Insurrection

Is there need for ‘democratic’ insurrection?

The strength of democracy is that in principle governance is ultimately in the hands of the majority of the people, advanced by an electoral process that places the executive administration of the governance in the control of an indirectly elected nominated person; a vote for a party does not give direct selection of who holds individual office of responsibility. The main benefit of this electoral process is that on a regular basis ‘the people’ can throw those they have elected out of office should the government not do what the people want and change to another administration. Such new administration might be one that may be more in tune with what the country / electorate seems to need. This form of selection is seen as a flexible and a fair ‘democratic’ way of running a country that offers a balance of power for the majority and restrains exuberant executive control. Of course, this is not wholly true. It is a fragile system, open to abuse, does not reflect the overall majority view, is amenable to wealthy or corporate lobbying persuasion and gives little actual control over implementation of policies. Its strength should be in if all the population vote, they understand what the issue are, they have control of the direction of governance, have an ability of exercising constituent referendum, can limit excessive affluent influence and are not subject to any process of administrative mendaciousness; all of which the electorate do not actually have any control over. All it, the electorate, has to go on is political manifestos that often do not portray the authenticity of a party’s ideology from which policies are made and are often later found invariably deceptive.

Consistently the elected executive avoids laying out policies that it deems to be too sensitive to be raised in open discussion that would alarm or potentially be politically damaging to its own interest if grasped by the public. It may be considered that some issues are too complex or indeed too earnestly sensitive that it is better to avoid raising any questions and either take actions ‘under the counter’ or play for orderly time assimilation, the (new) nudge technique or let events unfold and act accordingly. An example of such avoidances would be the causes and implication of, the debt / deficit crises (economic corruption with inflation & devaluation). The energy deficit, (nuclear) population growth, (unaffordable nor sustainable) immigration (too much and non-integration) sovereignty, (illusion of power) productive imbalance (depleted exports and import dependency) and the greatest avoidance of all, the non-application of real democracy to maintain the existing illusive of one.

All political parties have had a long held view that the best form of government is one provided by democracy and it should or aught to be adopted by all countries. In the UK, the system gives power to the party that wins a majority vote of the voting populace disregarding the fact that on numerical term it does not reflect the view of the overall population or the value of one vote against a block as in a strong majority ward boundary. It is a system that is increasingly allowing the direction of state to be self-sustaining with the control of power to be residing in the class affluence stratification of society.

In as much that a vote is a stamp of limited approval to the winning party, the power that influences the machinery remains in the hands of the embedded influential legal, business, rich, military, media, civil and professional lineage. These long-standing influences have more weight on the direction of state than looking to the mass of the electorate. An unreliable electorate that just may have a conflicting view on issues and whom will not by given a say on ‘sensitive’ issues other than in a perfunctory media trashed interpretation of issues, often bent on a political slant for its own ends.

While such an imperfect political system is hugely beneficial to political expediency of a party, it does not represent a proper democracy. The party system (in this case all that profess to have a democratic system) all favour the existing illusion of democracy that relies on less than 60% of a voting out-turn split between contestants, that does not produce a democratic mandate. It is an illusion that all parties want to avoid addressing in favour of the existing first pasts the post, as in the UK, one day in five, pretence of democratic involvement; to do otherwise would be to rewrite the rational of democracy, which it is known, is a terrifying prospect; compulsory voting, referendums, power to the people – never.

The current government alliance in the UK has seemed to move fast and offered a chimera of policy changes. Such as a play with the idea of AV, big society, redistribution of public sector power under a euphemistic progressive agenda, safe-guarding the NHS by moving to privatise it and rolling back a raft of social protective legislation, redrafting employment law, curtailing university entrance to the deserving affluent and a vague limit to immigration. Enough tendentious potential changes that initially chimed with some people’s vague wish for policies that are more responsive to ‘the people’ however behind the scene lay the unannounced motives and ultimate direction. Although no one party won the election, the labour opposition should have culled some of the changes of their own, instigated ideas of progressive cohesion and vigorously challenged others, yet, ‘new labour’ had no idea, intention of or how to move with the sense of the electorate and are still being left behind; so far. When Brown was in power he seemed to offer a new direction, indeed talked about a new direction but sadly, he missed the opportunity to change political tack and take on the new leadership required. He stayed with his obsession with control carried over from his stint in the treasury. In many ways, he lacked perceptive vision in fact and physically.

