Help build a secure world using the strength of
NON-VIOLENCE through The Peace Party

The Peace Party

Charter for Peace, Love, Truth, Tolerance, Respect, Justice for all and for our World

This Charter sets out, firstly, the Core Values – the ideas at the heart of The Peace Party, the ideals and vision that motivate supporters of the Peace Party. Surrounding these, and re-inforcing them, are the more detailed Principles of the ten perceived basic human needs. And, surrounding these in turn, are the Policies inspired by the Core Values and Needs Principles.

For some, peace means the absence of war or, perhaps, time for the preparation for the next one; BUT this Charter sets out to show that peace is the constant practice of everyone’s compassion for life and for humanity.

A. Core Values

The Peace Party draws its strength from people who

1. Have love and reverence for life above all else

2. Uphold the supreme worth of every person

3. Trust and respect others

4. Are tolerant of others and their views

5. Are mindful of the needs of others

6. Are humble, considering others to be better than themselves

7. Are unselfish

We know that, from these widely-held values come

Co-operation with others in the practice of Peace

1. Justice in all our dealings with others

2. The full range of human rights and responsibilities

3. Harmony with the natural and man-made world

ThePeace Party represents this and future generations and knows that they need,

1. Universal co-operation and peacefully co-existence
2. Effective involvement in decision-making
3. Appropriate health care
4. Places to live for everyone; safe and peaceful homes
5. Harmony with natural and man-made surroundings
6. Justice for everyone
7. Freedom to be able to learn and study
8. Meaningful work and an assured income
9. Quality food and water
10. Recreation and leisure time

Only The Peace Party can make its vision of become reality with the co-operation of everyone

The Peace Party appreciates that people who hold to the Core Values set out above

Can never needlessly injure another, let alone wound or kill or allow anyone to so act in their name

1. Do not support the insanity of war

2. Fully accept that there is no such thing as a “just” war

3. Oppose the manufacture and sale of any weapon

4. Oppose injustice in all its forms

5. Oppose cruelty, oppression. exploitation and corporatism

6. Can never waste the earth’s resources or despoil nature for selfish gain

Peace Party councillors and members of parliaments hold to the values that their electors have, understand the world’s needs and value life.

First Edition

December, 2007

B. PRINCIPLES

Contents

1. Security: universal co-operation and peaceful co-existence

2. Decision-making

3. Appropriate health care

4. Places to live for everyone; safe and peaceful homes

5. Harmony with natural and man-made surroundings

6. Justice for everyone

7. Freedom to learn and study

8. Work and an assured income

9. Food and water

10. Recreation

1. Security: universal co-operation and peaceful co-existence

The Peace Party represents this and future generations and knows and understands that they need universal co-operation and peaceful co-existence

Those people, on behalf of their children and grandchildren, know and understand that:

1. Peace is the touchstone for everyone’s humanity. Where the world is without violence or the threat of it then there is the greatest compassion between people. As a result there is peace, no poverty, the best of housing, the best health care. Where there is war and the preparation for war then real compassion takes second place to fear and threats of violence. Resources are squandered and people suffer.
2. Peace is recognising, when things go wrong, the cycle of violence and how to break out of it.
3. Conflict must only be solved using the principles of non-violence.
4. Everyone needs to have and to feel the greatest security and freedom without compromising their rights, responsibilities and privileges in any way.
5. The sovereignty of countries is respected absolutely so that everyone may feel safe within any borders.
6. Everyone should conduct themselves within the confines of laws based on the basic human rights as defined by the European convention on human rights.
7. The ultimate vision is to make a single unified world a reality, with people of different outlooks and beliefs living harmoniously together and working for the common goal of a world at peace.
8. Peace is about activity; it is a process, a set of procedures that imply unequivocal care and concern, selfless compassion and respect for all humanity. There can be no real peace without truth, trust, toleration and justice.
9. Peace is a myriad of webs of communication that link us all, creating real security and strengthening bonds between people and within each one of us. In today’s world we can be in touch with any other instantaneously.
10. Peace needs constant work and effort. The flows of energy in this create a force stronger than any weapon.
11. Peaceful communication is positive, co-operative, constructive, life-enhancing and creative.
12. Peace is belonging. Peace is community. Peace is harmony. Peace is solidarity. Peace is cultivating virtues of compassion, kindness and consideration for others.
13. Peace is security where people can define and answer their own needs where they live, free from exploitation, violence and persecution. Security comes from within – from within individuals and from the places where they live.
14. Peace is about the full development of all of humanity and the acknowledgement of all human rights.
    

