September 1, 2022 • 34 mins
Hear how a leading women’s rights campaigner and peace activist came to realise that a democratic world government with a world parliament and world constitution are needed to really ensure the rights of all women, minorities and stateless people.
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(00:00):
Today we’re going to look at the life and thought of another major world federalist thinker, Rosika Schwimmer.
Schwimmer was a leading women’s rights activist and peace activist
before she developed her ideas about the need for a democratic federal world government.
For her, a democratic and all-inclusive world government,
with women serving in office as well as men,
(00:21):
was necessary in order to move away from what she saw as the patriarchal and militaristic world system,
and to bring about true and sustainable world peace.
And moreover, she believed that the future world government
should be directly elected by the world’s people and accountable to them,
rather than simply being a unity of states.
(00:42):
Because in this way, she believed, it would be able to grant world citizenship to everyone
and thus guarantee the rights of women, and minorities, and refugees,
and all other people who could not count on their own national governments to grant them rights and freedoms.
Schwimmer was born on 11 September 1877 in Budapest, then capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
(01:05):
to a middle-class, secular Jewish family.
She attended primary school in Budapest and then her family moved to Transylvania
where her father worked as an agricultural merchant, and she continued her education in a local convent school.
She was a talented linguist and by the time she left school
she could speak English, French, German, and Hungarian, and was able to read Dutch, Italian, Norwegian, and Swedish.
(01:30):
In 1894, when Schwimmer was 18, her father lost his business and went bankrupt, and the family returned to Budapest.
Schwimmer found that she needed to work.
She started to work as a governess, and then she took other short-term jobs as a bookkeeper and correspondent clerk,
and then as a journalist and as a translator.
But in all of this she found it extremely hard to find a proper jobthat paid a wage that she could actually live on.
(01:58):
This was because at this time it was not considered appropriate for women to be economically independent,
and thus jobs for women tended to be short-term, part-time and very lowly paid.
As a very independently-minded young woman, Rosika found this appalling.
She fervently believed that every person was equal
and should have the same rights and the same opportunities,
(02:21):
and be paid the same for the same work.
So she set about trying to change things.
In 1897 she started working for the National Association of Women Office Workers
where she started to collect proper data about women’s wages and women's work conditions.
Once she had put together the picture for Hungary, she wanted to compare that with the situation of women workers in other countries,
(02:46):
and so she started writing to international feminist organizations to collect statistics on women's working conditions there and in other countries.
In the process of corresponding with these other feminist organisations
she came into contact with several leading figures in the international feminist movement,
people such as Aletta Jacobs, Marie Lang and Adelheid Popp,
(03:07):
who encouraged her in her work, and opened her eyes to women’s activism happening in other countries.
Young Rosika started to mature into a serious women’s rights activist.
In 1903, at the age of 26, she co-founded the ‘Hungarian Women Workers Association’
as an umbrella association to bring together all the various organisations working on women’s issues in Hungary.
(03:31):
The following year, in 1904, she attended the inaugural conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in Berlin, Germany.
There she spoke about labour conditions for women industrial workers in Hungary,
and listened to other women activists talk about the situations in their countries,
and she met many of the leading feminists from the international movement.
(03:53):
She returned home energised and inspired and she set up the Hungarian Association of Feminists,
along with her colleague Vilma Glucklich.
The organization was considered very radical at the time,
as it set out to work for gender equality in all aspects of women's lives,
including education, employment, access to birth control,
(04:14):
and reform of laws governing married women's socioeconomic status and inheritance rights.
She developed her ideas about women’s liberation,
arguing for example that housework should be done by women's collectives, rather than separately in every household,
as this would free most women for more interesting and rewarding pursuits.
(04:35):
And most importantly, she initiated the campaign for women’s right to vote,
a campaign which ultimately gained its objective in 1920.
In 1907 Schwimmer had a very public argument with a prominent professor who sought to limit women’s access to higher education
and insisted that educated women were like ‘female monsters’ who destroyed families.
(04:57):
Schwimmer argued against him, claiming that women had the right to be educated just like men
and that this would not make them ‘monsters’.
Indeed, she pointed out, this professor’s own wife had enjoyed an excellent education and she both had a family and was not a monster!
After that Schwimmer became a well-known figure in Hungary.
(05:17):
The male-dominated press and the establishment constantly criticised her and her organisation.
But this did not deter her at all.
She was a highly determined individual and quite unusual for a woman of her time.
She smoked, drank wine, and wore colourful, comfortable loose-fitting dresses, without a corset.
(05:37):
She described herself as a ‘very, very radical feminist’.
She went on lecture tours around Europe, arguing for women’s rights and particularly the right to vote.
She was an amazing speaker and she won over audiences with her energetic personality, piercing intelligence and biting satire.
(05:57):
She became widely known as one of the most inspiring and influential feminist campaigners in Central Europe.
A few years later she moved to London and became the press secretary of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance.
This was a crucial moment in the history of the British women's suffrage campaign.
Many prominent suffragists, led by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, had started the tactic of direct action in the last few years,
(06:23):
smashing windows, sabotaging the mail, and defacing public monuments in order to publicize their cause.
One suffragette, Emily Davison, had dramatically rushed onto the Derby race course,
snatched the bridle of the King's horse, and been trampled to death,
becoming a martyr to the cause of women's suffrage.
(06:44):
But Schwimmer was against such tactics
because as well as being a feminist, she was also a very committed pacifist.
And she was against using violence for any cause.
In these years before the first world war there were many feminist campaigners who agreed with Schwimmer,
and did not partake of the more violent methods used by Pankhurst and the other suffragettes.
(07:07):
But as soon as the war began, many of these feminists forgot about their abhorrence of violence and quickly supported the war effort.
Many even thought that it was necessary to put the whole issue of women’s rights temporarily to the side
in order to give their efforts to supporting the war.
On the other hand, other women’s rights campaigners, particularly those in the US,
(07:29):
wanted to solely focus on getting women the vote,
and not get involved in all the ‘stop the war’ campaigning.
Schwimmer, however, was unusual.
She believed that rights for women and world peace were inseparable issues
and she pledged herself to advance both of them, despite the war.
She had always been an ardent pacifist and pacifism ran deep in her family.
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One of her uncles, Leopold Katscher, had founded the Hungarian Peace Society,
and she had grown up amid discussions about how a world parliament and a world court were needed
so that states could solve their differences in a legal way,just as individuals do, without resorting to violence and war.
And in August 1913 she attended the 20th Universal Peace Congress in The Hague,
(08:17):
where international peace activists came together to develop and promote these kinds of ideas.
However, peace was not on the cards at this time and a few months later the First World War broke out.
