Introduction

For many years I strove to be a good citizen in this participant democracy of ours. I felt I had an obligation to the brave men and woman who throughout history have made enormous sacrifices in order to improve my chances of living in a truly democratic society – an egalitariian and just society which would emerge and prevail against tyranny. Dutifully, I joined a political party with supposed functioning grassroots and a trade union with more of the same. I earnestly did the footwork that comes with the territory, giving up large chunks of my life to assist others to achieve high office. Even more earnestly I crafted policy and resolutions so that when these people achieved high office they would know what we, the lumpen footsoldiers, expected of them.

However, with the passage of time, I began to notice a curious tendency on the parts of these people we promoted to high office. Suddenly, they became "leaders". Suddenly they knew more about everything than we did. Suddenly they were smarter. Suddenly they knew better than us. And successions of them began to take the liberty of telling entire branches, entire constituencies, entire regions, even entire conferences that they, the "leaders", knew best and that they would be disregarding our guidance despite its democratic origins.

To old hands, this was apparently not surprising. To novices and initiates like myself, this was a profound insult to my intelligence, to my commitment, and to the large portions of my life devoted to the cause.

When, eventually, on the backs of a famous victory of monumental proportions, the "leaders" proved to be such a bunch rootless kiss-asses that I could no longer bear to be associated with them, I felt an enormous weight lift from my shoulders. Suddenly, I had all this free time. Suddenly substantial elements of my social life came back into being. Suddenly I was laughing more and worrying less.

This couldn’t be right. I still held a nagging feeling that I had abandoned the brave men and women of history who had been tortured and killed in the cause of people like me having my say in a free and open society. Whilst I had plain, firsthand evidence that our current political processes simply throw up the donkeys most likely to abandon principle and kiss-ass, and that in any event none of these processes were ever intended to impinge on the real power forces at play – the underlying economics, I felt I must do something other than be a simple passive observer to the ruination of the brave men and women’s dreams.

So, here follows my advice on government if any of those donkey kiss-asses should ever take the trouble to read it. In writing this, my job is done. I shan’t be toiling for any of your betrayed grassroots. I shan’t be voting for you in tosspot elections. I shall simply be leaving this where, if you have any luck, you may find it and, if you have any brains, you may heed it. If you have neither luck nor brains, then carry on "leading" this democratic society to oblivion, you bunch of sickening putzes.

ps:  Note for citizens. ALWAYS VOTE, even if only to spoil your ballot paper.  Too many men and women suffered and died to bring you this limited but rare and special privilege. 

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Every year thousands upon thousands of secondary school leavers are released into the society for which they have, supposedly, been being prepared. It is more and more widely recognised that:

1. these people have not enjoyed their final years in the secondary system and are anxious to leave, and
2. this process, to which they have been more or less unwillingly subjected, has not even had the saving grace of succeeding in this supposed preparation.

Many of these people have come from schools where "discipline", still the cornerstone of current educational method, has been breaking down. Classrooms have been chaotic and learning has been an almost incidental by-product. Many educationalists have been turning a blind eye to all this and have carried on developing theory which is totally divorced from the practical, day to day reality.

The consequential impact of this production line of disenchantment has been disastrous in ways too numerous to list. In fact, the impact has been so broad, so pervasive, so much a part of our every day lives that, for all practical purposes, it goes unnoticed. Escalating violence in the streets and homes.... Escalating stupidity and insensitivity in the forces of "law and order".... Escalating attitudes of rabid self-interest among the better-off.... And, above all, the rising torpor of large sections of the population who sense that they are under attack but lack the analytical and organisational wherewithal to respond.... These are all symptoms of a much larger malaise.

What is this larger malaise? Where is it coming from?

Many would argue that the malaise arises out of the obscenely unequal distribution of goods, resources, and services. This is certainly a large and fundamental part of it, but experience has shown, time and time again, that people with adequate access to goods, resources, and services don't necessarily develop attitudes of concern and commitment to making these same things available to everyone else. Material well being doesn’t in itself generate a concern for society and the success of democracy.