2. Decision-making

The Peace Party represents this and future generations and knows that they need effective decision-making. This is best achieved through co-operation rather than confrontation.

Those people, on behalf of their children and grandchildren, know and understand that:

1. Everyone should accept the moral responsibility for their decisions; everyone is accountable to everyone in the community.

2. There should be a high level of involvement in decision-making at all levels

3. Everyone needs to feel that they have a real effect on decision-making

4. Decisions are to be made on the basis of clearly-presented information

3. Appropriate Health care

The Peace Party represents this and future generations and knows that they need appropriate health care.

Those people, on behalf of their children and grandchildren, know and understand that:

1. (To be supplied)
   

2. Good physical and mental health care comes from the valuing and promotion of the worth of each individual.
   

3. It is everyone’s responsibility to adopt and maintain a healthy life-style.
   

4. It is the responsibility of the community to ensure that full health care is available at all times to anyone anywhere.

4. Places to live for Everyone; safe and peaceful Homes

The Peace Party represents this and future generations and knows that they need places to live – safe and peaceful homes

Those people, on behalf of their children and grandchildren, know and understand that:

1. Everyone is entitled to a safe, secure and peaceful home of their own

2. It is the responsibility of everyone acting together to ensure that there is an adequate supply of homes of all appropriate kinds in the places where people need to live and adapted for the needs of all (the young, single people, families, single parents with children, older and disabled people)

5. Harmony with Natural and Man-made Surroundings

The Peace Party represents this and future generations and knows that they need harmony with their natural and man-made surroundings

Those people, on behalf of their children and grandchildren, know and understand that:

1. They need to work to build the right relationship with our natural and man-made surroundings, a relationship that is holistic and organic.

2. They have and over-riding responsibility to bequeath both the natural and the man-made world, its rocks and soil, wildlife and plants, cities and transport links, landscapes, water and air, to their children and grandchildren in a better condition than it is at present.

3. It is accepted that everyone, for the sake of justice, has an equal right to, and use of, the natural and man-made resources of the Planet.

4. There is a need for each individual to have sufficient for their economic, health, social and physical needs throughout their lives.

6. Justice for Everyone

The Peace Party represents this and future generations and knows that they need justice for everyone

Those people, on behalf of their children and grandchildren, know and understand that:

1. There is an individual and moral responsibility to behave in a socially acceptable way

2. Justice is upheld as the first virtue of its institutions established by a community

3. All people, from whatever background, are accepted into a community on an equal basis to everyone else

4. Justice is “The quality of being just; fairness; the principle of moral rightness; equity”

5. Nothing is the legal property of a person unless it has been given freely and willingly; any action to the contrary will be manifestly unjust

6. We, as humans, are all of the same family; the divisions based on religious affiliation and colour are merely ones, among many others, of means of identity, and must never be a cause for superiority over another, discrimination and violence

7. Fundamentally, all human groups are equal and all individuals are equal to one another; no individual is superior to another save by their good deeds and benevolent actions and no one is inferior regardless of any factor

8. (To be provided )

7. Freedom to Learn and Study

The Peace Party represents this and future generations and knows that they need freedom to be able to learn and study in co-operative ways, unfettered by competition.

Those people, on behalf of their children and grandchildren, know and understand that:

1. Each individual learner should have the highest value placed on her/his uniqueness and potential

2. Reverence for life is to be nurtured through love, care, compassion, concern, consideration and respect for individuals and the whole of humanity, the Planet and the future

3. Learning needs to take place throughout life

4. The best learning takes place when the individual is ready to learn

5. It is the responsibility of everyone to ensure that they develop their own abilities and aptitudes to the full

6. Learning takes place at a pace determined by the learner and their advisor(s)

7. Education is a process in which each person learns according to their age, ability and aptitude

8. Learning relates to the intellectual, spiritual and emotional needs of each person

9. Personal and local knowledge is a foundation to all learning, keeping the individual in touch with the real world

10. Inspiration is drawn from new as well as well-established thinking and practice in all fields of learning

11. Learners are encouraged to develop a philosophical and critical viewpoint

12. Learning focuses on the practical skills of living together with other people and groups and within the rest of the natural world

13. The learning experience should encourage co-operation between learners and between learners and those facilitating learning

14. The identification and connection of patterns of change should be sought, for example, between local and global, the present and the future and between human and the natural

15. Different ways of knowing and learning and different ways of looking at issues should be valued.

16. Borders between disciplines are for convenience only and are not to be regarded as barriers.

17. Engaged and participative learning processes and styles should be used

18. Curiosity, enthusiasm, innovation, creativity and spirituality should be encouraged. However imagination is central to the learning experience.

8. Work and an Assured Income

The Peace Party represents this and future generations and knows that they need meaningful work and an assured income

Those people, on behalf of their children and grandchildren, know and understand that:

1. People should be as greatly valued as the work they do

2. Work is to be valued as a meaningful activity,

3. Work entails equality of opportunity

4. Work provides a contribution to society by providing a central source of wealth as well as the means of support for an individual and often his/her dependents

5. A central supply of money provides services for a peaceful, non-violent and just world that individuals, families and groups cannot easily provide from their own resources

6. A central supply of money should be obtained through a simple, clear and transparent system of collecting locally and centrally needed money and resources: justice must be seen to be being done by all

7. Work is valued best when it takes place co-operatively – under the control of those who do it

8. Everyone is entitled to a basic, assured income

9. There should be free movement of labour with open borders

9. Food and Water

The Peace Party represents this and future generations and knows that they need quality food and water

Those people, on behalf of their children and grandchildren, know and understand that:

1. As far as is humanly possible, no-one anywhere will ever go hungry again.

2. Everyone is entitled to access to healthy food and clean water.

3. Everyone should take collective responsibility to ensure that everyone does have access to healthy food and clean water.

4. The Earth has sufficient to supply the needs (but not the GREED) of several times its present population.

10. Recreation

The Peace Party represents this and future generations and knows that they need healthy recreation.

Those people, on behalf of their children and grandchildren, know and understand that:

1. Exercise is essential to maintain good physical and mental health

2. Everyone has an entitlement to leisure time to take adequate exercise and recreation

3. Recreation promotes social as well as physical well-being

4. Violent games and sports are discouraged in a peaceful world.

C.POLICIES

Contents

1. Security: living and co-operating peacefully with others

2. Decision-making

3. Health care

4. Homes: safe and peaceful places to live for everyone

5. Natural and man-made surroundings

6. Justice

7. Learning

8. Meaningful work and an assured income

9. Quality food and water

10. Recreation

1. Security: living and co-operating peacefully with others

War is destructive to humanity and a morally unacceptable way to resolve conflict. Killing people must never play a part in government policy – The Peace Party renounces war entirely. It does not support any kind of war for whatever reason. It is determined to work for the removal of all causes of war. It knows that it is time to break the war habit and to move beyond the use of physical, and other and more subtle forms of, violence.

A Peace Party Government, or one influenced by it, will to pass laws to:

1. Resolve differences and conflict by non-violent means (peace-making and peace-building) – finding a common interest, a unity of purpose by listening and talking, mediation, negotiation, arbitration, conciliation and reconciliation.

2. Close down all the military, abolishing the standing armed forces and the military-industrial complex. Peace has been shown to be extremely cost effective by several orders of magnitude than meeting violence with violence.

3. Take out of use and destroy all weapons stockpiled for military purposes and thus allow the reallocation of at least £37 billion each year (£32 billion – Ministry of “Defence”, £1.5 Billion – Foreign Office, £4.5 billion – International Development) to all kinds of socially useful work such as eliminating poverty, delivering peace (£0.1 billion only is currently used for Conflict Prevention), promoting health and education and improving the environment;

4. Withdraw from all current military commitments and withdraw immediately from all military alliances – the UK will never take part in any war again. We will thus greatly reduce, and probably eliminate, the chances of our being considered a target for terrorism;

5. Close all armaments factories and research facilities and subsidise their conversion to peaceful purposes since peaceful production can bring an end to war;

6. Stop the arms trade: ban all trade in any type of weapon or military equipment.

7. Establish and maintain a multi-skilled, non-violent, highly-trained “Sea-Air-Land Disasters Emergency Force”, based on the coastguard, fire and ambulance services, to help deal with national and international emergencies.