Although it would seem that there was initially a move to address (as above) three issues, financial corruption, immigration and the voting system, it is still miniscule, little enough has been done to have slight effect and does not offer any real change in the application or corruption of power. In some way, the last election was a referendum on the plague of politics that has taken little regard for the political disconnect and background changes that have occurred particularly in some parts of the county, as any visitor to the old mill towns of Bolton, Bury Blackburn, Bradford, Preston, and Leeds. Alternatively, Birmingham, Leicester or London will see the transformation from a wholly England culture to the mini state-lets of Poland, east EU, African, India / Pakistan et al. Since the days of the 'Winrush' inflow, there has not been any attempt at planning a transformation shift of one culture to any other and the idea that such a change could take place in a relatively short period, was considered an impossible shift. There was a professional belief that assimilation would blend any difference out. This blind attitude, was driven primarily by the overall desire that cheaper pliant labour was required in a booming economy – no thought of integration, multi-culturism or the later created perverse P.C.

Skilled career Politian’s of all stripes have over the year played down any threats from creeping influences of un-assimilated customs; multi-culturism was considered and is still postulated as a useful addition to Englishness. The additions of diversity was given a positive spin such that it was worth overlooking destructive islamic tendencies and with their influential growing constituency make up, some elected members are also very uncertain of their position, to risk alienating any leading muslim support. This led them to acquiesce quietly to the hidden threats of fundamentalism. For too long political correctness has poisoned the discussion of both immigration and Islamic fundamentalism. Many parts of the UK, in localised area have become breeding grounds of insular imported ideology that has at its core an antithesis of British democratic vales and free principles with detestation for the country that offers them a base. In doing so, they are more than pleased to use the existing laws to protect themselves after participating in methods to undermine or actually destroy the peace of others with destructive force. There have been many occasion were guilty criminal parties or illegal entrants have been allowed to stay in the UK, by way of outdated political asylum and avoiding deportation. Using EU law, to deport them would infringe their human rights, place them in danger from the country they came from (some in hiding from for crimes committed) and to which they should, but cannot be deported back too!

That strong Islamic doctrine has had an impact onto the attitude of the west’s response to act of violence is obvious and it has been leading to a slow reassessment of engaging in the non-assimilation of multi-culturism made sharper with the increasing easy flow of migrant, particular throughout Europe. Although for the moment demographics are against a shift in democratic processes caused by migrant influx, the weakness of democracy means it could be overthrown by indigenous default and negligence to address those weaknesses. This weakness is probably of greater importance to the UK.

The UK is arguable one of the most open and relaxed cultural systems with a long heritage of slow assimilation that has led to its increased population growth. However, it is too small a country with diminishing resources now and should not be placing itself in a position that override the mass of ordinary law-abiding indigenous people in favour of migrants that have no establish ties with the UK. This is particularly important when many aspects of the country’s resources become stressed. So long as voluntary segregation is claimed by living in comfort zones of ethnicity, the dispersal into a wider cultural context will not take place. 10% of the population are ethnic and forecast to rise to 20% by 2050 this is not necessarily going to cause a problem if it can be seen that integration into acceptable British lifestyle is underway but it will be a problem if not. It is a potential difficulty when most of the ethnic growth lies within England with its dense population of 52m on 50k sq miles of land. It does not compare well with land density of other countries.