Schwimmer, a native of Austro-Hungary, was still living in London,
and with Austro-Hungary and Britain on opposite sides in the war, she suddenly she found herself in enemy territory and unable to return home.
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Then to make matters worse, the British government branded her as an ‘enemy alien’ and she was forced to leave the country.
But where should she go?
She managed to the United States.
There she stepped up her activism for both women’s rights and for peace,
and increasingly, she emphasised the connection between these two things.
(09:03):
She travelled around the country with other feminists,
giving talks about the need for women to have the right to vote and thus have a say in choosing their government,
because if women were to vote they would surely not vote to go to war.
For Schwimmer, both pacifism and feminism were fundamentally political issues.
(09:23):
And so the work that needed to be done, she believed, was to change the political situation.
As such she was very much against a lot of the non-political activism which was taking place at the time.
She was very critical, for example, of all the charitable relief work
that both feminist and pacifist organisations were carrying out during the war.
(09:43):
She said, and I quote, “the problem with war relief was that it narcotises so many good people
into believing everything is done if we care for the victims,
while we don’t care to prevent as much as possible the making of new victims”.
She fervently believed that this kind of activity was just ‘charity’
and that in the long-term it prolonged the unjust political situation
(10:05):
by putting a plaster on it so that it didn’t seem so bad.
Instead Schwimmer wanted herself and other women to get involved in politics,
to form new processes and structures which would bring an end to war,
rather than simply acting as nurses and relief workers to help the needy
in what she saw was the patriarchal, militaristic world.
(10:27):
In 1915 Schwimmer helped to create the Women’s Peace Party, and became the organization’s international secretary.
She began to devote all of her energies to opposing the war and urging a peaceful settlement,
and she issued a proposal calling for the neutral nations to meet and formulate a plan for mediation.
At the Hague Congress of Women held later that year, Schwimmer convinced the conference to send representatives
(10:52):
to meet with leaders of both neutral and belligerent nations and encourage peaceful mediation.
She argued, and again I quote (10:58):
“When our sons are killed by millions, let us, mothers, only try to do good
by going to the kings and emperors, without any other danger than a refusal!"
Jane Addams led the delegation to the belligerents,
and Schwimmer herself took responsibility for meeting with leaders of the neutral countries.
(11:19):
She met with US President Woodrow Wilson and also withSecretary of State William Jennings Bryan,
and tried to convince them to convene a United States–sponsored neutral mediation conference to try to end the war.
But they were not convinced.
But Schwimmer did not give up. She just tried a different tactic.
She managed to secure a meeting with Henry Ford, of the Ford Motor Company,
(11:42):
the leading American automobile manufacturer, who was publicly against the war,
and she successfully convinced him of the need for a meeting of neutral states to discuss how to bring the war to a close.
She persuaded Ford to approach President Wilson again
and personally ask him to establish such a Neutral Mediation conference,
and Ford even offered to finance it.
(12:03):
But again, Wilson again declined.
Still Schwimmer did not give up.
If the governments wouldn’t do it, she thought, then the people should do it.
And so she persuaded Ford to finance an unofficial international mediation conference, which she would organise.
And so the Ford Neutral Mediation Conference took place in Stockholm on February 8, 1916,
(12:26):
with Schwimmer serving as expert adviser.
To get publicity for the event, Schwimmer arranged for the American delegation, which included Ford,
to sail to Stockholm on what became known as the ‘Peace Ship’.
However, the press again ridiculed Schwimmer and her activities,
and in the end, for various reasons, the whole thing was a bit of a flop.
(12:47):
But still, after the Ford Conference, Schwimmer did not give up.
She remained in Europe and continued her activism for women’s rights and for peace.
At the end of the war the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed and the new democratic republic of Hungary was formed.
Schwimmer returned home.
One of the first things that the new Prime Minister did
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was to table a bill giving literate women over the age of 24 the right to vote.
The bill was passed by parliament,
and for the first time in Hungary women’s suffrage became a reality.
Schwimmer was ecstati!
The war had ended, she and millions of other women had gained the right to vote.
Things were changing!
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The new Prime Minister was so impressed with Schwimmer that he invited her to become a member of his National Council of Fifteen,
and also to serve as Ambassador to Switzerland.
She was delighted to accept, and she became one of the world's first female ambassadors.
She moved to Switzerland and began to settle in.
But the good times were very short-lived.
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Just five months later Hungary’s democratic government was overthrown by Béla Kun’s Communist regime.
And in a sharp turn of events, Schwimmer was re-called to Hungary,
her passport was confiscated and she was barred from leaving the country.
And then things got even worse.
The Communist regime was in turn overthrown by the Fascist and Anti-Semitic regime of Admiral Nicolas Horthy.
(14:13):
In the period known as the ‘White Terror’ they began to purge and kill the Jews and Schwimmer was on the list.
She fell into despair.
The death and suffering that she saw all around her hurt her deeply,
and the fear for her own life, and that of her family, weighed her down.
In a letter that she wrote to her friend and feminist activist in the US, Lola Maverick Lloyd,
(14:37):
she wrote that her whole family were contemplating collective suicide.
But while Schwimmer and her sister supported the idea, her parents were against it, and thus it didn't happen.
In the end she and her family managed to find a way to get out of Hungary.
In 1920 loyal friends and peace activists succeeded in smuggling her out on steam boat on the Danube River
(14:59):
and she arrived safely in Vienna, where she lived as a refugee,
financially supported by her feminist friends and colleagues.
The following year, in 1921, at the age of 44,
and with the help of her American friend, Lola Maverick Lloyd,
she secured permission for herself and her family to emigrate to the United States.
She renounced her Hungarian citizenship and set sail, arriving on 26 August 1921.
(15:24):
In 1924 she applied for US citizenship.
However, in the application form there was a question about whether the applicant would take up arms and fight in defence of the country.
As a committed pacifist, Schwimmer wrote ‘no’.
This led to her being called for questioning and for interviews,
and ultimately being denied US citizenship.
(15:46):
Schwimmer was shocked.
She appealed in court and started a legal battle which would go on for the next five years and go all the way up to the Supreme Court.
But in 1929 she finally lost the battle,
as the Supreme Court judges voted by a majority of 6 to 3 to deny her citizenship.
One of the three judges that had voted in her favour did point out that as a woman over 50
(16:11):
she would not be allowed to take up arms even she if she wanted to.
But this argument somehow failed to persuade the other group of all-male judges.
And thus at age 52, she found herself a stateless person,
permitted to stay in the US, but unable to work,
and again, unable to vote.
(16:32):
This whole drama got her to start seriously thinking about the issue of statelessness
and what could be done to help individuals who had been denied citizenship.