8. Set up a Ministry for Peace

9. Limit the use of guns specifically to shooting clubs. Guns will be held, by license and only within specified, secure buildings. This will ensure that public safety is of paramount importance, but will also give adults the opportunity of enjoying the sport of shooting as intended. Users of firearms will be required to demonstrate their competence in handling firearms and will also be required to satisfy the authorities of their mental and emotional ability before being granted a license to keep guns as above.

10. Ensure that all areas of towns and cities will be accessible to everyone with no ‘no-go areas’. People must not be frightened to go out at night for fear of being attacked by groups of youths or by intoxicated individuals.

11. Adopt a peace constitution for the European Union that can be supported by a two-thirds majority of the people.

12. Strengthen our commitment to peace-building organizations elected by the people including the United Nations and its agencies, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe – for conflict prevention, crisis management and post-conflict rehabilitation.

13. Set up a world-wide disputes settlement service within the United Nations.

14. Establish within the United Nations that no single country must possess or be allowed to possess the power to invade sovereign states, and that any action taken against another country can only be sanctioned by a security council. Such a council must be made up on the basis of size of population rather than on wealth or military prowess. Any sanction imposed will be a non-violent one.

15. Work to reform the United nations with the ultimate aim of converting it to an elected body.
    

2. Decision-making

A Peace Party Government, or one influenced by it, will to pass laws to

1. Hold annual elections for all decision-making bodies

2. Hold all elections using the system of proportional representation which most closely reflects all shades of opinions within the electorate

3. Set up and support local committees for small neighbourhoods “below” council level

4. Hold referendums on local and national issues if sufficient people request them

5. Simplify legislation on decision-making

6. Ensure that there is full education and information on voting – where to vote, how to vote, etc

7. Limit the term to be served by any one leader (as in the USA)

3. Health care

A Peace Party Government, or one influenced by it, will to pass laws to

1. Ensure that health care is free at the point of delivery

2. Ensure that health care is promptly delivered

3. Promote the prevention of disease e.g. heart problems

4. Provide hospitals, research, dental care, mental health care

5. Ensure that mental health services are financed on a par with rest of health service

6. Provide free access to all latest tested drugs

7. Give the Government shares in the drugs companies

8. Provide truthful information about health care

4. Homes: safe and peaceful Places to live for Everyone

A Peace Party Government, or one influenced by it, will to pass laws to

1. Create a housing programme to ensure that everyone has a home of their own to rent or buy

2. Make full use of brown-field sites for new housing

3. Improve, using subsidies, existing housing stock to make it, for example, more energy efficient

4. Re-use older houses by re-furbishing them

5. Institute shared ownership schemes

6. Ensure that the housing programme contains ways to overcome the stigma of social/council housing

7. Create whole new communities with schools, transport and local employment rather than enlarging present settlements.

5. Natural and Man-made Surroundings

A Peace Party Government, or one influenced by it, will to pass laws to

1. Ensure that we work with nature, using only our fair share of resources and recognizing that every action rapidly affects every other across the globe

2. Make sure that everyone has access to free local travel with longer overland journeys by train and bus being even more heavily subsidized than they are at present;

3. Ensure, by means of subsidies for wind, wave, hydro-electric power (river and tidal), solar, nuclear fusion and biomass burning that everyone has access to sufficient, non-polluting energy with the aim to replace as soon as possible nuclear fission power and the burning of all carbon-dioxide-producing fuels - gas, coal, oil. Indeed, petroleum, coal and uranium are too useful to burn.

4. Subsidise the storage of “wastes” from burning and nuclear reactions for future use (we do not know what new technologies will require as raw materials).

