'The strength of the anti-war march was the diversity of the protestors - people came from different backgrounds, different faiths and different political affiliations. But without a clear or comprehensive political programme we remain dispossessed, with only the parties of business or bombing to vote for. Together we probably make up the majority.' -- Salma Yaqoob, Birmingham Anti-War Coalition

During October we had the bore of the party political season, the two main parties vying with each other as to who was to seize or hang on to power. Within this pathetic little drama, we had the leaders of the parties desperately clinging to power. On the side, the Lib-Dems basking in the glory of having once again got the dustbin vote, this time at Brent East.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/10/278763.html
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/09/277796.html

At the end of October 2003, George W Bush is touring the Far East to enforce US global hegemony. The countries Bush visited wanted to discuss economics, Bush chose instead to discuss terrorism, his not theirs, though not of course the terrorism US exports to the rest of the world.

September 2003, Bush had applied pressure on Third World World countries to acquiesce to US diktat at the WTO talks at Cancun. The pressure was not the explicit military threats that were issued at the WTO talks at Doha, but threats nevertheless. Surprisingly the Third World stood their ground, forcing the WTO talks to collapse.

Collapse of the WTO talks at Cancun, is one of many example of good news that is leaking out of the system.

Civil society forced the WTO talks to collapse at Seattle. Civil Society and Third World governments said no at Cancun.

 http://www.heureka.clara.net/gaia/wto.htm
 http://www.wdm.org.uk/campaign/cancun03/cancun.htm
 http://cancun.indymedia.org

Activists and Third World governments have forced big pharma to partially back down on patent enforcement in the Third World.

 http://www.heureka.clara.net/gaia/pharmas.htm

The World Bank demanded the privatization of the public water supply in Cochabamba, in Bolivia (the poorest country in Latin America). The local water company, Servicio del Agua Potable y Alcantarillado, was sold at a knock down price to International Water, a subsidiary of the US Bechtel. Water prices were hiked, the collection of rainwater made illegal. In a city where the minimum wage is less than $100 a month, the local people found they were paying as much for water as food. The people mobilised, La Coordinadora de Defense del Agua y de la Vida was formed. The city was shut down, martial law declared, and protesters shot and at least one killed. Bechtel employees were forced to flee the country. The government was forced to hand the water company back to the people. The Cochabamba Declaration calls for the protection of universal water rights. The reaction of Bechtel (who are benefiting from massive contracts in Iraq) has been to sue the Bolivian government for lost profits.

In Argentina, a little over a year ago, people took to the streets and forced president after president to resign.

In Mexico, the Zapatistas have taken control of large areas of Chiapas. All government officials have been kicked out.

 http://www.heureka.clara.net/gaia/zapatistas.htm

In Bolivia, the miners, peasants, workers and indigenous people, have taken to the streets. After a month of bloody repression, the US-backed president has been forced to resign. A deathly silence from the mainstream media. The demands of the Bolivian people are simple – an end to the neoliberal agenda, an end to the US looting their country.

 http://bolivia.indymedia.org/
 http://argentina.indymedia.org/
 http://peru.indymedia.org/
 http://www.indymedia.org/

In Porto Alegre, in Brazil, Partido dos Trabalhadores, Brazilian Workers Party, are working directly with local people. With the capture of the presidency last year, PT, is carrying the experiment in participatory democracy nationwide.

 http://www.heureka.clara.net/gaia/pt.htm

In the UK, the New Deal for Communities, pours money into deprived local areas. What was obviously not intended to be taken literally, it puts communities in charge. According to Hilary Wainwright, writing in Reclaim the State, at least two communities, in East Manchester and Luton, have done just that, and put themselves in charge.

Writing in One No, Many Yeses, Paul Kingsnorth, former deputy editor of The Ecologist, gives many more examples.

People are apathetic, not interested in politics. Are fed a diet of crap by Murdoch and similar clones in the mainstream media. Voting figures would appear to confirm - voting trends worldwide indicate fewer and fewer people are voting each year.

 http://www.idea.int/turnout/

The reason why people don't vote is because they don't like the crap on offer. If people are not interested in politics, why did millions turn out on the streets worldwide to protest the war in Iraq? Two million in London alone.

Given the opportunity, people will participate. It is their exclusion, not lack of interest, that is the problem.

The situation in the Rotten Borough of Rushmoor is not atypical. A business airport, the business airport for Europe, a key component of globalisation, has been forced on the people of Farnborough. The Council is colluding in the destruction of the town centre, the latest being to approve Compulsory Purchase Orders at the behest of a property developer. Mike Lane, has reported on Indymedia UK, much similar for Liverpool.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/10/279026.html

It does not have to be. In neighbouring Hart, the people of Fleet and Church Crookham, have risen up and said no to an unwanted housing estate. In neighbouring Guildford, the people rose up and said no to an unwanted incinerator.

 http://bvej.freewebsites.com
 http://bvej.o-f.com

The only reason unwanted development is being forced through in Farnborough, is because the pathetic local people let it happen. The worst are the groups formed to oppose, who do nothing for fear of being seen as troublemakers! At the meeting to approve CPOs, only one member of the public bothered to turn up, myself.

