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THE FOLK UNION


UNITE AND UNITE!

Folk culture is under threat. Capital and social media strip it for parts, romanticise the ordinary, and sell fragments back as lifestyle. The Right tries to twist it into a weapon of exclusion. Both steal from the people. Both suffocate what they claim to save. The Folk Union is not a heritage society or archive. It is a cultural body. A collective that recognises Folk as the commons. It combines aspects of trade unions, art movements and a political campaign.

We are not a society. We are not a club. We are not a brand.
WE ARE A UNION. We gather to defend the living commons.

OUR MANIFESTO

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STRUCTURE:


  1. The Folk Union is a membership body open to anyone engaged in folk practice and those who enjoy working, heritage and traditional culture.
  2. It is a democratic organisation. We meet at regular online assemblies where decisions are made collectively by membership.
  3. Local branches tied to place and community feed into the national movement.


PRINCIPLES:

  1. Proletarian ownership. We believe that folk belongs to working people, not curators, collectors, or profiteers.
  2. Anti-commodification. Culture should not be packaged as a heritage product or a lifestyle brand.
  3. Anti-nationalism. Folk is internationalist, inclusive, anti-racist.
  4. Living culture. Folk is not a relic. It is alive only when it is practised.
  5. The Commons. Folk is shared, it is ours.

PURPOSE:


  1. To reclaim folk as a weapon for the people. Not a museum piece.
  2. To connect folk culture with wider struggles – worker’s rights, land rights, housing, identity and ecology.
  3. To ensure that folk is not nostalgic but living, defiant and political



ACTIONS:

  1. Direct resistance. We support the opposition of commercial or nationalist hijacking of folk culture and call out brands, groups or institutions that exploit it.
  2. Counter-archives. We engage with songs, stories and practices in ways that resist enclosure and support a vernacular, living archive.
  3. Mutual support. We work together to find funds, support and resources for folk practitioners and projects.
  4. Agitation and education. We produce literature and cultural action that links folk directly to class struggle and environmental justice.

OUR DEMANDS:


  1. Folk for the proletariat. Culture belongs to the people who make it, not the bourgeoisie who sell it.
  2. End commodification. No more heritage products, lifestyle brands, or curated feeds that strip meaning from folk.
  3. No nationalism. Folk is internationalist and inclusive. It cannot be used to divide.
  4. Defend the commons. Land, culture, voice cannot be enclosed.
  5. Keep folk alive. In our actions and places not as sentimental nostalgia.
  6. Resist gentrification. Fixating on desirable aspects of folk defangs it. Folk is not quaint or rarified; it belongs in the everyday.
  7. Stand together. Against elites, profiteers, and nationalists. For community, for solidarity, for struggle.


Unite and unite! Let us all unite!
Folk is ours. Folk is the commons.

Mike Hankin & Jess Stone 2025
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