John Robb's booklet Out of the Past: a Divisive Democracy Into the Future: a Citizens Alternative is an attempt to confront issues facing a rapidly changing world that are usually swept under the carpet. He refers to the "humanity of many" being strangled by the need "to maintain the momentum of 'success', sales and status at the altar of consumption and pollution". 'Greedy materialism' reigns supreme among the prosperous while frustration and social anger dominates the alienated and marginalised.
Robb reflects on changes he associates with the 60s civil rights movements in the USA and Northern Ireland. He sees these as radical attempts to democratise institutions and communities but notes that many unionists saw civil rights as threatening.
This was because civil rights was interpreted as a subtle attempt to undermine the state, which whatever its weaknesses, was their basis of security. In contrast many nationalists felt inspired by a civil rights movement seeking to address their grievances and so, in Robb's view, they were led to engage in local community initiatives. Today, however, community development, community politics and Credit Unions find support in loyalist areas also.
Robb is attempting to stimulate discussion around the 'right of the citizen to participate in any decision-making process which affects her or him'. Power, he argues, should be dispersed from the centre to the region, the district and the individual. Robb admits, however, that the 1960s and 1970s did not provide a solid basis for real participation in that, without power to make it effective, participation represented little more than 'a sop thrown at frustration'.
Today he says comfortable powerlessness creates apathy among the affluent while the underclass struggles to cope with uncomfortable powerlessness that feeds anger, frustration and violence. He stresses that people want more than basic material needs and seek dignity, personal affirmation and an end to social disadvantage. Even outside the underclass many are consumed by fear lest loss of earnings plunges them into the same chasm. This fear remains largely unexpressed in a 'neurosis of silence'. Worldwide, the remoteness of centralism, 'the main disease of our time', has sapped the health and vigour of rural communities and produced a 'burgeoning underclass' linked with deprivation, destitution and starvation. In contrast, the cost of affluent consumerism to the environment is or ought to be alarming to 'all right thinking people' because we are devouring that which belongs to tomorrow.
There is also a dearth of creativity. Robb claims that many people no longer read different books and creatively do distinctive things. In the workplace many perform meaningless repetitive movements that characterise the 'inanity and artificiality' of modern employment. Even super specialists lack wholeness and, despite their 'expert' status, may be tempted to 'make a break for freedom' and join the struggle 'for liberation and regeneration'. Creativity once stretched beyond people's work lives so that some fulfilment could be found in creative leisure pursuits as well as in family and community activities but uncertainty threatens ever here.
Robb puts forward the New Ireland Group's Community Charter promoting citizen involvement in community, economic enterprise, health, education, politics, policing with voluntary national social service provided for school leavers. In much of this the thinking of Ivan Illich, former Jesuit priest and radical thinker who sadly died last year, shines through.
Robb is also appreciative of the work of EF Schumacher whose Small is Beautiful – he argued that smaller and more sustainable economic enterprises could in the long run, be more productive and less damaging to the earth's finite resources. People may be slowly and belatedly beginning to utilise less environmentally damaging and renewable forms of energy and opportunities exist for ordinary people to aid an ailing planet. However, democratisation of the workplace and meaningful work remains largely a pipedream. Among the underclass hopelessness coincides with high rates of illness, depression, unemployment and, as in Northern Ireland's underclass enclaves, victims of the system may be blamed for society's shortcomings.
Broken communities and broken lives displace the sense of human dignity, wholeness and purpose. The rich and powerful need to sit alongside the poor and marginalised to create a basis for a new dynamic and a better future for all. The task is big and must be faced in manageable portions. Robb quotes Schumacher who saw himself as a crank, 'a small object, manmade and it creates revolution!'
