Local Finance Scheme

As we saw in the 18th February blog of this series, a booklet published in 1988/9, tells the story of how local government of the people, financed by the people and for the people was wrecked by lies, treachery and self-interest of politicians under the control of global financial interests. It is a world-wide story that was repeated over and over again during the course of the 20th century. Ever since Rudolf Steiner spoke on The Karma of Untruthfulness during the First World War, corruption has disempowered ordinary people in their home territories. "It is a story of intrigue and double-dealing, ambition and power, sex and money, conspiracy and corruption, betrayal and blackmail!" The "Bradford Revolution", as told in The Pickles Papers is of utmost importance to the future of every locality across the world.

Up to the Local Government Reorganisation of 1974, the English system of local provision of health, education, welfare and culture was evolved by local people to meet the needs of local people in all walks of life. As such, it was second to none in the world. Through that system local people were able to work together on terms dictated by the needs of the people in the locality in which they worked. The Bradford Revolution took financial power clean out of the hands of the people who create wealth and welfare, and put it into the hands of the creators of war, poverty amidst plenty and ecologically disastrous infrastructures. That is not 'progress'. On the contrary, it spells disaster. So - where do we go from here?

In the last blog of this series (27th February) Terry Boardman was quoted as saying "We are finally beginning to realise ... that unless we change our way of life significantly, our so-called post-industrial civilisation may well not see the end of the 21st century; the human race will have committed suicide."

What is now vitally necessary is to re-establish local government of the people, by the people and for the people. Quite simply, we need to secure local authority and control over local economic resources. That means land, capital of all types, and, above all, our own labour. And that means thinking outside the box of mainstream, neoclassical economic orthodoxy. Thankfully, since that has been done before, there is no need to re-invent the wheel.

Set within the body of the Douglas/New Age literature is the Draft Mining Scheme. More accurately termed the Draft Finance Scheme, it was designed to be applied to farming, arts and crafts, industrial production, schools, colleges, hospitals, health clinics, land management, infrastructure provision and so on. Already, when the Scheme was first devised, and circulated through the educational arm of the trade union movement, the dangers of centralisation of financial power were being noted, observed and understood. Times were very different. Nevertheless, the importance of local control over banking and money supplies was well understood.

Details of the Draft Mining/Finance Scheme are given in What Everybody Really Wants to Know About Money and The Political Economy of Social Credit and Guild Socialism, await study by forward-thinkers of the 2020s. The proposals, which first appeared in Credit-Power and Democracy (Clifford Hugh Douglas,1920) were a century ahead of their time.

The correctly named ‘Draft’ Mining/Finance Scheme was a revolutionary proposal to bring industry under the economic control of workers’ banks, monitored by a central clearing house scheme. The abolition of the traditional antagonism between capitalist and worker combined with social control of prices was a novel concept. Douglas and Orage were aware that their work constituted an introduction to a new political economy. The development of a working blueprint would require the co-operation of leading thinkers, the trade unions and the wider community over an extended period. In 1922 Orage recognised the impossibility of further development in the short term. In 1923, as Douglas observed, the economic system was founded on outmoded financial mechanisms, which dictate economic growth based on the wasteful use of natural and material resources. Now:

"it is necessary to decide whether you wish the economic system to be made the vehicle for an unseen government, over which you have no control, which you did not elect, and which you cannot remove so long as you accept its premises; or whether, on the other hand, you are determined to free the forces of modern science, so that your needs for goods and services may be met with increasing facility and decreasing effort. This would permit humanity to expend its energy on altogether higher planes of effort than those involved in the mere provision of the means of subsistence." (See The Political Economy of Social Credit and Guild Socialism p77).

Douglas posed the rhetorical question: if this scheme appears complex and incomprehensible, is it any more so than the present financial system?

What Do You Think?

 

The worldwide social disorder we face today has not suddenly emerged out of the blue. On the contrary, it has been observed, documented and commented upon since the end of the First World War over a century ago. Now, as then, we seem to be none the wiser as to the causes of the general malaise.