She had little sense of allegiance to any one nation, but felt connected to the whole of humanity
She wrote around this time (16:48):
“I have no sense of nationalism,
only a cosmic consciousness of belonging to the human family”.
But how could she make this almost spiritual sense a political reality?
In 1924 she had started to develop her ideas about the need for a world government,
a federal level above national governments,
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that would both end the need for war and organise joint action on common problems,
and also provide a type of global citizenship for all peoples of the world,
including those that did not have any national citizenship.
This world government, she believed, would be totally different to the League of Nations,
which was not only powerless and ineffective,
(17:31):
but was also based on patriarchal and militaristic principles and run solely by men.
The future world government needed to be fundamentally egalitarian,
and have women serving alongside as men as Presidents, representatives, diplomats, political strategists, and so on,
all jobs that were still in the domain of men only.
(17:52):
In the next few years she continued discussing these ideas with her friend and fellow peace and women’s rights activist, Lola Maverick Lloyd,
who also shared her radical feminist, pacifist and internationalist views.
Lloyd had spent years criticising the League of Nations as being fundamentally undemocratic.
While others had criticised the League for its lack of enforcement power,
(18:14):
or because of its limited membership by only some states, with others excluded,
all very legitimate criticisms,
Lloyd had criticised it because it was dominated by states
and closed to the input from non-governmental organisations or from ordinary citizens.
And as the 1920s progressed Lloyd was also coming to the conclusion that the League of Nations was unreformable
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and that instead a whole new world government needed to be created,
directly elected by the people and directly accountable to them.
These two women were far more radical than most of the activists in either the feminist or the pacifist movements at this time,
and they increasingly took to developing their ideas together.
They focused on the notion of world citizenship, with real legally-protected rights.
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In 1934, as Hitler consolidated power in Germany and began persecuting Jews and other German citizens, Schwimmer wrote:
“the establishment of world citizenship and world passports
is a fundamental necessity, and the key to physical safety.
This is essential not for Germans only,
but for all others who are without a country,
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without rights anywhere,
without that minimum of safety
which is the birthright of the most miserable citizen in any civilised country.”
She argued that world passports could be created by the League of Nations,
rather like the Nansen passports that they had issued in the 1920s to serve as identity papers for state-less refugees
from countries undergoing massive civil war, such as Russia, and later Armenia and Turkey,
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but that these world passports could go even further and give real rights of world citizenship.
And alongside arguing for this, she continued to work feverishly to help refugees to escape Hungary
and other parts of Fascist Europe, as Nazism and anti-Semitism raised their ugly heads.
As the 1930s progressed Schwimmer and Lloyd became increasingly focused on the idea of a democratic world government
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as the only way to bring about the long-term end of war
and to protect women’s rights and the rights of all minorities, refugees and stateless people.
They read about the various other world government and world federation plans that were circulating at the time,
but criticised them all because they did not emphasise the direct democracy of all world citizens.
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Most of them focused on uniting states,
and many of them preserved all sorts of structural inequalities, of race, of ethnicity, and of gender.
In contrast, their model was fundamentally egalitarian, all-inclusive and linked directly to the people.
They set about trying to convince other feminist and pacifist organisations,
(20:55):
in particular the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, in which they had both long been active.
But their ideas were too radical for most of the people in these circles and they did not find much support.
Instead, as tensions increased again in Europe the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
got bogged down in a long ideological debate about whether they should stand against Facism and Nazism
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and try to stop violence from developing, or whether they should remain neutral.
Schwimmer and Lloyd were extremely frustrated when the organisation chose to stay neutral.
Just staying neutral was not going to stop war.
To do that it was necessary to change the world order, and create a democratic world government.
This is what they believed.
And so in 1937 they set up a new organisation: the Campaign for World Government. (21:40):
undefined
They firmly believed that ordinary people did not want war.
And so if there was a truly democratic world government,
that followed the wishes of the world’s people,
then this was the best possible chance of avoiding war.
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Schwimmer’s experience of being denied citizenship by the US,
and her experience being denied the right to vote for many years just because she was a woman,
led her to emphasise a number of elements which were not in other world federation plans that were circulating at the time.
In particular was the focus on individuals and their rights within the world federation.
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While other models focused on bringing together states
and developing the bureaucracy of the federal government structure,
Schwimmer and Lloyd’s vision emphasised that it should be individuals,
men and women, of course,
who directly voted for their representatives to the world government, and not states.
And that the federal level of world government would be able to give real rights and responsibilities to all individuals,
(22:46):
so that they would become world citizens in a real and serious sense of the term.
That same year they published a small pamphlet setting out their ideas, titled:
“Chaos, War or a New World Order (22:55):
What We Must Do To Establish the All-Inclusive, Non-Military Democratic Federation of Nations”.
The central idea was that a World Constitutional Convention should be convened,
with delegates from every country,
in order to draft a World Constitution for the new democratic federal world government.
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Ideally, governments should organise this process.
But if they did not, then ordinary citizens should organise it themselves.
In any case, they insisted that the delegates should be ordinary people,
not members of government or of the armed forces or navy.
The world constitution should outline the framework of a global level federal structure, with a world parliament,
(23:39):
which would regulate certain areas of political, economic and social cooperation between nations.
Beyond this, they also offered their own ideas as to what might be in the World Constitution.
They envisioned a federal structure similar to the US or Switzerland.
And the highest level, the world government, would only be able to govern on matters related to the welfare of the whole world.
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Other matters would remain the responsibility of the national governments.
Most importantly, people will be citizens of the world,
with rights and responsibilities granted by the federal government,
as well as citizens of their respective states.
As such they will have a world passport and be able to travel freely around the world
and to reside in any country that they wanted.
(24:24):
They also suggest that there should be a world parliament,
again with representatives elected directly by the people.
Each country, they propose, would elect 10 delegates
so that all the different groups and minorities in a country would be able to be represented.
These delegates would not be expected to agree on all matters or to vote together as a bloc.
Indeed it was expected that they would find ideological allies from other countries
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and would more likely vote according to ideology, to the left, to the right, and so on, rather than nationality.
They also proposed that the parliament would set up a number of Commissions to deal with common global problems.
For example, there would be an Economic Commission to gather all the unused war and defence budgets,
which would now not be needed because armies and navies and weapons wouldn't be needed anymore because there would be no more war,
(25:12):
and so all of this money could be put together to spend on the employment of people in efforts for the improvement of the world and its citizens.
They also suggested a Financial Commission to regulate global finance and to establish a uniform monetary system,
and a Trade Commission to remove tariffs and duties and establish a global free trade area.
