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What Are We Here For?
by Ted Wheatley

What are World Federalists? We are simply people who believe we can learn from the past and apply the same lessons to create a future world that is peaceful, just and happy.

The ideals of community life built up over millennia of human existence should apply to the world community. What is a community? Surely it is a grouping of people who work together, care for each other and create simple rules leading to peaceful co-existence.

The community could be a family, a tribe or a nation-state. The reality is that we are now part of a global community as well. We talk on the telephone or write on our computer instantly to every part of the globe; the goods from distant lands line our larder shelves; we can now sit in armchair comfort in our own homes to watch our fellow-citizens dying of starvation thousands of miles away. We are all world citizens, whether we want to be or not.

Just as loyalty to a tribe does not stop us being loyal to a family, or even to a nation-state, so a loyalty to all Mankind does not lessen any other loyalty.

But World Federalists go further than that. They note that every community has to have a set of rules by which all are bound. It needs a way of making laws, a way of applying laws to particular disputes and a way of ensuring that these laws are enforced. There is at present no binding law within the world community and we are seeking enforceable world law that is ultimately binding on national governments.

The European Union is an important example of how sharing part of our national sovereignty can lead to half a century of peace and growing prosperity.

There is a valuable talking-shop in the United Nations. But only national governments are represented there. We aim to make it more democratic, ultimately with a Parliament representing the people of the world which will sit alongside the General Assembly. Even then, the U.N. would not have the funds to complete the massive tasks in front of it.

Various ideas have been put forward to fund the U.N. independently. They all basically aim to tax certain things that are harmful to the planet – a tax on aviation spirit, on international arms sales, above all a ‘Tobin Tax’ on large international currency transactions. A reformed democratic United Nations should have, and could have, the funds commensurate to the challenges it will face in the 21st century.

Recent acts of terrorism remind us that wars can now be fought in many different ways – and the weaponry of war is now so horrendous that Man is capable of wiping out all life in whole regions of the world. That is why our message is especially relevant today.

Just as peace is impossible without justice, so is justice impossible without binding law, and law without a democratic foundation could be frightening. That is why our message of world peace through world law is a special message and reform of the United Nations is a special task.

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