May 19, 2023 • 35 mins
Robert sits down with Patrick Thelwell, an anti monarchy activist who hucked several eggs at the King of England and was arrested and charged.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, Robert here. Before we get into it, I
want to note my internet was terrible during this call.
We tried to have the guest record locally, but there
was kind of a technical glitch there, and Zoom glitched
a little on the audio. In order to make it listenable.
There are going to be like three or four points
here where I pop in and just say what he
(00:21):
was trying to say or what he said, and the
Internet then garbled up so that you can understand what's
actually being said in the conversation. So when my voice
pops in and I read a line, it's me reading
something that he said that got kind of distorted. I
do apologize. Ah, welcome to it could happen here. A
(00:43):
podcast about things falling apart and occasionally about the quest
to build a better world. Today, we've got an episode
that is in the latter category about the struggle to
make the United Kingdom less I don't know, in the
thrall of a monarchy and an aristocratic class, and to
(01:04):
build a more equitable society. And our guest today is
somebody who is attempting to further that cause, and did
so last year by attempting to huck several eggs at
the current King of England, Charles the I forget the number. Patrick, Well,
how are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Hi?
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Yeah, I'm good. Thanks. Yeah, it was five eggs. Five
eggs and he's the third king.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
The third king, third king.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Far more than three unfortunately. Yeah, you guys have had
a few. Was one of the ones you'all killed?
Speaker 4 (01:40):
To Charles?
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Yeah, yeah, that was the last one.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
That was the last one. Well, yeah, I would say trouble. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
So let's start by talking about this is in a
twenty about a year ago at a he was doing
a they called it a walkabout, which I guess is
when the king shows up in a city in the video.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
I watched the video of this and like, there's.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
A bunch of people dressed in all sorts of fun costumes,
and some ladies got a massive sword.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
Like a a sword of.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
The size that I know for a fact that man
cannot lift above his head.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Yeah, it's funny. He comes out of his little car
and I know, all the little trumpets go and everyone starts,
you know, waving their flags on queue and going like, look,
there he is. There is some pretty unhinged to be honest,
it's it's it's quite embarrassing.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
But yeah, there's like the American chauvinist in me that
like wants to wants to laugh more about the monarchy.
But I'm just finished reading an article about Dianne Feinstein
where the journalist interviewing her was like, so you've missed
a bunch of votes over the last three months, and
(02:53):
she's like, no.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
I haven't. I've been working the whole time.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
So I guess we're all kind of enthrall to the
corpses of of our past.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
It's hierarchy. Hierarchy everywhere is the problem.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
So you decide to show up when you kind of
find out that the king is going to be showing
up here, and what kind of leads you to decide,
I'm gonna I'm gonna throw some eggs in my pocket
and take my shot.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
So I actually only found out that he was coming
to York about three days with a megaphone and you know,
shout some cause obviously the queen had died about a
month or so before, and during the funeral processions there
was you know, several people were arrested for someone shouted
(03:41):
at you know, Prince Andrew, you know, in Scotland's they
were like, oh, you're a sick old man, and they did,
and that was probably my my inspiration. But then on
the morning when he came to York, my megaphone was
just like busted. So I was just like, oh, okay,
I'm gonna gonna go get some eggs then.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
And white eggs.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
What kind of led to that decision?
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Man? Everyone asked that. Yeah, I guess like I was
into the assumption that we all just knew that you
throw eggs at people you don't like maybe it's a
British thing.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
But I think it may just be that in the
US because of the gun stuff, people are like a
lot more hesitant to huck stuff just for fun, right,
if you're throwing stuff and somebody it's serious.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Although someone someone threw a beer at Ted Cruz.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
Yeah, they sure did. That was good. That was good.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yeah. I think you know, I actually had a lot
of time to think about before my trial about white
eggs and stuff, and I think they're just funny, you know,
like there's a lot of egg puns that came out
of it that that, you know, not to get too
philosophical about it, but they're kind of you know, they're
they're really harmless, you know, but inherently humiliating as well.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to argue attempted murder from an egg.
But at the same time, yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Well exactly. And I think there's there's something to be
said for contrasting the violence of the state, yeah, with
what's obviously like very low level violence. And yeah, I'm
the one standing trial for it.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
Yeah, I mean it is.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
It is like the language that got used by the
state kind of in the proceedings against you was was amusing.
Like I know that it was a pain in the
ash you had to go through, but like the kind
of the framing that they they put with it to
make it seem like this was this was such a
like serious offense against public order was was was quite funny.
(05:40):
And I think it's beyond me to know what was
going on in the now king's head at the time,
but I you got quite close. You can see right
after it hit there's there's goop on the ground directly
in front of his foot, and his shoulders slump a
little and he looks down, and I wonder if it
made him feel bad. I hope it did. You know,
I can't get inside the man's head. Maybe he's not
(06:03):
capable of that, but I wonder.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
So, yeah, I mean through five and I will say
it for the record that one of them did bounce
off his arm, but he does have a force field,
so it's not my fault that it didn't didn't get
the full impact. But yeah, I honestly think he didn't
have a clue what's going on. He's pretty pretty sen
how to be honest. Yeah, but you know, monarchists were like,
(06:27):
so like, wow, look at how stoic he is. He
just doesn't even care. He just shrugged it off. He's
such a badass, and it's like he's just been guided
through this series of bizarre public opinions where he's got
to pretend that he you know, smiles and waves at
normal people and he doesn't think that we're all clubs.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
But yeah, yeah, and it was the crowd reaction around
you was pretty intense from what I understand. I mean,
like people came after you when they realized what had happened.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Yeah, I think in some ways that spoke more more
itself than like anything that I could have done. You know,
the reaction to the video, you know, people immediately just
start like pulling my hair, out in chunks and just
like screaming, like you know, like just killing him, like
stick his head on a spike, kick him to death,
and you know, and it really I think maybe that
kind of rhetoric is perhaps more like, you know that
(07:21):
the overt violence is more prevalent in American politics. But yeah,
you know, it exposed that you know, these people are
essentially fascists, you know, and that they yeah, they're very,
very violent people.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
And I think this is something people have are starting
to recognize a little bit more about kind of politics
in the UK. I mean, we're looking right now. The
Public Order Act of twenty twenty three is kind of
the most recent law that's gone through Parliament that effectively
(07:56):
like expands the ability of the police to crack down
on protests. Some people will argue, and I think this seems,
based on what I've read, pretty credible that it basically
makes it possible for the police to arrest anyone for
