselves to a ‘Statement of Community Involvement’. Community groups thought that Christmas had come early. At last, councils would be forced to do as they told them, and not as elected local politicians wished. The reality is – and always was – that this was a smokescreen behind which decisions were taken away from the locality altogether. Now unelected civil servants decide everything of any importance in the planning world and matters are getting progressively worse. The Campaign to Protect Rural England had the true measure of ‘community involvement’ all along. As their poster proclaimed, “Your new airport goes here. What colour would you like the fence?”
When Labour politicians – and the Tory ones are no better – speak of empowering communities, the rhetoric translates into reality with so many caveats as to be deeply deceitful. A new generation of environmental protestors is now coming to the fore, one that will not be content with sit-ins and stunts that simply delay the bulldozers by days. Westminster diktat may find itself met with a more resolute denial of authority and legitimacy. We should not be surprised to see big developers and their pocket decision-makers vilified very personally as the public enemies they clearly are. No moral individual could defend those who are busily wrecking Wessex in the name of a despotic Parliament whose right to rule is nothing but self-proclamation backed up with tanks. When road protestors set fire to the contractors’ plant, can we say that that was a crime? And that what that machinery was doing to our land was a lawful act, advancing truth, beauty and goodness? We shall have to think again very thoroughly about what we mean by the law. The only certainty is that Westminster has no claim to be making it.
One pressing reason why power needs to be radically decentralised is that the planet needs this. World government is not the answer to the world’s problems. Small is beautiful not because it allows good things to happen, although it does, but because it prevents big, bad things being allowed to happen. Those who have to live with the consequences don’t willingly foul their own nest.
So a philosophy that puts Wessex first is not one that denies our interdependence with the rest of the world. Quite the reverse. We seek to contribute to a sustainable, equitable world where the health, security and liberty of all is paramount, regardless of race or creed. But we do that from our own land, by showing solidarity, morally and economically, not by gung-ho intervention where we’re not wanted. Humanitarian aid – well-organised by charities – is best kept quite distinct from political meddling. ‘Foreign policy’ is a fancy term for not minding our own business. It could be a very attractive as well as unique selling point for the Wessex Regionalists to be the only party whose foreign policy is not to have one. Globalisation is on the defensive – protectionism is making a comeback – and internationalism is up for redefinition.
Watching the television news it is hard to resist the feeling that anywhere and everywhere matters except home. Recent events in Gaza were tragic. But did they justify top billing night after night after night after night after night after night after night? Let us examine why foreign news has such a fascination for broadcasters.
There are the superficial reasons. One is that foreign correspondents cost money. If you have them, you use them. Not using them would only get you into trouble with the accountants. Another is that editorial control is in the hands of a generation whose background leads them to embrace the foreign and despise the domestic. Hippies who spent the 60’s out east don’t care much what happens in Easton or Eastleigh. The Middle East is ‘cool’, whichever side you take. And so it’s assumed that everyone else would want to give it the same gravity.
But there is a deeper agenda. George Orwell’s proles and his ‘outer party’ won’t have spotted it but the ‘inner party’ will have thought it through carefully.
Firstly, for every foreign story that dominates the headlines there is a domestic story that has been spiked. So what is the bad news that this is a good day to bury? Corruption in high places? Another piece of repressive legislation waved through Westminster without the public’s knowledge? Revelations about a failed Government policy? The squandering of public money? Your guess is as good as mine.
Secondly, foreign news fosters a sense of powerlessness. Domestic news makes folk angry and there is plenty they can do about it. They can change the government. Even change the system. But foreign affairs are by definition immune to the outcome of a British general election. Whether Brown, Cameron or Clegg sits in Number 10 makes no real difference to the sufferings of others thousands of miles away (unless British troops are involved). So when foreign news makes people angry, that is all it does. And belief in politicians drains away all the faster. And if politicians can’t change anything, why have them? When pundits now talk about a ‘post-democratic Europe’, its handmaidens are easily identified. They are the sirens wailing their song nightly upon our screens.
When cuts fall on the broadcast media, it is not the foreign correspondents who suffer. The first casualty is always regional news. Understandably so, since it often amounts to little more than ‘cat stuck in tree in Chippenham’. One of our key tasks in the years ahead will be to change the media organisations, so that they speak to us primarily about ourselves. Together we can then make that story interesting as local action increasingly challenges our oppressors. Yes, folks. The revolution WILL be televised.
Take the example of planning, where local discretion has now been all but abolished. When the 2004 ‘reforms’ were pushed through at the behest of the power of money, community groups naively fell in behind them. The package included a requirement that councils bind themselves to a ‘Statement of Community Involvement’. Community groups thought that Christmas had come early. At last, councils would be forced to do as they told them, and not as elected local politicians wished. The reality is – and always was – that this was a smokescreen behind which decisions were taken away from the locality altogether. Now unelected civil servants decide everything of any importance in the planning world and matters are getting progressively worse. The Campaign to Protect Rural England had the true measure of ‘community involvement’ all along. As their poster proclaimed, “Your new airport goes here. What colour would you like the fence?”
When Labour politicians – and the Tory ones are no better – speak of empowering communities, the rhetoric translates into reality with so many caveats as to be deeply deceitful. A new generation of environmental protestors is now coming to the fore, one that will not be content with sit-ins and stunts that simply delay the bulldozers by days. Westminster diktat may find itself met with a more resolute denial of authority and legitimacy. We should not be surprised to see big developers and their pocket decision-makers vilified very personally as the public enemies they clearly are. No moral individual could defend those who are busily wrecking Wessex in the name of a despotic Parliament whose right to rule is nothing but self-proclamation backed up with tanks. When road protestors set fire to the contractors’ plant, can we say that that was a crime? And that what that machinery was doing to our land was a lawful act, advancing truth, beauty and goodness? We shall have to think again very thoroughly about what we mean by the law. The only certainty is that Westminster has no claim to be making it.
One pressing reason why power needs to be radically decentralised is that the planet needs this. World government is not the answer to the world’s problems. Small is beautiful not because it allows good things to happen, although it does, but because it prevents big, bad things being allowed to happen. Those who have to live with the consequences don’t willingly foul their own nest.
