I left the UK on the 17th of September, in the dark hours of one of those dry and cold autumn mornings so particular to this country. The storm clouds of unstable debt, so long hovering over the transatlantic housing bubble had broken furiously with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, but the politicising forces of the recession gave me hope as I heard ordinary people increasingly break the taboo of talking politics. The Hope not Hate campaign, which I'd become familiar with at university, seemed to be effectively battling fascism in the UK, the Independent Asylum Commission was spearheading a creative new form of campaigning with the release of its final reports, and the first rumblings of a Convention on Modern Liberty could be heard in response to the erosion of British freedom. I left this country optimistic, firm in the belief that an organised, effective and ethical citizenry would be strong enough to keep this country together.
I return in the saddest of days. Each morning of the past month the reputation of Britain's highest authority has been dragged deeper through the filth of parliamentary expenses. 2.1 million people are now unable to find work. Around 70,000 families face the prospect of repossession as the flagship policy designed to protect them has pathetically reached only two families. The government stumbles blindly as Gordon Brown clings to the premiership, the knives in his back inspire confidence in neither this small inept man, nor the disparate and desperate rebels. And then today, one wakes up to read that fascists, who deny the holocaust, aim to expel "non-indigenous" citizens, and who advocate the return of corporal and capital punishment have been elected to represent this country in the European Parliament, an institution that proclaims human dignity is inviolable, the bedrock of Human Rights.
In all this time only once have I wished to leave, to return to my roaming. Thursday the 4th of June, as I travelled back to Bath from London to go and vote not once did I see a rally, a march, campaigners going from door to door, speakers, posters, leaflets, stickers; not one indication that this was a day of international importance in which we the people, at the height of our dignity, may choose who it is that will represent us in a community of nations. No surprise then that we learn that turnout, again, was the lowest ever.
But the darkness of these days must not lead us to despair. The retreat of other candidates in the North West Region from the podium last night as Nick Griffin advanced to give his victory speech seemed to symbolise the inability of morally bankrupt parties to take on and confront an emergent fascism.
The disgrace of party politics leaves figures such as Sir Robert Atkins simply unable to confront hatred where it rears its abominable face, backed by 132094 votes. This is a moment for citizen society, one in which it must not falter.
The strength and dynamism with which ordinary citizens organise to build the society in which they want to live is the only alternative in a barren institutional environment plagued by opportunists and weakness. We must issue a call to arms, to defend and re-construct British democracy from fascists and tyrants, cowards and careerists. The people of this country are its sovereign power, we need no permission to call our own Constituent Assemblies to define and defend our democracy. An organised, effective and ethical citizenry can bring democracy back to Britain, it must simply be ambitious enough to recognise its own authority. There is no time to lose.