almost any kind of activism. And that kind of was
exhibited during the coronation when a group of kind of
(08:19):
of anti monarchist protesters who are more on the liberal
side of things, and you're kind of approaching this as
an anarchist, but a fairly large group of protesters with
signs that were saying stuff like not my king, attempted
to rally doing so. I believe their goal, from what
I can tell, was to comply with the law as
(08:40):
they understood it, and that did not protect them from
the police.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
No. So you know, the context is in the wake
of the police there was a police officer, you know,
last year who murdered a woman, Sarah Everard. Yeah, and
in the wake of that, they passed the Police, Courts,
Sentencing and Crime Bill. And that that bill was really like,
you know, the most over crackdown on protest. It banned
(09:10):
it allowed the police to arrest, the discretion of an officer,
any protest that was deemed potentially annoying, like that's the
specific language, is any any action that could be loud
or annoying. So, you know, there was a there was
a lot of protests against that at the time. That
obviously came to nothing, and they passed the bill anyway,
and then and then so the Public Order Bill just
(09:31):
goes that step further by allowing them to preemptively arrest
anyone who might be about to do something that's loud
or annoying and including this new thing called a serious
Disruption Prevention Order, which is something that they can apply
to someone who's considered an aggravated activist.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
He's saying, which is someone who has been arrested more
than twice for protest related offenses.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Essentially, it bans, you know, use of the internet to
communicate about your ideas, basically stopped from attending protests in
the first a rest at the train station. And yeah,
we saw that in play with the Republic, with this
organization that had been extensively liaising with the police, and
you know, it just seemed quite like Pikachu face when
(10:14):
suddenly they were all just rounded up and yeah, but
for literally, you know, no pretext. It was they had
they had like twelve thousand pounds worth of signs in
a van and they were they were all wrapped up
in yeah, just like rope rope, and the pretext for
the arrest was that the rope was a lock on
device that could be used to you know, I don't know,
(10:35):
like jump in front of the procession and tie yourself
with rope.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
To the road.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
I really don't know, Like.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Yeah, from what I could tell just from the coverage,
I've read. If their protest had gone the way they
planned it, it would have been like a show, a
visible show that there were people who didn't like the monarchy,
but it would not have caused it. Like they would
not have this. These people were not planning to like
burn down any public buildings or you know, smash car
(11:02):
windows or stop a road. Not that I'm specifically condemning
that behavior, but I'm just stating this was not the
state cracking down on people because they were afraid of
a riot. This was the state cracking down on people
because they didn't want the display of any kind of
descent to exist.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Yeah, and you know, that's where we're at in this country.
And to be honest, the arrest of those organizers was
the best thing that could have happened for the movement,
because you know, what it really did was just shine
a light that it was impossible to ignore and in
some ways kind of over shadowed the coronation. Really was
far more than any speech that Graham Smith you know,
(11:43):
was planning to give, you know, just so overtly that
that there is no acceptable form of descent. Now, the
very concept is so distasteful to yeah, our aristocracy that
it's banned.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
And I really appreciate your ability to kind of see
the upside, the tactical upside in that, because I think
it is true. I doubt I would have heard about
that protest if it had gone as the organizers planned, right,
because it would have just been Yeah, there's some people
who don't like the monarchy in the UK. That doesn't
surprise me at all, but seeing it was like everywhere
(12:19):
all over my social media. I got sent it by
multiple friends, by a family member because the state decided
to go after these people, And I do think I
think it's also from just a standpoint when you're talking
about a struggle with as long odds as kind of
struggling against the monarchy in the United Kingdom, which is
(12:42):
you are talking about like the most entrenched power structure
outside of the Vatican, right Basically, when you're talking about that,
it is so important to be able to look at
moments like this and see the upside in them rather
than just rather than just kind of feel the boot
all the time. Otherwise you're you're not going to have
(13:03):
the endurance to keep fighting, you know.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
For me with specifically with the eggs, I was I've
been conscious the whole time that the backlash and the
you know, disproportionate state reaction would speak more than my
own actions. So so, for example, one of the reasons
why I think, you know, it went pretty viral when
I when I threw the eggs in the first place,
(13:37):
I was a bit surprised by by how it went
kind of quite internationally. But but but you know, so
the fact, so my bail conditions were between between my
arrest and my trial were that I wasn't allowed to
carry eggs in public. Yeah, I know. And so that
is in itself like so absurd that it's like, right.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
I gotta notice there like a provision for if you're
going home from the store or are you just are.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
You just so? So the copper who was literally just
like making this up at the station says like, okay,
so your bail condition is you're not allowed within five
hundred meters of the king, you're not allowed to carry
eggs in public. And then he goes like, oh, actually,
like what was if he wants to buy some eggs
And they're like okay, So they changed it so it's
like you're allowed to carry eggs as long as you're
going home from the shops and you've got the receipt.
(14:29):
And I think that was more viral than me actually
doing it, you know what I mean, Like people were like,
you know, that's that's that's Britain for you. Have you
got a license for those eggs?
Speaker 1 (14:38):
You know, I'm imagining you like sliding down an alleyway
with like a like a like a nineteen forty style
shoulder holster, but with just like eggs under each.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
Yir yeah and so and so you know when I so,
I had my trial, you know, which was for yeah,
threatening behavior that made someone feel imminent violence. In the
wake of that, like I was convicted, I narrowly avoided
six months in prison, which is the sentence that I thought, yeah, yeah,
(15:12):
and so, so you know, in my trial, you know,
I had the option to either downplay what I did
as being like, oh, it's not really violence, it's just
an egg. But then of course, you know, legally it
was you know, that could just cancel as a soul.
But then I chose instead to say, Okay, yeah, it
was violence, but it was legitimate violence because it was
(15:33):
necessary to resist the far greater violence of the British state,
you know, citing the historic impact of colonialism.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
He's saying current foreign policy, like the king personally negotiating
weapons deals with Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
And then also you know climate breakdown and the way
in which by continuing to invest in fossil fuels global
South like intentionally and so therefore, you know, I was
basically defending the right of you know, acting in defense
of others with violence. I'm glad I did it, and
I'd have done much worse. So in the end, actually
I got one hundred hour. I got one hundred hours
of community service, which was extreme, you know, getting away
(16:11):
with it essentially.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
So, yeah, did you get us? I wondered, was it
just a situation? Did you just get lucky with a
judge or like, because that's that's surprising. I'm surprised that
like that that worked as well as it did in
a positive way.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
I think, yeah, yeah, me too. Yeah. I mean I
had a big bag with me with all my light
undies in because I thought I was going down, you know,
And I think there was partly, yes, getting lucky with
the judge. Partly I think they were in a really
difficult position and this is what I wanted to put
them in essentially, which is that following all of that
(16:48):
the money, you know, in the lead up to the coronation,
there was a lot of negative press around around the
king and the monarchy, and they had a choice between
either sending me to prison and looking extremely authoritarian and
blowing out proportion, or letting him get away with it.