We expect to have to fight developers and big business, they are there to make money, not to serve the interests of local communities and wider society. What we should not have to do, is fight officialdom and corrupt politicians, who nominally are there to serve our interests, it is us after all who pay their wages.

Things have to change. People, sometimes, get of their backsides to fight a very specific threat, then just as quickly disperse. We have to, as Thomas Paine desired over two centuries ago, devise a political system, where what is brought forth in revolution, becomes the political norm.

'It appears to general observation, that revolutions create genius and talent; but these events do no more than bring them forward. There is existing in man, a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which unless something excites it to action, will descend with him, in that condition, to the grave. As it is to the advantage of society that the whole of its facilities should be employed, the construction of government ought to be such as to bring forward, by quiet and regular operation, all that capacity which never fails to appear in revolution.'

Paine, at the time of absolute monarchs, proposed the-then radical idea of representative democracy. He thought everyone should have proprietorship in government, what we have instead is alienation. Representative government has failed, we simply have unaccountable elites, there to do the bidding of big business.

How do we devise a political system 'such as to bring forward, by quiet and regular operation, all that capacity which never fails to appear in revolution'?

Writer and broadcaster George Monbiot, has put forward the idea of creating a new political party composed of malcontents. This has already been widely criticized by the Green Party as The Party that occupies the niche as radical party.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/10/278889.html
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/10/278849.html

More fundamentally the idea is flawed as the problem is political parties. They are self-serving and for sale to the highest bidder - cf Conservatives and Neo-Labour. The others don't count as no one is bidding.

George Monbiot has in the past criticised BNP, not on race, but for the fact that they were lifting wholesale the ideas of himself and Noam Chomsky. If BNP are getting across to white working class poor, the ills of neoliberalism, then it is ourselves who should be criticised for our failings.

BNP are getting elected precisely because they no longer play the race card, they concentrate on the problems of blighted working class areas, albeit with a racial tint. It is for the rest of us to get in there and radicalise and work with these areas, not sit on the sidelines chanting 'racist scum', as to do so is to label those who are voting BNP, the majority of whom are not racist, but are prepared to vote for people who act for them. A BNP councillor acting for and working with a local community is of more use than a Green councillor who is not.

Estates in Aldershot are run down, as is the town centre, yobs are running amok. Apart from the people who live there and a few activists, no one cares. In Oxford, it was down to local residents to attempt to drive out the yobs who had been terrifying the local area.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/10/278888.html

One of the most successful anti-McD's actions on International Anti-McDonald's Day (16 October 2003) was in Newcastle. Why, because the people protesting took the time to relate to those who use McDonald's. It is poor working class who suffer from McDonald's, it is they who eat their shit food. It was poor working class who used to run, and often owned, the little side street cafés, which are now an endangered species. It is the poor working class who have lost their jobs. It is brainless students who work in McD's, taking jobs that even the poor working class will not take, but by doing so, driving out of business corner cafés, and driving down working class wages.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/10/279079.html

If the problem is the parties themselves, then we have to get rid of parties. Politics is too important to be left to politicians.

George Monbiot is on the right track in suggesting a party of activists. But why do we need the party? Let's forgo the party and just concentrate on the activists. We need a loose coalition of activists who are determined to seize power, not for its own sake, but to enable power to be transferred to communities to run their own affairs. Formation of a new party is simply a distraction. The activists could be inside or outside of existing parties, but their loyalty would be to the communities they serve, not their party, and their role would be to act as an enabler and to provide a framework within which local autonomy operates.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/10/278763.html
 http://www.heureka.clara.net/gaia/democracy.htm

There are sufficient people in the anti-globalisation, anti-war movement, to hijack the ruling party in any constituency, deselect their existing people and replace them with activists prepared to work with and hand power to local communities. Instead of fighting the local state machinery, we should seize it and use it to benefit the people who it is supposed to serve.

ref

Bolivia Smells of Insurrection - "Que Se Vayan Todos!", Indymedia UK, 14 October 2003

In Lozada Trouble, Schnews, 17 October 2003

Paul Kingsnorth, One No, Many Yeses: A Journey to the Heart of the Global Resistance Movement, The Free Press, 2003

Newcastle anti-McDonalds report, Indymedia UK, 17 October 2003

Keith Parkins, Big Business Jets In, Red Pepper, December 2002

Keith Parkins, Brent East, Indymedia UK, 19 September 2003

Keith Parkins, The Party's Over, Indymedia UK, 13 October 2003

Keith Parkins, Farnborough town centre – compulsory purchase orders, Indymedia UK, 16 October 2003

Keith Parkins, New political initiative, Indymedia UK, 16 October 2003

Keith Parkins, A sense of the masses - a manifesto for the new revolution, October 2003

Residents evict ‘terror gang’ from park, Indymedia UK, 14 October 2003

Residents to reclaim park from ‘terror gang’, Indymedia UK, 3 October 2003

Hilary Wainwright, Reclaim the State: Experiments in Popular Democracy, Verso, 2003

WTO, BVEJ Newsletter, October 2003