Humanity is (a)live again!

Some of you will be aware that I chose to try a new tack when I left Derbyshire in 2021.  I moved to Suffolk with my wife and joined Waveney Labour Party in the summer of 2022.  I had been reasonably successful in Derbyshire, doubling and then trippling again my vote in Parliamentary elections, from 50 votes in 2010 to 450 votes in 2015. I had decided in 2019 not to stand and split the progressive vote, having done my best to facilitate a progressive alliance between Humanity, the Greens, Labour and the Liberal Democrats, to no avail.  Such an alliance would definitely have won the seat from the Conservatives.  So I decided to see what I could manifest in the Labour Party, where there would be a ready made group of people I imagined were up for progressive change and whom I might win to a firm progressive stand.

I joined the Waveney Constituency Labour Party in the summer of 2022.  I became a parish councillor in Kessingland in 2023 and became the Waveney CLP Policy Officer, also in 2023.

I led two very successful education and policy circles in 2023 and was re-elected Policy and Education Officer of the new Lowestoft CLP in January 2024.

During this time I was becoming less and less enamoured with the Labour Party leadership and found myself also at odds with our prospective parliamentary candidate, who was turning to the Eastern Region Officers to have discussions on policy I had planned (on anti-semitism) banned, and motions on Gaza and on CLP Executive Committee voting rights also banned.

At the February CLP Executive meeting, where I was proposing that we invite our prospective parliamentary candidate to participate in CLP meetings  much more regularly than she had done, it became obvious that the majority of the Executive was quite happy for the PPC to continue to act completely independently of ourselves, and I felt myself being told that the rules were the rules and that if I didn’t like them, then I should do my best to get them changed, or leave.  What I heard was that the majority of the Executive did not wish to rock the boat and make requests of the PPC that would promote communication and accountability, and have her recognise that we were expecting our PPC to take account of our wishes rather than do her own thing and have discussions she didn’t want to us to have, banned by Region.  I felt that those arguing to let the PPC do her own thing without reference to us were normalising a lack of accountability that I could not possibily go along with.

That night I couldn’t sleep, knowing that I could spend my life at odds with my fellow Labour Party members, with my PPC, and with the Labour Party leadership, or I could step out and try out something of  my own again, which is what I then decided to do.

There are some very fine people in the Labour Party nationally, and within the local Lowestoft Labour Party . I trust that we will remain friends and that we will work together in the future.

World leaders not up to the job!

It would appear that our leaders are only interested in competing with each other for world domination, killing us through war, and committing collective suicide through ignoring climate change (according to Antonio Gutierrez, Secretary General of the United Nations).

We need leaders who will grasp this competitive nettle and choke its continued rampant growth by regulating the market ’til it stops serving the interest of private profit and begins to serve the needs of the vast majority of the world’s population, which is not rich and privileged, as are the world’s leaders, who naturally only serve themselves and organise everything to serve their own needs.

So, don’t be taken in by the Conservative Party, which is the party of the rich and powerful, nor by the current leadership of the Labour Party, led by an establishment figure (how could a knight of the realm ever seriously lead a working class party?), nor by the Greens, who don’t take an anti-capitalist, anti- free-market economic stand. Notice that the Lib Democrats don’t even deserve a mention here, they are such a bunch of blow-with-the-wind opportunists!

We, that is you and I and everyone we can inspire to join us, need to have the courage to stand up and say no to big business, no to the rich, no to the private press and media, no to big finance, no to all war-mongers and have the guts and the will to carry through a root and branch co-operative transformation of the planet, caring for all peoples, all animals, all natural resources and for the environment to reverse climate change.

No ifs and buts!

Rather than go to war …

I wrote a friend, saying that I was against war in principle, that I took neither side in the Ukraine/Russia conflict, that killing anyone doesn’t take the human race forward, ever.

She wrote back:

“Whatever your ideologies and hopes for ‘non-violence’, I don’t see how closing your eyes to how or why it happens is a solution.And I don’t see how insisting people lie down and die when attacked from the comfort of an English home is ‘non-violent’?And equating perpetrators and recipients of violence doesn’t seem a very logical or fair theory to me either.Neutrality may be very self-comforting when faced with a ghastly situation, but I don’t see how it helps.”

