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<div>Hope you can come to this, tomorrow (Tues) eve:<br></div>
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<div>Meeting: Real Democracy Working Group</div>
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<div>Event: 6pm at Tent City University on Tuesday 10 January</div>
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<div>Contact: Steve Freeman <<a href="mailto:49sfreeman@googlemail.com" target="_blank">49sfreeman@googlemail.com</a>></div>
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<div>Groupspace: <a href="mailto:RealDemocracyNow@groupspaces.com" target="_blank">RealDemocracyNow@groupspaces.com</a></div>
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<div>Draft Agenda:</div>
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<div>1. Aims of the Real Democracy Working Group </div>
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<div>Proposal to adopt the following Draft Aims</div>
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<div>[Note the word Draft implies further discussion and amendment not closure]</div>
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<div>1. To develop a critique of the present political system in the UK</div>
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<div>2. To encourage theory and the practice of real democracy</div>
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<div>3. To promote the Occupy movement to see itself not only as a movement for social justice but as a movement for real democracy.</div>
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<div>4. To encourage this Occupy movement to promote a national conversation on the need for radical democratic change and mobilise for this aim</div>
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<div>2. Organising the RDWG</div>
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<div>We need to agree on some organisation.</div>
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<div>Proposal</div>
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<div>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 </div>
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<div>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) </div>
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<div>iii) Chair/Sec who produces an agenda/ book speakers/ encourages papers </div>
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<div>iv) Publicity – how can we publicise/report or promote what we are doing. (More than 1 person could be involved in this function) </div>
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<div>3. First discussion on Pauls Paper ( see full text below) </div>
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<div>Paul to introduce</div>
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<div>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.</div>
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<div>4. Future issues and activities</div>
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<div>St Pauls and St Marys Church in Putney – actions and dates</div>
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<div>Promoting some common proposals for Sheffield</div>
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<div>Flags</div>
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<div>5. Where to meet</div>
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<div>Some discussion on the need for regular meetings and their location</div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
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<div><strong><font size="4">Draft Democracy Critique</font></strong></div>
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<p>Draft for the Occupy London democracy working group. Towards a critique of the present political system. Author Paul Feldman.</p>
<p>"The current system is unsustainable. It is undemocratic and unjust. We need alternatives; this is where we work towards them."</p>
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<li>Britain’s political system, or the parliamentary democratic state (PDS), is a highly centralised power over people’s lives and interests.
<li>The PDS is an alienating power that has established itself above society as a whole.
<li>Power is concentrated in the hands of Whitehall mandarins, chiefs of the armed forces, heads of the security services, police and judiciary.
<li>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.
<li>The British constitution is an obsolete facade, concealing the real nature of bureaucratic and political power.
<li>PDS institutions are answerable primarily to other parts of the PDS rather than people themselves.
<li>The House of Commons is a powerless assembly rather than an independent transforming legislature. (1)
<li>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.
<li>Nominally neutral bodies like the civil service and intelligence agencies have been politicised and now serve governments’ immediate agendas.
<li>Human rights are under increasing threat from a surveillance state that secretly monitors and tracks the legitimate activities of activists, trade unionists and protesters.
<li>Increasing numbers of "arms-length" quasi-state agencies have been created which are totally unaccountable at central and local level
<li>Local government has lost its relative autonomy and is now reduced to carrying out central government orders and decisions. (2)
<li>A previous role of the PDS as mediator between different social and class interests has given way to privileging corporate and financial interests.
<li>Since the 1980s, a regulated welfare state that reflected a general consensus in society has been replaced by a deregulated market state.
<li>This has led to the privatisation of public services or state/corporate partnership in the creation of markets where none existed beforehand.
<li>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.
<li>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)
<li>The PDS has ceded substantial power to a range of financial markets and investment banks.
<li>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.
<li>The PDS increasingly lacks legitimacy and popular support. (4) </li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></ul>
<p>Notes:</p>
<p>(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." <em>The British </em>Constitution, Anthony King, 2007</p>
<p>(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</p>
<p>(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</p>
<p>(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. <a href="http://www.ippr.org/publications/55/1820/worst-of-both-worlds-why-first-past-the-post-no-longer-works">http://www.ippr.org/publications/55/1820/worst-of-both-worlds-why-first-past-the-post-no-longer-works</a></p>
<p>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. <a href="http://tinyurl.com/cayo7j7">tinyurl.com/cayo7j7</a>.</p>
<p>"(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."</p>
<p>"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. <a href="http://www.jrrt.org.uk/uploads/PowertothePeople_001.pdf">http://www.jrrt.org.uk/uploads/PowertothePeople_001.pdf</a></p>
<p>"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. <a href="http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2005/10/06/our_democracy_has_been_hollowed_out.php">http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2005/10/06/our_democracy_has_been_hollowed_out.php</a></p>
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