I first met John Papworth 25 years ago on the day of Prince Charles’ wedding to the princess Diana. We were on the other side of The City of London at the first Fourth World Assembly. Kirkpatrick Sale was there waving his Human Scale at the assembled company while Ivan Illich was going on about leather belts and falling asleep in the education forum...Deschooling Society was his current hit.

Human Scale is one of the movement’s half a dozen sacred books. The others are The Breakdiown of Nations by Leopld Kohr, E.F.Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful: economics as if people mattered, John Seymour’s Complete Handbook of Self Sufficiency, John Papworth’s Small is Powerful and Ivan Illich’s collected works (Convivial Tools, Gender, Medical Nemisis etc). Edward Goldsmith’s Blueprint for Survival also deserves a mention as he increasingly puts his considerable intellectual weight behind the human scale solution.

Behind the conference scenes in the summer of 1981, Toni Pinschof and Nicholas Albery were performing miracles keeping the whole show together after Jill Tweedie had transformed its prospects by publishing an article in The Guardian a few days beforehand. Between four and five hundred people attended. Numbers have been declining every since as the reformists at the green end of the alternative movement peel off and head for the suburbs and the liberal democrat camp..and toil away to become something in government or the city.

Meanwhile our radical rumps found the eddies of modern life taking us ever further into the weeds. Schumacher might have thought it a good idea to put up his sail on the theory that when the wind blew it would take his little vessel into a sane humane ecological future. But if you are stuck in the weeds it is going to take one devil of a hooly to move you at all. Humphrey Bogart, Katherine Hepburn and The African Queen spring to mind. I am not keen on the Schumacher metaphor. At the mercy of the elements is no way to act on the world.

Twenty years later in September 2001, abandoned to our unhappy fate by the Jonathon Porritts and Jakob von Uexkulls of this political world we mustered less than a hundred souls for our gathering in Swindon. But John Seymour, Edward Goldsmith and Kirkpatrick Sale were there. Nonetheless history will report the conference as the most significant happening of the week...despite the collapse of a couple of tall buildings on the other side of the North Atlantic. Did we do that? Queer place this universe of ours.

John is a very demanding colleague so I choose to stride manfully in and out of his political life. The theory is that in this way I retain my sanity and avoid activist burn-out. We worked closely together in 2001 organising the Radical Consultation so my 4-year sabbatical was well-deserved. But whether or not I used it well only time will tell. It was either extended bereavement leave or a shrewd outflanking operation.

As we limber up for this year’s conference there is a general staking out of positions going on. This exchange captures some of the flavour. John to whoever it may concern: '...Peter Cadogan has come up with a proposal for every neighbourhod to have its own local news-sheet/magazine. I have actually started one, but it is bloody hard work and needs a local team effort to put it on a secure basis.'

My response: ‘...uncharitable souls could satirise your position within the alternative movement by saying that the reformists (95%) write to their MP, the papworth radicals (4.95%) write to their local newspaper...and kirk sale's ecohysterians (0.05%) beam weblogs to each other from behind the barricades of their electronic cottages. What was it Stalin said about the divisions the Pope commanded?

For good measure I added: ‘...I am probably the only one of your recipients that understood the bloody hard work bit of your remark. I put out the Rye Harbour Boat Owner Association's magazine for three years and had enough trouble coping with two or three issues a year...and I managed only one issue of the highly acclaimed local Private Eye broadsheet The Mudlark before giving it up as a mug's game.

A few things done today after completion of weblog duties. My IG-Index account is now up 'n running and looking forward to its first influx of hard-borrowed money for dabbling in currency futures. Company accounts for Edward Elgar Publishing Limited are mine for the downloading after registering with Companies House WebCHeck, my direct debit to BT has been cancelled and my 2002 review of Creating Money by James Robertson is winging its merry way to Living Economies in New Zealand.

Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in the evening in Notorious. A quick e-mail check and then to bed. A rejoinder in from the redoubtable Reverend John Papworth. ‘The Pope is reported to have replied, “Marshal Stalin has his divisions in this world; he will meet mine in the next”.’