And you know, I think they chose to minimize the
negative press. You know, I mean, obviously, supposedly there's an
(17:11):
independent judiciary and there would have been no conversations with
the palace and the police about the charging procedures. But
that's a low rubbish but you know, yeah, and so
but I think I wanted to put them in that
difficult position because I knew that, like I said, their
backlash would look worse than what I did. And so
when I chose to go to the coronation following following
my conviction, you know, I had to tell my probation officer, look,
(17:35):
I'm going to the coronation. I am going I'm going
to peacefully protest. I'm just going to be there, deal
with it, you know. And basically he told me that
the counter Terrorism Department was seeking an injunction from the
courts to stop me attending but then the court had
ruled that no I was allowed to attend. I'd already
been given my punishment and he wasn't going to put
(17:57):
any further conditions on me not be allowing allowed to go.
So so but I knew that if I went to
the coronation and they would arrest me anyway, and it
would make them look bad, you know. And then they
they did. You know, I was as well as well
as all of the organizers. I was there, you know,
just not my king, blah blah blah. And then and
then I and then I look up and there's a
(18:17):
little watchtower that they had erected in the center of
Trafalgar Square, and I just saw that there was about
seven police officers just all like staring at me and
filming me from you know, like two hundred meters away.
And I was like, oh, okay, they're gonna arrest me now.
So yeah, I gave my phone and my wallet to
my brother and then smile. And then within seconds, within seconds,
(18:37):
they were just dragging me out, like you know, in handcuffs,
from the center of a of a crowd of about
you know, twenty thousand people. And and it honestly couldn't
have looked like more like overtly fascist if they tried,
and and that was kind of the point. Really is.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
A man, I uh, such a wild story, but.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
I'm I'm glad you did what you did.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
I'm impressed by the amount of thought that kind of
went into the optics of it, because it's really the
only way to turn an egg into an effective weapon,
right is by very careful planning. I'm kind of curious
where do you see what do you see as the
route forward for both not just kind of opposing the
(19:25):
monarchy in your country, but sort of opposing the overreach
by the police. This is a problem in more places
than the United Kingdom, but y'all are kind of on
one of the cutting edges of sort of global attempts
by law enforcement and its supporters in the state to
(19:46):
effectively make dissent impossible. Ahead of what everyone knows is
going to be kind of a heightening period of climate
based activism.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Yeah, and so with the climate activist movement in the UK,
you know, we've seen extinction rebellion active since like twenty eighteen,
and I've been, you know, arrested multiple times with them
at different actions. You know, the part of their strategy
was that mass arrests, you know, blocking roads, nonviolent direct
(20:18):
action and civil disobedience would force the government to take action.
And I think really we're seeing that strategy like having
run its course. And I think for a while now
that's been evident that it wasn't working because they've just
banned the types of protest that we were doing. And
also it was essentially quite naive to believe that, yeah, oh,
(20:41):
you know, if we cause enough desruption, they're just going
to put aside all of the you know, lobbying interests
and their literal role in upholding capitalism to just go,
oh no, okay, fair enough that they're blocked and roads,
we are going to like radically transform society to deal
with climate breakdown. That was never going to work, you know, realistically.
And so so even though you know, we've seen every
(21:06):
time they pass these these new legislation, there are there's
a there's a backlash, there's some marches, there's some protests
that fizzle out, and the state just keep consolidating more
and more power, and people keep getting more and more
disillusioned with.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
He says, with what an effective strategy of resistance looks
like and so for me personally, it's something I've been
thinking about for a while now.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
But recently have is that, you know, we have to
stop asking politicians through direct democracy at the local level
and essentially you know, using like democratic confederalism, you know,
as they're doing Rajava, to to look at creating a
national network of people's assemblies that builds dual power outside
(21:50):
of the state. Because because because I think a lot
of the problem with these direct action movements is that
they don't have the legitimacy of a democratic mandate. So
that's even whilst the tactics might be like in some
way effective, you know, Extinction Rebellion has always said our
message is to say that climate change is a serious threat,
but we cannot propose the solutions because we don't have
(22:12):
a democratic mandate. But the way to you know, work
around that is to build a democratic mandate through holding
people's assemblies, creating forums where people can create their own vision,
and then direct action can then be used in service
of those aims rather than putting the car before the horse,
if that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
No, yeah, I think that that's certainly like one of
the more pragmatic ways forward that I think I've seen,
you know, we're we're always talking about an uphill battle here,
and I think kind of the inherent difficulty of fixing
any of these bigger problems, particularly fixing the and what
(22:55):
we mean is dismantling the systems that are causing climate destruction,
and like that is such a lopsided battle that I
think whenever, whenever you have you present an option to people,
because it sounds hard, there's this tendency to just be like, well,
you know, we have to go by the thing that
(23:15):
we know, which is just kind of like trying to
vote in better people. If we can take a lesson
out of the last thirty years, it's that the standard
electoral methods cannot provide the solution to climate change, Like
(23:39):
they simply aren't going to do it. And I think
the police in a lot of kind I mean in
the United States right here in one of my old hometown's, Austin, Texas,
they just voted on a police accountability bill that the
police have basically said we're not going to abide by
like this is and you can find stories like that
all over the United States and other parts of the world.
(24:01):
Like the kind of the hope that you can just
sort of like put in your however long it takes
you to do voting in your country or city or whatever,
and that that's the method forward. It's it seems more
realistic because it's more familiar. But I think the vision
you're putting forward not to say that it's as simp
(24:25):
that's simple, but like it's effortful. And I think that
whenever someone's positing something like that that requires that kind
of like effort from a large enough segment of the population,
I see that as inherently more realistic than hoping that
we can just all kind of keep putting our twenty
minutes of voting a year towards solving the problem and
(24:46):
expect it to get better.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
Yeah, And it's like one of those things with you know,
like the idea that imagining prison abolition, you have to
imagine a world where that's possible, and that requires changing everything, right,
and I think that applies is to tackling climate change
and implementing direct democracy. So you know, if you're talking
about a system where people can turn up to a
(25:08):
forum in a local community center or you know, church
or whatever once a week, then people say, well, that's
not going to be accessible, you know, because so it's like, well,
you're right, we'll probably have to set up a system
of mutual aid that supports you know, working class people
to be able to attend those kind of events. And
you know, yeah, it's like how you're going to pay
(25:30):
for it, And it's like, well, you're right, We're probably
going to have to, you know, set up a solidarity
economy where, you know, we if we decide, for example,
that we want free public transport then and and bus
drivers to be paid paid a fair wage, you know,
then you're going to have to look at a whole
system whereby people are potentially getting free housing in return
(25:50):
for being a bus driver, free food that comes from
the local food cooperative. And you're like, I say, building
dual power rather than attacking the system head on, because
in a battle, in a pitch street battle in this country,
at least between us and the police, that we're going
to lose. And I think that, you know, we need
(26:11):
to think smarter because at this point, they haven't yet
made organizing public meetings illegal, but you know, they probably
will at some point, and then it's the only way
we'll be able to resist that is if we've had
some public meetings to decide how we're going to do it,
because at the moment, we haven't even had the meeting
to decide what our collective strategy is because there is
so much atomization between these different like you know, left
(26:36):
wing like social movements and civil society organizations and so much.
