Who’s going to save us from ourselves?

Once upon a time, before The Evil Empire beat The Third Reich, and “we” beat both in the name of Freedom, schoolchildren learned about democracy. Well, sort of. There were Reform Acts and Chartists and Levellers, and other Good Things we’ve since forgotten. Now it’s all citizenship and discipline, not the never-ending struggle against Authority, unless it’s foreign, and not “our” ally. Yet on the eve of the Great Unravelling, a report was published called Power to the People. “The main political parties are widely held in contempt,” it found, after 18 months of public inquiry. “They are seen as offering no real choice.”

“Would it not be easier,” quipped one of the authors, quoting Brecht, “for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?” Journalists were told “the creeping threat of authoritarianism” could be fought by “harnessing the kind of interest inspired by single-issue movements,” like the Suffragettes, and American Civil Rights campaigns.

But what if your single issue needs long-term cross-party consensus? We could have changed all the light bulbs in Britain without changing climate or energy policy. The investors who gambled trillions wanted politicians to tell them the rules. And these “leaders” wanted markets to solve the problem, because that’s what their corporate backers wanted, so they could make money for investors. When the merry-go-round juddered to a halt in 2009, we faced a dilemma. Our leaders begged us to beg them to do what they said they couldn’t. And when we did it in large enough numbers, everything changed. Government was basically nationalised, like the economy, to stop voters from rejecting it for trying to downsize us.

For a while, that was the blessing that saved us from meltdown, but what happens next? Is there really nothing better than elective dictatorship? Alternatives are out there in abundance. And in this post-ideological era, who cares what’s left, right, red, green, or centrist? But if any of these groups were radically changing things, how would we actually know that they existed?

Buried in the Power Report were gripes and everyday musings from ordinary people. “The media’s agenda is largely directed by the vested interests of political parties and capital,” one said. “Commercial considerations influence too greatly how newspapers and other media gather, edit and represent news,” carped another. But there wasn’t time or space to print that in the papers. “Man on street talks sense” just isn’t a story.

Now, even after the Abolition of Parliament Act, is it really the job of journalists to be oppositional? Well, yes. Dissent is the basis of democracy. It’s participative, not a rubber-stamping exercise. You don’t just turn up and vote once an Olympiad. If you want something to change, then do it yourself, even if you only call for action. At least that’s a start.

So think like anarcho-funkateers: free your spine and your ass will follow. Reclaim the sheets and speak your minds. Leaders are like chainsaws and credit cards. They’re useful things, but dangerous. What we need is vigilance, to chisel away at power by channelling our own. Think local, act global and import things, like a written constitution and big ideas. Such as these provocative thoughts from Latin America:

“We did not believe what Power taught us. We skipped class when they taught conformity and idiocy. We failed modernity… We are united by the imagination, by creativity, by tomorrow. In the past we not only met defeat but also found a desire for justice and the dream of being better. We left scepticism hanging from the hook of big capital and discovered that we could believe, that it was worth believing, that we should believe – in ourselves. Health to you, and don’t forget that flowers, like hope, are harvested.”

Er, Amen.