Eimar O'Duffy, Irish poet, playwright and economic philosopher, wrote Asses in Clover in 1933. He neatly summarised the dilemma of the 20th century. Like so many at the time, O'Duffy knew that the problems of war, poverty-amidst-plenty, environmental degradation and over-production were the direct result of the muddle-headed-thinking of the ordinary citizen- in-the-street who is prepared to go to work or to war if they are paid an income to do so. While people continue to be educated on a pure diet of materialistic philosophy, it is small wonder that, to this day, Cuanduine's quest to free the natural world (songbirds and wildlife) from the grip of corporate ownership would be met by the same blank incomprehension as when O'Duffy wrote in his dystopian novel:

"The unfortunate people being so muddled in their heads by all they had been taught by their schoolteachers, their professors, their novelist-philosophers, their publicists, their economists, their politicians, and their newspapers, that they were quite incapable of thinking to purpose for themselves."

Nothing has changed over the intervening decades. If anything, the situation has worsened. Stop anybody in the street, - academic or activist, nurse, salesman, physicist, parent, teacher or grandparent, ask what they think should be done, and the same refrain will echo back: "I'm too busy to think it through right now".

And what are they so busy doing? Earning the money from some kind of employment to pay the rent/mortgage to keep a roof over the heads of their family so that they can put their children through an educational system designed to turn out adults incapable of thinking why they have no time to stop and think, because they have to go to work to earn the money to pay the rent... . So long as people are brought up from childhood under the impression that working for tests, exams, certificates and qualifications to improve their career prospects and earning power is the main priority in life, it will be emotionally tricky for them to undertake any fundamental re-think of the social order under which they live and gain their livelihoods.

In an article in New View, published in the Summer 2006 edition, anthroposophist Terry Boardman makes the following observation:

"Since the reign of King James I, the colossal consequence of the Anglo-American globalising process with its overwhelming concentration on the products of the sense world matrix, there has been a mighty acceleration in the pace of economic, scientific and technological change to the point where today, the very future of humanity is threatened by nuclear annihilation, ecological disaster, genetic manipulation and the replacement of human beings by robots and cyborgs, all the consequence of a reductionist philosophy of natural science that rigidly restricts its investigations to the world of the five senses and their technological extensions. We are finally beginning to realise, as we never did during the nuclear showdown years of the Cold War, that unless we change our way of life significantly, our so-called post-industrial civilisation may well not see the end of the 21st century; the human race will have committed suicide."

Prospects for the future look gloomy, and will continue to do so so long as citizens are content to work for money as nuclear physicists, researchers in Big Pharm companies (see Le Carre's The Constant Gardener), academics and politicians across the board, in banking, transport, farming, health, welfare, education and in administration. After all, as was well said, it is difficult to get a man "to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding". Or, to put it another way:

I thank the goodly god of Gold

Who has denied me nought,

Who has increased me fifty-fold,

Because I have not thought. 

(Eimar O'Duffy 1933)

Local Government

The "Bradford Revolution" of 1988 (see Blog 18 Feb 22) heralded the nation-wide imposition of financial control over local government. All manner of local provision of health, welfare, education, infrastructure and community support for urban dwellers and their families were taken under the financial control of national government, and then denied funding. The history of the evolution local government provisions may prove helpful in understanding what is happening today. And the best way to start would seem to be to consider the origins of those provisions that were to be the subject of swinging cuts in the Bradford Revolution of 1988. (which in turn followed from the Local Government Acts of 1974).

Finance and urbanisation have gone hand in hand since the onset of the industrial revolution in the 18th century. And that is because the move to the towns from traditional farming communities necessitates a host of communal provisions to fill the gaps that were filled by traditional communities.

Municipal, 'gas-and-water' socialism was the term given in the late 19th century to the provision of local government services in the inner cities. Poverty and disease were rife. The quest was to provide piped water, sewage disposal, fuel, transport, health care, education and the entire infrastructure necessary to produce healthy living and working conditions in urban areas. The services were administered through democratically elected local government structures evolved by and for the local citizens of the urban district across the political spectrum. The Bradford Revolution led to the nationwide dismantling of a host of this type of provision considered necessary for sustainable urban living since the late 19th century.

