e-mancipation

Today, e-mancipation.org.uk is a site dedicated to the promotion of change in our political system towards one which ensures that Parliament represents the will of the people but bringing about constitutional change to facilitate the ability of governance to accommodate the diversity of preferences amongst the UK social and economic constituencies.

This site is the result of some five (5) years work and analysis on how to promote successful independent community representation.

Free Britain

The original initiative involved two web sites UKIndependents and EUIndependents (initiated in 2005) and associated with the medium FreeBritain.com (initiatied in 2004). The reasons for a revealing lack of public interest in these initiatives were analysed in some depth. Amongst the conclusions drawn was the fact that the British media and reporting environment was not applying sufficient resources to such questions because they were not editorial priorities. On the other hand numerous short term issues continue to switch the attention of the media from one issue to another in quick succession. A marked phenomenon during this period was the extent the focus of media was dominated by political party press releases or headline-grabbing events announced or leaked as a tactic by parties to dominate media coverage. Often these tactics were used to depreciate the standing of the opposition or anyone considered to be an influential or potentially influencial opposing force. However, the substantive significance of content was invariably extremely low.

Outcomes

It was concluded that there was a need to initiate a broad communications effort so as to promote a clear and consistent analysis and description of the predicament of Britain's democratic status by exposing the more damaging impacts of political party behaviour as well as to review practical options to foster more reflection and consideration of feasible means of moving towards a more appropriate basis for representation and decision-making to be more responsive to the preferences of the social and economic constituencies of the United Kingdom.

Emancipation

Our first step in this direction was to start this site (e-mancipation.org.uk) in November 2006. At first we attempted to produce a participatory site including online voting on issues of importance. However, we found that such an initiative had several drawbacks, the most significant of which was the ease with which communications technologies (email, mobile and internet dialogues) can help secure fraudulent votes and the difficulty of operating in an environment where the rest of the UK media and print media coverage continue to act as a veil obscuring or distracting attention from the fundamental failures of our political system. Accordingly, in February, 2008, we launched the online medium Emancipation (part of APE-Agence Press Européenne) to provide a voice for rational politics and the promotion of independent community representation. In November 2008 the domain registration of e-mancipation.org.uk lapsed but it was decided in March 2009 to re-register this domain name and post the original, but up-dated, content.

Text book on how politics can work without parties

There was a need for a reference work providing a broad review of the specific issues causing our democracy to be so ineffective in satisfying preferences and defending freedom. Accordingly in 2007 the book, "The Briton's Quest for Freedom .. Our unfinished journey" was published which provides a more comprehensive background to the range of constitutional failures in the UK political system and containing specific proposals for new constitutional structures aiming to bring governance into line with the preferences of the social and economic constituencies. The only rational basis for achieving this, as set out in this book, is to change the basis of representation from that of political parties to independent representation. However, as this book observes, a range of constitutional provisions are required to guarantee governance which accommodates and reflects the preferences of the social and economic constituencies. The significance of this book is that it provides a comprehensive justification for "politics without parties" and the means of achieving this.