[Campaignforrealdemocracy] Democracy Working Group Tomorrow Tues 6pm

[Mark Barrett]

 Hope you can come to this, tomorrow (Tues) eve:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Meeting: Real Democracy Working Group

Event: 6pm at Tent City University on Tuesday 10 January

Contact: Steve Freeman <49sfreeman at googlemail.com>

Groupspace: RealDemocracyNow at groupspaces.com

Draft Agenda:

1.  Aims of the Real Democracy Working Group

Proposal to adopt the following Draft Aims

[Note the word Draft implies further discussion and amendment not closure]

1.   To develop a critique of the present political system in the UK

2.  To encourage theory and the practice of real democracy

3.  To promote the Occupy movement to see itself not only as a movement for
social justice but as a movement for real democracy.

4.  To encourage this Occupy movement to promote a national conversation on
the need for radical democratic change and mobilise for this aim


2.  Organising the RDWG

We need to agree on some organisation.

Proposal

i)  Convenor – who will take responsibility for fixing dates, times and
places for regular meetings and communicating this to the RDWG and to the
wider Occupy network including Tent City Uni

ii)  Tech person – who makes sure we are on the best systems – email/
facebooks/ or whatever and can make sure we know what we are doing
(training).  (More than 1 person could be involved in this function)

iii)  Chair/Sec who produces an agenda/ book speakers/ encourages papers


iv)  Publicity – how can we publicise/report or promote what we are doing.
(More than 1 person could be involved in this function)


3. First discussion on Pauls Paper ( see full text below)

Paul to introduce

Proposal -  1.  RDWG adopt this as a Draft Working Paper [with notes in
brackets of areas for further discussion]   2. The RDWG agrees to encourage
critiques of the paper with further papers to be discussed and further
opportunities to amend the paper.


4.  Future issues and activities

St Pauls and St Marys Church in Putney – actions and dates

Promoting some common proposals for Sheffield

Flags


5.  Where to meet

Some discussion on the need for regular meetings and their location
* *
*Draft Democracy Critique*

Draft for the Occupy London democracy working group. Towards a critique of
the present political system. Author Paul Feldman.

"The current system is unsustainable. It is undemocratic and unjust. We
need alternatives; this is where we work towards them."

   - Britain’s political system, or the parliamentary democratic state
   (PDS), is a highly centralised power over people’s lives and interests.
   - The PDS is an alienating power that has established itself above
   society as a whole.
   - Power is concentrated in the hands of Whitehall mandarins, chiefs of
   the armed forces, heads of the security services, police and judiciary.
   - The central principle of the constitution is the sovereignty of the
   Queen in Parliament. Legal authority does not come from the people as
   citizens, but from the Monarchy, Lords and Commons.
   - The British constitution is an obsolete facade, concealing the real
   nature of bureaucratic and political power.
   - PDS institutions are answerable primarily to other parts of the PDS
   rather than people themselves.
   - The House of Commons is a powerless assembly rather than an
   independent transforming legislature. (1)
   - Members of Parliament do not exercise any real control over ministers
   or civil servants. The House of Commons cannot convene itself, nor control
   its own agenda.
   - Nominally neutral bodies like the civil service and intelligence
   agencies have been politicised and now serve governments’ immediate
   agendas.
   - Human rights are under increasing threat from a surveillance state
   that secretly monitors and tracks the legitimate activities of activists,
   trade unionists and protesters.
   - Increasing numbers of "arms-length" quasi-state agencies have been
   created which are totally unaccountable at central and local level
   - Local government has lost its relative autonomy and is now reduced to
   carrying out central government orders and decisions. (2)
   - A previous role of the PDS as mediator between different social and
   class interests has given way to privileging corporate and financial
   interests.
   - Since the 1980s, a regulated welfare state that reflected a general
   consensus in society has been replaced by a deregulated market state.
   - This has led to the privatisation of public services or
   state/corporate partnership in the creation of markets where none existed
   beforehand.
   - The state has abandoned primary responsibility in a number of areas
   including housing, higher education (where students have to take out loans
   and pay fees) and care in older age in favour of markets.
   - Power at national level increasingly exists only in relation to an
   unaccountable, unelected transnational state. This includes the European
   Commission, World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund.
   (3)
   - The PDS has ceded substantial power to a range of financial markets
   and investment banks.
   - The present PDS is the major barrier to the real democratic control of
   society and has effectively disenfranchised the 99% and undermined the
   significance of the vote.
   - The PDS increasingly lacks legitimacy and popular support. (4)

