I’m not in the Socialist Alliance. I am a member of Scargill’s predominantly working class Socialist Labour Party. I have run for local government on three occasions and I was selected to run against New Labour MP and minister for Island Jane Kennedy in the last general election. As was expected I came nowhere as Jane Kennedy walked it. You know what they say in Liverpool? You could stand a donkey in Liverpool for New Labour and the people would vote the donkey in. As for my politics. I am a follower of people like Paulo Freire and other libertarian educationalist such as Henry A. Giroux and Ire Shor.

I steer clear of party politics and I believe in peaceful democratic direct activism. I am not a parlour room socialist, neither am I a weekend socialist. I am part time self-employed and live on a small income. This enables me to do a lot of direct activism. I am open about everything I do. I put my full name and phone number onto Idymedia because I don’t give a shit about MI6 or MI5 or whoever monitors me or bugs my phone. I’ve got nothing to hide.

My main aim is to try and bring democratic procedure into community affairs and to try new and innovative ways of empowering community leaders and activists by trying to create a simple open democratic community.

Below are some simple suggestions of bringing this about, but they are only suggestions and will probably be too simple for middle class socialists. They are open to critical dialogue and are not rigid or sacrosanct in any way:

IT’S ONLY A DRAFT!

The document below is just a draft and is open to critical dialogue and change.
It is felt by critical community activists who live in poor areas earmarked for regeneration that regeneration administrators, consultants and outreach workers (many of whom, do not live in the run down community that they work in) can not be trusted to work with and for the community in a democratic way. It is also felt that if council officers and regeneration administrators are not continually monitored they will, by using stealth, impose their undemocratic agenda onto the unsuspecting community. Of course these accusations are levelled mainly at the Liverpool City Council, but it's a well-known fact that many people do not trust their councillors or council officers.
Below is a suggested draft constitution, which tries to encompass democratic procedure within a New Deal Community. As already stated this document is just a draft, which tries to fit in with the present methodology that is being imposed on NDC communities throughout the country. It is felt that if communities were left to their own devices they would be able to develop a much better and fairer way of doing things.

A quantity of the text below has been taken from quotes by libertarians Paulo Freire and Ire Shor. Note the inclusions have not been plagiarised (plagiarism is common practice amongst careerist urban regeneration workers) but intermingled throughout the document. This is because the above-mentioned libertarians were experts at defining the undemocratic complicated and ambiguous way in which local government civil servants operate.

Draft constitution for a society of democratic neighbourhoods

· We the people of the Liverpool Kensington New Deal community believe that the betterment of society begins with the individual’s needs and wants. That we should have a common understanding in all areas and compromise wherever possible.

· In the New Deal for Communities (NDC) neighbourhood, one of the main concerns should be for equality for the individual. Each member of the NDC neighbourhood should have equal rights, and these rights should be protected. There should be an equal redistribution of the power of decision-making amongst the NDC community in order to make this equality possible. As long as certain interest groups and administrators control the NDC process they will always be in a position of power. Once the power is taken away from these interest groups, equality will be possible for all.

· Each Neighbourhood within the Liverpool Kensington NDC zone will elect it’s own community NDC board members to make guidelines for the best interests of the people. The board members will by no means have the final say. If they do not function in a manner concerned mainly for the people, they will be removed.

· The NDC board candidates should be selected by virtue of the democratic process used in local and central government elections and not by community resident association leaders. In other words anyone should be able to run for election as a board member by virtue of obtaining ten signatures from people who live in the area in which they intend to run.

· The NDC community board members should outnumber the paid professional and elected members on the board by at least 4. This is because the paid professional service providers, being professional and conversant in community dynamics, have more ability to put their case across in a more convincing manner than the community members. This unfair advantage will always give the paid professionals an edge over the resident board members.

· The goal of each of the NDC community board members is to try to help the community be a better place to live, where equality, freedom and concerns for other is to the highest degree.

· All NDC board meetings should be open to be observed by the community, irrespective of what issues the board meetings cover.

· All community members other than the board members should remain as silent observers and should only speak if invited to by the NDC board chairman.

· To avoid undemocratic parochial behaviour all community resident association and community council meeting should be open to members of the NDC community, irrespective of what part of the community the residents live in.

· All community meetings, concerning whatever community body, held by the Kensington Regeneration team should be open to the community.

· Any resident working for the community, either on a voluntary or paid basis, should consider themselves to be trusted servants and not leaders. They should always work to the pretext that the residents as a whole are greater than a small group of people and as such are far better at making decisions collectively, if they are allowed to do so. Trusted servants must learn to trust the people they represent because it is felt that trusting the people is an indispensable precondition for lasting change. Those community residents who authentically commit themselves to the people must re-examine themselves constantly so as not to allow themselves to be caught up in ambiguous behaviour patterns.

· Projects and initiatives should be put together by the community and not imposed onto them by the Kensington regeneration and it’s team of outreach workers.


· The use of community referendums, especially for major projects, should be common practice, and used to further involve the community as a whole in the decision making process.


· All repressive codes of conduct should be discontinued. If there is disagreement, at whatever level, the people involved should try to find out why the aggrieved person or persons are distressed. If there can be no agreement the meeting should be closed. Like all community participation and empowerment methodology all codes of conduct have been put together by the Kensington Regeneration’s team of paid professional without any consultation with the residents and then, by using stealth, imposed onto the many resident bodies that the KR team have put together. No resident should be excluded indefinably, this behaviour as well as being undemocratic goes against what the NDC initiative stands for which is inclusion not exclusion.

