System failure: give people the power to transform UK democracy

The Real Democracy Movement has launched a petition to back the launch of Citizens’ Conventions to develop proposals for a new, truly democratic system and a transfer of power to the people. Please read and sign:

We believe that the UK’s political system is broken at all levels. It is now incapable of representing the diverse views and aspirations of citizens in any meaningful way.

The current Brexit deadlock is merely one symptom of failure, which has led to deepening inequality, austerity, record levels of homelessness and poverty, crumbling public services and runaway climate change.

Despite having the right to vote many of us feel that we lack real power.

We therefore call for the setting up of grassroots Citizens’ Conventions throughout the UK.

They will develop proposals for a new, truly democratic system based on a written constitution and a transfer of power to the people.

As an inclusive society, we can confront the ecological emergency together.

The economic and social well-being of all our citizens, not that of the corporations, will be our number one priority.

Sign at Change.Org

Leave protesters in Parliament Square. Photo: Howard Jones

How Labour can answer the far right’s attack on democracy

As Theresa May reaches out to Jeremy Corbyn in her efforts to solve the Brexit crisis in Parliament, it’s clear that the usual form of politics in the UK has ended.

Brexit is viewed by many people as an unnecessary and dangerous right-wing diversion from the big issues facing society as a whole. But this is a one-sided view. As Laura Kuenssberg noted in her BBC2 documentary, Brexit has now essentially morphed into a crisis of the political system…

How Evald Ilyenkov was ‘found’

How a philosopher considered the most significant theorist of the Soviet era came to influence Nordic, British, American and German thinkers, as well as revolutionary activists, is revealed in Finding Evald Ilyenkov.

Through the cameo stories of leading Ilyenkov scholars, Finding Evald Ilyenkov traces how academics, researchers and practitioners in the UK, Denmark, Finland, Canada and Russia were drawn to his work.

Written in an accessible style it introduces an uncompromising thinker to new generations searching for dynamic approaches to knowledge and practice.
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Climate change actions close London bridges and roads

Thousands of people responded to the call by Extinction Rebellion to close down roads and bridges in London on April 15 in support of the demand to the government to begin to respond to climate breakdown. At Waterloo Bridge, one of the main crossing points from South London over the Thames hundreds of people surged across the road at both ends blocking all traffic except bicycles and pedestrians. Photo-report by Peter Arkell

There’s nothing green about bio-energy

The story of bio-fuels is a moral tale of how marketised, profit-driven responses to climate change will both fail to solve the problem and cause unconsidered damaging outcomes. Penny Cole reviews The Bio-fuel Deception: Going Hungry on the Green Carbon Diet by Okbazghi Yohannes

South Shields takes on fight against neoliberalism

A hugely successful ‘Make 2019 the year Corbyn becomes PM’ meeting in South Shields agreed a programme of action to take the fight against neoliberalism and for real democracy into other parts of the North East. Jointly organised by Momentum South Tyneside and the Real Democracy Movement, the event at the South Shields Museum and Art Gallery on February 23 was warmly supported by local activists. A range of speakers made contributions alongside workshops discussing how to meet the attacks a Corbyn-led government would face from the state, big business and finance, the media and from within the Parliamentary Labour Party. These were based on the scenarios in What if? published by the RDM.

Neoliberalism is the engine driving the climate crisis

A Presentation to South Shields meeting “Make 2019 the year Corbyn becomes PM” jointly organised by Real Democracy Movement – Penny Cole, on line from Lochwinnoch

The IPCC report that came out at the end of last year stated there are 12 years left to act before catastrophic climate change becomes unavoidable. News of the report mobilised hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren to go on strike and brought the start of the Extinction Rebellion movement.

In the midst of splits and political meltdown, a way forward for Labour 

The resignation of eight Labour MPs and three Tories from their parties in order to form a reactionary “Independent” Group in the House of Commons is a clear indication that the present Parliamentary system is in the midst of a nervous breakdown. Holding the fractured system together looks like mission impossible. A strategy to renew and extend democracy is essential, especially for the Labour Party if it is to succeed in ousting the Tories and coming to power. Read more 

Poetry as witness and engine of change

I am large, I contain multitudes. Walt Whitman’s words in Song of Myself capture the generous and expansive spirit of one of America’s best-known poets. They also perfectly describe the outcome of months and years of labour by fellow poet and editor al-Sayegh who has just published two books by poets Stephen Watts and Jenny Lewis in Arabic & English.
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McCullin’s photographic voice for the people

The photographs are stunning, of war and poverty and suffering mainly, all in black and white and accompanied in each of the ten display rooms by a revealing quote from the photographer who took them – Don McCullin. McCullin who is 83 now but still working, grew up in a deprived part of north London and got his break with a picture of a gang, all mates of his, posing and looking cool inside an old house that had lost its frontage. Read more

Ruskin – a man of his time and of our time

Events around the country are celebrating the bi-centenary of John Ruskin’s birth on 8 February – #Ruskin200. Thinker, campaigner, artist, scientist, educator and social critic John Ruskin was one of the most contradictory of all the famous Victorians.

He was both a man of his time and a man looking to the future – even while distraught about the world around him. Read more

Mapping out the road from Wigan Pier

RDM supporters from around the UK came together in November at Wigan’s Sunshine House.  Getting to grips with neoliberalism teach/learn-in  discussed four presentations – on climate change, precarity, democracy and culture and identity.  Read the report: Mapping out the road from Wigan Pier.

Why capitalism is crisis