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Beyond Westminster’s bankrupted practices, a new idealism is emerging (Transition movement)
Madeleine Bunting, Guardian
Progressive politics will take root from the rubble of a Labour defeat. The Transition movement is giving us a glimpse now
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Something remarkable has happened. Politics has become entirely unpredictable. Suddenly all manner of political reform is back on the table, a new urgency has been infused into tired debates about political disengagement and apathy, and radical reforms are being proposed to reinvigorate the hollowing out of political institutions. While the detail is vague, the scale is sweeping: …
… this week is a mere sideshow compared with what Labour will receive at the general election next year – and for its brand of politics to be thoroughly discredited, it needs a drubbing.
Apart from a few diehards, it will be hard to mourn the defeat in 2010 of a political party that lost its moral bearings in its bid to woo middle England
… If you want to catch a glimpse of the kinds of places outside the political mainstream where that new politics might be incubated, take a look at the Transition movement. Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change secretary, was one of the first to spot its potential when he described this young and fast-growing movement as “absolutely essential”. Other politicians have been similarly intrigued, and last year The Transition Handbook came fifth in MPs’ list of summer reading. It isn’t hard to see why politicians are so interested. The Transition movement is engaging people in a way that conventional politics is failing to do. It generates emotions that have not been seen in political life for a long time: enthusiasm, idealism and passionate commitment.
(31 May 2009)
Will Hammersmith eco-village inspire new generation of Diggers?
Bibi van der Zee, Guardian
The spirit of the Diggers has been invoked once more with plans to seize land in Hammersmith next week in order to create an eco-village.
The Diggers were a group of 17th-century English radicals led by Gerard Winstanley, who has been referred to as the father of both communism and anarchism. Winstanley realised that one-third of England’s land was barren waste, which the landowners would not permit the poor to cultivate. He declared:
… if the waste land of England were manured by her children it would become in a few years the best, the strongest and flourishing land in the world.
So on 1 April, 1649, Winstanley and his followers began to dig over a patch of common land in St George’s Hill in Walton-upon-Thames. They were soon chucked off, and then chucked off the next spot they tried out. Winstanley gave up in the end, and became a Quaker instead. But the idea had taken root, and has never been killed off since.
(1 June 2009)
Critique of European liberal policy on energy
Luis de Sousa, The Oil Drum: Europe
EuroElections 2009 : ALDE
This series on the Energy Policies put forward by the main parties running for the European Parliament moves on, leaving the heavyweights and bringing focus to smaller political groups. The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) is the main political group at the centre, pretty much in between EPP-ED and PES. It is the major Liberal reference in Europe, as in the member states where it is represented.
Writing about Liberalism in Europe is not a simple task. While it can be identified as the ideology with the largest support base in the continent, and the one that had the strongest grip on politics during the last 25 years, the parties that directly subscribe to it are yet to have major electoral results
… For foreign readers, ALDE can be broadly considered the European counter-part of the American Democrat party, although in a smaller scale and without much of the burdens of a party that is at the helm from time to time.
… This Policy project doesn’t have the same level of incongruence as those presented by the big parties, but that’s in great measure a consequence of its superficial nature. The only good point that can be made from this blurry image is that ALDE doesn’t seem to be band-wagoning on the bio-fuels hype, although the word actually appears once in the text, it doesn’t have the same highlight other parties lend to it. On the negative side is the obsession with Liberalisation; it can have obvious benefits if it comes to foster the physical inter-state integration of the Energy Grid, but how can it deal with internal depletion? And the depletion in Europe’s main energy suppliers? Believing in Liberalisation and Deregulation can be seen largely as a philosophical option, but it is an illusion to push it as the remedy for all evil, and believe it can solve the EU’s most pressing energy problems.
It would be better if there was more to write about ALDE’s Energy Policy, but there really isn’t.
(1 June 2009)