Many would argue that this malaise arises out of the obscenely unequal distribution of power and justice. This too is very much and very fundamentally a part of the problem. But the same argument applies. Those already in receipt of satisfactory quantities of justice and power show little or no sign of using these to the general benefit of all those without. Legal and economic well being doesn’t in itself generate a concern for society and the success of democracy.

Why not? Who cares, but the fact remains that they do not. More to the point, why aren't the people without material, legal, or economic well being creating hell to rectify this unsupportable situation?

To me the answer is glaringly and embarrassingly obvious. The production line of disenchantment is the main shaper of attitudes in this society. All the other distortions of information produced by distributive inequalities and nonsensical communications media serve to reinforce, hone, and refine these attitudes, but the foundations are all but irrevocably laid in the primary and secondary education systems.

Our citizens are created in the education system.

Participative citizenship is, at best, a laughing stock. At its worst, it is non-existent. Where it does exist, it usually receives hysterical media condemnation as being the product of some "vocal minority" or other. What most people in this country assume to be taking place in the way of democratic process is a gross exaggeration of reality.

In the work place, poor communication between shop floor and management creates expensive and time consuming multiplications of initially small, manageable problems. Because the hierarchically authoritarian model of the education system is, for the most part, reflected in the workplace, there is virtually no upward flow of information (something upon which nearly every visiting West German or Japanese business person comments).

The cumulative message, first from the from the education system and then from the workplace, is "...do as you're told; don't ask questions." The absence of critical thought abounds. The proliferation of unsuccessful models of educational and work administration continues. They continue because people, themselves products of and participants in hierarchical authoritarian systems, tend to say of the processes that their children are experiencing, "What was and is good enough for us, is good enough for our children....". And those of us who managed (primarily by force of economic circumstance) to survive the process with some sensitivity and some critical faculty still intact seem unwilling or unable to make a concerted effort to precipitate change.

History is littered with isolated examples of attempts to contravene this educational process and its after effects. Many individual teachers and even entire schools have experimented with giving students a real say in the formulation of their own education. Many experimental initiatives have been taken to allow students to determine fully their courses of action within specific areas of study. Many schools, now and in the past, have successfully incorporated genuine student representation in the very management of their institution. But these isolated examples die out and are forgotten and, ultimately, have shown no sign of bearing influence on national educational policy making.

The main reason these experiments have died out, unnoticed, is that there has been no political will to provide the legislation to support and protect these initiatives.

What does this tell us about idealistic experimentation in the absence of political will? By and large it tells us that there have been a lot of good, committed, creative people who have devoted substantial parts of their lives to the betterment of educational practices, but whose efforts have amounted to naught because there has been no consistent interest in following up their initiatives. What's worse is that the absolute contrary seems to have been the case - that these committed and creative people have been induced into nowhere sidings where they could be contained and ignored at one and the same time. More sinisterly, it could be argued that there seems to have been a conscious policy in force - a policy which protects the education system from innovation whilst, concurrently, purveying an image of liberal, concerned, and forgiving interest.

So how does one break this destructive cycle. What strategies suggest themselves to us?

To my simple mind, the answer is gratingly obvious. What's called for is clear legislation for the democratisation of schools.

This simplistic (to some) but frightening (to others) conclusion has a number of in-built features which, one would think, might appeal to believers in the democratic system. A sensible, co-ordinated period of introduction could serve to popularise practical democracy among the public at large. Democratic processes are often portrayed as tedious, time-consuming, and of use only to careerist politicians - but they needn't be. Many of us know that collective decision making can be very dramatic and involving; even uplifting. General public enthusiasm for such procedures should, one might suppose, be welcomed by committed democrats.

But in the education system itself, a carefully introduced programme could harness much of the disaffected energy of the "misfits" of today to the benefit of systematic, orderly, and ongoing experimentation which, in responding to the needs of all the participants, could only serve to make of education the popular resource we so desperately require. And that very process of democratically evolved education would, even if the actual "transfer of knowledge" itself could be shown to be inadequate (could it possibly be less adequate than now?), produce generations of citizens fully versed and fluent in the practices and techniques of democratic procedure. They would have a very real, firsthand grasp of the pleasures and pitfalls of collective authority and collective responsibility. Would they, ever again, settle for a non-participative role in the administration of their lives? Would we, as campaigners for social justice in a thousand and one different ways, ever again come across the stunning ignorance and listless lack of interest we, at present, face in such discouraging quantities every day?