So a philosophy that puts Wessex first is not one that denies our interdependence with the rest of the world. Quite the reverse. We seek to contribute to a sustainable, equitable world where the health, security and liberty of all is paramount, regardless of race or creed. But we do that from our own land, by showing solidarity, morally and economically, not by gung-ho intervention where we’re not wanted. Humanitarian aid – well-organised by charities – is best kept quite distinct from political meddling. ‘Foreign policy’ is a fancy term for not minding our own business. It could be a very attractive as well as unique selling point for the Wessex Regionalists to be the only party whose foreign policy is not to have one. Globalisation is on the defensive – protectionism is making a comeback – and internationalism is up for redefinition.
Watching the television news it is hard to resist the feeling that anywhere and everywhere matters except home. Recent events in Gaza were tragic. But did they justify top billing night after night after night after night after night after night after night? Let us examine why foreign news has such a fascination for broadcasters.
There are the superficial reasons. One is that foreign correspondents cost money. If you have them, you use them. Not using them would only get you into trouble with the accountants. Another is that editorial control is in the hands of a generation whose background leads them to embrace the foreign and despise the domestic. Hippies who spent the 60’s out east don’t care much what happens in Easton or Eastleigh. The Middle East is ‘cool’, whichever side you take. And so it’s assumed that everyone else would want to give it the same gravity.
But there is a deeper agenda. George Orwell’s proles and his ‘outer party’ won’t have spotted it but the ‘inner party’ will have thought it through carefully.
Firstly, for every foreign story that dominates the headlines there is a domestic story that has been spiked. So what is the bad news that this is a good day to bury? Corruption in high places? Another piece of repressive legislation waved through Westminster without the public’s knowledge? Revelations about a failed Government policy? The squandering of public money? Your guess is as good as mine.
Secondly, foreign news fosters a sense of powerlessness. Domestic news makes folk angry and there is plenty they can do about it. They can change the government. Even change the system. But foreign affairs are by definition immune to the outcome of a British general election. Whether Brown, Cameron or Clegg sits in Number 10 makes no real difference to the sufferings of others thousands of miles away (unless British troops are involved). So when foreign news makes people angry, that is all it does. And belief in politicians drains away all the faster. And if politicians can’t change anything, why have them? When pundits now talk about a ‘post-democratic Europe’, its handmaidens are easily identified. They are the sirens wailing their song nightly upon our screens.
When cuts fall on the broadcast media, it is not the foreign correspondents who suffer. The first casualty is always regional news. Understandably so, since it often amounts to little more than ‘cat stuck in tree in Chippenham’. One of our key tasks in the years ahead will be to change the media organisations, so that they speak to us primarily about ourselves. Together we can then make that story interesting as local action increasingly challenges our oppressors. Yes, folks. The revolution WILL be televised.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Whither Wessex?
"At a number of places in his celebrated Imperialism (1902), J. A. Hobson used southern England as an image of the successful, imperialist side of British capitalism: a countryside of plush ‘parasitism’ drawing tribute from overseas via the City, supporting ‘great tame masses of retainers’ in service and secondary industries, and riddled with ex-imperialist hirelings. ‘The South and South-West of England is richly sprinkled with these men’, he continued, ‘most of them endowed with leisure, men openly contemptuous of democracy, devoted to material luxury, social display, and the shallower arts of intellectual life. The wealthier among them discover political ambitions… Not a few enter our local councils, or take posts in our constabulary or our prisons: everywhere they stand for coercion and for resistance to reform.’"
Tom Nairn, The Break-up of Britain, 1981
Next year, political Wessex hits 40. It was towards the end of 1969 that the then Lord Weymouth first mooted the idea of a Wessex identity for the purposes of tourism promotion. Of course, even then, his ambitions were more extensive than that. So how far has reality today caught up with them?
St Aldhelm’s Cross and even the Wyvern are now to be seen flying from public buildings in Wessex, and the list of towns and cities doing so will doubtless grow. Aldhelm is becoming more widely recognised as the patron saint of Wessex. A Wessex Anthem has been written by a Dorset dialect poet and set to music by a composer from Gloucestershire. Our wonderful dialect is attracting new scholarly interest. We even have our own Earl and Countess, a fact of recognition for which we can almost forgive their meagre efforts to live up to the title. The infrastructure of a community is taking shape.
For many of these feats, except the last two, the credit must go to Wessex Society, which Party members helped to launch in 1999, on the 1100th anniversary of King Alfred’s death. The Society has, quite rightly, taken on a life of its own. The membership today includes a peer, a bishop, an MEP, three MPs and the popular musicians Acker Bilk and Gordon Haskell. While some Society members are also Party members, the vast majority are not. It would be false to assume that to be patriotic about Wessex is to be sympathetic to Home Rule. Yet no regionalist can be unhappy that Wessex is finding pride in itself again.
And not before time. While the letters pages of our region’s papers are dominated by those droning on about Brussels, or the unfairness of Scottish devolution, Wessex is being torn apart. Not by the regulators of straight bananas. Nor by some anti-English conspiracy. But by the money men (and women) of the City of London. Our homes, our farms, our deep-rooted businesses, all are simply opportunities for them, opportunities to place their own pockets above the common good. And who can blame them? If we let our politicians let them then we have only ourselves to blame.
In News from Nowhere (1890), William Morris coined the term ‘cockneyisation’. Morris, a Londoner himself by birth, saw it as the process by which crass commercial values seeped up the Thames valley, consuming all they found, oblivious to charm and beauty. Morris was horrified by what he saw in his own day. What would he make of Basingstoke or Didcot now?
Some have suggested simply abandoning the east of Berkshire to London, much as some Welsh nationalists have toyed with re-defining Wales as the Welsh-speaking parts only. Such counsel leads nowhere. Once every limb has been amputated, where is there left to call home? We insist that nothing is up for surrender. If the Cockneys laugh at the Wessex accent, then it’s time to laugh back and remind them where they’re now living.
Gently, of course. Because we make no distinction between native and settler who alike love Wessex. Take away in-comers and our Party would collapse. There are all too many Wessex natives who have been taught to despise their heritage for us to be choosy.
But if it’s not about race, it’s very much about space. New homes by the hundreds of thousands are planned and we’re entitled to ask searching questions about why our farmland is to be destroyed to make way for them. We’re still awaiting even a half-convincing answer.
Folk are rightly upset about what’s happening. ‘Change’, we’re told. Yes, but what sane person supports change when it’s irrespective of better or worse? What we demand is the restoration of politics, of the right to make choices democratically and to see them implemented, not side-stepped. For that, Wessex needs a party it can call its own.
