CCTS
Review 35

A project to transform policy, starting in the UK
by Diana Francis

The beginning
About two years ago three CCTS members, Simon Fisher, Paul Clifford and I, discussed the need to build a conceptual framework that brought together peace, economic justice, environmental protection, along with human rights and political participation. This is how we articulated the concern and the analysis that lay behind this thinking.

Having worked for many years in the field of Conflict Transformation, we have become ever more aware that the work we do and the brave peacemaking efforts of the people we work with are constantly at risk from the destructive action of governments. We see increasingly oppressive global structures, disastrous world events and, perpetuating and exacerbating these, inadequate, wrongly motivated and inept policies. Behind all this we identify the marginalisation of humane values in mainstream politics and hidden and damaging assumptions that needed to be challenged at the deepest level. We see a politics bereft not only of rigour and integrity but of anything that will enable the urgent needs of a looming and already manifest global crisis to be met. Such politics make the work of conflict transformation at best an uphill struggle. Working to mitigate their effects no longer seems an adequate response.

At the same time we see that peace cannot be separated from economic justice, or from human rights, including the right to participate in public affairs. And we recognise that the abuse of the planet that continues unabated will result in environmental and resource conflicts of increasing intensity and threaten the security of us all – indeed of all life.

While, for many reasons, old socialist models failed to deliver on their promise, unfettered capitalism and the tyranny of the economically powerful have only increased the gulf between rich and poor.

Neo-liberalism has signally failed to address the misery of human poverty. It has shown itself to be exploitative by nature and is therefore morally disgraced.
This abusive approach to people has been coupled with a similar attitude to the earth and its resources, with consequences to our environment that are likely to prove cataclysmic. There is no sign of any existing will or policies, among the globally powerful, to act in ways that will reverse these trends. Their very assumptions about the necessity of pursuing currently prevailing economic interests and of maintaining existing structures undermine any such intentions.

Amidst this global injustice and environmental degradation, war is used as an instrument of domination and (like terrorism) as a means of resistance or liberation. The grievances of poverty and marginalisation are often causal factors leading to war, and war is all too often used to extend economic and political dominance – in other words, for greed.

Whatever war’s causes or justifications, its impact is not only suffering and death on an incomprehensible scale but the further exacerbation of poverty, with all the misery and deprivation it entails: through forced migration, the disruption of lives and livelihoods and the destruction of the infrastructure needed for economic development.

Similarly, while pressure on scarce resources and the desire to exploit and control them may be a factor behind violent conflict, war constitutes a monumental waste and diversion of the resources necessary to poverty’s eradication. At the same time it destroys, degrades and pollutes the earth, its atmosphere and its creatures. Its environmental footprint is gigantic and goes largely unnoticed by those not immediately affected by it.

The disregard for the rights and needs of other human beings that is embodied in exploitative systems and in wars is accompanied by the endemic disregard for human rights within societies, whether by factions within those societies or by the governments that supposedly control them. It is ironic that powerful countries claiming to act in favour of human rights and democracy show their contempt for both through illegal and immoral acts of war (and the way they curtail human rights within their own countries). Summary execution for political reasons, whether through the concerted, wide-scale violence of war, or through the more ad-hoc violence that is called terrorism, denies to its victims the most fundamental of human rights.

While violent forms of struggle for and against domination are the order of the day, with the summary curtailment or gradual erosion of individual freedoms that come in their wake, the freedom and power to participate in social and political life are drastically diminished. And in those countries that are relatively safe and privileged, materialism and disaffection combine to allow political participation to atrophy, so undermining the democracy such countries claim as their foundations. Although the notion of ‘the end of history’ has been shown to be ludicrous, currently alternative ideologies to those of neo-liberalism (and elsewhere of authoritarianism) have all but disappeared from public discourse.

The chasm of anger that is growing between ‘the West and the rest’ is deepened by the way dominant Western countries, in a thousand insidious ways, frame and justify their power as righteousness. They claim that they are powerful because they got things right, assuming a position of moral, intellectual and cultural superiority. They forget that it is through the exploitation of others that they have reached a position that enables them to dominate the rest of the world. And when they castigate terrorism they ignore the extreme violence of the wars and poverty of which they are instruments.