What's called for is legislation providing for the equal representation of

1. students,
2. teaching & non-teaching staff, and
3. parents & local community

on the Governing Boards of every secondary school. This legislation should re-affirm the authority of these bodies in the running of their schools. There must be, associated with these provisions, schemes for the familiarisation of all concerned, particularly students and members of the local community in need of "positive discrimination" in these respects, with the fundamentals of democratic process and how to make genuine, practical use of them. All Governing Bodies would be linked through regional and national elective assemblies with the national assembly becoming the major educational policy maker. The whole process would probably require a carefully planned staggered introduction, perhaps year by year and/or region by region.

We are talking about pressing for legislation (5, 10, 15 years?) for a scheme which will take six to ten years to implement. This is long term planning in the extreme, but can we afford to ignore the current reality of an education system spewing out disenchantment on a scale which ridicules every effort at reform? As we struggle to take responsibility for what we have been and continue to do to the planet as a whole, can we afford to overlook the counter-productivity of our educative systems in allowing democracy to prevail over economic tyranny?

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2.  Health – barefoot doctors

In the early days of bright rational thinking in the new nation state of Tanzania, some of the strategists noticed that their programmes for improving the peoples’ health were flawed. They were paying good money to subsidise some of their more hopeful students of medicine to go abroad and study at some of the best medical schools in the world. The students duly went and duly became enormously qualified because they were, indeed, good students.

However, two problems emerged. The first was that they became aware that their hard earned skills could earn them much more money just about anywhere but in Tanzania. So many of them decided to work in rich first world countries, abandoning the people they were funded to serve.

The second was that among the ones who did come back, there was soon a clamouring for up to date/state of the art equipment to be placed in large expensive new hospitals. These highly educated students now wanted to practice the arts they had spent so much time and trouble learning. They wanted to do lung transplants and open heart surgery. They wanted to do brain scans and re-constructive surgery. In short, they wanted to deal with all the sexy, frontline problems being experienced in the sexy, fast living first world where they had studied. They didn’t want to deal with ingrown toenails and sleeping sickness or advise on nutrition and basic hygiene which was what the bulk of the population needed. That was beneath them and they wouldn’t get the international reputations they deserved if they stuck with that kind of work.

So, the strategists responded by cutting subsidies to first world medical schools. Instead, having noted that the bulk of the population suffered from variations of three basic diseases, they reasoned that a network of very basic community clinics staffed with people versed in the diagnosis and treatment of these three main diseases would be a better service to the people than a glitzy hospital in downtown Dar Es Salam geared up for the latest techniques in heart surgery. The number of fully qualified first world doctors declined dramatically. The number of "barefoot doctors" serving the outlying communities through basic, no frills community clinics increased dramatically. And as they increased, so did the overall health of the nation improve.

So, here in the UK, just about everybody suffers from flu every year. They have to go down to see their highly trained GP – a person who can diagnose perhaps 1000 different types of ailment – to get him or her to confirm what everybody already knows and prescribe a cure that a good nurse or pharmacist could have prescribed in half the time, with significantly less hauteur, and at considerably less cost to the nation and the patient. We don’t need highly trained and whingeing specialists to deal with the bulk of our ailments.

Let us have basic community clinics staffed with good and dedicated nurses as the frontline. If the ailment cannot be diagnosed as flu or one of perhaps a couple of dozen other of the most common ailments afflicting UK citizens, then send the patient "up line" towards more specialist care.

 

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3.  Economics - Localising the Economy

fabric of community

In some circles, "fabric of community" is a readily accepted concept. The theory is that individuals within communities establish complex strands of communication with each other. These may be friendships, extended families, work relationships, trading relationships, transport pools, educational support groups, leisure clubs, mutual interest groups, and so on. One individual may have a single strand of communication with another, or many such strands as they interact on many different levels. The strands may be utilitarian, formal, and expendable, or they may be very deeply emotional, or combinations of the two. Collectively, these strands form the fabric. The fabric is fairly robust insofar as it can handle a certain amount of change; a certain amount of coming and going. But major upheavals cause the fabric to tear, and although it is difficult to attribute a cash value (for the benefit of people who can only understand cash values) to such tearing, the most profound consequences are usually experienced in terms of severe detriment to quality of life.