In 1988 the official story line was that municipal provision of of services could not be sustained for lack of finance. The task ahead is to review the local history of the area in which we currently live, with a view to re-creating democratically sound, sane and sustainable provisions of municipal services, health, education, welfare, libraries, parks, leisure centres, allotments, advice centres, and above all council housing and Care Homes. The entire pack of lies that has been sold to a gullible electorate over recent decades is designed to bring in a totalitarian regime of global finance. Tat danger is to be avoided at all costs.

In 1944, Orwell wrote: "The really frightening thing about totalitarianism is not that it commits 'atrocities' but that it attacks the concept of objective truth; it claims to control the past as well as the future," a framework that would morph into Big Brother's "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." The attack on truth and language makes the atrocities possible. If you can erase what has happened, silence the witnesses, convince people of the merit of supporting a lie, if you can terrorize people into silence, obedience, lies, if you can make the task of determining what is true so impossible or dangerous they stop trying, you can perpetuate your crimes. The first victim of war is truth, goes the old saying, and a perpetual war against truth undergirds all authoritarianisms from the domestic to the global. After all, authoritarianism is itself, like eugenics, a kind of elitism premised on the idea that power should be distributed unequally." (Quoted in Orwell's Roses by Rebecca Solnit (2019, p145)

Presently, we find ourselves living under a state of medical martial law, maintained by the police and backed by the military. In the absence of democratic debate based upon clearly presented factual information, we find ourselves subjected to 'Lockdown' measures that seem quite inappropriate outside a police state. And all in the name of health and safety!

So, what can be done? We must face the fact that too many are complying, in the hopes that it will all blow over. We must, on the contrary, move in the opposite direction, seeking to decentralise power and control to local level. The way to a sustainable future is to re-create municipal consensus politics at local level. We must support local farms, suppliers and businesses, becoming increasingly self-sufficient, doing more for ourselves outside the money economy. Local banking must become more widespread defence against Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). All such measures require local people's research, informal 'round table discussions' and practical action. So much is already happening.

Non-compliance is not an easy option. That way the Covid measures will last for ever. We may tell ourselves that this will be just until the crisis ends. But if history tells us anything, it teaches us that nobody ever 'complied their way out of totalitarianism'.

The Bradford Revolution

 A small book entitled The Pickles Papers, published in 1989, carried the following legend:

"In October 1988 Eric Pickles and his Tory group took control of Bradford Council with a radical programme designed to "wipe out municipal socialism forever".

"His plan heralded the "Bradford Revolution" and was set to become the blueprint for every radical Tory council in the land. The story behind the Bradford Revolution is the story of Eric Pickles.

"It is a story of intrigue and double-dealing, ambition and power, sex and money, conspiracy and corruption, betrayal and blackmail!"

The Pickles Papers raises the issue of the changes in administration of local government services that flowed from the 1974 Local Government Acts. Sweeping boundary changes were imposed on local authorities across the entire country. The book tells the story of how Bradford blazed the trail of devastation of local services, leading towards the present imposition of totalitarian controls. The boundary changes of 1974 were imposed upon local authorities on grounds of a spurious financial 'efficiency'. They were NOT demanded by the people, by their elected councillors, or by the local government employees. In fact, as Tony Grogan shows in The Pickles Papers, they were fiercely opposed. There was a general feeling that local shops and local businesses, banks, schools, hospitals, clinics, transport and the entire infrastructure were serving the local community through identifiable structures operated by identifiable individuals. Between 1974 and 1988 elected councillors of all parties sought to make the new administrative structures work for their local communities. That was an impossibility. The changes were intended to take power from the people. Throughout the country, individuals like Eric Pickles were being groomed as tools of the national financial authorities. Financial capitalism had to "wipe out municipal socialism for ever" because consensus politics is its arch enemy. The new agenda introduced by the financial powers-that-be through the likes of Eric Pickles, had no time for the consensus politics of truly local political administration.