Those of us who benefit, at a material level, from the current dispensation find it impossible to separate ourselves from it – either from its benefits to us, now, or from its injurious impact on others and on the future of all of us. We feel disempowered by the knowledge that if we act alone to modify our lifestyles, while others continue as before and policies remain unchanged, we shall have little impact. Even those who enter politics and other power arenas in order to effect change find themselves powerless in the face of existing systems.

A process of consultation
With Simon’s agreement, Paul and I applied to the Polden Puckham Charitable Foundation for some seed money, which they were generous and visionary enough to give us, to pursue this idea through a consultation process (in which Simon was very much involved), to see whether and in what way it could be pursued.

We decided to invite people we already knew (who were therefore reasonably likely to accept our invitation) to a one-day, workshop-style meeting, bringing together around a dozen lively thinkers and activists from the four fields we wanted to unite. This is what we wrote to those we were inviting, along with the summary of our perspective that is outlined above.

[The] picture painted above is grim indeed. But the world has not been emptied of people of good will, nor of imagination and intellectual ability. The human capacity for good is immense and our planet is resourceful. In the midst of so much that is bad, many good things are happening and we have potential allies in the most unlikely places. While the situation is desperate in so many ways, perhaps the very urgency or our global predicament is creating a moment of great opportunity. We must act on that supposition.

The purpose of this project is to help stimulate the growth of a new kind of politics: based not on the perpetuation of existing systems and relationships of power, but on the values of respect, care and co-operation. We want to do this by helping to build a new policy platform, embracing the four areas suggested above: those of peace, economic justice, environmental protection, and the human rights of security and participation: policies that are founded on the concept of co-operation, not domination.

We mean to begin in Britain, firstly because that is where we live; secondly because it is a country (or collection of countries) whose impact on the rest of the world is considerable and, in too many ways, past and present, malign. We want to see the nature of that impact change for the better and believe such change is possible. We want to see policies developed here that will make us global contributors, in terms of human and planetary needs, and at the same time ensure that all those who live in our islands are well served by those who represent and govern them. And we want to see our fellow citizens wake up to their own power and responsibility for political participation.

The tentative thinking that we shared was that we would begin by elaborating our analysis, through individual and collective thinking and writing, in a variety of contexts, and through the circulation of ideas in different circles, using different forums for dialogue and debate. On the basis of the analysis we reached, we would begin to formulate policies, through similar modes of thought and exchange, and once they were formulated disseminate them more widely, seeking entry points into different circles and institutions.

What we hoped to achieve during this consultation was first an exploration of the connections between the four fields, as seen by our participants, so that the rationale for co-operation is articulated. The second question we wanted the group to explore together was what kind of initiative – if any – would be productive. This exploration might, we thought, point us to (a) publication(s); to an ongoing or occasional conversation; to a big joint conference; to joint lobbying; to behind-the-scenes dialogue, or to a unified and concerted campaign. We were open to all possibilities – including the one that no-one had time or energy for any new initiative or that everything that could be done was happening already. But we were sufficiently convinced of the urgency of the policy vacuum that we considered this initial exploration to be not only worthwhile but imperative.

We undertook that once this initial meeting had taken place we would at the very least write up and distribute our findings. If it produces leads that needed somebody’s time to take forward, Paul and I were both willing to be ‘somebody’. At that point we would need to find sources of additional or longer-term funds.

On the day in question an excellent group of people came together in Oxford and the exploration that took place was rich in analysis and in ideas for popular outreach, as well as for more ‘weighty’ work to influence policy. The consultation’s proceedings were duly written up and circulated to all concerned, and several people expressed interest in ongoing involvement. We felt sufficiently encouraged to apply for much more substantial funding. The proposal we made was still focussed very much on a dialogical process, wheeled out into communities, as well as on more specific working groups related to media, publications and so on. Maybe the proposal was both too lacking in specifics and too ambitious, but we had no success in getting funds to take the idea forward. And negotiations that began with a specific organisation that showed a lively interest in taking on the project ran into the ground.

So for now the idea is in abeyance; but we have not altogether given up the hope that some opportunity or some flash of insight will present itself and we will find new energy to take it forward. Indeed, the need for a policy initiative of this nature seems even more urgent now than it did then. The potential for a disastrous attack on Iran; the increasing erosion of human rights and civil liberties; the growing gap between the wealthy and the poor and the increasing evidence of the impending devastation of climate change all make the need for change even more urgent.
We would really welcome any ideas on how to take this initiative forward.

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