Sometimes just depresses me to think about how many people
are working for environmental charities or whatever, where all of
their work and their research is going towards creating policy
proposals for politicians to ignore it. If you were putting
(26:58):
that amount of energy and your enthusiasm in service of
the vision that's been created democratically by the people, then
we don't need to petition anyone to make the changes
we need, because we'll have organized effectively enough to do
the things that will really challenge state power, for example,
(27:21):
like a mass rent strike and a general strike.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Or if those efforts that are currently going towards putting
policy papers on desks where they'll be ignored or neutered,
was going towards putting forth policy that is then being
backed by a movement that is carrying out rent strikes,
that is putting out together work stoppages, that is blocking
roads that's able to actually throttle some of the life
(27:46):
support system of the state. Well, then suddenly you're not
looking at a recommendation, a white paper that's going to
wind up on some bloodless bureaucrats desk, or that's going
to wind up getting cut to pieces in Parliament. You're
you have something that that has teeth behind it, right,
the kind of force that might be able to make change.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Again, when you talk about this kind of stuff, you
have to contrast it with what we've been trying so far,
which is nothing.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Yeah, and you know, diversity of tactics is huge, and
so you know a lot of these direct action groups
in the UK, like just Stop Oil that have been
blocking motorways and stuff, have received, like you know, huge criticism,
especially from people who you know really ought to be
allies and at least recognize the the that this action
(28:39):
is coming out of a place of desperation because people
cannot see a better way. Yeah, and you know, there
was a there's someone from just Stop Oil who just
got three years in prison for blocking a motorway and
and that's that's insane, you know, And you know on
some level that person is it is a martyr, and
you've got to hold your your often say. What that
(29:01):
has done is shine a spotlight again on state authority
in a way that you know, if they have these
laws on the books but they never have to use them,
then it's easy to forget that they exist. We have
that power.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
Do you want to talk a little bit about cooperation UK?
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Yeah? Yeah, So so you know, for me, I'm a
democratic confederalist, you know, I mean or like you know,
the Rajavant project using direct democracy but also confederating that
up to sort of replace the state with a form
of governance that's democratic. And you know, I also I'm
(29:41):
a big believer in cosmocracy, right, which is the proper
name for global democracy.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
He says, essentially, you know, I wrote about this while
I was doing my masters.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
And that is how potentially, if we were implementing this
system world, we can use the internet to confederate to
a global level, you know, and really start to ta
call the issues that we collectively face as humanity, which
is like the fact that our separation from nature and
the rise of fascism is is threatening angus with extinction.
(30:12):
And so yeah, I'm a citizen of Earth and you know,
that that's what motivates a lot of my actions. But
you know, in some ways I've been kind of stewing
on these ideas alone. And so recently I met a
group called Cooperation UK. Who are you know, connecting. I
can often get bogged down in abstract theory about like
(30:33):
how you know, changing the whole world and never actually
doing anything practical. That's my downfall. But you know, you
need to start a movement like that locally, and and
so they're copying Cooperation Jackson, you know, who have been
incredibly effective, you know, setting up people's assemblies, mutual aid
economy in Jackson and also like a community land trust.
(30:58):
You know, they own like fifty different buildings you know
that are used collectively by the community. And this group
are planning to set that up in Hull, which is
just a city in the Northeast that's incredibly deprived. It's
got like the lowest voter turnout in the UK, but
it also has a thriving network of food banks and
(31:19):
you know cooperatives and mutual aid groups. And I think
the next step for me is when those those groups
send delegates to meet together and decide on collective strategy,
right like because there are so many people doing so
much good work, but there's almost like no faith in
our own vision, which is that if we're the people
(31:41):
you know who are say a union for nurses, then
you know, we should be deciding the conditions that exist
in healthcare, you know, because who better besides patients and
like staff is that to decide the conditions that they
that they operate in. And and so yeah, cooperation UK.
(32:04):
There are there's a group of us that are moving
to Whull. I'm moving. I'm moving next week. I'm really
excited about it. And yeah, we're planning to set up
lots of local neighborhood assemblies with the intention of within
a year holding a citywide people's assembly that can create
a shared vision and then and then potentially you know,
(32:25):
standing candidates for local council, but whose only policy is
we will enact. We will give power to the people's
assemblies and then they can use the you know, financial
power of existing institutions to support the transition to a
new model. And whilst they're doing that in Hull, you know,
(32:45):
the work that I hope to be doing is document
in that process learning, you know, so people can learn
from the mistakes and that, you know, and hopefully we
can set them up in in every city well across
the UK, because there are already people who's think very
similarly and that we're at a time now where that's
coalescing into the you know, people are recognizing the need
(33:06):
for this new movement with a new strategy that's based
around democracy rather than just activism. And yeah, it's really exciting.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, I mean that's I think that's a worthwhile idea.
I think it's a it's it's bold and something that
I'm I'm glad to see being attempted. Well, it's been
really great talking with you today. Did you have anywhere
you wanted to direct listeners in order to help if
they're interested in what Cooperation UK is doing.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Yeah, definitely. So there's there's a crowdfunder that I think
there'll be. I believe there'll be a link that you
guys can act.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
He says, and we'll be using that money to set
up the People's Assembly and mutual aid networks, but also
to create resources that anyone anywhere can use in their
local community.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
And I hope is that, you know, as these groups proliferate,
you know, going to start reaching out to each other,
forming an international solidarity network that is capable of providing
like the mutual aid that we that we need to
support each other, you know, for example, you know, if
we're talking about Palestine or Iran, to provide real meaningful solidarity,
(34:18):
these you know, liberation groups will require more organization than
just like thoughts and prayers.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Really and yeah, yeah, well, thank you so much, Patrick,
It has been great talking with you. Good luck as
you continue moving forward.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
And yeah, yeah, thanks very much. Yeah, I guess I
should also say I'm on I'm bizarrely, I'm on TikTok.
That's the medium I'm using at the moment. I wish
it wasn't. I'll probably want to start making more YouTube
videos discussing these ideas, So maybe I'll send you a
link that you can put in there, the Citizen of
Earth Show. It's my YouTube channel.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Excellent, well, Patrick, tell well Citizen of Earth YouTube channel
and we'll of your TikTok and the description.
Speaker 4 (35:01):
Thanks again for coming on the show.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Everybody go out and uh, you know, acquire eggs.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone Media.