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They also proposed a Raw Materials Commission
to regulate the production and consumption of raw materials in an equitable manner at the federal level.
The idea was that this would make it unnecessary to go to war for colonies in order to get access to those raw materials.
They also suggested a Commission to create International Law,
and global courts to enforce it.
(25:53):
And various other Commissions to deal with health and education and various other issues.
Having published this pamphlet with their ideas, they set up the Campaign formally,
with an office in Chicago focusing on national activities within the US, led by Lloyd,
and an office in New York, focusing on the international campaign, led by Schwimmer.
Between 1937 and 1939 they lobbied congressman
(26:15):
and persuaded them to raise resolutions in the US Senate and House of Representatives,
calling for the US government to convene a World Constitutional Convention.
But then once the Second World War broke out
they focused more on trying to convince the US President to convene again a conference of neutral states
who would find a way to bring about the end of the war
and guide states towards peaceful coexistence and world federation.
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In 1943 Lola’s daughter, Georgia Lloyd, then a recent graduate in Political Science from the University of Chicago,
took over the reigns of the Chicago office.
She herself became a serious activist for women's rights, pacifism and a world government.
During 1944 she participated in discussions about the future United Nations
(27:00):
and developed her vision of what it should look like,
and in 1945 she attended the San Francisco Conference which created the United Nations,
as an accredited Non-Governmental observer.
Meanwhile Schwimmer, and her friend and colleague Edith Wynner, ran the New York office.
In 1945 Wynner travelled to London to meet Henry Usborne
and to help him develop his ideas about how to create a world government.
(27:24):
Earlier that year Usborne had become a member of parliament for the British Labour Party.
And in his maiden speech in the House of Commons he had said, and I quote:
“I believe that there is only one hope of permanent peace,
and that it lies in world government.
Until we have world government, as distinct from world leagues or confederations,
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we cannot guarantee world peace.
We must therefore do something now and take some positive steps in that direction.”
And so in 1945 he sat down with Edith Wynner to develop ideas for what exactly those steps might be.
Together they developed a plan for a World Constitutional Convention to draft a World Constitution.
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In 1947 Georgia Lloyd, Edith Wynner and Henry Usborne, as well as hundreds of other people,
attended the Montreux Conference in Switzerland
which led to the formation of the World Movement for World Federal Government,
later to become the World Federalist Movement, or WFM.
Usborne presented the plan to hold a World Peoples’ Convention to draft a World Constitution,
(28:29):
and after much discussion it was accepted by the Congress
as one of the possible strategies to bring about a federal world government.
The following year, in 1948, Usborne set up the Peoples’ World Assembly Movement
and started to prepare for the Convention, which he proposed should take place in Geneva in 1950.
He and his colleagues reached out to parliamentarians and activists in as many countries as they could
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and sought to arrange the democratic election of delegates to the Convention.
The Peoples’ World Convention did indeed meet in Geneva in December 1950,
and there were about 500 delegates from 47 countries.
But it wasn't a huge success.
Despite the lengthy discussions they did not succeed in drafting a World Constitution
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or in agreeing a clear way forward.
By then the Cold War had started and many people had stopped believing that
a world federation that included both America and the Soviet Union would be possible.
Usborne did not give up hope, but he did decide to change tactics.
He moved away from the idea of a World Constitution Convention
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and instead in 1951 he set up the World Association of Parliamentarians for World Government,
to bring together parliamentarians from many different countries
to discuss the need and shape of a future democratic world government,
and to work towards it a bit more slowly.
But as Usborne changed directions, another world government activist stepped up to continue the call for a World Constitutional Convention.
(30:00):
In 1950 Henry Philip Isely joined the Chicago branch of the Campaign for a World Government, then run by Georgia Lloyd,
and he published a pamphlet entitled, ‘The People Must Write the Peace’,
calling again for a Peoples’ World Constitutional Convention.
And in 1958 they launched the World Committee for a World Constitutional Convention.
(30:21):
In 1961 Isely decided to separate out from the Campaign for a World Government
and along with others he set up a new organisation, and established headquarters in Denver, Colorado.
And in 1966 they changed the name of this organisation to the World Constitution and Parliament and Association.
By this time the World Federalist Movement had moved away from the idea of a World Constitutional Convention
(30:44):
and decided to focus more on the project of reforming the UN into a viable future world government.
But nonetheless, the World Constitution and Parliament Association worked throughout the 1960s
to gather support from national governments to hold a World Constitutional Convention.
But after several years they'd only managed to get five governments on board.
(31:06):
And so they decided, like Schwimmer and Usborne before them,
that if the governments would not do it, then the people could do it themselves.
And so in 1968 they held the first session of a Peoples World Constitutional Convention,
in Switzerland, with around 200 delegates from 27 countries and 5 continents.
And they established a drafting committee to produce a draft Constitution of the Federation of Earth.
(31:32):
In 1977 they organised a second session of the Peoples World Constitutional Convention, this time in Austria,
where the draft was debated and amended and finally agreed.
They then sent the document to the UN General Assembly and to all national governments,
in the hope that it would be signed and ratified.
Unsurprisingly, the document did not receive any ratifications.
(31:55):
But nonetheless, the group continues to today,
calling for the ratification of the provisional Earth Constitution and for the creation of a World Parliament.
This is just one example of a world constitution.
To date over 150 proposed World Constitutions have been drafted,
many by ordinary people and some by high-powered thinkers such as Professors of Chicago University.
(32:18):
While none of these World Constitutions have come into force,
they and their drafters all owe a debt of inspiration to Rosika Schwimmer and Lola Maverick Lloyd,
and the workof the Campaign for World Government.
In 1948 Rosika Schwimmer was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
However, she died in August that year, at the age of 71, before the committee had completed its deliberations.
(32:42):
And no Peace Prize was awarded that year.
Schwimmer’s vision of a world federation and a democratic world government
was inspired by her years as a women’s rights campaigner and as a peace activist.
It was also born as a result of her experience of statelessness,
and her awareness of the refugees and other people who also found themselves without national citizenship
(33:03):
and thus without rights and without safety.
These experiences drove her to develop a particular vision of world federation
that directly linked the world government to the world’s people,
and created a form of world citizenship with real and enforceable rights.
Her ideas inspired thousands of people to think about how the world order should be designed
(33:25):
and to participate in writing World Constitutions.
And they also overflowed into the post-war human rights movement
and campaigns for refugees and stateless persons.
While with hindsight we may realise that there are many stages to go through before
the world’s people, or their representatives, can sit down together to really draft a world constitution,
there is still much in her ideas and methods that can inspire us today.