Tony Grogan takes up the saga of 1988:

"Beeley [leader of the opposition] eyed his overweight opponent with anger. Beeley had been a close friend to Pickles' predecessor as Tory leader, but he could not even bring himself to speak to Pickles. For Bradford it was a new phenomenon. Years of consensus politics had ended with Pickles and Beeley sharing a mutual contempt.

"There lay few surprises ahead. Since taking control on September 18th [1988] Pickles had created a near hysterical atmosphere with a series of shock announcements spelling out his radical plans. Almost daily the local newspaper, the Telegraph and Argus, had led it's front page with the latest news of proposed cuts, sell-offs, price rises and job losses. But Pickles knew exactly what he was doing. He chose to ignore warnings - even from his loyal officers. 3 weeks earlier he had made his most stunning pronouncement to date; the Tory group would axe the jobs of 9000 council employees!

"At 4 o'clock the council meeting got underway. It was to be one of the longest in living memory lasting over 12 hours.

"Throughout the meeting abuse flew across the council chamber and down from the galleries. At times it was impossible to hear the debates, but one by one the Tory's phase one proposals were pushed through on the casting vote of the Lord Mayor.

"An hour and a half into the meeting everything stopped as someone set off the fire alarm. 2 hours later further disruption was caused by what turned out to be a hoax bomb call.

"But nothing could stop Pickles and his group as proposal after proposal were approved in the stifling heat of the council chamber.

"£5.8 million was cut from the budget, chiefly in Education. Up went council rents, the first of 2 such increases within 6 months. Up went charges for leisure centres, theatre hire, car parks, school meals, home helps, meals on wheels, elderly luncheon clubs and cemeteries. Staff cuts were announced amongst repairs and maintenance workers, caretakers, teachers, creche and nursery workers, social workers and council officers. Job vacancies would remain unfilled and budgets slashed in most departments. The council's Old Peoples Homes would be sold off and Benefit Advice Centres closed. For the largely poor inhabitants of the inner city it was a terrifying package and it was only the start." (p11).

And the rest is local history just waiting to be drawn upon for suggestions for building back a better system of local security to counter the power of global finance. The task is to explore new ways for all to work towards the common good at local, national and international levels, starting by reclaiming our truly local autonomy.

Robots

 A frequently asked question is WHY? What are the powers-that-be, up to as they commit those crimes against humanity against which Reimer Fuellmich has now launched his case? Fuellmich may well be right, we muse, but what on earth have the authorities to gain from pursuing that course of action? The wicked uncle can engineer a situation where the unwary nephew slips on the banana skin. But why should he bother to do that? What is he up to? If ill-health and malaise abound, if people are indeed dying from the side effects of Big Pharma products, surely there will be no wealth or welfare for the super-rich or anybody else to enjoy. What's the point?

The answer is quite simple. The fault lies in our inability to recognise that consensus politics has long since disappeared from the scene, locally, nationally and internationally. We continue to assume that we all want the same things - peace, prosperity, health, welfare and happiness for all, imagining we merely differ in our opinions of the best way of achieving that end. And that's where we are going so horribly wrong. There is another agenda, and it has been around for a very long time, that is, for at least a century and a half.

The alternative watchword is "progress". The natural world as a whole, and humanity itself, need to be improved upon. They are fundamentally flawed, and await the scientific and technological progress being perfected by Anthony Fauchi, Bill Gates, and the entire Big Pharma brigade. The sky is, quite literally, the limit. We can reach the moon, the stars, the planets. We can create artificial habitats, Artificial Intelligence, and Eden Valleys in space containing robot bees. We have developed ways to correct all manner of faults in human bodies. We can cross animal, plant and human genes, create clones with desirable characteristics as foretold in dystopian novels. We have no further use for primitive human beings tied to the land, family and community. As we create drones and driverless vehicles we can move humanity forward into an endless game of model railways where we, the masters, are in control.

