A rather gentle piece on Transition Towns in this weekend’s FT showed no trace of irony, given the seismic shocks that continue to shake our world. It was almost as if ‘nice to do’ and ‘need to do’ can never be real bedfellows. Yet never has that need been more urgent.
An apparent eagerness to explore new ideas and radical thinking is still not matched by a realistic framework to make such thinking real. Acres of newsprint are dedicated to the merits or otherwise of ‘quantitative easing’ – but the notion of alternative currencies that speak directly to local empowerment, economic regeneration and a contribution to higher levels of wellbeing don’t merit mentioning in the same context. We are in collective denial as to the real possibilities of recovery. Politicians fear the usurpation of representative democracy, as they see it, by more direct action. Yet initiatives including MoveOn and 38 Degrees are showing the true reforming power of an active citizenship.
The Transition Town movement is something we consider in more depth in Part Three of Citizen Renaissance. What is happening in Totnes and Lewes (and gathering increasing pace in the US also) is not merely a sub-Good Life phenomenon, but rather a genuine affirmation of citizen values, together with early proof that new economic models can work alongside accelerated wellbeing. As one Lewes resident notes in The FT: “Using an alternative currency brings it home that we can make a difference to where we live by our own economic clout. It’s giving people power to influence their immediate environment.”
This revived civic humanism is also clearly gathering pace among the chattering classes of the more conventional political ‘elite’. I have posted before on David Marquand’s excellent Strange Career of British Democracy, his logical mandate for Democratic Republicanism and, within this, a call to Citizen Activism. This thinking comes from the so-called Left. And yet, from the Right, we see not dissimilar progressive thinking – as brilliantly articulated by Philip Blond in Prospect recently on the rise of the Red Tories: a new communitarianism, with its heady mix of social conservatism and a sceptical approach to neoliberal economics, should now be at the forefront of the Cameron agenda. “Taken together”, Blond writes, “such policies will help conservatives create a transformative red Tory manifesto. They would build a new economic and capital base that decentralises power and extends wealth and also makes a final break with the logic of monopoly and debt-financed capitalism” .Read it in full here.
Left to right, Marquand and Blond would agree that the existing political system continues to fail us and that we need to find a better way. The citizens of Totnes and Lewes may yet hold the key to something wonderful and powerful. They are the heirs to The Levellers and to Mill and Milton. It would be nice to see them move away from the cosy pages of the ‘House & Home’ supplement and into the FT’s mainstream thinking. They need to prick the conscience of the nation – and the nation needs to experience and enjoy the reformation.