France. 63m. population on 260k sq mls.
Germany. 82m. on 137k sq mls.
England. 52m. on 50k sq mls.
Scotland. 5m. on 30k sq mls.
Wales. 3m. on 8k sq mls.
UK. Total. 60m. on 88k sq mls.

This only provides a numerical view of population against overall land holding, if one looks at the population density location in any country it can reveal that much of the deprived and ethnic density is within small-urbanised areas with little weight to integrate. It is just one problem that has been ignored and will play out over time. As will the issue of extremism.

The USA Home land security has considered for a while that the UK too open to Islamic influence and fertile ground for potential Islamic conflict. The UK’s regard for human rights as it has adopted under European charter, allows no discrimination against those that have no intention of respecting the humans right of those they want to kill and are suspiciously intent on overthrowing European democracy in favour of, it seems, some form of a caliphate. There is a sense that Islam has an inimical attitude to any that are not of its faith. It is a religion that is apparently wholly ossified into stasis that seeks no change, no adjustments to the practicalities of civil life, no flexibility and offers little or no exercise of power allowed to females. It allows no enlightened interpretation of its scriptures; it is taken as the direct munificent words of its prophets and despite denial seeks to turn all other faiths or social structure to its favour. In many countries, that it has a hold on, it eschews secularism and fights to remain dominant enslaving population to a lifestyle that is difficult to change even allowing for the different Islamic group interpretation of beliefs. This negative view is not helped by the lack of challenge to the hard extremist interpretation of the religion from the moderate secular followers of Islam.

In normal times with adequate opportunities and a degree of fluid affluence that came from general expansion of growth, little of the foregoing creates too much anxiety in a stable society that cannot be bought off. However it is obvious that when resources are diminishing at a fast rate, buy offs are subsequently being retracted leading to stressed positions.

All government exist to control machinery of state, initially one assumes for the benefit of the country but this is by no means the norm; dictators, despots, and perverted authority rule, does not necessarily hold a nations best interest at heart over their own. However, to all controlling powers, in time, it usually becomes more important to see itself as the only ‘legitimate’ power and simply responds to excessive stimulus or maintain the status-quo. Like all large administrative structures the reason d’être for its existence changes, to reinforce the impotence of its own existence, rather than the whole state of the nation which to governments means just itself and not the populace as a whole. From this administrative dichotomy between the administration and the people, areas of stress can arise. Any stress imposed on the majority of a populace by say lack of income, food, energy, water, outlets for expression or unresponsive to the need for beneficial change, cannot be brushed aside. Once such stress is endemic, it can only be a matter of time before forms of disruption afflicts any nation that chooses to ignore outbreaks of discontents.

Of recent interest is the developments in Tunisia and Egypt, were people are in the process of pressurising a change of dictatorial governance. A change that has taken the west by surprise, this is not unexpected given the wide divergence of status of those in power, the wealth structure and the control exercised over all aspect of their countries that generate a deteriorating living standards. Conditions that those in power simply did not see, are likely to experience, or comprehend, the falling living standards of the mass of the population that are equally effected by the shift in the global economy and resource acquisition for basic foods stuffs etc. yet they were possibly wise enough to accept change. Compared with Libya and Syria were revolt has taken place against Gaddafi and Assad regimes by peasant that do not have resources to fight these regimes yet are putting up a stiff resistance – that without the west involvement of hard resources may see a protracted conflict that spreads, a situation that is more than likely.

A similar situation is playing out in Greece albeit with superficially different root causes and methods of control against people that perceives an adversary that has caused them harm and unfolding lose, with little ability to expunge the causes of their predicament. A frustrating position that calls for a rational approach but one that is not available when power is not in control of events raising stress and fear to fight an insubstantial foe responsible for the causes, results in attacks on the subsidiary administrators. Yet once the fear threshold is crossed, the fight cannot be obliterate completely.

What these situation demonstrate is that when there is a disconnect between the administrative powers and the people; with a decline in life comfort factors, equality of expectations and a rise in the unassimilated social elements, disruption can be spontaneous.

