A Citizen Ownership Agenda: to reclaim power from global elites

I'm very pleased to be back in the People's Republic of Stra. Um I first saw that in the the backdrop of a a a talk that Gail Branbrook was doing in 2018 called distinction. So this town of Stra played a key role in uh extinction rebellion which then played a massive role in a new kind of environmentalism talking about climate as an urgent uh peril that we're in. Uh so yeah, it shows you what people can do uh from town Mike Straoud. So I mentioned that because I've been thinking about all the good things we've been hearing so far at this conference um and the importance of more commonly assess managed assets cooperatives and such like. So that's on the one hand and a greater political voice on the other which often requires activism and new ideas around that. So um I'm going to talk about that probably for about 25 minutes and then I'll invite you to discuss in groups what you feel about what I've said and then we'll do a bit of Q&A after that. So this is a a very different kind of talk for me um because I've never done a speech about specifically about politics before explicitly about politics and I was involved in politics the first half of 2017. I worked with Jeremy Corbyn and his top team uh in the run-up to the election in 2017 writing speeches and doing strategic communications and helping with the manifesto. But that was very much the back office and then after that I then uh trained some people who who are now running the back office like Morgan next week. I can't have that connection, but I've never myself done a political speech because of that. Um, I'm going to use notes. So, please, I want to get it right. Because I actually feel a bit nervous about talking about politics because we're in a time where people get very upset very quickly. Um, so sit. I'll say it. We'll see what happens. So since the start of XR extinction rebellion, obviously things um have been getting both worse and weirder. So with climate being climate change, global heating has been accelerating faster than anyone anticipated and people's delusions about that have been accelerating faster than anyone expected. And part of that is the understandable alienation that many people feel from experts and authorities. Um, and also the kind of elitist form of environmentalism which seems to dominate with both policy and budgets. And so within that context, I think that anything we can do which returns power to communities important. And that's why I was so keen to join in at this conference. some so the moment the discussion about what is a revival of the commons meaning why is it so important um particularly in this time when um as I see it we're not only in a time of societal destruction but some kind of creeping collapse of all the systems that we depend on the opportunities we once had so I want to check on whether we agree on something do we agree the people best place to look after something are those who use it, benefit from it and rely on it for the long term. >> Yeah. >> And in the right place. >> So that's the idea at the heart of the communist movement and the cooperative movement and of promoting what we might call citizen ownership more generally. So I think we should get quiet about the ownership aspect of what we're talking about uh both for common or cooperatives specifically we're interested in the fairness of ownership of property assets and enterprises and that's important in principle and in practice in this increasingly diff of societal disruption. It's involved in principle because the increasingly remote and extractive forms of ownership are a significant systemic cause of the worsening and weirdening of everything in our societies. And it's important in practice because both big corporations and the big government agencies are meeting people's needs and aspirations less than before and will continue to decline in that role. Now, history teaches us that any serious attempt at socopolitical change must involve both practical action and we showed some amazing examples of that just in the last session but also political voice. So I want to pose a question. Would you be happy if in 10 years from now there are a few more cooperatively owned houses, shops and pups in your local area, but the sector of cooperatives and the availability of resources held in common both physical and digital hadn't grown at all compared to today. Would you be happy? And that would also mean with the trends that we're seeing that Britain would be even less resilient than it is today happening with world's environment and all the political issue. So if that may not be good enough then we need to think a bit more politically which means that there needs to be a clear philosophy and voice around the role of the commons and about more fair and up close ownership in general. We need to be clear about the importance of more citizen ownership of the assets in this country both physical and digital. So yes, we can celebrate the activity of people and cooperatives and the commons as we're doing this weekend, but we shouldn't think that means we can ignore the political context around us, how that's changing and what we might be able to do about it. So yes, let's keep working locally. I myself involved. I'll mention that later. But I think it would be unwise to consider that a replacement for political engagement rather than a compliment to it. We can see that the state helps not hinders efforts to scale up citizen ownership. And for that to happen in a meaningful way, we've got to revive the politics around citizen ownership for this new context of societal disruption and decline. So it needs me means we need a political agenda that's relevant and relatable to real interests as well as internationalist and divorced from technofudal and techno athoritarian trends. So what I want to do in my talk is explain why a revival of commons related politics needs to happen and I'm going to give a couple of examples of the incoherence as I see it not only of current cooperative politics in Britain but also the wider political class and I believe if we don't articulate politics of revoling the commons which also speaks directly to the mainstream of political conversation Today we're going to become selfinvolved sideshow misselling our group projects of cooperatively going pubs shops and houses with a fanciful claim that this adds up to wider social change. >> [applause] >> Traditionally, the cooperative party has been regarded as representing the interest in community ownership within British politics. Many people