Stop bloody whingeing and do something about ‘it’ !

Oftentimes the obvious is only obvious once someone has pointed it out to you.

Starting point: why don’t politicians better use their power to change the world? If only they would… [insert complaint] … then … [insert desired outcome].

But why not do more things ourselves to help bring about the changes we want to see in the world? Why rely on people we are unlikely to ever meet to represent what we want. Why not take power into our own hands and ACT – rather than hoping that someone who scarcely knows what we want will act for us in the way we wish?

Sure there are things that may require legislation due to the difficulty of acting as a group of individuals, or due to externalities (e.g. smoking ban?). But there are, I guess, many more things that could be changed for the better if we decided to act – both as individuals and in groups – to change things for ourselves.

Action versus representation. Why not act more – and complain less about failures of representation?

This connects to what I’d blogged about previously here and here, after hearing Ann Pettifor talk at the Compass conference – about how often change at the political/legislative level can only happen after a groundswell of grassroots opinion has been created and mobilised. Individual and collective action is a pre-requisite to change – and that not intially aimed directly at the legislature. So the first step is always to convince and bring with you a group of people who want the same thing.

I have made a mental note to myself to think creatively about how I can act next time I start to complain about something that is wrong with the world – rather than just complaining. (e.g. first stop: contact Ecover to tell them that the reason I’ve stopped buying their stuff and switched to Bio-D is because of their failure to adopt a fixed cutoff date for animal-tested ingredients.)

Do you think we have become a society of individuals that doesn’t act enough? That instead we comfortable recline on a jaundiced view that the reason nothing ever changes is because of the failure of others to act for us? Was it ever thus?

Thoughts after the Compass conference

I went to the Compass ‘Shaping our Global World’ conference on Saturday. My first political conference (and first non-telecoms conference). Dipping the toe in…. and the water wasn’t bad !

Two of the themes that came out quite strongly in the sessions I went to were around the links between ‘progressive social movements’ and the labour party, and the limits to the power of govt to change things. Resonant with some of my thoughts in my earlier post.

e.g. #1 Ann Pettifor who was heavily involved in Jubilee 2000 campaign described how the Labour Party wasn’t heavily involved (or involved at all?) in this until right near the end. Instead she built up a coalition of e.g. the BMA, faith groups, concerned people to lobby the politicians. She described how she spent 10 years on this campaign starting – under the Tories! – going around the UK talking to people about the need to cancel ‘Third World’ debt and encountering deep sceptism. Very inspirational – msg: attitudes can be changed if you make good arguments but it’ll be lots and lots of hard work and a long hard slog.

e.g. #2 Ken Livingstone talked about how he had partnered with a bunch of other major metropolitan cities around the world and used their combined purchasing power to negotiate with power suppliers e.g. to improve the greeness of public buildings through support from these companies. He said he didn’t even bother going to Government to discuss this as he knew it would make no difference.

So both positive examples about how change happens – but both illustrating how involving Government / politicians isn’t necessarily required, or even a good idea until you’ve build up a sufficient constituency demanding change. Not ‘Government is the problem’ so much as ‘Government can’t make any difference, for many important changes that are needed now – unless lots of people already are demanding it’.

Early, unformed ideas – how change happens

For a while I’ve been pondering how big changes happen in society.

e.g. Govt brings in smoking ban on 1 July in England. So restaurants, pubs, clubs become smoke-free. Big change. Caused, ostensibly, by Govt introducing a new policy. There will be unintended consequences (pub gardens will prob become much more smokey as all the smokers will be outside. –> more passive smokers for non-smokers during Summer? / non-smokers stuck inside during Summer to avoid smoke?

But is this it so simply? Why did the Govt feel it could introduce such a draconian nanny-state policy? I don’t really know the background. Maybe there is EC legislation it had to enact? But I guess it only felt it could do this because it had done opinion polling to check that more votes wouldn’t be lost than would be won by doing it.

So the question becomes – how does the general public get to a point of feeling strongly enough about something (e.g. banning smoking) that the Govt then feels it can do something about it? i.e. it’s not just a matter of Govt acting – it’s about a general sense in the general population that this is right to be done. Who does the leading? Govt – the general public – other opinion formers (pressure groups, media, business… ?). Who is the lead?

I was wondering about this in terms of the well-being agenda (see my Compass article). But it’s a generally applicable problem. e.g. a Govt in the UK wouldn’t introduce a law banning killing animals for food – they would be voted out of office. But if we got to the point where most people felt it was wrong, and unnecessary to kill animals for food – then you could see the Govt would introduce the appropriate legislation. So the question is how to get enough people won around to your argument that it shows up in opinion polls to lead to policy change. Hence, I guess, campaigning organisations. FoE/ Greenpeace/ Peta etc.

But the power of business to set its agenda through its spend on marketing/ advertising is so strong this must be a huge challenge. I’m suddenly gaining a lot more respect for my friends who work in campaigning organisations.