· People within the NDC community should try to work for the common good of everyone and not just for themselves.

· People should judge other people in the same way, as they would want to be judged.

· The NDC community should hold gathering every month to help improve the community and bring up beliefs and complaints against the NDC board members and the NDC paid administrators. They would be able to replace board members by a 2/3-majority vote if they feel fit.

· As far as possible the dividing of the community into many different groups should be avoided and discouraged. It is felt that this practice is promoted and used by the regeneration administrators as a tool to control and domesticate the community. It is also used as a tool to put as many paid community workers as possible into as many jobs as possible to administrate the many small bodies of people. This practice not only slows the regeneration process down but also creates too much unnecessary bureaucracy. It’s common practice for council officers and paid regeneration administrators to use divide and rule tactics as a means to impose their agenda onto the unsuspecting community. This form of oppressive behaviour is omnipresent in most regeneration communities. In order to dominate the majority the paid professional regeneration administrators, being in the minority, must divide the majority and keep it divided in order to remain in power. The minority cannot permit itself the luxury of tolerating the unification of the wider community, which would undoubtedly signify a serious threat their own power base. Accordingly the paid professionals halt by any stealth like method any action, which even at its very beginning could awaken the community to the need for unity. Concepts such as unity, organisation, and struggle are labelled by the urban regeneration administrators as dangerous. Of course these concepts are dangerous to the so-called paid professionals, for their realisation is necessary to actions of liberation.

· It is felt that the paid professional regeneration administrators go out of their way to weaken the regeneration community residents and to isolate them, to create and deepen rifts among them. This is done by varied means, from repressive methods of bureaucracy to forms of cultural action with which they manipulate the community by giving them the impression that they are being helped. One of the characteristics of oppressive cultural action, which is almost never perceived by the dedicated, but naïve paid professionals who are involved is the emphasis on a focalised view of problems rather than on seeing them as dimensions of a totality. In “community development” projects the more a region or area is broken down into “local communities,” without the study of these communities both as totalities in themselves and as parts of another totality, (the area, region and so forth) which in its turn is part of a still larger totality (the nation, as part of the continental totality) the more alienation is intensified. And the more alienated people are, the easier it is to divide them and keep them divided. These focalised forms of action, by intensifying the focalised way of life of poor people in poor run down communities hamper the community from perceiving reality critically and keep them isolated from the problems connected with other people who live in other regeneration areas throughout the UK.

· Looking at the NDC regeneration community as a whole entity should be promoted and encouraged. The NDC residents should realise that the NDC community, in its entirety, is in reality a very small area.

· As far as possible cronyism and the formation of community cliques should be discouraged and it should be continually pointed out that each resident is part of the wider community.

· As far as possible parochial (narrow-minded, territorial) behaviour should be discouraged because it is felt that the paid professional administrators and their outreach workers use the communities parochial nature as a further tool to subjugate and domesticate the residents thus giving the paid professionals the opportunity to impose their agenda onto the unsuspecting community.

· Constructive critical dialogue should not be discouraged but rather promoted as an implement for change. Any situation in which some individuals prevent others from engaging in a regeneration project and in the process of inquiry is one of symbolic violence. The means used are not important; to alienate community members from their own decision-making is to change them into objects. Those who have been prevented from expressing their opinions are entitled to reclaim their right, using a democratic process, to speak and prevent the constitution of this dehumanising aggression against them.

· All community residents should be encouraged to change the environment that they live in, be it in whatever area, rather than adapting themselves to that environment.

· As far as possible the NDC funding should be distributed equally throughout the NDC community.

· The community should abolish the community participation and empowerment methodology that is being imposed upon it by the Kensington Regeneration team and it’s outreach workers. The community should be allowed to independently devise its own community empowerment methodology, with no interference or influence by the Kensington Regeneration team or outreach workers.

· The Kensington Regeneration team of paid professionals should provide the services and not get involved in or with the way in which the community conducts its empowerment strategy. The paid professionals should do what the community tell them to do.

· The paid professionals NDC administrators should only attend community meetings when invited. The community should be allowed to make decisions without any influence from the paid professionals.

· As far as possible the community should devise its own consultation and research methodology and they should be paid the going rate for doing this. When trying to ascertain what the community wants the highest standards of qualitive research methodology should be devised and used by the community with no influence or interference from the Kensington Regeneration team.

· There should be a constant flow of truthful simple and concise information circulated around the Kensington NDC community.

· It is suggested that all community meetings should be held and organised in the simplest of ways. Below is a suggested set of rules:

1. All meetings should be held in a circle. People can relate better if they sit in a circle. Everyone can sit were they want. People should be able to sit were they feel most comfortable and not in an assigned seat.
2. People at the meeting should not speak only to the chairperson when they talk, but will speak to everyone, or to the person they want to respond to.
3. The chairperson is not always the only one responsible for filling up silence, and for keeping the conversation going.
4. The meeting should be as informal as possible and it should be permissible for residents and the chairperson or any paid professional service providers to talk to each other on a first name basis. Calling each other by first names doesn’t let one feel superior over someone else, as if Mr, Mrs, Ex were used.
5. No one is forced to say anything. Everyone should have an opportunity to talk at one time or another, not just letting the same persons talk and carry on discussions. But no one should be forced or called on to talk.

Can be continued: