Five Acres & A Cow
Most party politicians, mass media commentators and corporate executives are genuinely perplexed by the antics of our apathetic youth as they drag their anarchist circus around the globe from Seattle to Washington, Prague, Nice, London, Gothenburg and Genoa.

'What a nerve!' they cry. 'How dare they pitch their tents across the street from our luxury hotels and disrupt our democratic deliberations!'

I was first introduced to the full force of the 'World Trade Organisation's 'Multinational Agreement on Investments (MAI)' in the summer of 1998 at a seminar put on by the 'Swedish Green Party' for 'Almedalsveckan' on the Baltic island of Gotland. During the seminar it was pointed out that had this agreement been in force during South Africa's apartheid regime, all government boycotts and sanctions against South Africa would have been illegal...with the result that apartheid might still be the policy and Nelson Mandela still in jail.

Nor was this the least of it. States rights in the USA would have gone out the bathroom window as no country or city would have been allowed to introduce zoning laws or permits favouring its own nationals or local residents.

As for notions such as community reinvestment acts, these too would have been outlawed along with anything else that sought to shift the balance of power away from outside interests and in favour of locality.

Unfortunately there is too little recognition of the extent to which governments...and in particular 'Big Government' as a species of governance...have brought this corporate backlash upon themselves by their 'rule of lawyers' and their 'government by regulation'. But a response that sets a new corporation-friendly set of regulations against the old government-friendly regulations is not the answer.

If we are to grapple seriously with the global crisis, which is first and foremost a crisis of power brought on by giantism, then we must go further and come to terms with the 'Who? Whom?' of the regulating process itself. Who has power over whom? With whom do they wield it? And to what ends? Not that this is the first time that the question of 'the rule of law' has boiled down to the rather different question of 'who's law rules'. Sir Thomas More ran foul of an earlier engagement.

But there are grounds for hope because as legitimacy drifts away from the 'WTO's' member governments so niches will start to open up for legitimate governance representing real people in real communities.

Before long someone will need to invent the idea of 'The League of Real Nations' to help these new nations fight their corners. The side effects may be the main effects and the bad news may not turn out to be so bad after all. Nor is that the only piece of good news in these troubled times.

Quite unwittingly, the New York lawyers commissioned by the 'WTO' to draft their 'Charter for Corporate Global Business' have done a tremendous job on our behalf. In aikido terms, this 'MAI' provides an excellent first draft for a 'Real Communities Charter'.

Power only flows one way at a time, so by shifting the nexus of power in the 'MAI' from the 'World Trade Organisation (WTO)' to a myriad of 'Village Common Sense Trusts'...and this can be done by inserting a few 'not's and 'no's here and there and reversing the flow of power in most of its clauses...we will have a manifesto for globalising economic activity within the confines of our own little local worlds...many millions of them...each stretching little further than 35 miles from where we live. Once these are in place 'locality' could come into its own and begin its long fight back against 'interests'…particularly those of the 'riding roughshod over' type.

Localization with self-sufficiency has the potential to cause much more damage to the anarchy of corporate power, with its mindless pursuit of bigger and bigger profits, than any anti-capitalist protest. Besides, what would better revitalise national democracy in these time of electoral apathy...where the turn-out at elections in many countries is now sliding towards the 50% of that beacon of democracy the 'United States of America'...than voting for parliaments that have the real power to choose between two identical charters; the one...where all the votes are...giving sovereignty to local communities; and the other ceding power and sovereignty to boardroom barons shuffling papers behind closed doors...and steel barricades...in unhealthy buildings?

And what better way for a county (sic!) to deal with the bad new times ahead than by issuing five acres and a cow instead of the dole to its younger citizens. There is no reason why the Queen should not carry on sending telegrams to our mothers on their hundredth birthday. But her son would be better advised to devote himself to doling out cows and land deeds to every able-bodied male in his kingdom on their eighteenth birthday.

Any Lord Lieutenant of the County that managed to push this through County Hall would soon be the envy of the country.

'All power to the parish' is the fastest way to ensure that all wealth stays in the county!

William Shepherd
Rye 30th July 2001