don't even know the cooperative party exists as 43 ops in partnership with Labor on your uh House of Commons today. Representatives of the Cooperative Party say that they're very proud of being distinct and yet in cooperation with Labor, that they partner with them as a kind of a form of conscious marriage rather than a forced one. And there are some good policy initiatives coming from the C- party such as securing the legal right to lock assets with an within a co-op to stop greedy carpet baggers from deutralizing them. And that's a reminder of the potential role of the state in the partner state in supporting not hindering cooperative ownership and with the new English devolution and community engagement bill. If it becomes law, then that's also going to be a small success for the co-op party in strengthening community right to buy assets of particular community importance. But of course that doesn't mean there's going to be financing to do that especially in the context of inflating land prices and the start of government scrapping of the community ownership fund might actually turn out to be more consequential for community ownership. I think in truth you only get crumbs from the fat cats when you choose to sit at their feet. So I want to propose today that we need a new kind of commons politics for this era of societal disruption. One that's radically coherent and relevant to people today both home and abroad. We're going to look at the fundamentals for that. Commonly owned property is good because it means the property is owned by the people who contribute to it, who benefit from it and therefore are committed to it long term. This is the obvious benefit of more uplose ownership rather than distant ownership. It's just like citizenship in a country. Citizenship is good because it means rights and privileges of being a citizen of a country are for the people who contribute to it, benefit from it and therefore are committed to it over the long term. So exactly the same political philosophy means we can become concerned about the purchase of British property by foreign persons and foreign corporations. If they are not citizens or the shareholders of corporations not citizens, then that acquisition of property in the UK represents international capital, raising the prices of housing and rents for British residents, which means they're helping to extract money and time from our country into the international money system. This is the opposite of uplose ownership that the commons and cooperative move movements clearly recognize as important. And that is why it's important that foreign ownership of British land and housing has doubled at least since 2010. And that's not including the recent upswing in house buying by companies that are owned or financed by international capital. Bankers call it investment. It is actually economic dispossession. Now people are waking up to this when they see that foreign own water companies are taking away our money and just leaving us the sewage but there's a far wider exploitation of Kerala. Now in the last few years I've lived in Indonesia and as a foreigner there I'm not allowed to own land. So for my organic farm and farm school I need to buy at least 15 years. Um, so in future that land will return to the family and who've lived there for generations. I'm completely fine with that because it suits my values of not being there as a colonialist. Now in 60% of countries in the world, foreigners and foreign corporations can't buy land. So that means unlike us and Britain or Europeans or Americans or Australians um so for 75% of people in the world they're not competing with international capital for the price of a roof over their head or the price of a business parases or the price of a price of a piece of land to grow their own food. It's because such countries have a recent experience of foreign capital seekings would exploit their people. They know they need to fight against economic dispossession. But today, former colonizers like the UK or we're being colonized by the Frankenstein we created, which is the transnational capitalist class. People that you may have heard don't globalists. So restricting foreign ownership of land is a logical complement to an ethos of promoting more uplose ownership. a citizen ownership agenda is a logical compliment to support for the commons. However, the political imagination in this country has been so distorted that such an idea might even be dubbed racist. That's despite people from ethnic minorities disproportionately experiencing problems from rising menace. So in Britain, ethnic minorities are up to eight times more likely to experience over founding or unhealthy living conditions compared to the national average. Now neither the cooperative party nor any of the traditional parties have any policy proposals on this matter. The closest was 2% search charge on standard duty brought for foreign buyers brought in by the tries but that raised some revenue but did nothing to curb foreign ownership which was boo. And guess what? Reform UK has no proposals on this despite its rhetoric about defending Britain. Why? Because they're run by bankers who say whatever appeals to a disgruntled public by ensuring that the transnational capitalist class of which they're a part will continue to exploit us, the general public. So if we care about the commons as a principle, it's good enough for everyone, then we're caring about the economic rights and privileges of citizens. And if being a citizen is meaningful, then it involves having a preferential right and opportunity for economic control in the country where you have that citizenship. So we shouldn't be quiet about that because of fearing some kind of backlash from people who want to shame us I would say fake leftists and progressives who dominate British media and politics today and we should challenge the fake nationalism of reform UK because moderate immigration can be welcomed and celebrated and that's not the same as the economic dispossession of British citizens by international capital. So why am I talking about this at the festival of comedy? I think we won't move out of an ineffective duke of ghetto unless we become coherent and relevant in our analysis and proposals and try and speak to where people are having conversations in the mainstream which then also brings us to the most extreme form of economic dispossession that we're witnessing in the world right now. The term we give to this is settler colonialism. There's a lot of evidence to support the claim that the history of Israel has involved the theft