Notes:

(1) "Commentators frequently refer to the decline of parliament – that is,
the House of Commons – in recent decades, but parliament’s decline as a
legislative assembly began in the middle of the 19th century and was
complete by, at the latest, the 1880s or 1890s. Nothing much of
constitutional significance has happened [to parliament] since then… It
goes without saying that the British House of Commons is now, and has been
for a very long time, the archetypal arena assembly. It is simply not
equipped to function as a transformative legislature, and of course
governments of all political parties are anxious to ensure that it never,
ever becomes so equipped." *The British *Constitution, Anthony King, 2007

(2) "The story of British local government during the past half-century is
in large part a story of its cumulative loss of autonomy, its cumulative
loss of freedom and its cumulative loss of power. These losses have been on
such a scale that in the early twenty-first century the word ‘government’
in the phrase local government really does need to be put in inverted
commas." King 2007

(3) "Under the European Communities Act 1972, the British courts now owe a
legal duty to give effect to laws created by a significant power outside
the British state. In particular, the British courts now have both a duty
and an ability, which they had never before possessed, to refuse to give
effect to legislation passed by the British parliament on the grounds that
the law in question is in breach of European law … for all practical
purposes and at least for the foreseeable future, the British parliament is
no longer sovereign." King, 2007

(4) Just 1.8 per cent of the electorate - less than 450,000 voters -
decided the outcome of the May 2010 election in 108 marginal
constituencies. "The overwhelming majority of us live in safe seats where
we are increasingly neglected by the political parties both during and
between elections –and where we have little chance of influencing the
result of general elections," an IPPR report notes. The IPPR report shows
the dramatic shift away from Labour and the Tories over the last 60 years.
In 1951, the parties polled 96.8% of the total electorate between them at
that year’s general election. By last year, the figure had slumped to
65.1%. Yet the voting system continues to reward Labour and the Tories, who
between them won 86% of the seats in the House of Commons last May.
http://www.ippr.org/publications/55/1820/worst-of-both-worlds-why-first-past-the-post-no-longer-works

Only 23% believe there was a great deal of difference between the two main
parties in 2010 compared with 88% in 1983. One in five (18%) now say it is
not worth voting, up from 3% in 1987. British Social Attitudes Survey 2011.
tinyurl.com/cayo7j7.

"(M)any British citizens now no longer feel formal democracy offers them
the influence, equality and respect they believe is their due and why the
main parties are widely regarded as unattractive or irrelevant despite the
parties’ efforts to reinvent themselves. Alienation from politics takes
many forms for different groups – women, black and minority ethnic
communities, those on low incomes, young people – ranging from a general
sense that the system is out-of-date to a deep disgust at the fact that
politics has failed to bring about fundamental improvements in the lives of
the most disadvantaged. Fundamentally, however, all of these alienations
are exacerbated by a political system that cannot respond to the diverse
and complex values and interests of the individuals which make up our
post-industrial society."

"The level of alienation felt towards politicians, the main political
parties and the key institutions of the political system is extremely high
and widespread. The problem of disengagement from formal democracy is not
unique to Britain. Nearly all of the established democracies are suffering
from similar problems." Report of the Power Inquiry, 2006.
http://www.jrrt.org.uk/uploads/PowertothePeople_001.pdf

"Our democracy has been hollowed out. The opinions of the voters are, in
effect, purchased, just as demand for new products is artificially created.
Decades ago Walter Lippman wrote, "the manufacture of consent...was
supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy...but it has not
died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technique...under the
impact of propaganda, it is no longer plausible to believe in the original
dogma of democracy." Al Gore, October 2005.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2005/10/06/our_democracy_has_been_hollowed_out.php
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