In 2006, as an independent radical bookseller in Leeds, we found ourselves at a Transition meeting. What’s that you may ask? Not quite understanding either, we soon learned about how we need to form societies at local and then national level to transition from reliance on what is now Peak Oil, the perils of Capitalist growth models, and the impending disaster looming on the horizon caused by hurtling climate change and corporate greed. Big exciting ideas were now on the table. Local Currencies. Garden Cities. Environmental Action Groups. We learned that at national level young radical economists were making suggestions about, for example, Steady State Economics, the reform of money creation and BasicIncomes. Engineers and scientists also were looking at biofuels and other renewables , politicians were... doing very little.
On the national political scene there was a yawning chasm of at best inaction, blindness and ennui. A Labour government was in power which not only seemed to be colluding with the status quo it had begun its latest cycle of interminable infighting, in this period manifest in the competing ambitions of Blair and Brown. There seemed to be no alternative but to mobilise at local level.
So ultimately, Transition was about mobilisation: to find a means by which our City – and others – could begin to consider solutions wherein we could change the values, life and infrastructure of our locality. Thereby we would become a grass-roots national movement that would offer a practical response to the deep radical changes that would surely happen in how we all live our lives once the oil, for a variety of complex and fairly well rehearsed reasons now, could no longer be lifted out of the earth.
It was a hell of learning curve. Stats on population growth, world indebtedness, corporate power, and the banks were paraded. Folks, I tell you there were soothsayers at that meeting. We learned about how the banks were mortgaging our future in a bewildering array of financial products even they couldn’t understand. We learned about the vulnerable localities throughout the world that in 20 years would be under water or embrittled as deserts if we didn’t change our ways. We learned about the concept of oil wars – that Blair and Bush were warmongering their way to the oil rigs and that this wouldn’t be the end. And we were warned about the possibility of new wars and how borders will close because of surges in economic migrants and climate refugees.
Well here we are. Transition was a nice idea and spawned others including that other nice idea, Occupy. What good did it do? We are on our way out of Europe, Donald Trump is the President of the United States of America . The wolf is at the door and there seems to be no ‘populist’ progressive solutions on offer to stop it from blowing our house down. Here at Radish, we are not experts. We have no more power than any other ordinary Jo/e with an opinion but our citizen’s perspective is born and inspired entirely from that original Transition experience and we intend to continue to use it.
Democracy does not end with a voting event but continues in other forms. RadishBlog continues in this vein and also suggests books, articles and further reading for others who are similarly minded may find of interest.
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