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Hey everyone, Robert here. Before we get into it, I
want to note my internet was terrible during this call.
We tried to have the guest record locally, but there
was kind of a technical glitch there, and Zoom glitched
a little on the audio. In order to make it listenable.
There are going to be like three or four points
here where I pop in and just say what he
(00:21):
was trying to say or what he said, and the
Internet then garbled up so that you can understand what's
actually being said in the conversation. So when my voice
pops in and I read a line, it's me reading
something that he said that got kind of distorted. I
do apologize. Ah, welcome to it could happen here. A
(00:43):
podcast about things falling apart and occasionally about the quest
to build a better world. Today, we've got an episode
that is in the latter category about the struggle to
make the United Kingdom less I don't know, in the
thrall of a monarchy and an aristocratic class, and to
(01:04):
build a more equitable society. And our guest today is
somebody who is attempting to further that cause, and did
so last year by attempting to huck several eggs at
the current King of England, Charles the I forget the number. Patrick, Well,
how are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Hi?
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Yeah, I'm good. Thanks. Yeah, it was five eggs. Five
eggs and he's the third king.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
The third king, third king.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Far more than three unfortunately. Yeah, you guys have had
a few. Was one of the ones you'all killed?
Speaker 4 (01:40):
To Charles?
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Yeah, yeah, that was the last one.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
That was the last one. Well, yeah, I would say trouble. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
So let's start by talking about this is in a
twenty about a year ago at a he was doing
a they called it a walkabout, which I guess is
when the king shows up in a city in the video.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
I watched the video of this and like, there's.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
A bunch of people dressed in all sorts of fun costumes,
and some ladies got a massive sword.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
Like a a sword of.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
The size that I know for a fact that man
cannot lift above his head.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Yeah, it's funny. He comes out of his little car
and I know, all the little trumpets go and everyone starts,
you know, waving their flags on queue and going like, look,
there he is. There is some pretty unhinged to be honest,
it's it's it's quite embarrassing.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
But yeah, there's like the American chauvinist in me that
like wants to wants to laugh more about the monarchy.
But I'm just finished reading an article about Dianne Feinstein
where the journalist interviewing her was like, so you've missed
a bunch of votes over the last three months, and
(02:53):
she's like, no.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
I haven't. I've been working the whole time.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
So I guess we're all kind of enthrall to the
corpses of of our past.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
It's hierarchy. Hierarchy everywhere is the problem.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
So you decide to show up when you kind of
find out that the king is going to be showing
up here, and what kind of leads you to decide,
I'm gonna I'm gonna throw some eggs in my pocket
and take my shot.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
So I actually only found out that he was coming
to York about three days with a megaphone and you know,
shout some cause obviously the queen had died about a
month or so before, and during the funeral processions there
was you know, several people were arrested for someone shouted
(03:41):
at you know, Prince Andrew, you know, in Scotland's they
were like, oh, you're a sick old man, and they did,
and that was probably my my inspiration. But then on
the morning when he came to York, my megaphone was
just like busted. So I was just like, oh, okay,
I'm gonna gonna go get some eggs then.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
And white eggs.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
What kind of led to that decision?
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Man? Everyone asked that. Yeah, I guess like I was
into the assumption that we all just knew that you
throw eggs at people you don't like maybe it's a
British thing.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
But I think it may just be that in the
US because of the gun stuff, people are like a
lot more hesitant to huck stuff just for fun, right,
if you're throwing stuff and somebody it's serious.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Although someone someone threw a beer at Ted Cruz.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
Yeah, they sure did. That was good. That was good.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yeah. I think you know, I actually had a lot
of time to think about before my trial about white
eggs and stuff, and I think they're just funny, you know,
like there's a lot of egg puns that came out
of it that that, you know, not to get too
philosophical about it, but they're kind of you know, they're
they're really harmless, you know, but inherently humiliating as well.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to argue attempted murder from an egg.
But at the same time, yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Well exactly. And I think there's there's something to be
said for contrasting the violence of the state, yeah, with
what's obviously like very low level violence. And yeah, I'm
the one standing trial for it.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
Yeah, I mean it is.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
It is like the language that got used by the
state kind of in the proceedings against you was was amusing.
Like I know that it was a pain in the
ash you had to go through, but like the kind
of the framing that they they put with it to
make it seem like this was this was such a
like serious offense against public order was was was quite funny.
(05:40):
And I think it's beyond me to know what was
going on in the now king's head at the time,
but I you got quite close. You can see right
after it hit there's there's goop on the ground directly
in front of his foot, and his shoulders slump a
little and he looks down, and I wonder if it
made him feel bad. I hope it did. You know,
I can't get inside the man's head. Maybe he's not
(06:03):
capable of that, but I wonder.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
So, yeah, I mean through five and I will say
it for the record that one of them did bounce
off his arm, but he does have a force field,
so it's not my fault that it didn't didn't get
the full impact. But yeah, I honestly think he didn't
have a clue what's going on. He's pretty pretty sen
how to be honest. Yeah, but you know, monarchists were like,
(06:27):
so like, wow, look at how stoic he is. He
just doesn't even care. He just shrugged it off. He's
such a badass, and it's like he's just been guided
through this series of bizarre public opinions where he's got
to pretend that he you know, smiles and waves at
normal people and he doesn't think that we're all clubs.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
But yeah, yeah, and it was the crowd reaction around
you was pretty intense from what I understand. I mean,
like people came after you when they realized what had happened.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Yeah, I think in some ways that spoke more more
itself than like anything that I could have done. You know,
the reaction to the video, you know, people immediately just
start like pulling my hair, out in chunks and just
like screaming, like you know, like just killing him, like
stick his head on a spike, kick him to death,
and you know, and it really I think maybe that
kind of rhetoric is perhaps more like, you know that
(07:21):
the overt violence is more prevalent in American politics. But yeah,
you know, it exposed that you know, these people are
essentially fascists, you know, and that they yeah, they're very,
very violent people.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
And I think this is something people have are starting
to recognize a little bit more about kind of politics
in the UK. I mean, we're looking right now. The
Public Order Act of twenty twenty three is kind of
the most recent law that's gone through Parliament that effectively
(07:56):
like expands the ability of the police to crack down
on protests. Some people will argue, and I think this seems,
based on what I've read, pretty credible that it basically
makes it possible for the police to arrest anyone for
almost any kind of activism. And that kind of was
exhibited during the coronation when a group of kind of