And however unquantifiable it may be, quality of life is what most "economic development" practitioners would agree they are endeavouring to protect and enhance.

What sorts of things threaten the fabric of community? The most recognisable and graphic are natural disasters such as floods, landslides, and collapsing slag heaps. Economic development practitioners are not well placed to anticipate and pre-empt these. What economic development practitioners are well placed to anticipate and pre-empt is major economic upheaval. And this is where our broader purpose comes in. We are endeavouring to protect the fabric of community from unnecessary economic upheaval.

If you’re still with me, let’s look at economic upheaval. In a small community of 30 or 40 households, the closing of the corner shop can be a major economic upheaval. The individual strands of communication can be significantly disrupted, the fabric torn. In a larger community of many thousands of households, one or two corner shops coming or going could not be said to be a major upheaval. It follows that a shopkeeper in the smaller community could be said to have a higher level of obligation to that community than a shopkeeper in the larger community. Within the dominant western economic model, shopkeepers are free to do what they wish with their shops regardless of what communities they may find themselves in. They are, in fact, obligation free.

Likewise in a community, large or small, where a percentage of the workforce is reliant upon a single employer, the plans and intentions of that employer become important to the fabric of the community in direct proportion to the percentage of the workforce so reliant. The higher the percentage of the workforce employed; the greater the importance of that employer to the fabric of that community.

If that employer employs a high percentage of the workforce and is owned by Sir Jammy Fishpaste through a string of off-shore accounts, it could safely be said that fabric of community is not a consideration for that employer and that it (the fabric) is in double jeopardy.

A rough matrix begins to emerge with percentage of local workforce reliance along one side and distance (say in miles, but also in units of indifference) from locality of the ownership of the enterprise along the other. If you take zero to be lower left, straight lines progressing close to the edges can be seen to be less threatening to community fabric. Lines progressing up toward the top right-hand corner can be seen to be getting chancier and chancier as far as fabric is concerned.

protecting fabric of community

So, how do we protect fabric of community from economic disruption?

By diversifying the ownership of significant centres of local economic activity into local hands. In the example of the corner shop in the small community, we implement schemes which allow the local community to bid for the purchase of the shop in the event of the owner wishing to move out. In the example of the dominant local employer, we implement schemes which allow the local community to bid for the purchase of the business in the event of the owner wishing to close down.

There is no intention here to push community purchase down anybody’s throat. If the community expresses no interest in such buy outs, clearly, nothing happens. If the proprietor insists on a fair price for his or her enterprise, a fair price must be found. As long as the facility to make such purchases is in place and in the public knowledge, over time, more and more of significant centres of economic activity will come into local common ownership. And the more these centres come into common local ownership, the more stable the local economies will become and the better protected will the fabric of their community be.

Let us try to abstract the broadest possible interpretation of what we might be trying to achieve through "economic development" strategies. ED strategies (should) endeavour to secure for the community the protection of its fabric. Economic stability contributes to the protection of that fabric. Diversification into local ownership of a significant and stabilising percentage of local enterprise can contribute to economic stability.

However, there are a hundred and one variations on the theme of "local ownership". It could mean a transfer into the hands of a local wealthy benefactor, or the church, or the Rotarians. Any of these would serve the purpose insofar as they can be trusted to retain the enterprise within the community. If they cannot, the problem is simply being deferred to a later date.

"Common ownership" is a term coined by the international co-operative movement to denote ownership of enterprise which is held in trust. That is to say, common ownership enterprises are enterprises which are held in trust by employees or community groups who fully recognise the obligations owed by that enterprise to the fabric of its host community. Enshrined in its constitution will be principles which assure that long term decisions cannot be taken without reference to its impact upon the community it serves.

There are many thousands of experts and treatises on these topics (search "co-operative" on the web for a start). Many give historical, theoretical, and empirical context to all that is being said here. I would simply urge you to call upon this vast resource as you set about trying to establish an economic development strategy.