Strategy

First off, it’s important that we plan for a long, sustainable campaign. It will take a lot of effective campaigning to build a consensus that the current system of allowing private banks to issue the nation’s money supply needs to end. It will also take time to get the necessary legislation through parliament.

So, while it may feel as though everything is happening right now (the Budget, spending cuts, tax rises, financial reform in the US and so on), rest assured that these problems aren’t going to go away and there’s a growing body of evidence to suggest that the crisis is about to get worse, not better. If things do get worse, it makes it easier for us to win the argument that the current system doesn’t work. The slim possibility that things get better would only mean that the government had managed to hold off the ‘day of reckoning’ for a few more years (a bit like avoiding bankruptcy by taking out another credit card!)

With that long-term perspective in mind, we’re building an organisation that can grow to 100,000 or more on-the-ground campaigners, rather than attempting to tackle the media and authorities with the comparatively limited resources that we have right at this moment.

The Structure of the Campaign

It’s easy for government to resist pressure from a single campaign group. It’s not easy for them to resist pressure from the media, academia, major charities, business, unions, and their own MPs and opposition. Consequently, the campaign will focus on getting the bulk of the UK population aware of the need for reform of the monetary system before we spend too much time approaching government. The diagram below shows the two main planks of Call4Reform (the Student Network and the Constituency Groups), and how taking this indirect route to power will result in the government getting pressure from ‘all angles’:

(Click the image to see a full-size version):

We are aiming for ‘critical mass’, the point where an understanding of how money is created – and the destructive effect that has on all society outside of the banking sector – is ingrained in the minds of enough journalists, members of the public, and MPs, that no discussion of the financial crisis can avoid referring to this core issue. Once we have won that argument, it’s only a matter of time before the system is changed.

Laying The Foundations Over Summer 2010

We now have 4 student volunteers working full-time on preparing the campaign throughout the summer. Two of these interns are working on collecting all the conclusive evidence that this current system doesn’t work and can’t be rescued. The others are setting up the student network so that we have proactive student campaign groups throughout the 2010-2011 academic year.

For the constituency groups, these need to be able to grow organically and independently of resources and funding. To allow that to happen, we’re building a website that will serve as the hub of the Call4Reform community, and be used to coordinate all the events, projects and marketing done by each constituency group. Even if you’re in a small town on the outskirts of the country, you’ll be able to visit this site to get everything you need to start a campaign where you live, including flyers, videos, hand-outs, template emails and statistics.

Do Something Now…

Things are moving quickly behind the scenes, and by late September – when the sun has gone in and people are starting to feel the pain of the spending cuts – the campaign will be ready to launch with a bang. Until that moment there is one thing that you can do which will be incredibly valuable: Whenever you read an article in the news that talks about the debt crisis, financial reform or the government’s deficit, leave a comment or write a letter and link back to www.BankofEnglandAct.co.uk or Call4Reform.org. A single link on the Guardian website, for example, can bring more than 200 people, so this is a huge and powerful way to start growing the campaign.

More soon…

Ben Dyson on behalf of Call4Reform