We know that New Labour has no mandate in Wessex. Wessex has never voted Labour, yet has periodically suffered the consequences of votes cast in Scotland, Wales, London and the big cities in Mercia and Northumbria. Neither the Conservatives nor the Liberal Democrats have any solution to this. Both seek to control the Westminster machine themselves, and letting Labour in from time to time is the price they’re willing to pay. A Wessex Parliament would keep Labour out, for good, unless Wessex voted Labour. A Labour government at Westminster – or equally a Tory or LibDem one – could no more impose its policies on Wessex than it can today on Scotland and Wales. A vote for the Wessex Regionalist Party is no wasted vote. A vote for either of the main opposition parties is a wasted vote because all they can offer is to buy time before Labour is back with a vengeance.
There’s much to dislike about Labour, but not all. Strip away the PC twits and the wolves in sheep’s clothing and there remains a faintly beating radical heart. It was a movement that Wessex could, in the right hands, have endorsed. Looking at the deep blue map of today, it’s hard to imagine that less than a century ago Wessex was a predominantly Liberal region. It was a region with a strong tradition of mutual support, as shown by a thriving network of friendly societies. But it was also a region rightly suspicious of the collectivist instincts of the rising Labour Party. So much so that it has ever since preferred the safety of voting Tory.
Wessex Regionalism is a philosophy that necessarily reflects the political complexion of the region itself. But it’s also one that taps into the unfinished business of old-fashioned liberalism. Not the spiteful, totalitarian kind embraced by Thatcher and Blair but the truly radical programme of constitutional reform and social emancipation cut short by the rise of hard-line socialism. It was no accident that the wartime Common Wealth party had its origins in Wessex, a party advocating vital democracy, common ownership and morality in politics. Nor that WR office-holders over the years have included at least three ex-members of CW’s own Executive Committee.
Dissatisfaction with what the major parties all offer is growing. Extremists are likely to be the beneficiaries if no more attractive alternative is presented. Frustration is turning to anger and anger to rage. The alternating wings of the Laboratory Party have conspired to deprive us wholesale of the control over our lives that we have a right to expect. Decisions that used to be made at the level of individual schools or hospitals are now made in London, either by ministers or, increasingly, by the courts. Decisions on housing and planning that used to be made in town and county halls are now made by quangos stuffed with business interests and reporting to Whitehall-knows-best. Buses, electricity and water – vital services that used to be locally owned and controlled – now belong to the Scots, the French, the Germans and the Spanish. How long before the Russians and the Chinese follow them in?
Common sense dictates the appropriate scale of any service or enterprise. Nothing should be done at a wider level that can be done as well or better at a more local level. Whether it’s a public service or a private enterprise the same rules should apply. While there’s a plausible case for aerospace or pharmaceuticals to be organised on a continental scale, given the high development costs and need to meet U.S. competition, things like buses, electricity or water are tied to their local and regional geography. There’s no case for international empires in these sectors, except to maximise market share. And that’s a case we should have the right to reject.
Politics? Yes please. And the sooner the better.
Tom Nairn, The Break-up of Britain, 1981
Next year, political Wessex hits 40. It was towards the end of 1969 that the then Lord Weymouth first mooted the idea of a Wessex identity for the purposes of tourism promotion. Of course, even then, his ambitions were more extensive than that. So how far has reality today caught up with them?
St Aldhelm’s Cross and even the Wyvern are now to be seen flying from public buildings in Wessex, and the list of towns and cities doing so will doubtless grow. Aldhelm is becoming more widely recognised as the patron saint of Wessex. A Wessex Anthem has been written by a Dorset dialect poet and set to music by a composer from Gloucestershire. Our wonderful dialect is attracting new scholarly interest. We even have our own Earl and Countess, a fact of recognition for which we can almost forgive their meagre efforts to live up to the title. The infrastructure of a community is taking shape.
For many of these feats, except the last two, the credit must go to Wessex Society, which Party members helped to launch in 1999, on the 1100th anniversary of King Alfred’s death. The Society has, quite rightly, taken on a life of its own. The membership today includes a peer, a bishop, an MEP, three MPs and the popular musicians Acker Bilk and Gordon Haskell. While some Society members are also Party members, the vast majority are not. It would be false to assume that to be patriotic about Wessex is to be sympathetic to Home Rule. Yet no regionalist can be unhappy that Wessex is finding pride in itself again.
And not before time. While the letters pages of our region’s papers are dominated by those droning on about Brussels, or the unfairness of Scottish devolution, Wessex is being torn apart. Not by the regulators of straight bananas. Nor by some anti-English conspiracy. But by the money men (and women) of the City of London. Our homes, our farms, our deep-rooted businesses, all are simply opportunities for them, opportunities to place their own pockets above the common good. And who can blame them? If we let our politicians let them then we have only ourselves to blame.
In News from Nowhere (1890), William Morris coined the term ‘cockneyisation’. Morris, a Londoner himself by birth, saw it as the process by which crass commercial values seeped up the Thames valley, consuming all they found, oblivious to charm and beauty. Morris was horrified by what he saw in his own day. What would he make of Basingstoke or Didcot now?
Some have suggested simply abandoning the east of Berkshire to London, much as some Welsh nationalists have toyed with re-defining Wales as the Welsh-speaking parts only. Such counsel leads nowhere. Once every limb has been amputated, where is there left to call home? We insist that nothing is up for surrender. If the Cockneys laugh at the Wessex accent, then it’s time to laugh back and remind them where they’re now living.
Gently, of course. Because we make no distinction between native and settler who alike love Wessex. Take away in-comers and our Party would collapse. There are all too many Wessex natives who have been taught to despise their heritage for us to be choosy.
But if it’s not about race, it’s very much about space. New homes by the hundreds of thousands are planned and we’re entitled to ask searching questions about why our farmland is to be destroyed to make way for them. We’re still awaiting even a half-convincing answer.
Folk are rightly upset about what’s happening. ‘Change’, we’re told. Yes, but what sane person supports change when it’s irrespective of better or worse? What we demand is the restoration of politics, of the right to make choices democratically and to see them implemented, not side-stepped. For that, Wessex needs a party it can call its own.
