Our declaration
Declaration of Independence, Interdependence and Radical Dependence.
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, respect for humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to this separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all beings are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty and the chance to fulfil their evolutionary potential. That to secure these rights, the natural laws of ecology bring equilibrium and fairness to all. These laws alone are pre-eminent.
In human terms, governments are instituted amongst people, deriving their power from the consent of the governed. Whenever any system of government becomes destructive of liberty, equality and survival, thereby threatening the existence of all life, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish this form of government.
Our causes are these: Centuries of colonialism, imperialism and capitalism have impoverished most of the world, destroyed cultures and ways of being and knowing which have been millennia in the making, devastated ecosystems and biospheres, and led to the genocide of so many human and more-than human beings that our hearts simply cannot fathom the scale of the loss and the pain. Every single life lost so far in the name of profit and imperial expansion is a crime. At this precise moment in time, we are now teetering at the edge of the complete devastation of all life on our common home, earth.
The stable system that kept all alive without endangering the future, has been turned on its head in the interests of the selfish few. In this land, Scotland – 500,000 people were cruelly evicted and deprived of what was rightfully theirs. Many were deported to ‘the colonies’ to drive the process of enclosure even further and inflict the same pains on other people of the earth. Those that remained, had no choice but to flock to the cities and become a part of the ‘working class’.
The age of industry is now dead and our labour no longer needed. We live poor lives on the pittance given to us from the profits we have raised. Dependent on handouts from those that deprived us of our rightful inheritance, many of us have lost the self-respect needed by free people.
Not content with owning and destroying the land, the powerful seek to stymie our protests and ban access to our own city, a city in which motorways continue to tear up our communities and exclude those with the least.
We take this step with great reluctance and it is our intention to maintain peaceful, and respectful, relations with Her Majesty’s Government of the United Kingdom, and continue good relations with Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council. Nevertheless it is our view, that the workings and functions of the capitalist state and all its institutions, globally, nationally and locally, mean it is simply not possible to achieve a socially just and ecologically regenerative future within the bounds of these structures. Compelled by the need to meet the interests of a global transnational class, our democratic institutions continue to make decisions which are unfair, destructive and oppressive and their behaviour so unreasonable in the face of our appeals for a liveable, just world, that we face no choice but to separate and determine our own future.
Democracy – the will of the people – has not been used. More mindless economic growth will generate still more of the sickness that it claims alleviate. We therefore maintain, that the global threat to our environment and liberty from the powerful is incompatible with sustainable environmental use and any notion of democracy.
Finally: We the people of a new state – the Govan Free State – do solemnly publish and declare ourselves to be forthwith absolved of all allegiance to the British Crown and our autonomous territory henceforth to be known as Govan Free State.
We call on all people who share our beliefs, ideals and aspirations to declare their own independence, interdependence and radical dependence. To decolonise their territories, however they may define them.
We no longer find it reasonable to put our faith elsewhere. There is no one coming. There is only us. And for us that means each other in Greater Govan on Glasgow’s South Side.
We mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes and our honour. We fight not for glory, nor riches, nor honours but for freedom alone.