I then wrote:

“Looking more closely at your message, as this whole thing bothers me deeply, this is what comes up for me: 

I don’t see myself as closing my eyes to how and why violence happens – I do my best to understand what motivates it.  That doesn’t mean I condone it.  I can empathise with the despair without having to celebrate a violent response to it. 

I don’t believe I equate perpetrators and victims.  I see both sides as gangs of violent thugs acting out their emotional traumas on an international stage.  Neither side has the awareness or the conditions under which that awareness might grow to see that the violence comes from unresolved unmet needs that become more and more distorted, the longer they remain unmet. I’m not neutral, as I keep on affirming.  I’m against both. 

I see almost every nation in the world acting out unfettered expansionist tendencies, as capitalism always demands, to secure markets, to secure supply chains, to dominate material resources, so that its products can compete and dominate in the world market.  It’s the same on a personal level – those who can throw their weight around can avoid looking at their own personal (hi)stories to see where their personal physical, sexual and emotional health has been stunted. 

We need, the earth demands it, that we learn to take personal responsibility for our health and well-being, both individually and collectively.  We need to see that the challenges the planet faces, and those that we collectively and individually face, demand a level of awareness, consciousness, of self and other, that permits us to co-operate without feeling that we lose anything because we do so.  The only people who can do this are those who are so emotionally and spiritually developed that they can see that nothing is lost when we co-operate and share our resources according to need – the original communist vision.  I remain as radical as I always have been, and for me the revolution needed is one of consciousness, a recognition that we live on a planet that offers us personal and collective abundance if we have the courage to drop any demands that any of us rules the world, rules over any other, dominates resources, needs to consume any more than that which the planet can safely permit us, more than enough to survive and enjoy a fulfilling life. 

In the UK, we consume 4.5 times as much as the planet can sustain if everyone on the planet was consuming as much as we do.  In the US it is 6 or 7 times.  We need to find a way of organising ourselves so that we optimise food supply (self-sufficiency is great), energy supply, etc, etc without depleting the world’s resources.  In fact the human race is on a path to self-destruction if it does not do so.  There is simply not enough to go round if we don’t back off from consuming as much as we do. And wars such as the one in Ukraine, or any war, is simply a statement of the fact that the human race has lost its way, is stuck in an imperialist capitalist expansionist economic and social model, in both east and west, and any support for military activity, for whatever reason, is to encourage this historically redundant, anachronistic way of organising society.

Letter to my MP 3rd March 2022

Ukraine


Hello George,


I’m writing to you as my MP as my wife and I feel powerless to affect what’s happening in Ukraine and yet we want to do something. Writing to you as our representative in Parliament seems like one thing we can do in the hope that conveying our views to you may make a difference.


My aunt, as the Soviet spy Sonia, was responsible for conveying the American nuclear weapons secrets to the Soviet Union in the 1940s. When I learned about this, in the 80s, and asked her about it – she was living in East Germany at the time – she said she’d done it to create a balance between the West and the East so that nuclear weapons would never be used. I felt so proud of her as I imagined her actions had indeed contributed to nuclear weapons not having been used since 1945, for 40 years up to that point, and now for 80 years. I promised myself I’d take on the family mantle and do my best to see all nuclear weapons dismantled in my lifetime.


So what’s going on in Ukraine really worries me.


I have come to the conclusion, through everything that has happened in my life, that violence in whatever form, whether domestic, societal or international, resolves nothing and simply builds up resentment that at some point or other needs to come out and be expressed, generally in the form of more violence.


Our planet and our species demands that we find peaceful ways of dealing with difference, that we co-operate rather than compete, as issues such as climate change are now global issues that cannot be managed without global co-operation. Our survival as a species is threatened unless we stop reacting to each others’ behaviour violently.
The Russians have clearly not learned the lessons of the 2nd World War and continue to exercise themselves militarily – Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Georgia, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine amongst others … The West is no better – Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, The Falklands, Iraq, Afghanistan and now supporting Ukraine with offensive military supplies.


