[Campaignforrealdemocracy] excellent speech on democracy which i thought you might like

[james holland]

from one of my climate camp colleagues at the weekend's compass conference



I must admit that I feel like something of an anomaly at this 
conference. Before coming here today I looked on the Compass website at 
the impressive list of speakers that are here: people from think tanks, 
from policy institutes, from NGOs, journalists, elected politicians. In 
other words, people who might be considered ‘experts’, people who do 
politics for their day job.



And I want to begin by immediately renouncing any claims to such 
expertise on my part. I probably know less about some of these issues 
than anybody else in this room. I don’t spend my days reading policy 
papers for a living; instead, I spend my days teaching secondary 
schoolchildren in east London. But I think the fact that I am here, and 
that my presence here feels slightly anomalous, tells us something 
interesting about politics, and in particular the way that our politics 
has become increasingly professionalized. That, I think, is a problem – 
and it goes to the heart of our thinking about radical democracy in this 
discussion here today.



Climate Camp, I want to suggest, is the antithesis of professionalized 
politics. We are not an NGO, with a full-time staff; we are not a 
political party, with appointed leaders. We are a group of ordinary 
people, from all walks of life, who have come together because of our 
shared concern about climate change, and our desire to do something 
about it. Each year, we set up a week-long camp next to one of the root 
causes of climate change, from power stations to airports, culminating 
in some form of direct action. In the past we’ve camped outside Drax 
coal-fired power station; outside Heathrow airport; and, last year, 
outside the coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent. Most 
recently, on 1 April, thousands of people converged on Bishospgate in 
the City of London for a day-long camp outside the European Climate 
Exchange, the world’s largest carbon trading centre. It’s not just about 
protest: it’s about building our little vision of the future, in the 
here and now, a vision which we develop through workshops and education, 
through sustainable living, and through the day-to-day practices of 
direct democracy.



I think it’s very interesting to be in this discussion today because 
democracy goes to the core of what we are and what we do. We are a 
completely non-hierarchical movement. All our decisions are made through 
a process of consensus decision-making, so that our actions are founded 
on the principles of genuine agreement rather than simple majority vote. 
This process can at times be frustrating, it can at times be laborious; 
but it has real value because it invests people with a sense of 
ownership over any decision that is taken. It also means that the 
process is incredibly open to newcomers; so that, once you’ve overcome 
the initial hurdle of working out what’s going on, you are then able to 
participate on the same level as somebody who’s been in Climate Camp for 
years. So myself, for example, I’ve only been involved in Climate Camp 
for the last six months: yet in that time I’ve found myself helping to 
develop the key messages that we want to get across in the media ahead 
of this summer’s camp; operating the lights at the Amnesty International 
lecture theatre; making toilets to be used at the G20 protests; and 
speaking at events like this one today.



That is a very brief introduction to Climate Camp and what we do. Now, I 
was asked before this discussion to reflect on any lessons that Climate 
Camp democracy might offer for other areas of life, including the formal 
structures of the state. Big question, and in the remaining time I’m not 
sure I’m going to be able to provide an answer.



But what I will say is that I think it’s interesting the way the 
question has been phrased, particularly the bit about the ‘formal 
structures of the state’. Because I think there is a tendency in all 
these discussions to focus on only one dimension of democracy: that is, 
the relationship between the individual citizen and the state. When the 
political elite talks about democracy, it is usually talking about 
elections. Voting is important, I don’t deny that, but that discussion 
only captures one aspect of democracy. By concentrating your attention 
solely on the state you risk losing sight of what democracy really means.



Like I said before, I’m a teacher. And I find that the basic idea of 
democracy – that people should have a say in decisions which affect them 
– is intelligible even to twelve year-olds. That sense of democracy as 
being about making your own choices, directing your own destiny, is 
something that you feel intuitively: it hits you in the gut before you 
understand it in the brain. And whenever I hear people talking about 
proportional representation and additional member voting systems and 
elected second chambers and all those other things, I tend to ask one 
simple question: ‘would any of this stuff make people feel like they 
have more control over their lives?’. I’m not sure that it would.



So I think we should worry less about the intricacies of voting systems 
and more about creating meaningful democratic experiences. And if you’re 
trying to find those experiences in the formal institutions of state, 
I’m afraid you’re looking in the wrong place. The word ‘democracy’ does 
not refer to a set of institutions; it refers to a process, a movement. 
Every day – in our jobs, in our homes, in our communities – we travel 
through uneven landscapes of power. For me, democracy exists at those 
liminal moments when landscapes of power are in some way transformed by 
the collective action of ordinary people. That happens within Climate 
Camp. I’ve felt it happen, too, in other places, such as assemblies I’ve 
attended organized by London Citizens. I recognize the same feeling in 
this description by Bolivian activist Oscar Olivera, describing the 
transformative experience of the struggle against water privatization in 
Cochabamba:



‘The apprenticeship we have gone through shows us that it is possible to 
construct a country in which we can make the decisions, in which our 
opinions count. This would be a country in which we had our own voice, 
where we controlled our right to speak. It would, at last, be a country 
in which we were actors, not spectators’.



To conclude: let’s see democracy as journey, not destination; let’s stop 
worrying about where we end up, and start thinking about where we begin. 
I think that at Climate Camp we have a very strong sense that the 
project of revivifying democracy does not begin with a constitutional 
convention; it does not begin with electoral reform; it does not begin 
with citizen’s juries, or people’s peers, or independent MPs, or any of 
the other ideas you get coming out of the political and media elite. It 
begins with ordinary people, like you and me, taking action on something 
we believe in, and transforming society by first transforming ourselves. 
Because democracy is not something which is given, it is not something 
which is created from above - it is something which is won.
-- 




James Holland

http://risingclevel.blogspot.com/