of land by foreigners and the international capital they use. So it's a contemporary form of colonialism. Now obviously some of the resistance to that process by some Palestinians has caused great suffering to innocents but decent people will never accept the view that non-combatants are jointly responsible for the actions of their governments or militia. According to the legal experts, the British government and some British corporations are enabling war crimes. That includes making and supplying the armaments required by the IDF. The field of so-called responsible investment has been silent about profiting from those war crimes. Take a notable example. Black Rockck has large shareholdings in firms that supply arms to the idea. That even includes a direct stake in Elbert Systems, which in this country manufactures the means for forcibly moving and killing innocent civilians. So to the legal experts, that looks like profiting both from economic dispossession and genetic dispossession. So when the shareholders, directors and staff of Blackrop choose to profit from enabling genocide, they reveal who they truly are and what the system they administer truly is. Both they and the system they function within are applying a similar extractivist and destructive logic everywhere including even here in Britain because Black Rockck is one of the largest shareholders in Range of PLC the UK's largest listed private rented sector landlord. These firms are seeking to profit from ever higher rates, which means on the first day of every month, they're sucking the lifeblood out of Britain. So, I'll say it again. Making it harder to own your own property or afford a roof over your head is a form of economic dispossession. Rising housing costs are making it too costly for young people to move out of their parents' homes, plan for the future, or consider starting a family. Research on this finds it's one of the most important reasons for why young people are having kids. So by killing the very idea of babies, this is a form of econ not just of economic dispossession but also genetic dispossession and it's imposed by global capitalists who are shrinking the sense of possibility of younger generations in our country by race or creep. But we haven't heard any [clears throat] flavor of this uh we haven't heard any any of this from any flavor of media or political party. Not my heard. But from Gaza to Gaines Head, global capitalists are advancing the economic dispossession of citizens. In Gaza, the violence is extreme and overt. But in the areas of Britain where everyone goes into debt and mental servitude, there's a subtle and more covert form of violence. It's one where parents go hungry so they can still feed their kids or where people get sick in the winter because of a lack of uh adequate eating. Life in Britain seems a very different world to Gaza and thank God it is. But we're all being subjected to processes of the economic dispossession by of citizens by global elites. Abroad, we're seeing a violent transfer of economic control. And at home, we're seeing a peaceful transfer of economic control. But when we object to either of those processes, the state becomes violent to our rights and our bodies. So firms like Black Rockck are helping armies kill babies in Gaza, but they're also helping to kill the very idea of babies in the minds of young Britain. Now, it should come as little surprise that members of Britain's political class who enable colonial exploitation abroad are also enabling it here at home in Britain. The common factor is the political class. All of them, whatever their rhetoric, aren't helping families who've been embedded in place for generations with their ability to ward off international exploitation and economic dispossession. They don't prioritize ordinary people having the capabilities to care for ourselves and each other. Instead, they're acting as servants of money to the elites. And it's this political context which is so central to any effort to build the commons of cooperative sectors in Britain and beyond. All 43 MPs of the Cooperative Party voted to ban a nonviolent civil disobedience group by prescribing it as a terrorist terrorist organization. So whatever else their vote might indicate for us here today, it suggests they're not coherently understanding that uplose ownership begins with principle of not being forced off your land at gunpoint. So it points to the need for a new political movement around the commons and around cooperatives. Now the darkness I've described isn't on just one side of the political spectrum. Reform UK have had no interest in trying to stop our government's support for an ongoing colonial genocide and Reform UK have no policies on the foreign ownership of British land. So they don't care about you owning the land where you live or the Palestinians owning theirs. This demonstrates their fake advocates for a more national control and instead are just preserving the banker's exploitation of everyone from Britain to Palestine. Of course, it's not inevitable that all MDs will remain this way once they realize their treachery. To help that happen, we can become clear about our various interests, forming one career agenda. I'm inviting us all to make more explicit that the political interest we have in reclaiming control of economic life is a universal one. It's good enough for everybody if it's good enough for us. And that means we want political support for that at home and abroad. So it's neither racist to condemn Israel nor is it racist to demand Britain is not sold off to non-citizens. I want us I want to invite us to feel more confident in saying that just as Palestine is not for stealing, Britain is not for sale. And within that context, we get to explain why more uplose ownership in the form of more cooperative, more commonly held resources is actually so central to our future. And if we don't combine practical action with a louder strong political voice with uplose ownership or citizen ownership as a foundation stone for that then I think Britain will continue on its path towards a nation of renters and debt slaves. Ours will be a country run by bankers and elites who use our citizens capabilities to genocide others while waving the flag and telling us who to fear and who to blame. Instead, we could help to make citizen ownership the foundation of resilience in a turbulent future. So, let's not get stuck amidst the rubble of the old ways. Let's decide to be those green shoots that appear in the cracks through both practical action and political voice. [applause] >> [applause] >> Heat.