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REPRESENTATION? 
It is often revolting 

• By Frank Beal, who is a Welsh Fabian, now aged 92, living in Marshfield, near Cardiff.  He writes this, for The Welsh Fabian.

My title refers to representation in its broadest sense.  I would prefer to make a speech about this in front of millions of TV viewers, but even if the opportunity were to come my way, I would lack the self-confidence to face the cameras. 

My real urge is to paint, verbally, a vision of “Life on Earth” as it would be under a humanitarian regime, whose “representatives” understood their responsibilities both to the people who voted for them and to the natural world.  And like the BBC, “it’s evolving…” 

I do not pretend to know all the answers, but I am utterly convinced that there are better ways of governing our so-called “civilisation” than the way it is being run now.  For a start, we must outlaw war between nations before we can call ourselves civilised.  That may sound unrealistic in the present climate.  But for billions of people, of all faiths, killing a fellow human being is probably the greatest sin of all.  Most of them can now claim to live in some kind of “democracy” which means (if it means anything) that ordinary people can elect their representatives locally and nationally.  And

despite all the propaganda, very few people actually vote for war. 

Before I turn to my sketchy vision of the future, a few words may be in order about the past.  It seems that nearly all my life (I was born in 1911) I have been either living in a state of war, or clearing up the mess left by a previous war, or preparing for another.  The Treaty of Versailles humiliated the Germans to such an extent that it was virtually certain that they would sooner or later seek revenge.  That led to the rise of Hitler, and the 1939-45 War.  It seems that some politicians (and I am not forgetting Pearl Harbour) look for an excuse to go to war even while they are negotiating a phoney peace settlement.  They continue to re-arm their countries, while talking Disarmament. 

The situation is now a little different.  There are those in America (and I daresay also in the UK) who think that winning a war against the present regime in Iraq will enhance their prospects of winning the next Elections they face.  It makes me sick.  They are prepared to ignore the United Nations just to get control of the oil-wells – while pretending to act in accordance with international law.  You must be joking!  Is this democracy or demonocracy?  George Bush became President by fraudulent means – and that’s a fine example to set the rest of the world, especially those countries whose people are still denied the right to a free vote.  

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