English Revolution - Autonomous England

Found this great blog & something maybe activists in England can build around?

http://autonomous-england.blogspot.co.uk/

Our Autonomism


• English Autonomy - The prerequisite of social revolution is self-determination. The first step on this road is national liberation from imperialism. UK Devolution and calls for independence among the Home Nations requires that people of England consider their future position too and address the urgent need to break the ruling class and monopoly-capitalist stranglehold. Our 'nationalism' differs from that of the traditional nation-state. We reject the United Kingdom and its institutions (i.e. The Monarchy, British Parliament, foreign wars, etc.) Instead, we advocate a devolved English Republic based on regional and community self-government, within a British and Irish Confederation. The English Republican identity is not a racial construct but one based on place, community and shared experience/goals. Just as people of all ethnic backgrounds can support and participate in representative sport so too can all work together to celebrate their shared land and build working communities. We are against all forms of fascism, whether overt or disguised. We are English but also British, European and world citizens and therefore we stand against bigotry and chauvinism. We would like to continue to work closely with our neighbours and those with which we share a common history and values. Sovereignty, however, must rest in the people and should not be handed over to institutions like the European Union, which serve only the interests of a rich and powerful elite. In principal we support the liberation struggles and self-determination of all people and believe we must all think locally to affect positive change globally.

• Working Class Autonomy - By this we mean self-government for the working class, as opposed to the so-called 'representative democracy' of the ruling elite. We emphasise the ability of the working class to force changes to the organization of the capitalist system independent of the state, trade unions or political parties. Our definition of the working class includes both white collar and blue collar wage-earning workers as well as the unwaged (students, the unemployed, homemakers, etc.) All other definitions seek to divide us against ourselves and end up only serving the interests of the privileged few. Class autonomy would be realised through direct democracy, not only in the social/political sphere but also, and crucially, in the workplace. In everyday life this would mean Libertarian Communalism in the form of democratic assemblies and free confederation. We believe local people should have direct say in the issues that affect their own communities. Work and production should be reorganised along traditional Guild Socialist principles in which industry and services are publicly-owned and worker-managed on a communal level in the spirit of cooperation rather than competition. Democracy cannot simply be installed at a structural level but also requires changing individuals from ‘passive citizens’ to ‘active citizens’ who have the ability and drive to demand and use their democratic rights. This can only be achieved by democratic ownership of the workplace so to empower the workforce to take ownership of the key activity in their lives.

• Personal Autonomy - We advocate the autonomy of the individual but this does not mean complete individualism separated from the community. Autonomy refers to life in society by one's own rule and the capacity of rational individuals to make informed, un-coerced decisions about their own lives as well as the communities and social world in which they live. No one is an island and we must work in co-operation with others and with nature to realise our potential. More and more our lives are being determined by unelected, unrepresentative individuals and multinational bodies which rob humanity of their decision-making powers. We are under constant monitoring and censorship, not for our own benefit but to protect commercial and political interests whilst suppressing dissent. We call for an end to the attack on civil liberties but acknowledge that individual rights must come with responsibilities to oneself and society. Blame and compensation culture must be reversed. Lawyers often exploit both the legal system and victims, lowering the dignity of individuals and society and appropriating vast amounts of public wealth. The legal system has a duty to protect individuals but must also protect the accused from 'mob justice'. Everyone should have the right to defend themselves and the responsibility not to unnecessarily harm others. Group rights should only facilitate and not infringe upon individual rights whilst individual rights must not be allowed to harm social cohesion. The most fundamental individual rights are safety, shelter, healthcare, access to education, a living wage and the freedom (i.e. the time and means) to pursue one's own happiness.

• The Autonomous Social Movement - In recent years we have seen the rise of such social movements as Occupy and Anonymous. Both have great strengths but also weaknesses. Occupy shows that large numbers of people feel at odds with the capitalist system, especially where that system is most entrenched, but Occupy itself lacks meaningful goals and coherent critique. Anonymous has offered hope in the potential of subverting new technologies towards liberatory goals and destabilising power structures but especially suffers from a lack of political orientation, which has led to some ill thought-out campaigns. There has also been a growth of far-right nationalist movements around Europe. We believe this is largely due to the abandonment of the working class by the established political left and the inevitable consequences of global capitalism. A void has been created by consensus politics, economic crisis and the failure of any effective alternative. Ordinary people are desperate for change and empowerment. They should be offered a meaningful and progressive alternative to the current system and anti-democratic ideologies. We propose that economic globalisation represents the most pervasive form of imperialism today. It severely and negatively affects the traditional way of life of people worldwide and destroys their environments through ruthless greed. It must be fought on all fronts and replaced. It is time to reclaim, to liberate and organise our own lives on a personal, civic, national and ultimately global level. There is more meaning to human life than its labour and purchasing power. We place society, culture and the environment before profit and strive to raise human civilisation beyond its current stage.

