Virtue ....... Freedom ....... Aspiration ....... Wealth ....... Peace
A MANIFESTO IN THE MAKING
Manifesto Introduction
The party defines itself by the five core policies. So that members and non-members clearly understand what the party stands for, these cannot be changed. At present they are principles the details of which will be decided according to the party constitution
All other policies will be decided according to the constitution
Below is a provisional list of headings for the Mani-festo each with a link to a page
That page contains provisional ideas for discussion.
Read this, as work in progress. Only DRP paid up members can comment and so if you want to have your say:
JOIN THE PARTY AND LEAVE A COMMENT !
A NEW CONSTITUTION FOR BRITAIN
Constitution Design
Executive
House of Commons Senate/House of Lords
Autonomous Regions
Democracy
Judiciary
Constitutional Court Supreme Court
Functions of Government Public Services Board Monetary Policy Board
ECONOMICS
Banking
Finance
Globalization
Monetary reform
TAXATION
Tax havens
Corporation tax
Income tax
Wealth tax
REGIONS
Federal nation
Autonomous regions
INDUSTRY
Skills training
Industry needs
Business development
Export assistance
PUBLIC SERVICES
Health
Education
Utilities
Transport Road Rail Air
Social Housing
Postal Services, Telecommunications
Police
Fire Service
Prisons
Probation Service
Waste/ pollution
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Europe
Commonwealth
SOCIETY
Families
Social exclusion
Minorities and race relations,
Citizenship
Economic enfranchisement
Church of England
Civil Society
Deprivation
Youth
Meritocracy
Immigration
Ethical Issues
Humanitarian issues/Animals
Press and Media
NATIONAL PLANNING
National planning strategies
Coordination of regions
Transport
LAW
Justice
Human rights
Liberty
Economic rights
Citizenship
Penal reform
Vice
Drugs
Prostitution
Gambling
CULTURE
Arts
Broadcasting/BBC
Press
POLITICS
Political parties
Corruption
Protest
Political philosophy
HISTORY
SPORT/LEISURE
ENERGY
ENVIRONMENT
AGRICULTURE
CEREMONIAL
CIVIL SERVICE
Government departments
Prosecution Service
ISSUES DISCUSSED IN THE NEWSLETTERS NOT LINKED TO THE MANIFESTO
Whiggism
HISTORY
British Republican History
OTHER NATIONS
Three
INJUSTICE
We live in a world of massive injustice.
Everybody feels this and is aware of it. The effects of this injustice touch us all of our lives to a greater or lesser extent.
It might be because we see the country plunged into austerity in order to pay for the errors and greed of the banks and their super wealthy customers
It might be because we see our children getting into debt for the sake of an education to help give them a future in employment and at least a chance of some prosperity and fulfilment.
It might be because our savings and pensions are being constantly eroded as the government and the Bank of England contrive economic strategies to devalue the wealth we have worked hard to accumulate.
It might be because we see how those from privileged background advance faster and easier than we ever could hope to and go on to take the reins of government
It might be because we have lost our job and see the odds stacked against us against finding an equivalent job again
It might be because we see the death and suffering of our military who have been engaged in wars with doubtful ends and doubtful possibility of achieving those ends – if they can be defined
It might be because we see the desperate plight of those in the developed world living in countries mired in debt and corruption
It might be because we see a proud people like the Greeks reduced to penury and selling off their heritage
It might be a whole range of other factors.
Injustice touches us all. It undermines and poisons the society we live in.
And perhaps worst of all, we see no end to the system that produced and sustained the injustice that characterises our times.
The causes of injustice remain in place. Solutions to injustice are nowhere to be seen.
So what are the causes of injustice? How do we define this injustice in general terms?
The present day injustice has overwhelmingly a single cause: the massive disparity of wealth between those few individuals worldwide that hold and control great fortunes and the rest of us with normal means.
"Normal" can mean "rich" or even "very rich" - but not so superrich that you become divorced from any nation and its interests.
This is not a simple contrast between rich and poor as could be seen in previous eras.
And it is not that poverty and deprivation do not exist and that these no not also represent injustice.
We are speaking here of an all-pervading injustice that permeates through the whole society at every level, that affects every tax payer and everyone seeking just to find their way to a good life for themselves and their family.