We know that New Labour has no mandate in Wessex. Wessex has never voted Labour, yet has periodically suffered the consequences of votes cast in Scotland, Wales, London and the big cities in Mercia and Northumbria. Neither the Conservatives nor the Liberal Democrats have any solution to this. Both seek to control the Westminster machine themselves, and letting Labour in from time to time is the price they’re willing to pay. A Wessex Parliament would keep Labour out, for good, unless Wessex voted Labour. A Labour government at Westminster – or equally a Tory or LibDem one – could no more impose its policies on Wessex than it can today on Scotland and Wales. A vote for the Wessex Regionalist Party is no wasted vote. A vote for either of the main opposition parties is a wasted vote because all they can offer is to buy time before Labour is back with a vengeance.
There’s much to dislike about Labour, but not all. Strip away the PC twits and the wolves in sheep’s clothing and there remains a faintly beating radical heart. It was a movement that Wessex could, in the right hands, have endorsed. Looking at the deep blue map of today, it’s hard to imagine that less than a century ago Wessex was a predominantly Liberal region. It was a region with a strong tradition of mutual support, as shown by a thriving network of friendly societies. But it was also a region rightly suspicious of the collectivist instincts of the rising Labour Party. So much so that it has ever since preferred the safety of voting Tory.
Wessex Regionalism is a philosophy that necessarily reflects the political complexion of the region itself. But it’s also one that taps into the unfinished business of old-fashioned liberalism. Not the spiteful, totalitarian kind embraced by Thatcher and Blair but the truly radical programme of constitutional reform and social emancipation cut short by the rise of hard-line socialism. It was no accident that the wartime Common Wealth party had its origins in Wessex, a party advocating vital democracy, common ownership and morality in politics. Nor that WR office-holders over the years have included at least three ex-members of CW’s own Executive Committee.
Dissatisfaction with what the major parties all offer is growing. Extremists are likely to be the beneficiaries if no more attractive alternative is presented. Frustration is turning to anger and anger to rage. The alternating wings of the Laboratory Party have conspired to deprive us wholesale of the control over our lives that we have a right to expect. Decisions that used to be made at the level of individual schools or hospitals are now made in London, either by ministers or, increasingly, by the courts. Decisions on housing and planning that used to be made in town and county halls are now made by quangos stuffed with business interests and reporting to Whitehall-knows-best. Buses, electricity and water – vital services that used to be locally owned and controlled – now belong to the Scots, the French, the Germans and the Spanish. How long before the Russians and the Chinese follow them in?
Common sense dictates the appropriate scale of any service or enterprise. Nothing should be done at a wider level that can be done as well or better at a more local level. Whether it’s a public service or a private enterprise the same rules should apply. While there’s a plausible case for aerospace or pharmaceuticals to be organised on a continental scale, given the high development costs and need to meet U.S. competition, things like buses, electricity or water are tied to their local and regional geography. There’s no case for international empires in these sectors, except to maximise market share. And that’s a case we should have the right to reject.
Politics? Yes please. And the sooner the better.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Property & Privilege
One of the more amusing, if nonetheless unpleasant aspects of the current financial meltdown is the speed with which ardent free marketeers have rounded on the regulatory authorities for not being tough enough with them. Regulation that inhibits profits is bad, lack of regulation that fails to prevent losses is equally bad. Regulation, for its beneficiaries, is shamelessly a one-way street. Like the school bully out of his depth, the City of London is now running howling to teacher.
The so-called libertarians have got it badly wrong. Of course, there will ever be the political masochists who accept whatever consequences their ideology requires of them, but without practical solutions to real world issues they have no audience. Their gods have failed us and we no longer hearken to their sermons. It was always a cheek to argue for the end of State intervention when without State intervention to uphold the sanctity of property and contract their economic model lacked its most basic footing. Without police there is no property and without courts there is no contract. These things require a State and a democratic State will not confine itself to meeting the demands of the rich alone.
The libertarians’ greatest lie has been to link personal liberty and property, arguing unfettered property rights to be the true guarantee of democracy. History shows this to be false. Victorian Britain – before the secret ballot – saw countless cases of tenants evicted for voting against their landlord’s wishes. That was his right as landlord, but what was his right to be landlord at all? Libertarians stop the clock at now, entrenching all past gains, however made. Justice can go hang.
As a general rule, human rights begin at birth and end at death. Property rights have no such mortality. They pass onwards from generation to generation, but the origins of the chain of transmission are often deliberately obscured. Title ultimately derives from an act of conquest. Saxon dispossessed Celt, Norman dispossessed Saxon. And every honest transaction today rests on that tainted foundation. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s much-abused quip that property is theft is not far from the truth.
If property is not to be theft then it must be found a rightful possessor. And in that judgement, use value has always outweighed exchange value. Those who wish to use the land take precedence over those who wish to hoard it. That is the basis of the common law doctrine of adverse possession. A squatter’s rights have long trumped those of the paper owner who made no effort to enforce his claim. Sadly, the onward march of statutory land registration is biting deep into this ancient wisdom, so that more and more we are ‘bound in with shame, with inky blots, and rotten parchment bonds’. A fresh approach is due.
To prefer the claim of the homeless to that of the idle land speculator is not to condone the destruction of Wessex by endless population growth. Development should be controlled by the community through planning laws, because in our over-crowded region the days of putting up a shack on the common are long gone. But when farmland is sacrificed because existing homes lie empty, for no other reason than that the owner wants to keep them that way, we have a society with very warped priorities indeed. Perhaps the way forward is to give parish and town councils the right to oversee vacant land and buildings on their patch, and the power to force a sale by auction wherever they are not satisfied with the owner’s explanation. Public bodies should be as subject to this power of scrutiny as anyone else. In truth, land is never ‘owned’; all land is held as an estate under the Crown. Property is a privilege, not a right, and it should not be permissible to abuse that privilege.
The re-deification of private rights in land is one aspect of a wider loss of reality by society at large. Because our economy no longer depends on gathering, growing or making things, business has created class after class of virtual assets, which it then insists that the law should protect against anyone else wishing to do the same. Only with the State’s connivance can profit be made out of denying access to what was once free. ‘Intellectual property rights’ are the new enclosures. They do not belong in this world but in that of Alice in Wonderland. How else can one begin to characterise attempts by the U.S. Government to patent the DNA of indigenous peoples?
Copyright is the privatisation of censorship. It restricts the flow of information in a free society, slowing down cultural development. It outlaws the labour of those who do the copying, while rewarding those who have done nothing since the initial publication of their work. Nothing has been stolen but a figment of the imagination. The record company still has the master recording. The publisher still has the author’s manuscript. These are the only true assets in the industry of make-believe. There will always be a market for the genuine article, endorsed by its creator, but those who don’t want their work copied shouldn’t publish. While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, no-one should expect to be paid for being flattered. The law should protect the buyer from fake goods they don’t want, not from fake goods they do want.