Today we’re going to look at the life and thought of another major world federalist thinker, Rosika Schwimmer.
Schwimmer was a leading women’s rights activist and peace activist
before she developed her ideas about the need for a democratic federal world government.
For her, a democratic and all-inclusive world government,
with women serving in office as well as men,
(00:21):
was necessary in order to move away from what she saw as the patriarchal and militaristic world system,
and to bring about true and sustainable world peace.
And moreover, she believed that the future world government
should be directly elected by the world’s people and accountable to them,
rather than simply being a unity of states.
(00:42):
Because in this way, she believed, it would be able to grant world citizenship to everyone
and thus guarantee the rights of women, and minorities, and refugees,
and all other people who could not count on their own national governments to grant them rights and freedoms.
Schwimmer was born on 11 September 1877 in Budapest, then capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
(01:05):
to a middle-class, secular Jewish family.
She attended primary school in Budapest and then her family moved to Transylvania
where her father worked as an agricultural merchant, and she continued her education in a local convent school.
She was a talented linguist and by the time she left school
she could speak English, French, German, and Hungarian, and was able to read Dutch, Italian, Norwegian, and Swedish.
(01:30):
In 1894, when Schwimmer was 18, her father lost his business and went bankrupt, and the family returned to Budapest.
Schwimmer found that she needed to work.
She started to work as a governess, and then she took other short-term jobs as a bookkeeper and correspondent clerk,
and then as a journalist and as a translator.
But in all of this she found it extremely hard to find a proper jobthat paid a wage that she could actually live on.
(01:58):
This was because at this time it was not considered appropriate for women to be economically independent,
and thus jobs for women tended to be short-term, part-time and very lowly paid.
As a very independently-minded young woman, Rosika found this appalling.
She fervently believed that every person was equal
and should have the same rights and the same opportunities,
(02:21):
and be paid the same for the same work.
So she set about trying to change things.
In 1897 she started working for the National Association of Women Office Workers
where she started to collect proper data about women’s wages and women's work conditions.
Once she had put together the picture for Hungary, she wanted to compare that with the situation of women workers in other countries,
(02:46):
and so she started writing to international feminist organizations to collect statistics on women's working conditions there and in other countries.
In the process of corresponding with these other feminist organisations
she came into contact with several leading figures in the international feminist movement,
people such as Aletta Jacobs, Marie Lang and Adelheid Popp,
(03:07):
who encouraged her in her work, and opened her eyes to women’s activism happening in other countries.
Young Rosika started to mature into a serious women’s rights activist.
In 1903, at the age of 26, she co-founded the ‘Hungarian Women Workers Association’
as an umbrella association to bring together all the various organisations working on women’s issues in Hungary.
(03:31):
The following year, in 1904, she attended the inaugural conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in Berlin, Germany.
There she spoke about labour conditions for women industrial workers in Hungary,
and listened to other women activists talk about the situations in their countries,
and she met many of the leading feminists from the international movement.
(03:53):
She returned home energised and inspired and she set up the Hungarian Association of Feminists,
along with her colleague Vilma Glucklich.
The organization was considered very radical at the time,
as it set out to work for gender equality in all aspects of women's lives,
including education, employment, access to birth control,
(04:14):
and reform of laws governing married women's socioeconomic status and inheritance rights.
She developed her ideas about women’s liberation,
arguing for example that housework should be done by women's collectives, rather than separately in every household,
as this would free most women for more interesting and rewarding pursuits.
(04:35):
And most importantly, she initiated the campaign for women’s right to vote,
a campaign which ultimately gained its objective in 1920.
In 1907 Schwimmer had a very public argument with a prominent professor who sought to limit women’s access to higher education
and insisted that educated women were like ‘female monsters’ who destroyed families.
(04:57):
Schwimmer argued against him, claiming that women had the right to be educated just like men
and that this would not make them ‘monsters’.
Indeed, she pointed out, this professor’s own wife had enjoyed an excellent education and she both had a family and was not a monster!
After that Schwimmer became a well-known figure in Hungary.
(05:17):
The male-dominated press and the establishment constantly criticised her and her organisation.
But this did not deter her at all.
She was a highly determined individual and quite unusual for a woman of her time.
She smoked, drank wine, and wore colourful, comfortable loose-fitting dresses, without a corset.
(05:37):
She described herself as a ‘very, very radical feminist’.
She went on lecture tours around Europe, arguing for women’s rights and particularly the right to vote.
She was an amazing speaker and she won over audiences with her energetic personality, piercing intelligence and biting satire.
(05:57):
She became widely known as one of the most inspiring and influential feminist campaigners in Central Europe.
A few years later she moved to London and became the press secretary of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance.
This was a crucial moment in the history of the British women's suffrage campaign.
Many prominent suffragists, led by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, had started the tactic of direct action in the last few years,
(06:23):
smashing windows, sabotaging the mail, and defacing public monuments in order to publicize their cause.
One suffragette, Emily Davison, had dramatically rushed onto the Derby race course,
snatched the bridle of the King's horse, and been trampled to death,
becoming a martyr to the cause of women's suffrage.
(06:44):
But Schwimmer was against such tactics
because as well as being a feminist, she was also a very committed pacifist.
And she was against using violence for any cause.
In these years before the first world war there were many feminist campaigners who agreed with Schwimmer,
and did not partake of the more violent methods used by Pankhurst and the other suffragettes.
(07:07):
But as soon as the war began, many of these feminists forgot about their abhorrence of violence and quickly supported the war effort.
Many even thought that it was necessary to put the whole issue of women’s rights temporarily to the side
in order to give their efforts to supporting the war.
On the other hand, other women’s rights campaigners, particularly those in the US,
(07:29):
wanted to solely focus on getting women the vote,
and not get involved in all the ‘stop the war’ campaigning.
Schwimmer, however, was unusual.
She believed that rights for women and world peace were inseparable issues
and she pledged herself to advance both of them, despite the war.
She had always been an ardent pacifist and pacifism ran deep in her family.
(07:53):
One of her uncles, Leopold Katscher, had founded the Hungarian Peace Society,
and she had grown up amid discussions about how a world parliament and a world court were needed
so that states could solve their differences in a legal way,just as individuals do, without resorting to violence and war.
And in August 1913 she attended the 20th Universal Peace Congress in The Hague,
(08:17):
where international peace activists came together to develop and promote these kinds of ideas.
However, peace was not on the cards at this time and a few months later the First World War broke out.
Schwimmer, a native of Austro-Hungary, was still living in London,
and with Austro-Hungary and Britain on opposite sides in the war, she suddenly she found herself in enemy territory and unable to return home.
(08:42):
Then to make matters worse, the British government branded her as an ‘enemy alien’ and she was forced to leave the country.
