Confederate of Soviets of the British Archipelago
Following the 2017 citizens’ convention on the constitution of the United Kingdom resulting from the UK’s secession from the European Union a new settlement began in the British Isles.
In deciding where power should lie in the country, a fundamental shift towards subsidiarity began — initially following existing political boundaries, over time a more bioregional form of organisation emerged.
Thought leaders from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland brought experience and philosophical rigour from years of consideration of issues of national autonomy and devolution. As power in Westminster dissolved and The European Union collapsed, activists within the Republic Of Ireland became fired with a vision of a post-imperial confederacy in the British Isles.
As with all origin stories, myth has quickly occupied the void of neat historical evidence. Though no supporting photographic proof has yet emerged, it has been suggested by many that the ‘March for Europe’ on 2nd July 2016 marked both the first time the British republican tricolour had been marched with since the Chartist protests of the 1830s and the first widespread adoption of the sea-green ribbons that would later become so associated with the rise of the confederacy.
The veritable split in the Labour Party marked both an internal power struggle and a fundamental disagreement on the place of jouissance in revolutionary struggle. While the PLP favoured the commodified worker’s playtime of LEISURE, the vanguard faction and the mass of the party membership preferred to PLAY. As the body politic dismembered and remembered, both fission and fusion would power democratic re-invention.
The first signs of change happened in the lost heartland of Scotland, with so many former Labourers now at PLAY, Lowland and Highland Games could begin in earnest. A few brave Scottish LibDems ran into a field brimming with left and green affinities forged in the circles of the Radical Independence Campaign and RISE. Initial tensions with some other Scottish nationalists were turned to creative engagement following Pat Kane’s editorial in The Herald advocating a ludic turn as a provocative operation.
Max Planck wrote that Science advances one funeral at a time and it took the death of the UK Labour Party for the progressive alliances to truly flower.
In the Assembly Hall, the words of Chartist John Bates were painted on a banner suspended against the long wall:
‘There were [radical] associations all over the county, but there was a great lack of cohesion. One wanted the ballot, another manhood suffrage and so on… The radicals were without unity of aim and method, and there was but little hope of accomplishing anything. When, however, the Peoples Charter was drawn up… clearly defining the urgent demands of the working class, we felt we had a real bond of union; and so transformed our Radical Association into local Chartist centres’
Throughout the debates many speakers turned to Bates’ words as a reminder of the power of unity. Strong claims were put forward for both consensus and dissensus, new affinities were formed between activists and party journeyfolk of many Colours, and in the hall itself and in the alehouses about women and men of many parties and none found new languages, new sparks to the imagination and the fuel for the fire to come.
The new concepts of regional association received little but scorn from the right-wing of politics until the think-tank ConserverNation published their series of thinkpieces on the ‘invisible hand’ of co-operation and hosted the ground-breaking conference ‘When We Conserve the Land’. Empowered by the new information released on land ownership and driven to find new solutions by the end of European farm subsidies — land owners, land agents and land workers began conversations on a millennia spanning plan for — — British soils and the pan-generational management of our sovereign ecology.
ConserverNation is Britain’s leading conservative think-tank. We produce original research, publish innovative thinkers and host thought-provoking events.
ConserverNation has always been interested in power of nature as mentor, model and measure: working with nature rather than against it, we cultivate societies and places that mimic ecology drawing on the best of modern technology and guided by traditional wisdom.
We pride ourselves on working together with the more than human world that is the focus of our research. ConserverNation critically engages with new forms of deliberative work that inform the sacred precincts of communal life, from regenerative agriculture and consensus decision making to ground breaking analyses of multi-capital abundance in our cities and rural areas..
‘Conservatives believe that our identities and values are formed through our relations with other people, and not through our relation with the state. The state is not an end but a means. Civil society is the end, and the state is the means to protect it. The social world emerges through free association, rooted in friendship and community life. And the customs and institutions that we cherish have grown from below, by the ‘invisible hand’ of co-operation. They have rarely been imposed from above by the work of politics, the role of which, for a conservative, is to reconcile our many aims, and not to dictate or control them.’