Autonomous England is not a political party. As such there is no formal membership (no cards, no fees) and there are no leaders. The Autonomous Movement seeks to exert change on government and pressure on exploitative capitalism through protest and civil resistance. To achieve any success we must become a mass movement but one based on decentralized power. Autonomous England is therefore a banner and set of guiding aspirations under which to unite. The onus then is on all of us to act locally, find like-minded people and begin building a movement.

Firstly, we must organize Local Groups. These could also be referred to as Chapters or Divisions. These Local Groups work as part of the whole along the decentralized principles of Federalism. Power rests with the members of the group who make decisions democratically (decisions are made by those who do the work) – each group is autonomous and can consist of about 2 to 20 people (or more). Sometimes, group members are irregulars who participate in some group activities, but not others. They coordinate their activities through re-callable delegates who have no authority themselves. When a group becomes sufficiently large, it may choose to break up into smaller groups or simply have smaller project groups within the larger collective. The emphasis of Local Groups is organizing and education work at the local level. Local Groups can then build informal working relationships with other affinity groups in their region for the purposes of mutual aid and cooperation on major projects. As they become established, more permanent regional and national federations are developed which then can undertake the coordination of large-scale protests. The advantage of Local groups is that they are formed of people who have common goals, objectives and experiences – groups survive because individuals are committed to these objectives. Because they are small, people know and trust each other on a personal basis. Small working groups enable a group to communicate more efficiently and to operate by consensus. Local Groups should seek to be economically self-sufficient and fund all their own activities. If you want something done, Do-It-Yourself – You don’t need money when you can donate your labor. The advantage of a D.I.Y. approach is that people don’t have to have a lot of money to be politically and economically effective. It is an ongoing educational experience where we learn what works by doing the work, develop our own skills and abilities, and get to spend time with others in our community so they know what it is we all need and desire. Local Groups should be active and productive in their communities demonstrating to people what is possible by doing it and inspiring others to get involved in changing the society.


GET INVOLVED - CHECK OUT:
http://autonomous-england.blogspot.co.uk/

patriotic_worker wrote:Autonomous England is not a political party...

Ameded with a few less typos: http://autonomous-england.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/developing-locally.html

Sorry, chaps.

New easier web address for Autonomous England

www.autonomousengland.tk

http://www.mediafire.com/download/chh4s8adocxgde5/AE-leaflets.zip

AE supporters can now get T-shirts here:

http://autonomousengland.spreadshirt.co.uk/

The Case for Self-Determination

By 'self-determination' it must be stressed that we mean working class self-determination. National self-determination for England is not an end in itself but neither either do we reject the nation and wish to destroy its cultural history or the identity of its people. We oppose the 'Little Englander' nationalism of the English Democrats or UKIP who advocate isolation and old Tory values, which in the end will do nothing more than protect upper-middle class and right-wing hegemony in England. However, we too have seen that the homogenising global agenda of the neoliberal establishment (along with the dogmatic anti-nationalism put forward by their unwitting stooges on the ultra-left) is not geared towards the benefit of the majority. Rather than serving the needs of working people, this globalism really only aids the interests of large-scale capitalism: importing exploitation and driving down the wages of all working people. Therefore, like our cousins abroad, the English working class too is a subject of the neo-imperialist new world order insofar as we are exploited economically and ruled by an elite which believes itself inherently and culturally superior to the majority. An elite which uses its own anti-democratic institutions to maintain the status-quo, by force when required. It is meaningless to speak of an 'oppressing nation', if the overwhelming majority of its people remain oppressed, and their sovereignty is lost through multinational corporate control of the economy as well as the power of state and supra-state institutions.

“In the cabaret of globalization, the state shows itself as a table dancer that strips off everything until it is left with only the minimum indispensable garments: the repressive force.” - Subcommandante Marcos (Zapatista)

One of the most marked features of advanced capitalist countries is the ever-sharpening tendency on the part of monopoly-capitalism to reduce the scope and effectiveness of democracy, to obstruct the will of the electorate and reduce major political options.  This trend is clearly demonstrated by the prevalence of coalition politics and neoliberal consensus today. The tendency of monopoly-capital to put decision-making into the hands of a small number of key people (career politicians, senior civil servants, business leaders and the EU) clashes with the need for real democracy, freedom and creativity. The situation we have now is that described by the Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci: State control is maintained not just through violence and political and economic coercion, but also through ideology. The the ruling class has developed a hegemonic culture, which propagates its own values and norms so that they became the 'common sense' values of all. People in the working-class and lower-middle class identify their own good with the good of their political and business leaders and thereby help to maintain the status-quo rather than revolting. In other words the narrative of empire (in the form of a new, politically-correct imperial Britain) is still being used to create a false sense of unity between classes and directed, as all imperial rule is, towards the goal of maintaining upper-class rule and economic interests. The result is the suppression of working class self-determination and the exploitation of cheap imported labour. Our class faces daily, relentless assaults inflicted on us in the media and a constant onslaught of attempts to divide us. The unfortunate affect of this situation has been the growth of far-right racism in which political and economic woes are blamed on innocent scapegoats such as the immigrant and migrant workers (who are themselves colonial subjects of global capitalism) and non-white Britons born in England, creating false division and conflict among our class.