(08:19):
of anti monarchist protesters who are more on the liberal
side of things, and you're kind of approaching this as
an anarchist, but a fairly large group of protesters with
signs that were saying stuff like not my king, attempted
to rally doing so. I believe their goal, from what
I can tell, was to comply with the law as
(08:40):
they understood it, and that did not protect them from
the police.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
No. So you know, the context is in the wake
of the police there was a police officer, you know,
last year who murdered a woman, Sarah Everard. Yeah, and
in the wake of that, they passed the Police, Courts,
Sentencing and Crime Bill. And that that bill was really like,
you know, the most over crackdown on protest. It banned
(09:10):
it allowed the police to arrest, the discretion of an officer,
any protest that was deemed potentially annoying, like that's the
specific language, is any any action that could be loud
or annoying. So, you know, there was a there was
a lot of protests against that at the time. That
obviously came to nothing, and they passed the bill anyway,
and then and then so the Public Order Bill just
(09:31):
goes that step further by allowing them to preemptively arrest
anyone who might be about to do something that's loud
or annoying and including this new thing called a serious
Disruption Prevention Order, which is something that they can apply
to someone who's considered an aggravated activist.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
He's saying, which is someone who has been arrested more
than twice for protest related offenses.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Essentially, it bans, you know, use of the internet to
communicate about your ideas, basically stopped from attending protests in
the first a rest at the train station. And yeah,
we saw that in play with the Republic, with this
organization that had been extensively liaising with the police, and
you know, it just seemed quite like Pikachu face when
(10:14):
suddenly they were all just rounded up and yeah, but
for literally, you know, no pretext. It was they had
they had like twelve thousand pounds worth of signs in
a van and they were they were all wrapped up
in yeah, just like rope rope, and the pretext for
the arrest was that the rope was a lock on
device that could be used to you know, I don't know,
(10:35):
like jump in front of the procession and tie yourself
with rope.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
To the road.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
I really don't know, Like.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Yeah, from what I could tell just from the coverage,
I've read. If their protest had gone the way they
planned it, it would have been like a show, a
visible show that there were people who didn't like the monarchy,
but it would not have caused it. Like they would
not have this. These people were not planning to like
burn down any public buildings or you know, smash car
(11:02):
windows or stop a road. Not that I'm specifically condemning
that behavior, but I'm just stating this was not the
state cracking down on people because they were afraid of
a riot. This was the state cracking down on people
because they didn't want the display of any kind of
descent to exist.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Yeah, and you know, that's where we're at in this country.
And to be honest, the arrest of those organizers was
the best thing that could have happened for the movement,
because you know, what it really did was just shine
a light that it was impossible to ignore and in
some ways kind of over shadowed the coronation. Really was
far more than any speech that Graham Smith you know,
(11:43):
was planning to give, you know, just so overtly that
that there is no acceptable form of descent. Now, the
very concept is so distasteful to yeah, our aristocracy that
it's banned.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
And I really appreciate your ability to kind of see
the upside, the tactical upside in that, because I think
it is true. I doubt I would have heard about
that protest if it had gone as the organizers planned, right,
because it would have just been Yeah, there's some people
who don't like the monarchy in the UK. That doesn't
surprise me at all, but seeing it was like everywhere
(12:19):
all over my social media. I got sent it by
multiple friends, by a family member because the state decided
to go after these people, And I do think I
think it's also from just a standpoint when you're talking
about a struggle with as long odds as kind of
struggling against the monarchy in the United Kingdom, which is
(12:42):
you are talking about like the most entrenched power structure
outside of the Vatican, right Basically, when you're talking about that,
it is so important to be able to look at
moments like this and see the upside in them rather
than just rather than just kind of feel the boot
all the time. Otherwise you're you're not going to have
(13:03):
the endurance to keep fighting, you know.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
For me with specifically with the eggs, I was I've
been conscious the whole time that the backlash and the
you know, disproportionate state reaction would speak more than my
own actions. So so, for example, one of the reasons
why I think, you know, it went pretty viral when
I when I threw the eggs in the first place,
(13:37):
I was a bit surprised by by how it went
kind of quite internationally. But but but you know, so
the fact, so my bail conditions were between between my
arrest and my trial were that I wasn't allowed to
carry eggs in public. Yeah, I know. And so that
is in itself like so absurd that it's like, right.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
I gotta notice there like a provision for if you're
going home from the store or are you just are.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
You just so? So the copper who was literally just
like making this up at the station says like, okay,
so your bail condition is you're not allowed within five
hundred meters of the king, you're not allowed to carry
eggs in public. And then he goes like, oh, actually,
like what was if he wants to buy some eggs
And they're like okay, So they changed it so it's
like you're allowed to carry eggs as long as you're
going home from the shops and you've got the receipt.
(14:29):
And I think that was more viral than me actually
doing it, you know what I mean, Like people were like,
you know, that's that's that's Britain for you. Have you
got a license for those eggs?
Speaker 1 (14:38):
You know, I'm imagining you like sliding down an alleyway
with like a like a like a nineteen forty style
shoulder holster, but with just like eggs under each.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
Yir yeah and so and so you know when I so,
I had my trial, you know, which was for yeah,
threatening behavior that made someone feel imminent violence. In the
wake of that, like I was convicted, I narrowly avoided
six months in prison, which is the sentence that I thought, yeah, yeah,
(15:12):
and so, so you know, in my trial, you know,
I had the option to either downplay what I did
as being like, oh, it's not really violence, it's just
an egg. But then of course, you know, legally it
was you know, that could just cancel as a soul.
But then I chose instead to say, Okay, yeah, it
was violence, but it was legitimate violence because it was
(15:33):
necessary to resist the far greater violence of the British state,
you know, citing the historic impact of colonialism.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
He's saying current foreign policy, like the king personally negotiating
weapons deals with Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
And then also you know climate breakdown and the way
in which by continuing to invest in fossil fuels global
South like intentionally and so therefore, you know, I was
basically defending the right of you know, acting in defense
of others with violence. I'm glad I did it, and
I'd have done much worse. So in the end, actually
I got one hundred hour. I got one hundred hours
of community service, which was extreme, you know, getting away
(16:11):
with it essentially.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
So, yeah, did you get us? I wondered, was it
just a situation? Did you just get lucky with a
judge or like, because that's that's surprising. I'm surprised that
like that that worked as well as it did in
a positive way.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
I think, yeah, yeah, me too. Yeah. I mean I
had a big bag with me with all my light
undies in because I thought I was going down, you know,
And I think there was partly, yes, getting lucky with
the judge. Partly I think they were in a really
difficult position and this is what I wanted to put
them in essentially, which is that following all of that
(16:48):
the money, you know, in the lead up to the coronation,
there was a lot of negative press around around the
king and the monarchy, and they had a choice between
either sending me to prison and looking extremely authoritarian and
blowing out proportion, or letting him get away with it.