– Roger Scruton, Stand up for the real meaning of conservatism, The Spectator, 4.1.2014
It was a time of deep uncertainty and competing visions. ‘Wikid Questions’ An online scenario builder developed by programmers in the Pirate Party was abundant with divergent futures. A persuasive queer steampunk contingent frequently injected memes drawn from science-fiction novels, independent zines and MMOGs that, while apparently marginal, pulled the more mainstream arbiters of foresight in more radical directions. A range of counterfactual histories were forward projected as alternate presents, some of them played out as online games to reveal otherwise hidden interstices. Using a post-war version of Hearts of Iron: Darkest Hour adapted by the steampunks, a group of bioregionalist permaculturalists modded the game to produce a steady-state circular economy for the Atlantic Archipelago and then ran it through the WorldChange and Meadows/Tapley World3–2004 models. The promising results fed back into the convention.
A few rats left the sinking city for Frankfurt, New York or Singapore and more folk lost their jobs when transnationals retreated. The Tobin tax was railed against universally by the London financiers, the introduction of sovereign currencies called unworkable, but many were canny enough to carry on regardless — these were just more creative constraints they could use to outflank less flexible, less imaginative competitors. Councils annulled PFI contracts and implemented new longer term infrastructure plans funded by civilian pension plans, social investment opportunities abounded from local energy schemes through micro-financing to the raft of food and farming start-ups initiated as land taxes released thousands of hectares on to the market — there were opportunities for financial expertise everywhere.
The second city exodus was the rural resettlement of city workers to a raft of regional building societies, credit unions, friendly societies and trustees savings banks that sprung up across the regions — often the work was different to what they had done before, but their skills were transferable and the quality of life afforded in their new locales generally surpassed expectations. Starting families no longer seemed impossible. Country air, open land, gardens and affordable homes combined with the shorter working week and enhanced flexibility all encouraged fertility.
Decades on, London was just one regional financial centre on a par with Cork, Swansea, Dundee, Leeds, Limerick, Exeter or Middlesborough.
‘What untold riches these People’s Banks have within the forty-six years of their existence made available for small folk’s needs, what millions they have added to the wealth of the countries in which, as M. Léon Say testifies, they “flourish throughout “ ; what vast amount of misery, ruin, loss, privations, they have either averted or removed, penetrating, wherever they have once gained a footing, into the smallest hovel, and bringing to its beggared occupant employment and the weapons wherewith to start afresh in the battle of life, it would tax the powers of even experienced economists to tell. Propagating themselves by their own merits, they have overspread Germany, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium. France is trying to graft them upon her own economic system. Russia has in her own rather primitive way followed the excellent example. Serbia and Roumania have adopted them. And now we hear of their spreading from Italy into far Japan-China has got something like them already -while we in Great Britain scarcely yet know of their existence’
Henry W. Wolff, People’s Banks: A Record of Social and Economic Success (1893)
Think-tank ConserverNation invited the American political analyst Yuval Levin to their ‘New Democracies’ debate. A number of leading bioregionalists attended intending to take the conservative position apart, but the group found itself split between those holding to left partisanship and those who found themselves ready to explore ideas from across the political spectrum as ‘critical friends’.
‘Mr. Levin, a principled conservative, doubts that liberals have any practical remedies for the condition he describes because, as he says, they are locked into the idea that “the only genuine liberty is individual liberty and that the only legitimate authority is the authority of the national government.” For various ideological and historical reasons, they tend to see the mediating institutions of society — family, church, schools, and community — as potential threats to liberty that justify further interventions by federal authorities. We can see this in the ways in which the current administration tries to enforce civil rights regulations against schools and colleges and in the ways it stifles experimentation by the states in welfare and Medicaid programs. Yet, as he argues, the problems of our era grow precisely out of these impulses: the excessive centralization of political authority combined with the fragmenting consequences of hyper-individualism.