The root of the problem lies in the way finance is structured.
The liberalisation of banking and finance that has taken place over the last thirty years has facilitated the creation of wholly new capital structures to which only the superrich have assess.
These structures carry names that may be familiar but are often little understood. All serve essentially the same purpose: to suck wealth and earnings out of the productive economy.
The superrich are a pure rentier class. They contribute nothing to the real wealth of society. Their activities are not productive but parasitical.
They impoverish those working in the productive economy which then creates a further demand for loans. So further capital structures are created in a vicious spiral of rising debt and hopelessness.
You can see this in government debt which is constantly rising with no real hope of every paying it off.
You can see this in the way this in turn leads to issues of more government debt and twists the knife further.
You can see this in rising house prices which mean working people have to borrow ever more just to be able to own their home.
You can see this in the way students are forced to take loans to pay for an education and will spend years of their lives repaying the debts – if they ever do
These arrangements are all part of the “financialisation” of our lives, where every aspect of our lives becomes subject to loans – and as financialisation take over ever greater debt is needed to support it.
The beneficiaries of this debt are those who hold the capital. For the most part these are individuals and organisations that acknowledge allegiance to no country. They locate their wealth in tax havens shielding their earnings from the national taxes that normal people pay.
This evasion of tax further magnifies the inequality in wealth holding and the obscene injustice that goes with it.
The present political classes do nothing to correct this massive problem that pollutes and threatens our society and our economy.
Our monarch who is head of state of the British tax havens and has control over their legislation turns a blind eye. But the Queen is heavily and conspicuously implicated in all the evils that tax havens practice and allow.
It is transparently obvious that nothing is being done about this injustice. We are not shifting out of the present condition one inch.
Nothing has been learnt from the Great Crisis that started in 2008. That crisis continues and there are certainly many twists and turn still to come. All of them we can be sure will be bad.
Politicians talk about “fairness” as something they wish to strive for. They are doing little in this respect and the vocabulary itself reveals the feebleness of their thinking and their intentions;
We need the much stronger vocabulary of “justice” and “injustice”. Justice is what we seek - not a derisory fairness.
Justice is not a word the current political debate likes for it refers us too precisely to the nature of the condition of the world we live in.
One of the five core values that democratic republicanism holds to is virtue.
We wish to strive for a virtuous society and that means a society made up for the most part of virtuous citizens.
Indeed practically everyone wants to be virtuous. People do not need a political philosophy to remind them of this. We try to be virtuous. We regret it when we fall short of the high standards we set for ourselves.
But there is a huge obstacle to being virtuous in current society. The problem is that to be virtuous you have to believe that we live in a just society.
In societies where corruption is rife it is very difficult for the individual to take a moral stance in their actions. If everybody else is cheating and lying, maintaining virtue is very difficult and may practically disadvantage you and your family.
We still do live in a just society in many ways. The legal system for all its faults provides a degree of criminal and civil justice.
Everywhere in our contact with friends, colleagues and public figures we see people acting in a just and often generous way.
But overarching the just conduct we witness in our daily lives is the massive injustice by which our hard earned wealth being stolen from us.
Legally it may not be stealing. But that is precisely the problem. The theft of personal wealth and national treasure as it is practiced now by globalised wealth is entirely legal.
The whole apparatus whereby capital structures suck the wealth out of productive businesses and citizens has grown up with the endorsement of the political classes.
In this they have been aided by academic economists, whose neo-liberal theories approve financialisation and the explosion of rentier capital.
The way to restoring virtue and justice is largely through legal measures that will control the way capital operates.
These measures are not in any way anti-capitalism. It is the current domination by finance that is anti-capitalist.
It denies the essential ingredients of true capitalism:
freedom, the right to retain ownership of what is rightfully yours, true competition between companies, fair taxation and state support for innovation.
The present system crushes these elements sucking the life blood out of the system.
The spirit of people is such that many will always seek to prevail against adverse circumstance and sometimes succeed.
But we do not need the adverse circumstances in the first place.
With a proper reorganisation banks and finance we will create an economy that encourages private enterprise and true capitalism not one that works against it.
We will create a society that no longer carries the overwhelming sense of massive injustice
A society where justice and virtue can flower as natural and equal partners.
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