Copyright is a paradise for lawyers. How much copying is too much copying? Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code would have been inconceivable without the work of Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln in The Holy Blood & the Holy Grail. Yet he was cleared of plagiarism because they had claimed their own, equally imaginative work as fact. Wessex-born author J.K. Rowling is estimated to be the 12th richest woman in Britain, worth £560 million. Could Harry Potter have been created without the use of the English language in which the books are written? Or without reference to the Western magical tradition? No? So can society sue JKR for its share? Apparently not. If we want continuing creativity we should remove the cotton wool from our writers, musicians, film-makers and software engineers. Why do more work if you can live off past royalties for ever and a day? Of course, their fortunes would be considerably smaller. But a world with fewer millionaire celebrities would be a world with a more balanced sense of values. Not to mention a more realistic view of the contribution any individual or corporation can actually make to the culture with which they work.
The world of money is a house of (plastic) cards. The State, while taking all the poison thrown at it, is happy to sanction the whole range of legal fictions out of which money is ‘made’ at the public’s expense. Fractional reserve banking. Limited liability. And guaranteed property rights, even in things that don’t otherwise exist. Isn’t it time we got real and left Wonderland behind?
The so-called libertarians have got it badly wrong. Of course, there will ever be the political masochists who accept whatever consequences their ideology requires of them, but without practical solutions to real world issues they have no audience. Their gods have failed us and we no longer hearken to their sermons. It was always a cheek to argue for the end of State intervention when without State intervention to uphold the sanctity of property and contract their economic model lacked its most basic footing. Without police there is no property and without courts there is no contract. These things require a State and a democratic State will not confine itself to meeting the demands of the rich alone.
The libertarians’ greatest lie has been to link personal liberty and property, arguing unfettered property rights to be the true guarantee of democracy. History shows this to be false. Victorian Britain – before the secret ballot – saw countless cases of tenants evicted for voting against their landlord’s wishes. That was his right as landlord, but what was his right to be landlord at all? Libertarians stop the clock at now, entrenching all past gains, however made. Justice can go hang.
As a general rule, human rights begin at birth and end at death. Property rights have no such mortality. They pass onwards from generation to generation, but the origins of the chain of transmission are often deliberately obscured. Title ultimately derives from an act of conquest. Saxon dispossessed Celt, Norman dispossessed Saxon. And every honest transaction today rests on that tainted foundation. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s much-abused quip that property is theft is not far from the truth.
If property is not to be theft then it must be found a rightful possessor. And in that judgement, use value has always outweighed exchange value. Those who wish to use the land take precedence over those who wish to hoard it. That is the basis of the common law doctrine of adverse possession. A squatter’s rights have long trumped those of the paper owner who made no effort to enforce his claim. Sadly, the onward march of statutory land registration is biting deep into this ancient wisdom, so that more and more we are ‘bound in with shame, with inky blots, and rotten parchment bonds’. A fresh approach is due.
To prefer the claim of the homeless to that of the idle land speculator is not to condone the destruction of Wessex by endless population growth. Development should be controlled by the community through planning laws, because in our over-crowded region the days of putting up a shack on the common are long gone. But when farmland is sacrificed because existing homes lie empty, for no other reason than that the owner wants to keep them that way, we have a society with very warped priorities indeed. Perhaps the way forward is to give parish and town councils the right to oversee vacant land and buildings on their patch, and the power to force a sale by auction wherever they are not satisfied with the owner’s explanation. Public bodies should be as subject to this power of scrutiny as anyone else. In truth, land is never ‘owned’; all land is held as an estate under the Crown. Property is a privilege, not a right, and it should not be permissible to abuse that privilege.
The re-deification of private rights in land is one aspect of a wider loss of reality by society at large. Because our economy no longer depends on gathering, growing or making things, business has created class after class of virtual assets, which it then insists that the law should protect against anyone else wishing to do the same. Only with the State’s connivance can profit be made out of denying access to what was once free. ‘Intellectual property rights’ are the new enclosures. They do not belong in this world but in that of Alice in Wonderland. How else can one begin to characterise attempts by the U.S. Government to patent the DNA of indigenous peoples?
Copyright is the privatisation of censorship. It restricts the flow of information in a free society, slowing down cultural development. It outlaws the labour of those who do the copying, while rewarding those who have done nothing since the initial publication of their work. Nothing has been stolen but a figment of the imagination. The record company still has the master recording. The publisher still has the author’s manuscript. These are the only true assets in the industry of make-believe. There will always be a market for the genuine article, endorsed by its creator, but those who don’t want their work copied shouldn’t publish. While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, no-one should expect to be paid for being flattered. The law should protect the buyer from fake goods they don’t want, not from fake goods they do want.
Copyright is a paradise for lawyers. How much copying is too much copying? Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code would have been inconceivable without the work of Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln in The Holy Blood & the Holy Grail. Yet he was cleared of plagiarism because they had claimed their own, equally imaginative work as fact. Wessex-born author J.K. Rowling is estimated to be the 12th richest woman in Britain, worth £560 million. Could Harry Potter have been created without the use of the English language in which the books are written? Or without reference to the Western magical tradition? No? So can society sue JKR for its share? Apparently not. If we want continuing creativity we should remove the cotton wool from our writers, musicians, film-makers and software engineers. Why do more work if you can live off past royalties for ever and a day? Of course, their fortunes would be considerably smaller. But a world with fewer millionaire celebrities would be a world with a more balanced sense of values. Not to mention a more realistic view of the contribution any individual or corporation can actually make to the culture with which they work.
The world of money is a house of (plastic) cards. The State, while taking all the poison thrown at it, is happy to sanction the whole range of legal fictions out of which money is ‘made’ at the public’s expense. Fractional reserve banking. Limited liability. And guaranteed property rights, even in things that don’t otherwise exist. Isn’t it time we got real and left Wonderland behind?
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
The Meaning of No
Sir Desmond Glazebrook: ‘Surely a decision’s a decision?’
Sir Humphrey Appleby: ‘Only if it’s the decision you want. If not it’s just a temporary setback.’