The UK with its established hierarchy is moving to a similar disconnected position. With its divergent wealthy / poorer class structure, its vacillating undemocratic governments and the current impoverishing of the nation can easily move to a high stressed position. Of course, any action that challenges the dogma of the establishment or disturbs their hold over their views will be labelled as self-interested troublemakers, strikers, terrorist, seditious or any other descriptive term to justify punitive action and creating qualified sector segregation. Unresolved conflicting actions that can eventual manifest into hard action is insurrection and any of these terms used to describe dissenting voices, will be besieged as terrorist even if terrorist action does not actually have the means of volatile weapons.

The USA has many social problems that it does little to alleviate but it has its fiercely protected Constitution and the right to bear arms even though it has an 1807 insurrection act that allows the president to deploy troops on and within its territories to quell a breakdown of law & order. Implementing such a power could never be done with impunity due to Constitution and the right to bear arms, a benefit that is exercised by many Americans. With this protection, it is unlikely that the country could be at risk of a takeover from a foreign power, out of control executive or a dictatorship. However, would it survive a rebellion?

Of course, insurrection is only one word to describe a fracturing within society of a group of people and beliefs that conflict with a standing authority not ready, capable nor willing to adjust its controlling power. Any other tag such as revolt, rebellion, and insurgency can equally be attached to the groups seeking recognition. The opposing forces will tend to develop ownership of the most favourable description to appear to be in the right but no word will hide the actions; know them by what they are and do.

It is often been, in times of dispute, that there is a call for peaceful demonstration to vocalise a disagreement. It is as if this is the only legitimate means that will be given attention. However, over time the weak democratic vs. strong executive system has taken powers that curtails the procession of strikes, gathering and marches to the extent that they have become ineffective in persuading an executive to adopt a different path. In essence, there can be as many peaceful means as one likes and it might be thought that failing any voluntary change, using peaceful demonstrating will increasingly be useless.

Too few great changes within western history has come about via peaceful means and as moving to a full democratic system with referendums is unlikely to happen in the near future and given the peculiar nature of humans, it is more likely that the reverse will occur. The best that the UK can offer is a constant battle between a left and right band of self-serving bought politicos using an outdated mode of representation that in no way reflects or allows the general focus of the people a directive say. Now there has been the option of a useless AV system and referendum, rejected now; instead of full PR. Had AV been accepted it would have simply continue that same moribund ineffective parliamentary system still open to deferred bribery and professional protectionism.

If one looks at the stresses within the economic civil and electoral process of modern countries, it is not difficult to see factors that are likely to expand to a point of expression. Is it too late to create a progressive counter balance to any fracturing of society that the imposition of stress will cause? Ignoring the creeping discourse that highlights the problems that will unravel comfort and security with the perception of austerity, increased crime, poverty, social disfranchising, collapsing living standards or the ill-defined euphemistic benefits of multi-culturism, is not a fruitful attitude to hold too.

Is there potential to see insurrection?

What would be the purpose or benefits of an insurrection? Other countries, in the past have gone through dramatic changes to their administrative structure via e.g. civil war (USA), revolution (France), punitive war (Germany) and (Japan). With the exception of England, such upheavals have influenced the extent of their civil administrative structures that they have pulled away from institutionalised deference and influences of domineering historical rights, class structure and professional power constructs like landed gentry, military, public schools, political progeny and specialised ideology overridden by a formalised constitution. The changes brought about via influencing fractures, such as war or insurrection, helps restructure fixed perceptions. It might be thought of as beneficial in that the exercise of power is to a greater or lesser extent is eventually devolved to levels below the elected executive and contained within the practical constraints of a constitution and regional authority that has a better chance of reflecting the democratic composition of the country.

How does anything in the above mean that there is any scope or justification for insurrection?