And you know, I think they chose to minimize the
negative press. You know, I mean, obviously, supposedly there's an
(17:11):
independent judiciary and there would have been no conversations with
the palace and the police about the charging procedures. But
that's a low rubbish but you know, yeah, and so
but I think I wanted to put them in that
difficult position because I knew that, like I said, their
backlash would look worse than what I did. And so
when I chose to go to the coronation following following
my conviction, you know, I had to tell my probation officer, look,
(17:35):
I'm going to the coronation. I am going I'm going
to peacefully protest. I'm just going to be there, deal
with it, you know. And basically he told me that
the counter Terrorism Department was seeking an injunction from the
courts to stop me attending but then the court had
ruled that no I was allowed to attend. I'd already
been given my punishment and he wasn't going to put
(17:57):
any further conditions on me not be allowing allowed to go.
So so but I knew that if I went to
the coronation and they would arrest me anyway, and it
would make them look bad, you know. And then they
they did. You know, I was as well as well
as all of the organizers. I was there, you know,
just not my king, blah blah blah. And then and
then I and then I look up and there's a
(18:17):
little watchtower that they had erected in the center of
Trafalgar Square, and I just saw that there was about
seven police officers just all like staring at me and
filming me from you know, like two hundred meters away.
And I was like, oh, okay, they're gonna arrest me now.
So yeah, I gave my phone and my wallet to
my brother and then smile. And then within seconds, within seconds,
(18:37):
they were just dragging me out, like you know, in handcuffs,
from the center of a of a crowd of about
you know, twenty thousand people. And and it honestly couldn't
have looked like more like overtly fascist if they tried,
and and that was kind of the point. Really is.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
A man, I uh, such a wild story, but.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
I'm I'm glad you did what you did.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
I'm impressed by the amount of thought that kind of
went into the optics of it, because it's really the
only way to turn an egg into an effective weapon,
right is by very careful planning. I'm kind of curious
where do you see what do you see as the
route forward for both not just kind of opposing the
(19:25):
monarchy in your country, but sort of opposing the overreach
by the police. This is a problem in more places
than the United Kingdom, but y'all are kind of on
one of the cutting edges of sort of global attempts
by law enforcement and its supporters in the state to
(19:46):
effectively make dissent impossible. Ahead of what everyone knows is
going to be kind of a heightening period of climate
based activism.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Yeah, and so with the climate activist movement in the UK,
you know, we've seen extinction rebellion active since like twenty eighteen,
and I've been, you know, arrested multiple times with them
at different actions. You know, the part of their strategy
was that mass arrests, you know, blocking roads, nonviolent direct
(20:18):
action and civil disobedience would force the government to take action.
And I think really we're seeing that strategy like having
run its course. And I think for a while now
that's been evident that it wasn't working because they've just
banned the types of protest that we were doing. And
also it was essentially quite naive to believe that, yeah, oh,
(20:41):
you know, if we cause enough desruption, they're just going
to put aside all of the you know, lobbying interests
and their literal role in upholding capitalism to just go,
oh no, okay, fair enough that they're blocked and roads,
we are going to like radically transform society to deal
with climate breakdown. That was never going to work, you know, realistically.
And so so even though you know, we've seen every
(21:06):
time they pass these these new legislation, there are there's
a there's a backlash, there's some marches, there's some protests
that fizzle out, and the state just keep consolidating more
and more power, and people keep getting more and more
disillusioned with.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
He says, with what an effective strategy of resistance looks
like and so for me personally, it's something I've been
thinking about for a while now.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
But recently have is that, you know, we have to
stop asking politicians through direct democracy at the local level
and essentially you know, using like democratic confederalism, you know,
as they're doing Rajava, to to look at creating a
national network of people's assemblies that builds dual power outside
(21:50):
of the state. Because because because I think a lot
of the problem with these direct action movements is that
they don't have the legitimacy of a democratic mandate. So
that's even whilst the tactics might be like in some
way effective, you know, Extinction Rebellion has always said our
message is to say that climate change is a serious threat,
but we cannot propose the solutions because we don't have
(22:12):
a democratic mandate. But the way to you know, work
around that is to build a democratic mandate through holding
people's assemblies, creating forums where people can create their own vision,
and then direct action can then be used in service
of those aims rather than putting the car before the horse,
if that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
No, yeah, I think that that's certainly like one of
the more pragmatic ways forward that I think I've seen,
you know, we're we're always talking about an uphill battle here,
and I think kind of the inherent difficulty of fixing
any of these bigger problems, particularly fixing the and what
(22:55):
we mean is dismantling the systems that are causing climate destruction,
and like that is such a lopsided battle that I
think whenever, whenever you have you present an option to people,
because it sounds hard, there's this tendency to just be like, well,
you know, we have to go by the thing that
(23:15):
we know, which is just kind of like trying to
vote in better people. If we can take a lesson
out of the last thirty years, it's that the standard
electoral methods cannot provide the solution to climate change, Like
(23:39):
they simply aren't going to do it. And I think
the police in a lot of kind I mean in
the United States right here in one of my old hometown's, Austin, Texas,
they just voted on a police accountability bill that the
police have basically said we're not going to abide by
like this is and you can find stories like that
all over the United States and other parts of the world.
(24:01):
Like the kind of the hope that you can just
sort of like put in your however long it takes
you to do voting in your country or city or whatever,
and that that's the method forward. It's it seems more
realistic because it's more familiar. But I think the vision
you're putting forward not to say that it's as simp
(24:25):
that's simple, but like it's effortful. And I think that
whenever someone's positing something like that that requires that kind
of like effort from a large enough segment of the population,
I see that as inherently more realistic than hoping that
we can just all kind of keep putting our twenty
minutes of voting a year towards solving the problem and
(24:46):
expect it to get better.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
Yeah, And it's like one of those things with you know,
like the idea that imagining prison abolition, you have to
imagine a world where that's possible, and that requires changing everything, right,
and I think that applies is to tackling climate change
and implementing direct democracy. So you know, if you're talking
about a system where people can turn up to a
(25:08):
forum in a local community center or you know, church
or whatever once a week, then people say, well, that's
not going to be accessible, you know, because so it's like, well,
you're right, we'll probably have to set up a system
of mutual aid that supports you know, working class people
to be able to attend those kind of events. And
you know, yeah, it's like how you're going to pay
(25:30):
for it, And it's like, well, you're right, We're probably
going to have to, you know, set up a solidarity
economy where, you know, we if we decide, for example,
that we want free public transport then and and bus
drivers to be paid paid a fair wage, you know,
then you're going to have to look at a whole
system whereby people are potentially getting free housing in return
(25:50):
for being a bus driver, free food that comes from
the local food cooperative. And you're like, I say, building
dual power rather than attacking the system head on, because
in a battle, in a pitch street battle in this country,
at least between us and the police, that we're going
to lose. And I think that, you know, we need
(26:11):
to think smarter because at this point, they haven't yet
made organizing public meetings illegal, but you know, they probably
will at some point, and then it's the only way
we'll be able to resist that is if we've had
some public meetings to decide how we're going to do it,
because at the moment, we haven't even had the meeting
to decide what our collective strategy is because there is
so much atomization between these different like you know, left
(26:36):
wing like social movements and civil society organizations and so much.