‘Yes, Minister’, 1981
The rejection of the Treaty of Lisbon by Irish voters has been the subject of much triumphalist crowing by Eurosceptics, much dismissive arrogance by Europhiles and much fevered speculation by the pundits. It clearly is not the end of the line for the Europroject, nor is it just a democratic bump on the road to ever closer union. Those without entrenched positions have called for a debate on the future of Europe, for pause and reflection. Nice try. And good luck. Because it’s the right answer.
The debate is not illuminated by those sad folks for whom the European Union is a conspiracy. Whether it is meant to be Hitler’s legacy or Stalin’s is not always clear but for the sake of the argument it matters not a jot. The conspiracy could just as well be run by the Vatican, the CIA, Al Quaeda or the Elders of Zion. And occasionally the argument is precisely that it is. Europe deserves better than such tabloid tripe.
But that does not excuse what is done in the Union’s name. A truly great generation concluded that a repetition of the Second European Civil War was avoidable only if national rivalries were transcended for good. They have been let down badly by institutions awash with corruption and incompetence. They also failed to see how the hope enshrined in ‘ever closer union’ would become in later hands the seedcorn of a totalitarian super-state. (It is ‘ever looser union’ that will really cut the nation-states down to size.) Worst of all, we, in Wessex, have been let down by successive British governments who have simply signed everything the bureaucrats have put in front of them. And then blamed everyone but themselves for the consequences.
The Wessex Regionalist Party defends the interests of Wessex. That is our basic position. We have no automatic loyalty either to the United Kingdom or to the European Union: loyalty must be earned by actions. We do not accept that the interests of Wessex should be sacrificed to an alleged common good, whether English, British or European. We are not anti-European; nor do we uncritically accept all that is done in Brussels and Strasbourg.
Our aim is a decentralised Europe, a European confederation of small nations and historic regions that recognises our continent’s traditional cultural diversity as its greatest strength. We must limit the centralisation of powers both to Europe and to the current state capitals such as London and Paris. At the same time, we recognise that such a Europe, whose chief political units would be smaller than today’s nation-states, could not survive without common institutions to address the bigger economic, social and environmental problems we all face. Pollution, for example, is no respecter of frontiers. In a regionalised Europe, Wessex would be represented directly at European level; we would no longer have to rely on disinterested ministers from London to put our case for us.
Our aim is therefore to uphold the principle of subsidiarity, that nothing should be done at a wider level that can be done as effectively, or more effectively, at a narrower level. Transfers of power outwards should always be subject to a referendum of those affected and must always be reversible. This is not the case with the existing European treaties and we therefore insist that they be re-negotiated.
The European Union is remote, unaccountable and dominated by vested economic interests – but the same criticisms can be levelled with at least equal force at our own institutions. Its record on environmental protection and social welfare legislation has put successive British governments to shame. Nevertheless, it has presided over colossal failures – the Common Agricultural Policy foremost among them – and radical reform of structures and priorities alike is long overdue.
We reject the super-state model of the EU as over-centralised and conformist. The EU should address transnational ecological issues; regulate multinational companies; regionalise the European economy; balance needs and resources within Europe and with the rest of the world; resolve disputes between member states and promote understanding between their peoples. (And how about promoting knowledge of Latin as the neutral European language?) Other issues, including trade and economic policy, should be left to the regions to deal with. These should be free to co-operate on matters of shared concern with groups of like-minded regions, free either to reach agreement on issues of particular interest to them or to do their own thing without criticism from others. This is a multi-track Europe. It is not a multi-speed Europe, a phrase suggesting that the destination is pre-determined, with only the pace still to be set.
If a club enlarges its membership, the scope for disagreements automatically grows and new ways of working are needed. This ought to be treated as an opportunity, not as a threat. Yet all the reform talk is about increasing uniformity over an ever wider area, with less and less scope for national sovereignty. This is no way to enthuse people about Europe. Rather than scrapping vetoes we should be restoring them – and extending them to regional level so that Wessex, no less than Luxembourg, can safeguard its vital interests. The result will be a more diverse Europe, with policies better tuned to regional realities. We should have the courage and confidence to assert that it will not be a weaker solution if the European Union as a whole can agree on fewer things than it has in the past. Far from it. The Irish vote is not the beginning of the end. But, if taken as a constructive rebuke, it could yet be the end of the beginning.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: ‘Only if it’s the decision you want. If not it’s just a temporary setback.’
‘Yes, Minister’, 1981
The rejection of the Treaty of Lisbon by Irish voters has been the subject of much triumphalist crowing by Eurosceptics, much dismissive arrogance by Europhiles and much fevered speculation by the pundits. It clearly is not the end of the line for the Europroject, nor is it just a democratic bump on the road to ever closer union. Those without entrenched positions have called for a debate on the future of Europe, for pause and reflection. Nice try. And good luck. Because it’s the right answer.
The debate is not illuminated by those sad folks for whom the European Union is a conspiracy. Whether it is meant to be Hitler’s legacy or Stalin’s is not always clear but for the sake of the argument it matters not a jot. The conspiracy could just as well be run by the Vatican, the CIA, Al Quaeda or the Elders of Zion. And occasionally the argument is precisely that it is. Europe deserves better than such tabloid tripe.
But that does not excuse what is done in the Union’s name. A truly great generation concluded that a repetition of the Second European Civil War was avoidable only if national rivalries were transcended for good. They have been let down badly by institutions awash with corruption and incompetence. They also failed to see how the hope enshrined in ‘ever closer union’ would become in later hands the seedcorn of a totalitarian super-state. (It is ‘ever looser union’ that will really cut the nation-states down to size.) Worst of all, we, in Wessex, have been let down by successive British governments who have simply signed everything the bureaucrats have put in front of them. And then blamed everyone but themselves for the consequences.
The Wessex Regionalist Party defends the interests of Wessex. That is our basic position. We have no automatic loyalty either to the United Kingdom or to the European Union: loyalty must be earned by actions. We do not accept that the interests of Wessex should be sacrificed to an alleged common good, whether English, British or European. We are not anti-European; nor do we uncritically accept all that is done in Brussels and Strasbourg.
Our aim is a decentralised Europe, a European confederation of small nations and historic regions that recognises our continent’s traditional cultural diversity as its greatest strength. We must limit the centralisation of powers both to Europe and to the current state capitals such as London and Paris. At the same time, we recognise that such a Europe, whose chief political units would be smaller than today’s nation-states, could not survive without common institutions to address the bigger economic, social and environmental problems we all face. Pollution, for example, is no respecter of frontiers. In a regionalised Europe, Wessex would be represented directly at European level; we would no longer have to rely on disinterested ministers from London to put our case for us.