But where should she go?
She managed to the United States.
There she stepped up her activism for both women’s rights and for peace,
and increasingly, she emphasised the connection between these two things.
(09:03):
She travelled around the country with other feminists,
giving talks about the need for women to have the right to vote and thus have a say in choosing their government,
because if women were to vote they would surely not vote to go to war.
For Schwimmer, both pacifism and feminism were fundamentally political issues.
(09:23):
And so the work that needed to be done, she believed, was to change the political situation.
As such she was very much against a lot of the non-political activism which was taking place at the time.
She was very critical, for example, of all the charitable relief work
that both feminist and pacifist organisations were carrying out during the war.
(09:43):
She said, and I quote, “the problem with war relief was that it narcotises so many good people
into believing everything is done if we care for the victims,
while we don’t care to prevent as much as possible the making of new victims”.
She fervently believed that this kind of activity was just ‘charity’
and that in the long-term it prolonged the unjust political situation
(10:05):
by putting a plaster on it so that it didn’t seem so bad.
Instead Schwimmer wanted herself and other women to get involved in politics,
to form new processes and structures which would bring an end to war,
rather than simply acting as nurses and relief workers to help the needy
in what she saw was the patriarchal, militaristic world.
(10:27):
In 1915 Schwimmer helped to create the Women’s Peace Party, and became the organization’s international secretary.
She began to devote all of her energies to opposing the war and urging a peaceful settlement,
and she issued a proposal calling for the neutral nations to meet and formulate a plan for mediation.
At the Hague Congress of Women held later that year, Schwimmer convinced the conference to send representatives
(10:52):
to meet with leaders of both neutral and belligerent nations and encourage peaceful mediation.
She argued, and again I quote (10:58):
“When our sons are killed by millions, let us, mothers, only try to do good
by going to the kings and emperors, without any other danger than a refusal!"
Jane Addams led the delegation to the belligerents,
and Schwimmer herself took responsibility for meeting with leaders of the neutral countries.
(11:19):
She met with US President Woodrow Wilson and also withSecretary of State William Jennings Bryan,
and tried to convince them to convene a United States–sponsored neutral mediation conference to try to end the war.
But they were not convinced.
But Schwimmer did not give up. She just tried a different tactic.
She managed to secure a meeting with Henry Ford, of the Ford Motor Company,
(11:42):
the leading American automobile manufacturer, who was publicly against the war,
and she successfully convinced him of the need for a meeting of neutral states to discuss how to bring the war to a close.
She persuaded Ford to approach President Wilson again
and personally ask him to establish such a Neutral Mediation conference,
and Ford even offered to finance it.
(12:03):
But again, Wilson again declined.
Still Schwimmer did not give up.
If the governments wouldn’t do it, she thought, then the people should do it.
And so she persuaded Ford to finance an unofficial international mediation conference, which she would organise.
And so the Ford Neutral Mediation Conference took place in Stockholm on February 8, 1916,
(12:26):
with Schwimmer serving as expert adviser.
To get publicity for the event, Schwimmer arranged for the American delegation, which included Ford,
to sail to Stockholm on what became known as the ‘Peace Ship’.
However, the press again ridiculed Schwimmer and her activities,
and in the end, for various reasons, the whole thing was a bit of a flop.
(12:47):
But still, after the Ford Conference, Schwimmer did not give up.
She remained in Europe and continued her activism for women’s rights and for peace.
At the end of the war the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed and the new democratic republic of Hungary was formed.
Schwimmer returned home.
One of the first things that the new Prime Minister did
(13:08):
was to table a bill giving literate women over the age of 24 the right to vote.
The bill was passed by parliament,
and for the first time in Hungary women’s suffrage became a reality.
Schwimmer was ecstati!
The war had ended, she and millions of other women had gained the right to vote.
Things were changing!
(13:30):
The new Prime Minister was so impressed with Schwimmer that he invited her to become a member of his National Council of Fifteen,
and also to serve as Ambassador to Switzerland.
She was delighted to accept, and she became one of the world's first female ambassadors.
She moved to Switzerland and began to settle in.
But the good times were very short-lived.
(13:50):
Just five months later Hungary’s democratic government was overthrown by Béla Kun’s Communist regime.
And in a sharp turn of events, Schwimmer was re-called to Hungary,
her passport was confiscated and she was barred from leaving the country.
And then things got even worse.
The Communist regime was in turn overthrown by the Fascist and Anti-Semitic regime of Admiral Nicolas Horthy.
(14:13):
In the period known as the ‘White Terror’ they began to purge and kill the Jews and Schwimmer was on the list.
She fell into despair.
The death and suffering that she saw all around her hurt her deeply,
and the fear for her own life, and that of her family, weighed her down.
In a letter that she wrote to her friend and feminist activist in the US, Lola Maverick Lloyd,
(14:37):
she wrote that her whole family were contemplating collective suicide.
But while Schwimmer and her sister supported the idea, her parents were against it, and thus it didn't happen.
In the end she and her family managed to find a way to get out of Hungary.
In 1920 loyal friends and peace activists succeeded in smuggling her out on steam boat on the Danube River
(14:59):
and she arrived safely in Vienna, where she lived as a refugee,
financially supported by her feminist friends and colleagues.
The following year, in 1921, at the age of 44,
and with the help of her American friend, Lola Maverick Lloyd,
she secured permission for herself and her family to emigrate to the United States.
She renounced her Hungarian citizenship and set sail, arriving on 26 August 1921.
(15:24):
In 1924 she applied for US citizenship.
However, in the application form there was a question about whether the applicant would take up arms and fight in defence of the country.
As a committed pacifist, Schwimmer wrote ‘no’.
This led to her being called for questioning and for interviews,
and ultimately being denied US citizenship.
(15:46):
Schwimmer was shocked.
She appealed in court and started a legal battle which would go on for the next five years and go all the way up to the Supreme Court.
But in 1929 she finally lost the battle,
as the Supreme Court judges voted by a majority of 6 to 3 to deny her citizenship.
One of the three judges that had voted in her favour did point out that as a woman over 50
(16:11):
she would not be allowed to take up arms even she if she wanted to.
But this argument somehow failed to persuade the other group of all-male judges.
And thus at age 52, she found herself a stateless person,
permitted to stay in the US, but unable to work,
and again, unable to vote.
(16:32):
This whole drama got her to start seriously thinking about the issue of statelessness
and what could be done to help individuals who had been denied citizenship.
She had little sense of allegiance to any one nation, but felt connected to the whole of humanity
She wrote around this time (16:48):
“I have no sense of nationalism,
only a cosmic consciousness of belonging to the human family”.