Even if there is an element of veracity to the arguments, it is beyond the scope of expectation that such would or could be possible in the UK. Some may think the UK (or other ‘modern countries’) are too civilised to condone any violent change and the systems are is in place to insure that it just does not have a chance to occur. Never the less the system has the seeds of its own destruction set within it and external pressure will impact on a controlling system to bring about violent transformation; far better to adapt before-hand but political immaturity, discriminating self interest, popular ignorance and trepidation will be an impediment to change.
Even if there were a ground swell of public dissent, as there is no organised structure to direct actions that could be labelled as insurrection, subversion, rebellion etc be it peaceful or violent. In a state that has control of the machinery of law and weapons it will use them to abort attempts of any dissent; however, the longer and harder attempts are made to forcibly quell objection and ignore large manifest opposition with force against an unarmed populace, the inevitability is that violence will escalate. Any oppressive state that has to resort to such control that seeks to maintain its existence with the application of force, will attempt to disguise its action by ‘beneficial segregation’, perceptively splitting factions, control and dissemble information. It will do all that it can to exculpate itself from being seen as the oppressor.

Despite the above, exampling views around the effects of impoverishing the nations, conflict exodus, immigration and religious extremism which are growing precursors incendiary topics because of the ease of inflammation, the real ingredients of concern and which are largely being ignored, are the toxic ingredients of the effect of economic corruption and demographic disenchantment. These two essentials, that should be attaining paramount attention as a potential driver of forceful change, are currently too low a priority in political terms to engage any sort of corrective action. The attention of the global players is concentrated on the state of the financial strength of their banks and economies with most attention placed on the value of currencies like the Dollar and Euro. ‘Fighting’ created inflation with the manipulation of currency values and low interest rates to influence consumer spending, extols an air of gravitas confidence and flawed control that penalise savers, comes nowhere near attacking the fundamental defects of a wholly unregulated market system.

What is happening on a world stage is most relevant to the prime economies, in that slowly the shape of their economic standing is changing but given the huge corrupting fracture of the banking and finance systems that required baling out by governments, they have less power to instigate long term solutions. They have not raised any great controlling mechanisms or any form of punitive action against the financial market system to show the seriousness of the forced bailout. Now far too much is being QE’d, devaluing currency and creating inflation with a consequential drop in disposable incomes sucked out of the consumer matched by reducing economic expectations of many individuals seeing the disparity between rich and poor become steeper. The ‘ordinary’ people are paying the price of the failure of economic management. They have been fleeced while the financial markets have been cosseted from paying for their failure. It is easier to be seen to appear to be in control by taking actions that nips at the symptom of a problem but the causes requires radical solutions that cannot take place until there is a paradigm shift in thinking about how the ‘global financial market’ should and has to be managed.
However, although in political terms these issue are not being addressed, the pressures are now showing up in countries that have relied on and had access to affluent resources that are now in decline. Where there is no natural saleable resource they are facing a dramatic retrenchment of economic vision that is becoming visceral and creating a causative link with outbreaks of public descent. That the pigies ( Portugal, Italy, Greece, Ireland, England, Spain) are facing 10/20% unemployment rate, most of whom are young, is a source of energy that will find an outlet for expression. They will of course be controlled, mollified, listened to etc but they will be forcibly neutralised, for a while.
If there can be no peaceful insurrection / uprising / rebellion/ sedition, against the continuation of the status quo, perhaps there can be on one that is linked to an assault / insurrection on dogmatic ideologies to foster change.

Insurrection against the ideology of the supremacy of ‘the markets’.
Insurrection against political laxity that does not use its representative power properly.
Insurrection against the practice of executive mendacious acts onto the public realm, allowing those that wilfully propertage it, to escape without penalty.
Insurrection against the apathy of democratic involvement.
Insurrection against capital ignorance and poor sap intellectual conditioning.
Insurrection against ‘them and us’.

Democratic insurrection is needed now. Better to do it managed than have it forced upon one with a social ele.

© Renot 2011

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