The west has provoked the Russian bear by bringing many of the east European states into Nato and offering Nato membership to Ukraine.
I have no truck with Russia, I have no truck with western militarism either.
Please do not support the militarisation of eastern Europe. Please do everything you can do to have our own government step back from military activity in Ukraine, and for that matter anywhere else. The survival of the human race depends upon the human race evolving to become a species that treats others of the species peacefully. The planet demands the same and threatens us with extinction through climate change if we don’t kill each other first.


I would be happy to exchange further with you if you feel it would be of benefit to you.


Thank you for reading this. I hope you appreciate the necessity of a sea-change in international relations. I hope you choose to stake a stand for peace.


Robin de Brea.

Ukraine 24th February 2022

I imagine there are many of you out there who are feeling, as I, pretty powerless in the face of what is happening in and around Ukraine.


I see two massive powerblocs, Russia and the West, at odds with each other, each desiring to secure Ukraine into their cultural and economic spider’s web.


It’s very easy to imagine that the West is the good guy and Putin the bad. Personally I see both the west and Russia as vying for influence over any and every country and people they can get their hands on, just as China appears now to be doing also.


There seems to be, in all of these countries, a lack of checks and blocks on megalomaniacs acceding to positions of power that enable them to throw their weight around as Putin and Nato are currently playing at, with ordinary people’s lives being carelessly expended.
So, what are we to do?


I imagine, if you are like me, you are somewhat scared of the possibility of Europe descending into a blood-bath, and wondering what we can do prevent it. It would be oh so easy to blame Putin’s apparent posturing and take sides against him, throwing weaponry at the front line in an effort to stop what appears to be bullying behaviour on his part.
And that would then be that! How would we ever pull out before Europe had been obliterated as there’s no doubt in my mind that this would trigger mutual escalation until nuclear weapons were threatened and quite possibly used by one side or another to prove that “I’m less scared than you of pressing the button”.


What kind of madness would that be?


And if we don’t follow that path, what’s the alternative?


Well first of all, I state very clearly that none of the actions of the British establishment are undertaken in my name. I distance myself from any actions that may provoke further escalation on the part of Putin and his allies.


Secondly I reaffirm my commitment to the principle that any people must be the determinant of its own future and no outsider may exercise domination over that people. While I’m not particularly nationalistic, countries, regions, ethnic groups, any cohesive group that wants to do its own thing, must be honoured in its choices, as long as those choices don’t inhibit another group exercising its own freedom to do its own thing.


Thirdly, we must stop the production of arms, of all arms, stop their trade, stop their use in any setting. We must commit ourselves to peaceful methods of dealing with difference. We have laws against domestic abuse, in which the use of weapons would draw long, long prison sentences. What’s the difference when that abuse is national and international, exercised by police forces, governments and armed forces? The same thing must apply, although I can’t say I favour prison sentences as a way of dealing with irresponsible behaviour. Yes, the perpetrator must be stopped, and there are much more successful ways of bringing abour rehabilitation than prison.


Fourthly, as I was inspired, funnily enough by a Chinese commentator, to believe, Ukraine must declare itself to by neutral, no interest in Nato, no interest in joining Russia. It needs to go one step further and de-militarise itself. In fact, the United Nations should declare itself as encouraging all of its member countries to declare themselves to be non-belligerent and neutral in international matters. We have to choose a new paradigm in international relations, one in which weapons of war are no longer available to be employed when communication breaks down. What is needed is to put as many resources as are necessary to develop whatever is required to deal with differences in a peaceful way. There is no alternative if we are to survive as a species on the planet. Co-operation is the absolute necessity of the day, to deal with climate change, to deal with people across the planet desperate to improve their circumstances on a planet with limited resources.


In the UK we are consuming between four and five times the amount that the earth can sustain if this level of consumption is matched throughout the planet. The USA consumes more than six times this amount. We have to co-operate to bring this back to what the Welsh government recognises in its planning regime as One Planet Development.

Competing for scarce resources, competing for influence as this current war displays, is not compatible with the survival of the species. Our evolution demands a level of awareness, a level of consciousness, and a level of action that goes way, way beyond what we are seeing embodied in current leaders throughout the world.


We, the people, must take responsbility for the changes and put people in positions of authority who reflect our and the planets immediate needs, and the lines of authority must be devised in such a way that pyschopaths and narcissists such as Putin, Trump, Johnson, Bolsonairo, and so many others, are not able to take hold of the reins of our world!