Glen T. Martin

I was very sorry to receive the news that John Ewbank has passed from us.  I have known John and his wife Marjorie since 1994 when our paths first crossed at the studio offices of Radio for Peace International in Costa Rica. They were visiting the offices because RFPI at that time was a major voice for world peace and for the transformation of the world’s disorder in the direction of peace with justice.

John and Marjorie worked and traveled together, and after that time I always encountered them together, so it is only fitting that my recollection of John includes this testimony to their wonderful marriage dedicated to the benefit of humanity and our future on this planet. Neither of them were self-promoting, but rather they always promoted their keen ideas first and foremost. Therefore, it is also fitting that in remembering John we emphasize the ideas to which he and Marjorie were dedicated. In that first encounter in Costa Rica, they told me about the ideas behind Home Rule Globally, the organization they founded to promote human freedom as fully as possible within the framework of a Supra-National Federation.

They were the founders and Co-Presidents of Home Rule Globally. Their website which, true to their direct and no nonsense dedication to these important ideas, omits bells and whistles and instead presents an intellectual account of the philosophy of Home Rule Globally, states the following:

We envision Home Rule Globally a crucial strategy to empowering local authorities towards the establishment of a Supra-National Federation to lead the world out of the deprivation, environmental devastation, diseases, wars and despair that cloud [our] troubled lives, and guiding them toward brighter, dignified, peaceful and happier lives. HRG is therefore a people’s local action for research and motivation. HRG exists to successfully organize a non-violent global movement to overcome bondage, misery and suffering of people of the world using practical alternative strategies as instruments of change.

            Launching of a viable Supra-National Federation (SNF) that requires the VOLUNTARY ratification of a Proposal by nations aggregating the overwhelming clout of the world we aim to motivate the GRASSROOTS WISDOM by educating the people about the Mission and Philosophy of Home Rule Globally. Through round table dialogues, town hall meetings, seminars, symposiums at a regular basis in every corner of the globe we would execute our strategic campaigns of educating people. Also, very importantly, we would organize a GLOBAL ASSEMBLY every year at different locations of the world in cooperation with the local authority. Direct participation of the informed individuals as well as community groups are very much encouraged.

HRG emphasizes on widespread publicity of our movement throughout the world. To this end we consider our website as an excellent tool. We strongly believe that we have tremendous potential and merits to succeed in the efforts for the great cause.

John and Marjorie were deeply involved with the movement for world federation for many decades and understood the history of this movement deeply. John did a great service to our movement by writing a history of the movement drawing on his vast experience and knowledge. It begins with the statement “I have never encountered what I thought was a plausible history of the world government movement.” I strongly recommend reading this history which can be found at http://www.homeruleglobally.org/index.php?page_id=45.

            For many years John and Marjorie crisscrossed the Earth to participate in meetings and conferences of world citizens concerned with developing a new world system beyond the war-system of sovereign, militarized nation-states. Their voice was always a voice on behalf of the people, on behalf of democracy arising from the people in a system of local autonomy integrated within a Supra-national framework.  One of the organizations that John and Marjorie participated in and interacted with over the years was the World Constitution and Parliament Association. They regularly interacted with Philip Isely, Dr. Terence Amerasinghe, and the other leaders of the early WCPA on behalf of a libertarian world union arising from the grass roots.  They participated in at least one of the four World Constituent Assemblies that took place in 1968, 1977, 1979, and 1991, that resulted in the writing of the Constitution for the Federation of Earth.  Their signatures, as personal signers of the Constitution from a Constituent Assembly, appear today in all official versions of the Earth Constitution.

            John and Marjorie participated in several of the sessions of the Provisional World Parliament that came out of the development of the Earth Constitution and began meeting under the authority of its Article 19, beginning in 1983 and continuing to the present.  They were at the third session of the PWP that took place at the Hotel Fontainbleau in Miami Beach, Florida in 1987 and probably also at the first that took place in Brighton, England in 1983. They understood the significance of the development of the Constitution and were involved long before I became aware of this movement in 1995. Their voice, in all proposed legislation before these parliaments, was consistently on behalf of personal freedom and decentralized world government.

            John and Marjorie were participants in the sixth session of the PWP in Bangkok, Thailand in March of 2003.  This was the first parliament in which I was an organizer and it was during this parliament that the Executive Committee elected me Secretary-General of WCPA to replace Philip Isely.  I got to know John quite well at this session of Parliament and at the extra-parliamentary meetings and events that accompanied it. 

            Some of these meetings in Bangkok involved setting up a new organization called the Institute on World Problems to serve as a non-profit funding organization working in tandem with WCPA. John participated in meetings discussing the need for this new organization. He volunteered, as a lawyer by profession, to help me set up the Institute on World Problems as a tax-deductible organization in the U.S.  Upon our return to the U.S., John wrote and filed the papers pro bono to create the IOWP.

            To me this illustrates the great spirit and dedication of John to our multifaceted movement for a world beyond war, want, and tyranny.  The Bankok session of parliament and our discussions had revealed divergences in our views, John’s views being much more libertarian than my own. Nevertheless, he saw the value in supporting our work and helping us establish the Institute on World Problems.  Since then, John and I have been in occasional contact in a relation of mutual respect.  In the many years in which I have been involved with world peace work, there have been very few persons I have met who could equal the dedication, determination, and liberating vision that John and Marjorie brought to our cause.  The passing of John Ewbank, in my view, is a great loss for the cause of humanity.  He will be sorely missed.