‘Reclaiming the Commons’ The political significance of grassroots activism

1. Hypothesis • It is the hypothesis of this proposed research that democracy is thriving at the grassroots and that the millions of disparate groups across the world that we can define as being engaged in grassroots activism can show us evidence of this • The study will argue that the concepts that are emerging through movements to ‘reclaim the commons’ offer a basis for new forms of political organisation for the 21st century • Aims • To study participatory democracy in the UK today • To explore the usefulness of the concept of the commons in this analysis • To suggest that the concepts that are emerging through these debates offer a basis for new forms of political organisation for the 21st century • To undertake a study of a contemporary and local example of grassroots activism in the context of recent debates on participative citizenship and democracy ‘Reclaiming the Commons’The political significance of grassroots activism

3. What is meant by the concept of ‘reclaiming the commons’? ENCLOSURE RECLAIMING ‘Across the world, grassroots movements are working to open up more spaces for the commons by denying that any social whole – whether cultural, language, livelihood, art, theory, science, gender, race or class – has a right to assert privileged status over, and thus to enclose, all others of its type’. (The Ecologist 1993:191) ‘...it becomes clearer and clearer that recreating democracy must also be about reclaiming, inventing and reinventing those state institutions – including international ones – that are necessary, though not sufficient, to achieving redistribution, the provision of public goods and social and environmental regulation. But it must be about doing so in a way which involves far stronger, more direct control by the people.’ (Wainwright 2003:41) • ‘The act of surrounding land with a fence or hedge, the means of conversion from common land to private property.’ (Linebaugh 2008:306) • ‘Early industrial capitalism enclosed the commons of land and labour. Today’s post-industrial capitalism is enclosing the cultural and intellectual commons (both real and virtual), the commons of the human mind and body, and the commons of biological life.’ (Rutherford 2008) • ‘Every protected public space has been cracked open, only to be re-enclosed by the market......Fences that protect the public interest seem to be fast disappearing, while the ones that restrict our liberty keep multiplying.’ (Klein 2002:xvii;xviii)

4. “WITH POLITICIANS VIRTUALLY INEFFECTUAL, PERHAPS IT JUST HAS TO BE DONE BY OURSELVES! The following is a partial record of steps this community took to hear each other and get heard…” “A GATEWAY EMBLEM FOR TOTTENHAM IS NOT PRIVATE GATED FLATSBUTA CULTURAL CELEBRATION OF WHAT OUR BOROUGH IS”

5. Democracy & Activism Democracy (Participatory/Radical) GRASSROOTS ACTIVISM ‘ If the movement in all its diversity has a common dream, it is process – in a word, democracy, but not the democracy practiced and corrupted by corporations and modern nation-states. It is, rather, a reimagination of public governance emerging from place, culture and people. (Hawken 2007:18) ‘Alternative conceptions and practices of democracy are being reflected upon in the emerging literature which derives its inspiration, first and foremost, from popular movements at the grassroots.’ (Esteva, E. and Prakash, M.S. 1998:158) ‘We quite quickly noted that political democracy is worthless unless you have economic democracy. ..So we started fighting for this land...And after many years of struggle we got 1200 hectares of land that now supports 8 cooperatives.’ (Jordan, J. & Fremeaux. I. 2008:167) • ‘Democracy, to persist, must be perpetually reinvented, which requires an active citizenry committed to the practise of participatory democracy.’ (Kivisto & Faist 2007: 131) • ‘The British people are disillusioned with the political process and with politicians themselves…At the same time, they also appear to share a growing, worldwide realisation that a fast-moving and increasingly unaccountable global economy is having damaging effects on their local communities. In the face of these trends, British people – again like their counterparts worldwide – are increasingly prepared to take matters into their own hands.’ (Kingsnorth 2004) • ‘In their new commons, they search for shared governance, where democracy is nothing but common sense.’ (Esteva, E. and Prakash, M.S. 1998:159)

6. References • The Ecologist (1993) Whose Common Future? Reclaiming the Commons, London: Earthscan Publications • Esteva, E. and Prakash, M.S. (1998) Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the soil of cultures, London & New York: Zed Books Ltd • Haringey Independent 21/11/2008 • Hawken, P. (2007) Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming, London: Penguin Books Ltd • Jordan, J. & Fremeaux. I. (2008) in Interesting Times, Soundings Issue 39, London:Lawrence & Wishart • Kingsnorth, P. (2004) ‘Can ‘active citizens’ transform British politics?’ openDemocracy www.opendemocracy.net 2004-07-13 • Kivisto, P. & Faist, T. (2007) Citizenship: Discourse, Theory and Transnational Prospects, UK:Blackwell • Linebaugh, P. (2008) The Magna Carta Manifesto, California & London: University of California Press • Rutherford, J. Inaugural lecture (13/03/08) The culture of capitalism, Middlesex University • Wainwright, H. (2003) Reclaim the State: Experiments in Popular Democracy, London: Verso • Ward’s Corner website: http://wardscorner.wikispaces.com/ • Photos by kind permission of Pam Isherwood : http://pamisherwood.wordpress.com/ • Sophie Ball • Middlesex University - School of Health & Social Sciences • Annual Summer Conference • 25th June 2009