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The Newton Agenda

d I am burdened with an urge to find a coherent view of contemporary socialism.  I must accept the designation political thinker, even though that sounds pretentious.  That is because I think politics during most of my waking hours, off and on.  I am always trying to relate my daily experience to my own political analysis of what is going on around me.  I guess that must make me a “political  thinker”.

d And my search, in the manner partly of religion and of the Ages of Reason and Science, is for a coherent, unified political theory that makes sense of it all.   Nothing counts, it seems, unless it represents a comprehensive, coherent world view, capable of generating not only explanations but predictions.  Eclecticism (i.e the practice of merely “choosing the best out of everything”) simply will not do.  You gotta have a theory, a single theory.  If there is one God, there must be one coherent socialist theory.

d It follows that it must also be universal.  A theory which works only for Wales, or only for Britain, is of little value in contemporary political circumstances.  Most of the difficult issues confronting humankind are global in nature, with complex multilateral implications.  If the English are to talk with the French and the Germans, the Indians and Pakistanis, the Americans and the Cubans, we as socialists must find a common political language, a common high-level conceptual framework.

d The Newton Agenda is my attempt to share with others my own search for a coherent political philosophy, of universal reach.  Why "Newton"?   Newton is simply the Swansea village where I was born, where I have returned to make my home, and where I am both a Labour Party member and a Community Councillor.  Our butcher Roger Woollacott, is the son of the Woollacott who as butcher to my mother and grandparents, as she grew up in Newton, and went to Swansea University, in 1921.  My politics remains the politics of small things, of small neighbourhoods, of personal association.  

d The Newton Agenda has eight dimensions.  Not Chapters, or Sections, or Parts.  Dimensions.  Without an understanding of mathematics, I used to have difficulty with multiple dimensions.  But I now know precisely what the concept means, in the context of the Newton Agenda.   Each dimension designates not a pigeonhole but a way of looking at the complexities of daily life and experience.   Each dimension illuminates a different aspect of a phenomenon observed, many different perceptions of the same object.  They all overlap.  And if they seem to lead to inconsistent conclusions, those inconsistencies must be assiduously examined. 

d Within each Dimension, I plan to identify key socialist Principles, casting my logical net as wide as I can.  Finally, under each head of Principle, I plan to identify Party Policies, focusing on what I think Labour should do now. 

This, then, will be my framework.

Dimension > Principle > Policy