For decades we have allowed the 'experts' to experiment with our bodies, taking our sperm from our loins and our eggs from our ovaries, in order to provide embryo human beings for experimentation. Women's bodies have long been sites for experimentation. Our experiments with vaccines and the like may cause harm, but after all, taking a long term view, we don't need a large world population any longer. In fact, it is entirely dispensable. We can create all the clones and drones necessary to maintain the course of human progress. There is no room for sentimental regrets. Just face the facts: you can't stop progress.

Rational, Scientific, Economic Man has reserved to himself the right to play on into the future on the toy model railway he has created. He has no time for beauty, truth or love.

References

Robert F Kennedy, Jr. (2022) The Real Anthony Fauchi: Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. (Available electronically. Soon to be available in print in UK).

Jeremy Naydler, (2020) The Struggle for a Human Future: 5G, Augmented Reality and the Internet of Things, Temple Lodge.

Eimar O’Duffy, (1933) Asses in Clover Jon Carpenter (2003 edition)

Pat Spallone, (1989) Beyond Conception: The New Politics of Reproduction, Macmillan Education.

The Politics of 1974

The Local Government reorganisation of 1974 swept away local autonomy. In doing so, it made possible the present Dictatorship of Global Finance. Up to that point local government in the UK had been evolved by the people and for the people, and was a powerful force to contend with. Municipal socialism, as it can be termed, served the people well. Thereafter came the domination of the paymasters over policy formation across the political, cultural and economic spheres of the social commonwealth.

In the following series of blogs we will explore the impact that the changes in national legislation had upon local communities, local economies and the lives, lands and liberties of local citizens. Our starting point is Keighley, not just because I live here but because there is to hand some particularly interesting historical material. For example, opposition to national mandatory vaccinations in Keighley can be traced as far back as 1875. Local historian Ian Dewhirst tells the story:

"The Vaccination Acts of 1867 and 1871 had made the Board of Guardians responsible for enforcing the vaccination of the children within their Union — no easy burden, in the face of national opposition to what was still a controversial measure. In fact, the Guardians — in tune with the mood of the town — tacitly refused to prosecute the Acts. A Keighley smallpox epidemic in 1875 underlined the dangers of the situation, but also provided antivaccinationist [sic] propaganda insofar as both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated died. A long legal battle failed to budge the Guardians, until in August, 1876, the seven most obdurate among them were arrested, amid scenes of near-riot, as shouting crowds unhitched the horses from the omnibus taking them to the station, and dragged omnibus, Guardians and High Sheriff's officers round the streets. The occasion was celebrated locally with a brisk sale in carte-de-visite portraits of the prisoners, together with sundry broadsheets of verse:

"'At the pale little Sheriff one couldn't but smile,

As dumbfounded he sat like a mouse all the while;

Saying, I've heard tell o' Keighley, but ne'er been before,

And may I be hanged if I come any more.'

"The Guardians spent the better part of a month in the Debtors' Prison at York (the broadsheets more poetically said Clifford's Tower), where they ignored the rules, were feted by the National Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League, showered with grapes, books and money from sympathisers, and finally released on bail at the fervent request of the harrassed Governor. When, that November, the case of The Queen versus the Guardians of the Keighley Union came up at the High Court of Justice in London, the Vaccination Acts were at last applied: the obstinate seven returned home to tender their resignations and to receive a vote of thanks, endorsing a substantial public opinion, "for the manner in which they have resisted the carrying out of compulsory vaccination in Keighley." (Extract from Ian Dewhirst (1974) A History of Keighley, Keighley Corporation (p78-70).

Over the intervening decades, right up to the present day, the history of the relationship between national power and the political will of the people has been played out, and makes very interesting reading. The time has come to research, review and discuss the evolution of local government and its fate following the reorganisation of Local Government between 1974. The 'Bradford Revolution' of 1988 heralded the demise of municipal socialism in towns and cities across the land. . What happened in 1974? It certainly was not driven by the will of the people, So - why did it happen?