5. On climate change, reduce carbon dioxide emissions eventually to early nineteenth century levels:

1. Subsidise public transport (making it free locally and at very low cost for longer journeys) thus making it more attractive for car-owners

2. Tax, even more heavily, aircraft fuels and petrol and diesel in private vehicles

3. Subsidise cycling (e.g. by providing bike pools and cycle routes) instead of private car-driving

4. Subsidise the development of hydrogen-powered and electrically-powered private transport (where batteries are charged from non-polluting electrical energy)

5. Subsidise the production of renewable sources of power including run-of-river (not big dams and reservoirs) and tidal hydro-electric power, wind-generated electricity, solar power and bio-gas

6. Subsidise the development of fusion reaction for electrical power production to replace coal, oil and gas

7. Subsidise companies converting from carbon dioxide-producing to non-polluting processes

8. Tax companies producing carbon dioxide

9. Tax timber that cannot be shown to be from forests that are re-planted with trees of similar species

10. Work through the United Nations to do all the above all over the world (more “Kyoto Protocols”)

11. Educate children and adults about the dangers of carbon dioxide pollution

6. On climate change, reduce methane emissions:

1. Tax waste put into landfill

2. Subsidise re-cycling and re-use of materials

3. Promote food sources that do not rely on animal rearing

7. Reduce other man-produced pollutants:

1. Subsidise companies to convert from polluting to non-polluting processes

2. Tax the polluters

3. Educate children and adults about the dangers of all kinds of pollution

8. On climate change, work with everyone to reduce the proportion of atmospheric carbon dioxide to the pre-1800 level of 275 parts per million by volume (ppmv):

1. Subsidise tree-planting including the re-afforestation of land cleared for animal rearing and the promotion of “edible landscaping” i.e. the planting and using fruit and nut trees.

9. On climate change, reduce its possible effects (e.g. global warming, changes in rainfall patterns, increased windiness and possible local cooling):

1. Subsidise changes in forestry and agriculture – draining fields, introducing irrigation, bringing new land into cultivation to maintain and increase food production (as sea level rises and agricultural land is flooded)

2. Construct /make higher existing coastal defences to protect lands liable to flood as sea levels rise. (Such engineering works may have limited life but they will allow time for populations to be moved and for new agricultural land to be brought into use.)

3. Plan to re-locate residents, factories, offices, roads and railways (as sea level rises)

4. Develop multi-skilled emergency services (a Peace Party-governed country would have no military to lean on)

5. Improve water supply (e.g. by creating canals and pipelines from high to low rainfall areas, by improving storage of water, underground and in reservoirs), by the de-salination of sea/salt-water, by subsidising rain-water collection)

6. Improve/introduce flood relief schemes in river valleys

7. Work through the European Union, United Nations and other international organisations to do all the above all over the world

10. Educate children and adults about their role in climate change through, for example, the National Curriculum and advertising

6. Justice

A Peace Party Government, or one influenced by it, will to pass laws to

1. Establish laws based on the basic human rights as defined by the European convention on human rights.

2. Increase community policing

3. Increase civilian workers in the police force. Police stations will be open and ‘manned’ by civilians, freeing police officers of the masses of paper work, which they are bombarded with at present, so that they can carry out the work for which they are trained.

4. Use imprisonment for an appropriate amount of time for violent and serious crime. Deprivation of liberty would enable a full programme of education, training and psychological investigation and treatment to be given to the offender to prepare them for resuming life and taking up employment after their sentence has been served. Offenders would be expected to serve the full term of their sentence.

5. Appropriate sentences will always be given after the most careful consideration by judges.

6. Increase community service to assist in the rehabilitation of offenders

7. Increase the numbers of “community support officers” to reinforce the work of police officers and support the development of policing committees in each neighbourhood. The committees will be encouraged to develop strategies to support community service. These committees will have more say in how non violent offenders will be punished by carrying out work in the community, for example by repairing damage to victim’s property, cleaning up the rubbish on the roads, cleaning off graffiti etc. In doing so, it will give the offenders skills for legitimate work, repaying the community for the crimes they have committed and also reduce the incidence of re-offending.

8. Decriminalise long-term drug addiction which must be treated as a health issue

9. Deal with drug trafficking and, for those who resort to crime to feed their drug addiction or habits, deal with this in the most serious manner through the courts.

10. Demonstrate the absolute fairness of the criminal justice system which would become widely known and should ensure that potential criminals would be fully aware of the consequences of their law-breaking.