As a consequence of this, he thinks that conservatives are in a better position to win this debate because of their appreciation for the role that civic institutions can play in nurturing liberty and citizenship. In his view, the way forward in America is through the empowerment of the middle layers of society that stand between individuals and the national government. He sees the revitalization of these mediating structures — state and local governments, families, churches, and local voluntary associations — as a way of restraining the power of the federal government and of providing individuals with opportunities to exercise citizenship through participation in civic institutions. This is the traditional doctrine of “subsidiarity” — the idea that social problems should be addressed, to the degree possible, at the local level — but one that takes on greater urgency at a time when national authority has been extended to its limits and the national government is stalemated by partisan polarization. The way out of our impasse will thus be through a conservative agenda that emphasizes “modernization through subsidiarity, a revival of federalism, and a commitment to a robust pluralism of moral subcultures.” ‘
Co-operative structures had already proved their value. More and more factories, schools, and farms were coming under the collective control of their workers and members were appointed to the regional councils kick-starting a place-based regional renaissance. Young people saw the opportunity to participate actively in the free construction of a new society and enthusiastically joined the new groupings. Old books and their digitised mirrors were avidly scanned for ideas and inspiration. Beginning as a joke, activists started calling their councils ‘soviets’. Older folk with decades of left-right argumentation hanging over their thoughts considered it a bit childish but assumed it would disappear as so many fads had before it. The name started to stick though, a hashtag become a web meme, become a full on meme, a provocative operation, a conversation starter.
A bunch of old Trots pulled out a quote they thought a trump card, a way to increase their influence over the councils — but it was just more content — processed, value extracted, refiled. Put down your placards Ivan and pick up a spade, there’s work to be done.
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‘The essence of our epoch lies in this, that the productive forces have definitely outgrown the framework of the national state and have assumed primarily in America and Europe partly continental, partly world proportions. The imperialist war grew out of the contradiction between the productive forces and national boundaries. And the Versailles peace which terminated the war has aggravated this contradiction still further. In other words: thanks to the development of the productive forces capitalism has long ago been unable to exist in a single country. Meanwhile, socialism can and will base itself on far more developed productive forces, otherwise socialism would represent not progress but regression with respect to capitalism. In 1914 I wrote: “If the problem of socialism were compatible with the framework of a national state, it would thereby become compatible with national defence.” The formula Soviet United States of Europe is precisely the political expression of the idea that socialism is impossible in one country. Socialism cannot of course attain its full development even in the limits of a single continent. The Socialist United States of Europe represents the historical slogan which is a stage on the road to the world socialist federation.’
Leon Trotsky, Disarmament and the United States of Europe, Bulletin of the Russian Opposition, No.6, (October 1929)
Fear of a military coup that would turn back the progressive tide was broadly expressed. While speculative fiction had proved an excellent source of boundary-stretching ideas, too much time with sci-fi books could provoke thoughts about hidden conspiracies. One of the few downsides of marijuana legalisation proved to be the paranoia it facilitated in already primed minds. Eventually people just started talking with folk in the armed forces: family members, school friends, squaddies on trains — they were human like everybody else, they wanted peace and security and a better world. All workers wear a uniform of sorts.
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‘The… work[er] has suffered so much at the hands of the soldier, State and Federal, that he is quite justified in his disgust with, and his opposition to, the uniformed parasite. However, mere denunciation will not solve this great problem. What we need is a propaganda of education for the soldier: anti-patriotic literature that will enlighten him as to the real horrors of his trade, and that will awaken his consciousness to his true relation to the man to whose labor he owes his very existence.
It is precisely this that the authorities fear most. It is already high treason for a soldier to attend a radical meeting. No doubt they will also stamp it high treason for a soldier to read a radical pamphlet. But, then, has not authority from time immemorial stamped every step of progress as treasonable? Those, however, who earnestly strive for social reconstruction can well afford to face all that; for it is probably even more important to carry the truth into the barracks than into the factory. When we have undermined the patriotic lie, we shall have cleared the path for that great structure wherein all nationalities shall be united into a universal brotherhood, — a truly FREE SOCIETY.’
Emma Goldman, Patriotism A menace to liberty, (1917)