Our aim is therefore to uphold the principle of subsidiarity, that nothing should be done at a wider level that can be done as effectively, or more effectively, at a narrower level. Transfers of power outwards should always be subject to a referendum of those affected and must always be reversible. This is not the case with the existing European treaties and we therefore insist that they be re-negotiated.
The European Union is remote, unaccountable and dominated by vested economic interests – but the same criticisms can be levelled with at least equal force at our own institutions. Its record on environmental protection and social welfare legislation has put successive British governments to shame. Nevertheless, it has presided over colossal failures – the Common Agricultural Policy foremost among them – and radical reform of structures and priorities alike is long overdue.
We reject the super-state model of the EU as over-centralised and conformist. The EU should address transnational ecological issues; regulate multinational companies; regionalise the European economy; balance needs and resources within Europe and with the rest of the world; resolve disputes between member states and promote understanding between their peoples. (And how about promoting knowledge of Latin as the neutral European language?) Other issues, including trade and economic policy, should be left to the regions to deal with. These should be free to co-operate on matters of shared concern with groups of like-minded regions, free either to reach agreement on issues of particular interest to them or to do their own thing without criticism from others. This is a multi-track Europe. It is not a multi-speed Europe, a phrase suggesting that the destination is pre-determined, with only the pace still to be set.
If a club enlarges its membership, the scope for disagreements automatically grows and new ways of working are needed. This ought to be treated as an opportunity, not as a threat. Yet all the reform talk is about increasing uniformity over an ever wider area, with less and less scope for national sovereignty. This is no way to enthuse people about Europe. Rather than scrapping vetoes we should be restoring them – and extending them to regional level so that Wessex, no less than Luxembourg, can safeguard its vital interests. The result will be a more diverse Europe, with policies better tuned to regional realities. We should have the courage and confidence to assert that it will not be a weaker solution if the European Union as a whole can agree on fewer things than it has in the past. Far from it. The Irish vote is not the beginning of the end. But, if taken as a constructive rebuke, it could yet be the end of the beginning.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Beware of Barbarians
“…the forces of vandalism and cruelty are ever ready to exploit or destroy what so many generations have painfully laboured to create…”
Dr Herman Finer, 1933
Change itself is the only constant but there are different kinds or degrees of change. Some changes enhance the quality of life, others can diminish it (which is why 'modernisation' - the New Labour creed - is not self-evidently beneficial). Wessex largely 'missed out' on some of the key historical events that transformed other parts of Britain - the Viking settlement, the Industrial Revolution, massive conurbations. Our past is more visible than the past of those areas where subsequent changes have destroyed much of what previous generations wrought, those things that are essential to a sense of being part of a continuing community, stretching far back into antiquity and with a correspondingly rich and diverse set of reference points.
While there are no official statistics for Wessex, it is noteworthy that England’s ‘South West’ has the richest heritage of all the Prescott zones. It has 19% of England’s land area but 24% of its listed buildings and 36% of its scheduled ancient monuments. So how fares this heritage? Not well. English Heritage reports that 140 of the region’s finest listed buildings and monuments are ‘at risk’; the figure for the ‘South East’ is even worse, at 176.
These are matters that money could put right (for about £100 million, if the Lottery were not being looted for London’s benefit). But there is a darker disease that money alone will not cure. The very ethos of conservation is being undermined, by those who are entrusted to be its guardians. We have seen Labour put housebuilding ahead of the environment, present greed above future need. We have seen Natural England, the Government watchdog for nature conservation, landscape quality and countryside access question the value of Green Belts. We have seen Bath & North East Somerset Council bemoan the lack of tower cranes on the skyline of their historic city. It’s tower cranes that bring in the tourists, isn’t it? Why waste time on Georgian gems when you can gaze at Modern masterpieces in the midst of a permanent building site? Bring on the comic outpourings of inflated egos pumped up with money by the crassest of the overclass!
Anti-conservationism (destructionism?) is in full cry in the dying days of New Labour. Not since the 1960’s have we seen such bitter hatred for the past.
Concern for the past, we are told, is a sign of our insularity. Continental cities do it better, promoting the best of “contemporary design” (whatever that ill-conceived phrase may denote). Well, as it happens, they usually manage conservation much better too. It was continentals who invented conservation. Not the National Trust. The first ancient monuments legislation was introduced in Sweden early in the 17th century. The first listed buildings legislation in the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt early in the 19th. The first (and only temporarily) successful conservation campaign was perhaps in Cordoba in 1523, when the council sought to outlaw damage to the city’s incomparable mosque. And the first failure was perhaps the decree of the Roman Emperors Leo and Majorian in 458 against damaging ancient buildings and monuments in the Eternal City.
Concern for the past, we are told, is a sign of our nation’s neurosis. Anally retentive, no less. Poor old Freud. He’d surely have had a field day with architects and developers eager to obliterate their forefathers’ work so that it’s not around to stand comparison with their own feeble offerings. Yes, the very best architects and developers of today deserve the grand opportunities of previous generations but it is a myth to suggest that such do not exist (and cannot exist without destroying our heritage to make room). Let Foster and Rogers ruin Milton Keynes if they must. But spare the rest of us.
Concern for the past, we are told, is a sign of our inability to live comfortably with 21st century reality. Is it not rather a sign of our immaturity that our aesthetic judgement can be so easily impaired by what the calendar tells us? Architecture that was bad in 1999 will not be any better for being built today. A moment’s reflection will reveal that “contemporary” architecture is any architecture that happens now, which in practice is largely architecture that reflects the taste of the New Labour ruling class. Why should the style of the 21st century be so-called Modernism, a pastiche of the 1960’s, itself a pastiche of the 1920’s? Modernism is passé, long ago ceasing to be modern. And what has such thinking, in its internationalist guise especially, to do with the genius loci, the sense of appropriateness to place? Good architecture is always derivative; it is otherwise empty of cultural content. So the message it sends must always be closely evaluated.
Concern for the past, we are told, is a denial of our dynamic society. We cannot live in a museum. Our cities are living cities that must change to survive in the modern world. But there is a difference between a way of living that sustains the richness of our surroundings – including its time dimension – and one that wilfully destroys it through injudicious development. Every building demolished is a window on the past closed and that is why each decision requires careful reflection. We are being robbed of experiences that should be our birthright simply so that others can show off on a massive scale, can make their mark on history instead of taking their respectful place in it. It’s like carving your name on a mediæval bench-end. In our drive to be good global citizens, we build culture in breadth at the expense of culture in depth. Without roots, we are exposed to the chill winds of market forces taking us wherever they may blow. We have a choice then between ancient wisdom and transient sensation, between living as if we mean to stay and living only for the moments that our grasping anxieties lay before us.