Sometimes just depresses me to think about how many people
are working for environmental charities or whatever, where all of
their work and their research is going towards creating policy
proposals for politicians to ignore it. If you were putting
(26:58):
that amount of energy and your enthusiasm in service of
the vision that's been created democratically by the people, then
we don't need to petition anyone to make the changes
we need, because we'll have organized effectively enough to do
the things that will really challenge state power, for example,
(27:21):
like a mass rent strike and a general strike.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Or if those efforts that are currently going towards putting
policy papers on desks where they'll be ignored or neutered,
was going towards putting forth policy that is then being
backed by a movement that is carrying out rent strikes,
that is putting out together work stoppages, that is blocking
roads that's able to actually throttle some of the life
(27:46):
support system of the state. Well, then suddenly you're not
looking at a recommendation, a white paper that's going to
wind up on some bloodless bureaucrats desk, or that's going
to wind up getting cut to pieces in Parliament. You're
you have something that that has teeth behind it, right,
the kind of force that might be able to make change.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Again, when you talk about this kind of stuff, you
have to contrast it with what we've been trying so far,
which is nothing.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Yeah, and you know, diversity of tactics is huge, and
so you know a lot of these direct action groups
in the UK, like just Stop Oil that have been
blocking motorways and stuff, have received, like you know, huge criticism,
especially from people who you know really ought to be
allies and at least recognize the the that this action
(28:39):
is coming out of a place of desperation because people
cannot see a better way. Yeah, and you know, there
was a there's someone from just Stop Oil who just
got three years in prison for blocking a motorway and
and that's that's insane, you know, And you know on
some level that person is it is a martyr, and
you've got to hold your your often say. What that
(29:01):
has done is shine a spotlight again on state authority
in a way that you know, if they have these
laws on the books but they never have to use them,
then it's easy to forget that they exist. We have
that power.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
Do you want to talk a little bit about cooperation UK?
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Yeah? Yeah, So so you know, for me, I'm a
democratic confederalist, you know, I mean or like you know,
the Rajavant project using direct democracy but also confederating that
up to sort of replace the state with a form
of governance that's democratic. And you know, I also I'm
(29:41):
a big believer in cosmocracy, right, which is the proper
name for global democracy.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
He says, essentially, you know, I wrote about this while
I was doing my masters.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
And that is how potentially, if we were implementing this
system world, we can use the internet to confederate to
a global level, you know, and really start to ta
call the issues that we collectively face as humanity, which
is like the fact that our separation from nature and
the rise of fascism is is threatening angus with extinction.
(30:12):
And so yeah, I'm a citizen of Earth and you know,
that that's what motivates a lot of my actions. But
you know, in some ways I've been kind of stewing
on these ideas alone. And so recently I met a
group called Cooperation UK. Who are you know, connecting. I
can often get bogged down in abstract theory about like
(30:33):
how you know, changing the whole world and never actually
doing anything practical. That's my downfall. But you know, you
need to start a movement like that locally, and and
so they're copying Cooperation Jackson, you know, who have been
incredibly effective, you know, setting up people's assemblies, mutual aid
economy in Jackson and also like a community land trust.
(30:58):
You know, they own like fifty different buildings you know
that are used collectively by the community. And this group
are planning to set that up in Hull, which is
just a city in the Northeast that's incredibly deprived. It's
got like the lowest voter turnout in the UK, but
it also has a thriving network of food banks and
(31:19):
you know cooperatives and mutual aid groups. And I think
the next step for me is when those those groups
send delegates to meet together and decide on collective strategy,
right like because there are so many people doing so
much good work, but there's almost like no faith in
our own vision, which is that if we're the people
(31:41):
you know who are say a union for nurses, then
you know, we should be deciding the conditions that exist
in healthcare, you know, because who better besides patients and
like staff is that to decide the conditions that they
that they operate in. And and so yeah, cooperation UK.
(32:04):
There are there's a group of us that are moving
to Whull. I'm moving. I'm moving next week. I'm really
excited about it. And yeah, we're planning to set up
lots of local neighborhood assemblies with the intention of within
a year holding a citywide people's assembly that can create
a shared vision and then and then potentially you know,
(32:25):
standing candidates for local council, but whose only policy is
we will enact. We will give power to the people's
assemblies and then they can use the you know, financial
power of existing institutions to support the transition to a
new model. And whilst they're doing that in Hull, you know,
(32:45):
the work that I hope to be doing is document
in that process learning, you know, so people can learn
from the mistakes and that, you know, and hopefully we
can set them up in in every city well across
the UK, because there are already people who's think very
similarly and that we're at a time now where that's
coalescing into the you know, people are recognizing the need
(33:06):
for this new movement with a new strategy that's based
around democracy rather than just activism. And yeah, it's really exciting.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, I mean that's I think that's a worthwhile idea.
I think it's a it's it's bold and something that
I'm I'm glad to see being attempted. Well, it's been
really great talking with you today. Did you have anywhere
you wanted to direct listeners in order to help if
they're interested in what Cooperation UK is doing.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Yeah, definitely. So there's there's a crowdfunder that I think
there'll be. I believe there'll be a link that you
guys can act.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
He says, and we'll be using that money to set
up the People's Assembly and mutual aid networks, but also
to create resources that anyone anywhere can use in their
local community.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
And I hope is that, you know, as these groups proliferate,
you know, going to start reaching out to each other,
forming an international solidarity network that is capable of providing
like the mutual aid that we that we need to
support each other, you know, for example, you know, if
we're talking about Palestine or Iran, to provide real meaningful solidarity,
(34:18):
these you know, liberation groups will require more organization than
just like thoughts and prayers.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Really and yeah, yeah, well, thank you so much, Patrick,
It has been great talking with you. Good luck as
you continue moving forward.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
And yeah, yeah, thanks very much. Yeah, I guess I
should also say I'm on I'm bizarrely, I'm on TikTok.
That's the medium I'm using at the moment. I wish
it wasn't. I'll probably want to start making more YouTube
videos discussing these ideas, So maybe I'll send you a
link that you can put in there, the Citizen of
Earth Show. It's my YouTube channel.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Excellent, well, Patrick, tell well Citizen of Earth YouTube channel
and we'll of your TikTok and the description.
Speaker 4 (35:01):
Thanks again for coming on the show.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Everybody go out and uh, you know, acquire eggs.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can
find sources for It could happen here, Updated monthly at
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