Centering Citizen Ownership: Britain is not for sale and Palestine is not for stealing.

The transcript of a speech delivered in Stroud, UK on 13th Sept 2025, by Professor Jem Bendell.

“Britain’s not for sale and Palestine’s not for stealing – defending and restoring citizenship ownership in the face of collapse.”

I am pleased to be back in ‘The People’s Republic of Stroud’. I first saw that phrase in the background of a talk entitled ‘heading for extinction’ by Gail Bradbrook back in 2018. People in the town of Stroud played a key role in the formation and growth of Extinction Rebellion, which sparked a new wave of environmentalism, bringing wider attention to the climate crisis. I mention that today, as I’m interested in connections between more commonly-owned assets, on the one hand, and a political voice on the other. Only with both of those do we increase the chances of coping better with a creeping collapse of the systems and opportunities we once had.

Today is unusual for me, as I am going to talk about politics. I have never given a speech before that is explicitly about politics. In the first half of 2017, I worked in front line politics with Jeremy Corbyn and his team. I advised on strategic communication, co-wrote speeches, and some of the manifesto. I went on to train some of the current backroom staff for PM Keir Starmer, including Morgan McSweeney. But I have never given a political speech myself. I feel now is the time to do that, because of what’s happening in Britain right now.

Continue reading “Centering Citizen Ownership: Britain is not for sale and Palestine is not for stealing.”

Our Humanity Dictates that the Collapse of Other Societies Matters to Us – including Palestine

Update on July 31st 2025:

After publication of this essay, there were a couple of months of what I considered unsatisfactory responses from various persons in senior volunteer roles in the DA Forum, who complained about my public criticism. However, by July, there was a widening of focus to include addressing matters of online group moderator capacity, diversity and accountability. Conversations are ongoing to improve systems. In addition, the original post that was blocked by moderators of the DA FB group has subsequently been accepted here.

It is painful to think that many of the children pictured above are now starving to death, and the world has watched, without a way to intervene until too late for so many. 

For over a year some people have been saying “one day everyone will have always been against this”. They recognised that many people only move with the herd, as defined by legacy media and cultural bias, and such complacency provides abusers with the time to do great harm. In a metacrisis with societal disruption and collapse, we would benefit from more people with greater ‘critical wisdom’ as I explain in in Chapter 8 of Breaking Together. We can also ask people to learn from their mistaken compliance and complacency, to avoid repeating it.

Many of us are lucky that societal collapse is still only a concept. It can be our way of understanding the increasing difficulties we experience, or the increasing damage to the natural world, or can describe a future breakdown of basic services in our societies. However, for some people the collapse of basic systems for living has been happening for a long time. Moreover, some people are experiencing the daily risk of being killed, the pain of hunger, grieving loved ones, and coping with trauma from regular bombing and displacement. A military-induced collapse of society is one that could be stopped, unlike the wider collapse that unfolds due to environmental and other factors. Therefore any such volitional collapse is something we could try to prevent, or reverse. It is something that calls for our attention and action. That is especially so if our taxes are funding part of it or our financial savings are benefiting from it. 

What I have just written seems self-evident. It should not need explaining. Therefore, it is heartbreaking that a few people who made the reduction of harm from societal collapse a major theme in their lives have been blocking people with a similar perspective from discussing how we might help people in need, with no transparency about that censorship, which means we develop a mistaken impression of the response of our fellow man. I am writing about it here because I think that with your help this situation can change, and with it, both systems and cultural dynamics will improve in the Deep Adaptation communities and movement. 

Continue reading “Our Humanity Dictates that the Collapse of Other Societies Matters to Us – including Palestine”

What did you do in the genocide Daddy?

Jewish voice for peace, April 15th

Why should we talk about Gaza and genocide on Earth Day? Partly because we should be talking about it everyday. Partly because the same mix of forces that are destroying the planet are destroying life and land in Gaza. Partly because the mainstream environmental sector won’t be talking about it, as they lie that all we need is more technology, hope and charismatic leadership to save the world. My friend and colleague in the field of collapse readiness, Matthew Slater has marched with the Palestinian flag nearly everyday for the last 18 months. We discussed what he has learned and what more can be done, which resulted in the following guest essay. Please read and then share with individuals by email, not on social media, where such content is likely buried by algorithms.

Thx, Jem

What did you do in the genocide, Daddy?

by Matthew Slater [listen to an audio of this essay]

I find it difficult talking about Palestine.

What is happening is so much more than a regional conflict or an antiterrorist operation. So much more even, than the alleged genocide that is picking up pace. Before I put my case, it will help some readers who rely on mainstream media if I lay out some facts. I will limit myself to 10!

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Expressing ourselves and trying to help, without it mattering

Beyond Mattering
Do I matter?
Is that my driver?
If I matter, then I matter,
With no question, no trying.
To accept I matter, without condition,
Is something I could feel from within,
But can I?
Perhaps with the help of a mantra,
On losing my need to matter.
So, let’s make it now:
I shall not need to matter
But it’s welcome when I do
And I won’t need to have mattered
But it’s welcome if that’s true
Neither will I need to be heard to know
Or known for who I am
For that would be joining a very pointless queue.
But there go those bells from the temple
Durga doesn’t quite agree
She’s sending me some edits
To this mantra on feeling free.
So, let’s try again:
I really won’t matter much
But it’s welcome when I do
And I haven’t mattered much
But it’s welcome if that’s true
I won’t be heard that much
Or much known for who I am
For that’s an endless queue.
I write these words to clarify
And remind my future self
But will I share these words somewhere?
Or leave them on the shelf?
Oh, this need runs deep
To matter
To matter
To ‘share’ to matter
But Durga’s bells remind me
that sharing can be okay
Because, after all
It just won’t matter.
Not much, anyway.

(June 2020, edited June 2023, by me)

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Have you let the arms-traders inside your brain?

At times of war mongering, and mass media’s de-humanising of others, it is worth remembering the evidence and analysis of the economic drivers of such madness have existed for over a century.

This, in a footnote in 1860 by John Ruskin:

“It is one very awful form of the operation of wealth in Europe that it is entirely capitalists’ wealth which supports unjust wars. Just wars do not need so much money to support them; for most of the men who wage such, wage them gratis; but for an unjust war, men’s bodies and souls have both to be bought; and the best tools of war for them besides; which makes such war costly to the maximum; not to speak of the cost of base fear, and angry suspicion, between nations…And all unjust war being supportable, if not by pillage of the enemy, only by loans from capitalists, these loans are repaid by subsequent taxation of the people, who appear to have no will in the matter, the capitalists’ will being the primary root of the war…”

Perhaps President Eisenhower has read some Ruskin as he thought through his farewell address in 1961 that warned the American public and world of the growth of the Military Industrial Complex that was coming to control US foreign policy in favour of constant war.

So next time you see some “news” that makes you go

“gah, those disgusting…” or

“we should remove that son of a…” or

“we should send in the…” or

“something [violent] must be done…”

stop and wonder..

… have you let the arms-traders inside your brain?