Our manifesto.

Just About Everyone is a think tank developing ideas for a world in which everyone can belong, participate and help shape a shared future. We bring research, lived experience and public discussion together to explore how agency, inclusion, dignity and justice can guide the decisions that affect our lives.

We are independent of political parties. Our purpose is to develop and test ideas that communities, organisations and public institutions can use. Our principles invite contributions across countries and traditions, with room for different approaches suited to different settings.

Justice begins with the people most excluded

Every person has equal worth. Their dignity does not depend on wealth, nationality, ability, status or economic contribution. A just society must be judged by whether those with the least power can increasingly shape their own lives and the world around them.

Material security, health, education and rights are essential foundations. Justice also requires the freedom and practical ability to influence decisions, pursue aspirations and participate in a shared society. People should have a part in creating the future whose benefits they are promised.

Agency and inclusion belong together

Agency is the freedom and ability to act, make choices and influence the conditions of our lives. It is both a purpose of justice and a means of achieving it. Institutions should create the conditions in which people can exercise their agency.

Inclusion requires that this possibility extends to those who are most marginalised. An invitation to a meeting is insufficient if someone cannot be heard, challenge a decision or shape the available choices. Participation must accommodate different ways of communicating and contributing, including the support people may need to exercise their agency.

Relationships make participation possible

Trust, recognition and belonging allow people to express what matters to them and act with others. For people excluded from formal institutions, relationships can be the means through which rights become usable, support becomes accessible and their wishes become understood.

Agency, inclusion and trust-based relationships depend on one another. We call this foundation relational justice. It requires sustained attention to the relationships through which the most marginalised gain influence, and to the conditions that allow those relationships to grow.

Power should move closer to the people affected

Our guiding principle is to make decisions as locally as possible and as centrally as necessary. Those who hold power should explain why a decision cannot be made closer to the people whose lives it affects.

Meaningful devolution includes authority over resources. Communities need the means to act on their decisions, alongside ways of holding decision-makers accountable. Community leadership, democratic ownership and participation are important possibilities to investigate and develop.

Power can become concentrated at any level. Local arrangements must protect people against domination and allow them to challenge leaders. Wider institutions remain essential to uphold universal rights, redistribute resources between unequal places and coordinate matters that cross local boundaries.

Institutions should enable agency

The state has an indispensable role in protecting rights, providing common infrastructure and ensuring that people can participate on fair terms. Public services, businesses and civil society organisations also carry responsibilities towards the people affected by their decisions.

Administration, regulation and professional expertise should support these purposes. Institutions must remain accountable when their procedures displace participation or weaken the relationships people rely on. An intervention should be judged partly by whether it strengthens people’s ability to act and influence what happens next.

Economic life should serve shared prosperity

Economic activity should expand people’s possibilities and contribute to a fairer society. Growth, enterprise and innovation matter through the lives they make possible. The distribution of ownership, resources and decision-making power matters alongside the amount of wealth produced.

We will explore how economic arrangements can increase the agency of people with the least power. Local control must be supported by solidarity and redistribution, so that communities with fewer resources can exercise meaningful choices.

GDP, income and service provision offer useful information. Our understanding of progress must also ask who belongs, who can participate, whose rights are secure and whether people have greater power over their futures. These questions require human judgement and lived experience alongside quantitative evidence.

Culture and belonging are foundations of justice

Our expectations of one another shape who is trusted, whose knowledge counts and who feels able to contribute. A culture that values mutual responsibility, participation and interdependence helps make inclusion possible.

People need both the freedom to move and the conditions to belong. Their ability to challenge exclusion must not depend on remaining within a particular place or relationship. Strong communities should allow disagreement, welcome difference and respect individual freedom.

Our responsibilities extend across borders and generations

The equal worth of people extends beyond national boundaries. Decisions about trade, migration, aid, security and the environment should be examined for their effects on people elsewhere and on generations to come.

We seek a responsible approach to international relations that pursues long-term shared prosperity, global equality and justice. People affected by international decisions should have meaningful opportunities to influence them. A shared future requires participation in its creation as well as fairness in its outcomes.

This means examining whose interests a policy serves, whose choices it restricts and who bears its costs. Conflicts and trade-offs must be addressed openly. The interests of a powerful country or institution cannot be treated as a complete account of the common good.

Shared principles need different expressions

These principles can guide a neighbourhood initiative, a public service, a business, a national institution or international cooperation. Their practical expression must emerge through the people and circumstances involved.

No country, profession or institution has exclusive authority to define a better society. We will learn across cultures and traditions, recognising the knowledge held by people whose experience is often absent from policy debate. Common purposes should leave room for communities to pursue different futures.

Our approach to research and ideas

Just About Everyone will connect these foundations with practical proposals. We will examine devolution, community ownership, public participation and other approaches through their consequences for agency, inclusion and justice.

Our commitment to these values requires intellectual honesty. We will seek evidence that challenges our assumptions, distinguish ethical commitments from empirical claims, and change proposals when experience shows that they fail. We will investigate who benefits, who is excluded and what unintended effects follow.

The people affected by our work should be able to help choose research questions, interpret findings and develop proposals. Lived experience, practical knowledge and academic research each have a contribution to make. Disagreement should be visible and able to change our thinking.

The commitment we make

We will apply these principles to how we build Just About Everyone. We will seek to share influence, make participation accessible and be open about how our work is shaped and funded. This manifesto is a foundation for collective inquiry, open to development through the people who join it.

The question running through our work is simple: does this strengthen the relationships and conditions through which the most marginalised can exercise agency?

We want everyone to have the power to belong, participate and help create a better world.