“Previously we had always been able to come back. We had been poor before and we had been defeated before. But we had always had that vision that we could come back. That vision is gone and that loss of vision is the most damming consequence of that 14 years of struggle.” Dave Douglass, talking on the 1984/5 miners strike

The only way to defend against powerful corporate institutions is to build bigger and better institutions that represent people

The corporate dream

People are inadvertently living their lives around the visions of corporations, around illusions and very highly organised ones. Where are the alternatives?

The opposite reality, of the “left” can be another illusion. The illusion that knowing what is wrong, how things work, having all the answers and being right is all that is needed and all that has to be done. The balm of clever knowledge may keep the “educated” insulated in the ivory tower. But unless knowledge is translated to (universal) education and breaches the walls of the education establishment – much of this knowledge remains unreachable therefore unuseful to working people.

Building vision (for working people) starts at a practical level and with issues relevant to peoples lives. Through the struggle to deal with these issues, strategies are formed towards building vision of where we want to be.