The problem is essentially one of education. The value of the past has been neglected to the point where its very existence is threatened, perhaps as never before. European Architectural Heritage Year 1975, which started so many good trends, is a generation away and much of its momentum has been lost. Even the physical results are wearing thin, as environmental improvements come up for repair and renewal and the philistines move in. All it takes to flatten a building is to mention the money that development can ‘make’ (especially when it’s all in a ‘good cause’). The defenders of charm and beauty must begin again. Cheerfully. Since the price of civilisation is always eternal vigilance.
Wessex is changing fast and not necessarily for the better. It needs to change to improve, because it is not the best it will ever be. But improvement should not mean for better or for worse. Perhaps, in our day as in Alfred’s, things round here are going to have to change if things are going to stay the same.
Dr Herman Finer, 1933
Change itself is the only constant but there are different kinds or degrees of change. Some changes enhance the quality of life, others can diminish it (which is why 'modernisation' - the New Labour creed - is not self-evidently beneficial). Wessex largely 'missed out' on some of the key historical events that transformed other parts of Britain - the Viking settlement, the Industrial Revolution, massive conurbations. Our past is more visible than the past of those areas where subsequent changes have destroyed much of what previous generations wrought, those things that are essential to a sense of being part of a continuing community, stretching far back into antiquity and with a correspondingly rich and diverse set of reference points.
While there are no official statistics for Wessex, it is noteworthy that England’s ‘South West’ has the richest heritage of all the Prescott zones. It has 19% of England’s land area but 24% of its listed buildings and 36% of its scheduled ancient monuments. So how fares this heritage? Not well. English Heritage reports that 140 of the region’s finest listed buildings and monuments are ‘at risk’; the figure for the ‘South East’ is even worse, at 176.
These are matters that money could put right (for about £100 million, if the Lottery were not being looted for London’s benefit). But there is a darker disease that money alone will not cure. The very ethos of conservation is being undermined, by those who are entrusted to be its guardians. We have seen Labour put housebuilding ahead of the environment, present greed above future need. We have seen Natural England, the Government watchdog for nature conservation, landscape quality and countryside access question the value of Green Belts. We have seen Bath & North East Somerset Council bemoan the lack of tower cranes on the skyline of their historic city. It’s tower cranes that bring in the tourists, isn’t it? Why waste time on Georgian gems when you can gaze at Modern masterpieces in the midst of a permanent building site? Bring on the comic outpourings of inflated egos pumped up with money by the crassest of the overclass!
Anti-conservationism (destructionism?) is in full cry in the dying days of New Labour. Not since the 1960’s have we seen such bitter hatred for the past.
Concern for the past, we are told, is a sign of our insularity. Continental cities do it better, promoting the best of “contemporary design” (whatever that ill-conceived phrase may denote). Well, as it happens, they usually manage conservation much better too. It was continentals who invented conservation. Not the National Trust. The first ancient monuments legislation was introduced in Sweden early in the 17th century. The first listed buildings legislation in the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt early in the 19th. The first (and only temporarily) successful conservation campaign was perhaps in Cordoba in 1523, when the council sought to outlaw damage to the city’s incomparable mosque. And the first failure was perhaps the decree of the Roman Emperors Leo and Majorian in 458 against damaging ancient buildings and monuments in the Eternal City.
Concern for the past, we are told, is a sign of our nation’s neurosis. Anally retentive, no less. Poor old Freud. He’d surely have had a field day with architects and developers eager to obliterate their forefathers’ work so that it’s not around to stand comparison with their own feeble offerings. Yes, the very best architects and developers of today deserve the grand opportunities of previous generations but it is a myth to suggest that such do not exist (and cannot exist without destroying our heritage to make room). Let Foster and Rogers ruin Milton Keynes if they must. But spare the rest of us.
Concern for the past, we are told, is a sign of our inability to live comfortably with 21st century reality. Is it not rather a sign of our immaturity that our aesthetic judgement can be so easily impaired by what the calendar tells us? Architecture that was bad in 1999 will not be any better for being built today. A moment’s reflection will reveal that “contemporary” architecture is any architecture that happens now, which in practice is largely architecture that reflects the taste of the New Labour ruling class. Why should the style of the 21st century be so-called Modernism, a pastiche of the 1960’s, itself a pastiche of the 1920’s? Modernism is passé, long ago ceasing to be modern. And what has such thinking, in its internationalist guise especially, to do with the genius loci, the sense of appropriateness to place? Good architecture is always derivative; it is otherwise empty of cultural content. So the message it sends must always be closely evaluated.
Concern for the past, we are told, is a denial of our dynamic society. We cannot live in a museum. Our cities are living cities that must change to survive in the modern world. But there is a difference between a way of living that sustains the richness of our surroundings – including its time dimension – and one that wilfully destroys it through injudicious development. Every building demolished is a window on the past closed and that is why each decision requires careful reflection. We are being robbed of experiences that should be our birthright simply so that others can show off on a massive scale, can make their mark on history instead of taking their respectful place in it. It’s like carving your name on a mediæval bench-end. In our drive to be good global citizens, we build culture in breadth at the expense of culture in depth. Without roots, we are exposed to the chill winds of market forces taking us wherever they may blow. We have a choice then between ancient wisdom and transient sensation, between living as if we mean to stay and living only for the moments that our grasping anxieties lay before us.
The problem is essentially one of education. The value of the past has been neglected to the point where its very existence is threatened, perhaps as never before. European Architectural Heritage Year 1975, which started so many good trends, is a generation away and much of its momentum has been lost. Even the physical results are wearing thin, as environmental improvements come up for repair and renewal and the philistines move in. All it takes to flatten a building is to mention the money that development can ‘make’ (especially when it’s all in a ‘good cause’). The defenders of charm and beauty must begin again. Cheerfully. Since the price of civilisation is always eternal vigilance.
Wessex is changing fast and not necessarily for the better. It needs to change to improve, because it is not the best it will ever be. But improvement should not mean for better or for worse. Perhaps, in our day as in Alfred’s, things round here are going to have to change if things are going to stay the same.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
