I am the founder of Humanity. I live in Kessingland in Suffolk with my wife and my daughter. I am also to be found at NowHere in Northern Tuscany and at Paradise Valley in Herefordshire.
I founded Humanity in 2009, when I couldn’t find a political party which didn’t favour the use of weapons of war – even the Green Party at that time favoured a “well-equipped defence force”. It is my view that killing people is no way to conduct our relationships with each other and that the human race is better served by using its resources to exhaustively explore how we can live with each other peacefully.
I was born into a family of achievers, which is definitely one reason I had no problem in founding Humanity. My learning was that I had to do something big to be approved of, to be loved. Although I’ve struggled with that all my life, a sense that being me without any attempts to prove anything somehow wasn’t acceptable, I’ve decided to risk it and put myself out there in this way, as, for me, I’m driven to do something to save this paradise we have the good fortune to be living on.
So, my grandfather on my father’s side was the meteorologist on Scott’s expedition to the South Pole and then became the director of the Meteorological Office and is held to have given it the secure foundation it benefits from today. My grandfather on my mother’s side was a highly respected economic historian in Germany between the wars and co-led the German emigre movement in the UK following having fled Nazi Germany in 1934. I found both of them mentioned in the same geography text book at school!
My aunt was described by Chapman Pincher as “the most successful female spy in history”. She was responsible for conveying the american nuclear weapons secrets to the Soviet Union in the 1940s. I loved her dearly. She was my mother away from home when I spent a year in the German Democratic Republic in 1969, and when I found out about her spying, in the 1980s, and she said she’d passed on the secrets to ensure a balance between the West and the East, so that they’d never be used, I felt so, so proud of her. I take on that family mantle in my work here.
I’ve been a student union development worker for the National Union of Students, I’ve been a truck driver and a bus driver and a trade union rep in both of those industries. I’ve been a communard in a self-sufficiency commune (Atlantis Commune). I’ve trained as therapist at the Humaniversity Therapeutic Community. I’ve cared for my highly disabled daughter, in conjunction with her mother, for the last 24 years. I’m a trained Scott Peck Community Building facilitator (he of The Road Less Traveled fame). I have designed and built many, many geodesic domes of all shapes and sizes for varied clients and purposes (Geodesics Unlimited). I’ve stood for Parliament in Derbyshire Dales on 3 occasions. I’m founder of an off-grid, low-impact, vegan community in Herefordshire, on land gifted to the community via the Living Land Trust (Paradise Valley). I’m author of three books: Section 60 (A true story of schizophrenic breakdown and recovery), To God with Leila (the story of my and my daughter’s visits to John of God in Brazil) and Geodesic Domes: Their geometry and how to use it. I’ve composed and recorded three albums: Full Moon, Songs of Love and Spirit, and Requiem and Resurrection.
I’m very happy to have learned how to use WordPress so that I can share what I’ve learned in my life with you.