But how could she make this almost spiritual sense a political reality?
In 1924 she had started to develop her ideas about the need for a world government,
a federal level above national governments,
(17:10):
that would both end the need for war and organise joint action on common problems,
and also provide a type of global citizenship for all peoples of the world,
including those that did not have any national citizenship.
This world government, she believed, would be totally different to the League of Nations,
which was not only powerless and ineffective,
(17:31):
but was also based on patriarchal and militaristic principles and run solely by men.
The future world government needed to be fundamentally egalitarian,
and have women serving alongside as men as Presidents, representatives, diplomats, political strategists, and so on,
all jobs that were still in the domain of men only.
(17:52):
In the next few years she continued discussing these ideas with her friend and fellow peace and women’s rights activist, Lola Maverick Lloyd,
who also shared her radical feminist, pacifist and internationalist views.
Lloyd had spent years criticising the League of Nations as being fundamentally undemocratic.
While others had criticised the League for its lack of enforcement power,
(18:14):
or because of its limited membership by only some states, with others excluded,
all very legitimate criticisms,
Lloyd had criticised it because it was dominated by states
and closed to the input from non-governmental organisations or from ordinary citizens.
And as the 1920s progressed Lloyd was also coming to the conclusion that the League of Nations was unreformable
(18:37):
and that instead a whole new world government needed to be created,
directly elected by the people and directly accountable to them.
These two women were far more radical than most of the activists in either the feminist or the pacifist movements at this time,
and they increasingly took to developing their ideas together.
They focused on the notion of world citizenship, with real legally-protected rights.
(19:02):
In 1934, as Hitler consolidated power in Germany and began persecuting Jews and other German citizens, Schwimmer wrote:
“the establishment of world citizenship and world passports
is a fundamental necessity, and the key to physical safety.
This is essential not for Germans only,
but for all others who are without a country,
(19:23):
without rights anywhere,
without that minimum of safety
which is the birthright of the most miserable citizen in any civilised country.”
She argued that world passports could be created by the League of Nations,
rather like the Nansen passports that they had issued in the 1920s to serve as identity papers for state-less refugees
from countries undergoing massive civil war, such as Russia, and later Armenia and Turkey,
(19:48):
but that these world passports could go even further and give real rights of world citizenship.
And alongside arguing for this, she continued to work feverishly to help refugees to escape Hungary
and other parts of Fascist Europe, as Nazism and anti-Semitism raised their ugly heads.
As the 1930s progressed Schwimmer and Lloyd became increasingly focused on the idea of a democratic world government
(20:12):
as the only way to bring about the long-term end of war
and to protect women’s rights and the rights of all minorities, refugees and stateless people.
They read about the various other world government and world federation plans that were circulating at the time,
but criticised them all because they did not emphasise the direct democracy of all world citizens.
(20:33):
Most of them focused on uniting states,
and many of them preserved all sorts of structural inequalities, of race, of ethnicity, and of gender.
In contrast, their model was fundamentally egalitarian, all-inclusive and linked directly to the people.
They set about trying to convince other feminist and pacifist organisations,
(20:55):
in particular the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, in which they had both long been active.
But their ideas were too radical for most of the people in these circles and they did not find much support.
Instead, as tensions increased again in Europe the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
got bogged down in a long ideological debate about whether they should stand against Facism and Nazism
(21:19):
and try to stop violence from developing, or whether they should remain neutral.
Schwimmer and Lloyd were extremely frustrated when the organisation chose to stay neutral.
Just staying neutral was not going to stop war.
To do that it was necessary to change the world order, and create a democratic world government.
This is what they believed.
And so in 1937 they set up a new organisation: the Campaign for World Government. (21:40):
undefined
They firmly believed that ordinary people did not want war.
And so if there was a truly democratic world government,
that followed the wishes of the world’s people,
then this was the best possible chance of avoiding war.
(22:00):
Schwimmer’s experience of being denied citizenship by the US,
and her experience being denied the right to vote for many years just because she was a woman,
led her to emphasise a number of elements which were not in other world federation plans that were circulating at the time.
In particular was the focus on individuals and their rights within the world federation.
(22:22):
While other models focused on bringing together states
and developing the bureaucracy of the federal government structure,
Schwimmer and Lloyd’s vision emphasised that it should be individuals,
men and women, of course,
who directly voted for their representatives to the world government, and not states.
And that the federal level of world government would be able to give real rights and responsibilities to all individuals,
(22:46):
so that they would become world citizens in a real and serious sense of the term.
That same year they published a small pamphlet setting out their ideas, titled:
“Chaos, War or a New World Order (22:55):
What We Must Do To Establish the All-Inclusive, Non-Military Democratic Federation of Nations”.
The central idea was that a World Constitutional Convention should be convened,
with delegates from every country,
in order to draft a World Constitution for the new democratic federal world government.
(23:17):
Ideally, governments should organise this process.
But if they did not, then ordinary citizens should organise it themselves.
In any case, they insisted that the delegates should be ordinary people,
not members of government or of the armed forces or navy.
The world constitution should outline the framework of a global level federal structure, with a world parliament,
(23:39):
which would regulate certain areas of political, economic and social cooperation between nations.
Beyond this, they also offered their own ideas as to what might be in the World Constitution.
They envisioned a federal structure similar to the US or Switzerland.
And the highest level, the world government, would only be able to govern on matters related to the welfare of the whole world.
(24:01):
Other matters would remain the responsibility of the national governments.
Most importantly, people will be citizens of the world,
with rights and responsibilities granted by the federal government,
as well as citizens of their respective states.
As such they will have a world passport and be able to travel freely around the world
and to reside in any country that they wanted.
(24:24):
They also suggest that there should be a world parliament,
again with representatives elected directly by the people.
Each country, they propose, would elect 10 delegates
so that all the different groups and minorities in a country would be able to be represented.
These delegates would not be expected to agree on all matters or to vote together as a bloc.
Indeed it was expected that they would find ideological allies from other countries
(24:47):
and would more likely vote according to ideology, to the left, to the right, and so on, rather than nationality.
They also proposed that the parliament would set up a number of Commissions to deal with common global problems.
For example, there would be an Economic Commission to gather all the unused war and defence budgets,
which would now not be needed because armies and navies and weapons wouldn't be needed anymore because there would be no more war,
(25:12):
and so all of this money could be put together to spend on the employment of people in efforts for the improvement of the world and its citizens.
They also suggested a Financial Commission to regulate global finance and to establish a uniform monetary system,
and a Trade Commission to remove tariffs and duties and establish a global free trade area.