The promise of a united, social and democratic Europe has failed us too. Around 25 years ago when Thatcher pushed through the neoliberal single market as part of the Single European Act this marked the launch an anti-social Europe. The so-called ‘free movement’ of labour in fact only undermines wages and working conditions inside Europe. If ‘food-miles’ represent an unacceptably large carbon footprint, then ‘labour-miles’ and shunting human beings around Europe in the pursuit of profit is even more damaging. Norman Tebbit once famously told the unemployed to ‘get on their bikes’ to look for work. Now the EU and business bosses compel workers ‘to get on a plane’ and find work elsewhere in the EU. The cult of monetarist economics is enshrined in EU treaties. A major part of this cult believes that cutting budget deficits and imposing harsh austerity is an end in itself and mass unemployment and economic decline are a ‘price worth paying’ for curbing democracy and working class power. Unemployment in the Europe is at a record high, and the Eurozone economy is shrinking. But all EU member state governments stick with endless austerity. This means wage cuts and dismantling public services before handing them to the private sector that created the economic mess in the first place. These attacks on the living standards of the working class have been designed, at base, to increase the ruling class's share of surplus value at the expense of the working class. In a time of economic crisis this is achieved by decreasing the 'social wage' - cutting the welfare state. The same thing is being carried out directly at work. Today the bosses take a much larger percentage of the surplus created by the working class than was the case in the recent past.

Our alternative is this:

The gaining of collective economic control of the nation's resources by the nation as a whole and the eradication of any control or influence exercised by foreign capitalists over any aspect of the English economy. The recognition of a multi-racial English cultural identity and the establishment of a revolutionary socialist republic based on decentralized communalism. We do, however, aim to build strong alliances between our class in towns and cities, agricultural workers in the countryside, unemployed workers, working class refugees, and with other like-minded liberation struggles internationally. We oppose and fight against all forms of inequality and oppression, including that of women, ethnic minorities, gay people, refugees, and any other oppressed sector of the working class. We oppose racism, sexism, homophobia, national chauvinism, and anything else which divides our class. We are opposed to religious sectarianism and seek the complete separation of church and state and a secular society. The increasing destruction of our environment is due to mismanagement of industrialisation and the inevitable product of a system, which puts profit before all else, that is, capitalism. We are committed to sustainable and renewable energy sources, preservation of the ecology and biodiversity of our planet, with protection of all species and the promotion of a healthy environment for all people and animal life.

Western Europe is today gripped by a crisis of unprecedented dimensions. Enormous technical and economic potential exists side by side with a disarray in labour relations and signs of an unmistakable political and moral degeneration. This crisis sharply underlines the need to find a new democratic way towards a free people's Europe opposed both to neoliberal global agenda and the threatening rise of fascism. Autonomous England consider ourselves part of this process, a part, moreover, which can open up new horizons on the European plane and Internationally.  We do not advocate an all-or-nothing world revolution. Instead we believe that by radically altering the economic and social conditions in one of the world's most developed nations that we can change the the relationship between exploiting and exploited nations.

Unlike the existing parties of the far-left we put the real needs of people ahead of a fixed ideological fidelity. The revolution is not some never-to-be-reached nirvana, theorized and put off indefinitely by the chattering classes. The revolution can and must be enacted now by ordinary people, demanding and fulfilling the own needs and desires. However, we also firmly reject the petty populism of the right, which stirs division among us and ultimately only serves the interests of the rich and powerful. There exists no parliamentary road to liberation. We need to build an organised working class movement with the politics capable of leading the fight against capitalism. Our class is entitled to control over all the wealth of society and to obtain it through any means necessary.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

Check out what’s happening in England –
http://autonomous-england.blogspot.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/autonomousengland
https://twitter.com/Eng_Revolution
http://autonomousengland.tumblr.com/
http://autonomousengland.spreadshirt.co.uk/

That's a very interesting site. Its good to more people awakening to the fact that the only solution to capitalism is to break away from all forms of the internationalist menace. For too long, we have had to choose between the fake radicals and the reactionaries. Ditching both is the way forward.

On a side note, thank you for having this forum. Again, it is good to get away from the false options which always end up in victory for the oppressors.