11. Extend the use of restorative justice in the criminal justice system, helping to ensure that there would be a good chance that criminals would not re-offend as the offender would have come to fully understand the effects of his/her crime/offence.

12. Strengthen commitment to the World Criminal Court.

13. Encourage research into crime and so hope to come to understand and deal with the attitudes and social conditions that lead to it and, in doing so, consider all aspects of human rights, education and health

14. Focus on the rehabilitation of offenders and care for the victims of crime. Rehabilitation of offenders may be accomplished by teaching them a trade e.g. house-building.

7. Learning

A Peace Party Government, or one influenced by it, will to pass laws to

1. Ensure that education and training are free at every stage

2. Replace schools by “Centres of Learning” which would use learner advisers who would have varied roles ranging from direct teaching to large groups to arranging debates, to conducting small group tutorials, seminars and discussions, to advising and guiding individuals on their learning programmes.

3. Encourage learning through inter-disciplinary enquiry.

4. Encourage learning at home, using parental care, talents and compassion.

5. Encourage learning through electronic communication by supplying free basic computers, on-line materials and connections.

6. Encourage learning through libraries of a variety of sizes from small local ones (a few hundred metres from home) to those containing a full range of materials in major population centres.

7. Subsidise only those youth organizations that promote peace (e.g. Woodcraft Folk).

8. Educate individuals and groups, children and adults, to act rationally at times of conflict and thus to know how to build trust and self-empowerment, to use conflict prevention and all forms of non-violent conflict resolution – mediation, negotiation, conciliation, arbitration and reconciliation or, as a last resort, passive resistance, civil disobedience, conscientious objection and non-violent direct action.

9. Ensure that children as well as adults learn about peace, disarmament and human rights and that they are able to practise peace skills in a non-violent, co-operative atmosphere and in that way they learn that peace brings rewards for all, for, only where there is peace, can everybody win

10. Promote education for peace which should have at its core the recognition of violence in ourselves as well as in others. All should be able to learn the management of that violence as well as the fear and oppression that leads to violence. All should learn how to deal with bullying – war is a form of bullying. All should learn to be pro-active – the non-violent response (being a pacifist does not mean being passive) including the techniques of non-violent direct action.

11. Encourage everyone to learn about the lives of the advocates of non-violence: Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Darwin (?), the real story of war – numbers killed, injured, traumatised, lives ruined, places where people have moved on – Northern Ireland, South Africa (despite having the highest murder rate in the world and gated communities).

12. Ensure that in Music, Drama, Poetry there should be opportunity for learning about non-violence

13. Ensure that in fitness and sport, dance and gymnastics, all should learn co-operation.

14. Ensure that in Religious Education all should learn the real story of the major world religions revealing that all of them stand for love and non-violence and understand why and how these ideals have sometimes been lost.

8. Meaningful Work and an Assured Income

A Peace Party Government, or one influenced by it, will to pass laws to

1. Ensure, probably through the taxation system, that all adults have an assured real weekly income of £300 (at 2007 values) with smaller amounts payable to those under 18

2. Refine taxation so that people keep more of their income on lower pay scales and very gradually lose benefits so that they gain real income

3. Ensure that working conditions are compatible with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

4. Join with other members of the European Union in the abolition of systematic border controls through the full implementation of the Schengen Agreement

5. Pay immigrant workers the same as other working people

6. Ensure that work conditions (including pay and hours) should be the same for immigrants as for everyone else

7. Promote free trade

8. Subsidise scientific research programmes.

9. Support fair trade/trade justice by maintaining a minimum price for products and a minimum wage for producers as well as guaranteeing markets using subsidies.

9. Quality Food and Water

A Peace Party Government, or one influenced by it, will to pass laws to

1. Improve conditions for farm animals

2. Remove all food subsidies in the EU and UK

3. Re-nationalise the water industry

4. Put in place fail-safe devices to move food to wherever it is needed in times of emergency

5. Promote vegetarian and vegan diets

10. Recreation

A Peace Party Government, or one influenced by it, will to pass laws to

1. Ensure that all facilities are accessible to everyone no matter where they live

2. Encourage healthy living through appropriate exercise, recreation, sports and games

3. Encourage co-operative sports and games and other activities to help promote peace and non-violence

Copyright (c) 2008 The Peace Party. All rights reserved.