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The Fallacy of The Simultaneous Policy
a letter from John Papworth to John Bunzl
(read also In Praise of The Simultaneous Policy by Sir Richard Body)

I am sometimes only too well aware that when gifts were being apportioned the Almighty suffered some oversight with regard to myself in the matter of diplomacy. It leaves me wishing I had the capacity to differ from people without provoking them to ire, but in fact my life seems in one respect to be a record of incurring wrath from people whom I respect and even love, but with whom I happen to disagree on their views.

Your rejoinder prompted me to re-read your book and please don't be cross when I say I find it impels me to differ from you even more strongly. I notice you quote Schumacher with approval, but nowhere do you make any reference to Leopold Kohr or to my own work - Small is Powerful. Is this because you have not read them? Or that the arguments expressed there do not slot in with your preconceptions? Or that you do not grasp either their relevance or their importance?

These books, along with Kirkpatrick Sale's Human Scale can claim to be at the cutting edge of the ongoing development of radical thinking and perhaps the integrity of that claim can be estimated by the extent to which the ideas projected have been so sedulously ignored by mainstream media, by street activists and protesters, by 'alternative' journals and of course by the 'personal development' and the toenail-massage crowd.

My own book focussed on the play of decision-making power in what is assumed to be a mass democracy. I can only refer you there to the details of the argument indicating how any mass movement, (which presumably would include SP), quite inevitably disempowers the individual member whilst fully empowering the controlling apparatus at the centre. That is the record of all mass movements in the modern era and if SP is going to be different the onus on you is to explain just how. You do not deal with the factor of scale at all and your proposal that SP can somehow be made acceptable and adopted on a mass scale, somehow winkled into recognition and consensual agreement, on some non-political platform, begs all the questions whilst beggaring belief.
I would like to think that your book will help people to see more clearly the sort of goals we should all be seeking, even though some of the examples you quote, (such as the Scott-Bader factory) tempt one to wonder whether you are not exercising a rather esoteric form of humour, but what it is really doing is muddying the waters at a time when intellectual clarity is our most urgent need.

I think what disturbs me most about the insouciance of your proposal is its failure to relate to the power realities confronting us. We are evidently in the throes of some climacteric disintegration of our technologicalised lifestyle and because power on a global scale is out of control we are clearly in the opening stages of another global war which may well bring the entire works of civilisation to its knees.

If Tony Blah insists on involving the UK in any US military onslaught the resistance here could well erupt into a civil war, with the inevitable outcome of some form of totalitarian government. In this context SP could provide a convenient means by which pseudo popular acclaim could be organised to accomplish it. The essence of fascism is always its lack of historic roots, its readiness to exploit any transient discontent, to whip up fanatical adulation for a leader and an assembly of meaningless mantras, plus of course utter ruthlessness. SP has currently only perhaps one of these qualities (the first), but don't say you have not been warned. And don't suppose for a moment that if you get the SP show on the road to any considerable effect that you and your idealism will be in the saddle. I wonder how many idealistic communists made that error before the advent of Stalin? Again, don't say you have not been warned.

Right at the other end of the intellectual spectrum I would have thought your proposal is given its total comeuppance by Matthew Paris in the current July 6th issue of The Spectator in writing about the USA.

Your emphasis on the need for us all to co-operate is admirable, but it does rather beg the question of what we will be co-operating for. But I do hope you are not serious in suggesting that I believe adoption of the human scale is the complete answer to our problems. Both Leopold Kohr and myself expressly repudiate such a stance repeatedly.

I would so much love to be working in tandem with you rather than differing from you so strongly. I admire your grit, your doggedness and your unselfish idealism. But intellectual compromise is a form of treason of the soul, one which already litters the modern record so abundantly and which has had such horrendous consequences.

With warm regards

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