Here we are at the turn of a new century the world is running riot. Oppression for the poor countries, obsession for the rich is the order of the day.The new technology which should liberate us, set us free, is used to help bludgeon the population into a state of anxiety, fear and paranoia. A state in which we find spending money, instead of time with each other, a remedy for our ills.

History and vision

We have placed our future hopes and trust in the hands of imbeciles and tyrants. It may be we need to regain our vision. That is a people’s vision. We have ignored Rousseau’s sound advice and stopped “Attending to our (own) garden.”

If we are to re-establish this vision.

1.We need to study the achievements of the people who struggled before us. The struggle that gave us the quality of life we now are finding ourselves needing to defend.
2. And we need to study the schemes and strategies of those who plan to deny us this vision.

Reclaiming the commons

Through out these pages I mention Government in the same breath as Big Business. I make no apoligies here, for to me they are almost one and the same thing. And never more so than in the political situation the world finds itself in today. It is too late to deal only in the parochial situation, or in single issue politics.

Our problems and their solutions are world wide. It has become only too plain in the recent past that politics, politicians and their policy decisions are made in isolation and are uneffected by the views of the people that these agents and policies are suppose to represent.

Things won’t, and never have gotten better on there own.

What I am aiming for in the following sections is:

1. To look at some of the devices and language used through public relations, the media and propaganda that is used to:

*Antagonize and dissuade the public from taking issue and exploring the disparities and unfairness that they find themselves up against.

*The class system that cements such inequality.

*The strategies that are used to defend it.

2. To point towards ideas, people, historical and contemporary references for positive change that will:

*Empower and encourage people in our communities to understand how to rationalize the problems and to discover where the answer to these problems lie.

*To percieve the distractions designed to take their eye off the ball.

*And to make the experience enlightening and as enjoyable as possible.( Which is potentially the biggest fear of those who deem to control and exploit us.)

What it’s all about

There is a history of radical working class struggle which bears witness that positive change is determined and won by ordinary people. This is the history from which we have become disconnected. We need to reconnect. Don’t confuse this with the history we learned at school –
This is the history that makes clear that iIt is not leaders who create positive change but it is the people in our communities, who not only create but underpin such change. A history that warns against complacency to the tricks and contrivances carried out by the architects of the class structure. Those who divide and rule and reward for conformity and competition.
It is worth remembering that most of what the working people struggle against, both nationally and internationally, are fundamentally to do with class. Class means the same thing in any language.

Commons is the generic term. It embraces all the creations of nature and society that we inherit jointly and freely, and hold in trust for future generations.