(25:32):
They also proposed a Raw Materials Commission
to regulate the production and consumption of raw materials in an equitable manner at the federal level.
The idea was that this would make it unnecessary to go to war for colonies in order to get access to those raw materials.
They also suggested a Commission to create International Law,
and global courts to enforce it.
(25:53):
And various other Commissions to deal with health and education and various other issues.
Having published this pamphlet with their ideas, they set up the Campaign formally,
with an office in Chicago focusing on national activities within the US, led by Lloyd,
and an office in New York, focusing on the international campaign, led by Schwimmer.
Between 1937 and 1939 they lobbied congressman
(26:15):
and persuaded them to raise resolutions in the US Senate and House of Representatives,
calling for the US government to convene a World Constitutional Convention.
But then once the Second World War broke out
they focused more on trying to convince the US President to convene again a conference of neutral states
who would find a way to bring about the end of the war
and guide states towards peaceful coexistence and world federation.
(26:39):
In 1943 Lola’s daughter, Georgia Lloyd, then a recent graduate in Political Science from the University of Chicago,
took over the reigns of the Chicago office.
She herself became a serious activist for women's rights, pacifism and a world government.
During 1944 she participated in discussions about the future United Nations
(27:00):
and developed her vision of what it should look like,
and in 1945 she attended the San Francisco Conference which created the United Nations,
as an accredited Non-Governmental observer.
Meanwhile Schwimmer, and her friend and colleague Edith Wynner, ran the New York office.
In 1945 Wynner travelled to London to meet Henry Usborne
and to help him develop his ideas about how to create a world government.
(27:24):
Earlier that year Usborne had become a member of parliament for the British Labour Party.
And in his maiden speech in the House of Commons he had said, and I quote:
“I believe that there is only one hope of permanent peace,
and that it lies in world government.
Until we have world government, as distinct from world leagues or confederations,
(27:44):
we cannot guarantee world peace.
We must therefore do something now and take some positive steps in that direction.”
And so in 1945 he sat down with Edith Wynner to develop ideas for what exactly those steps might be.
Together they developed a plan for a World Constitutional Convention to draft a World Constitution.
(28:06):
In 1947 Georgia Lloyd, Edith Wynner and Henry Usborne, as well as hundreds of other people,
attended the Montreux Conference in Switzerland
which led to the formation of the World Movement for World Federal Government,
later to become the World Federalist Movement, or WFM.
Usborne presented the plan to hold a World Peoples’ Convention to draft a World Constitution,
(28:29):
and after much discussion it was accepted by the Congress
as one of the possible strategies to bring about a federal world government.
The following year, in 1948, Usborne set up the Peoples’ World Assembly Movement
and started to prepare for the Convention, which he proposed should take place in Geneva in 1950.
He and his colleagues reached out to parliamentarians and activists in as many countries as they could
(28:54):
and sought to arrange the democratic election of delegates to the Convention.
The Peoples’ World Convention did indeed meet in Geneva in December 1950,
and there were about 500 delegates from 47 countries.
But it wasn't a huge success.
Despite the lengthy discussions they did not succeed in drafting a World Constitution
(29:14):
or in agreeing a clear way forward.
By then the Cold War had started and many people had stopped believing that
a world federation that included both America and the Soviet Union would be possible.
Usborne did not give up hope, but he did decide to change tactics.
He moved away from the idea of a World Constitution Convention
(29:35):
and instead in 1951 he set up the World Association of Parliamentarians for World Government,
to bring together parliamentarians from many different countries
to discuss the need and shape of a future democratic world government,
and to work towards it a bit more slowly.
But as Usborne changed directions, another world government activist stepped up to continue the call for a World Constitutional Convention.
(30:00):
In 1950 Henry Philip Isely joined the Chicago branch of the Campaign for a World Government, then run by Georgia Lloyd,
and he published a pamphlet entitled, ‘The People Must Write the Peace’,
calling again for a Peoples’ World Constitutional Convention.
And in 1958 they launched the World Committee for a World Constitutional Convention.
(30:21):
In 1961 Isely decided to separate out from the Campaign for a World Government
and along with others he set up a new organisation, and established headquarters in Denver, Colorado.
And in 1966 they changed the name of this organisation to the World Constitution and Parliament and Association.
By this time the World Federalist Movement had moved away from the idea of a World Constitutional Convention
(30:44):
and decided to focus more on the project of reforming the UN into a viable future world government.
But nonetheless, the World Constitution and Parliament Association worked throughout the 1960s
to gather support from national governments to hold a World Constitutional Convention.
But after several years they'd only managed to get five governments on board.
(31:06):
And so they decided, like Schwimmer and Usborne before them,
that if the governments would not do it, then the people could do it themselves.
And so in 1968 they held the first session of a Peoples World Constitutional Convention,
in Switzerland, with around 200 delegates from 27 countries and 5 continents.
And they established a drafting committee to produce a draft Constitution of the Federation of Earth.
(31:32):
In 1977 they organised a second session of the Peoples World Constitutional Convention, this time in Austria,
where the draft was debated and amended and finally agreed.
They then sent the document to the UN General Assembly and to all national governments,
in the hope that it would be signed and ratified.
Unsurprisingly, the document did not receive any ratifications.
(31:55):
But nonetheless, the group continues to today,
calling for the ratification of the provisional Earth Constitution and for the creation of a World Parliament.
This is just one example of a world constitution.
To date over 150 proposed World Constitutions have been drafted,
many by ordinary people and some by high-powered thinkers such as Professors of Chicago University.
(32:18):
While none of these World Constitutions have come into force,
they and their drafters all owe a debt of inspiration to Rosika Schwimmer and Lola Maverick Lloyd,
and the workof the Campaign for World Government.
In 1948 Rosika Schwimmer was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
However, she died in August that year, at the age of 71, before the committee had completed its deliberations.
(32:42):
And no Peace Prize was awarded that year.
Schwimmer’s vision of a world federation and a democratic world government
was inspired by her years as a women’s rights campaigner and as a peace activist.
It was also born as a result of her experience of statelessness,
and her awareness of the refugees and other people who also found themselves without national citizenship
(33:03):
and thus without rights and without safety.
These experiences drove her to develop a particular vision of world federation
that directly linked the world government to the world’s people,
and created a form of world citizenship with real and enforceable rights.
Her ideas inspired thousands of people to think about how the world order should be designed
(33:25):
and to participate in writing World Constitutions.
And they also overflowed into the post-war human rights movement
and campaigns for refugees and stateless persons.
While with hindsight we may realise that there are many stages to go through before
the world’s people, or their representatives, can sit down together to really draft a world constitution,
there is still much in her ideas and methods that can inspire us today.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.