Newsnight Review is tonight running an item on social protest. This follows a week of demonstrations throughout London to coincide with the G20 meeting.
Idiot Superintendent David Hartshorn had warned of a "Summer of Rage" in the UK. Of course this was nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy, a kind of green light to his lads to 'get stuck in'. In the melees that were always going to follow, police and riot police were always going to be able to play the security card and accuse every man and his dog of causing a riot.
Not so, say eyewitnesses. On Wednesday, a diverse and large group of people marched from four stations in the vicinity of the city to the Bank of England. Numerous eyewitnesses confirmed the peaceful nature of the march and demo - this blogger included. Police were heavyhanded and provoked needlessly provoked a situation, detained everyone who was legally there (no water, no toilets, no food), and quickly sent in the riot police. It was a very frustrating and intimidating experience.
Worse still: The climate camp at Bishopsgate was entirely absent of so-called 'anarchists' (i.e. masked youths from Italy and France), but away from any media interest the violence was even worse.
Of course people are right to point out that the police have 'always' done this, but it doesn't make it right. What this points to yet again is the politicisation of the police. This is indeed worrying. Attending a legal demonstration becomes a hazard in itself and the police are doing their utmost to deter critically minded people from attending legal demonstrations in future. What this will result in is less democracy, less engagement with politics, and more nihilism. The self-fulfilling prophesy made by idiot Hartshorn thus comes full circle.
But these actions by the police shouldn't deter people from demonstrating. It should have the opposite effect. This summer should be the "Summer of Dissent".
Which brings me to Newsnight Review's tuppence on a history of social protest: "Has the nature and culture of protest changed?", asks Kirsty Wark.
It starts with a brief description of Peterloo, moves on to the Chartists, then the Hyde Park riots, the Trafalgar Square demonstration in the 1880s. This, so the BBC, instilled a protest culture, a culture of dissent. The Iraq protest features as the last item; then it moves on to 'angry' protests of last week.
Tristram Hunt believes that this week's protests mirror 18th cetury 'spring protests' rather than political protests of 19th century. John Bew, predictably, rubbishes the protests as 'fashionable' riots. Guess who's never attended a demonstration before; yes the editor of Democratiya. Hunt is far more nuanced. He believes it is borne out of frustration and anger at capitalism, but has no coherent voice and thus mirrors 18th century riots.
Janine di Giovanni rightly mentions globalisation as an agenda against which to march. Quite conveniently, Bew accuses the marchers of being 'leisure class'. Of course, him not being there, he did not see the unemployed and working class people who were on the march.
So predictably, the cosy hacks dismiss the very thing they do not engage in.
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One of the reasons for what seems to be very little violence so far is that its very difficult to do: after the recurrence of IRA bombings in the 1990s and the May Day Riots in 200O London has been put under systematic surveillance.
There are CCTV cameras everywhere and the police are obsessed with doing what they can to minimise any potential for violence of the kind that cost millions of pounds when protestors went on the rampage in 2000.
In 2001 I went to the May Day protests towards the end of the day and saw an ugly mood brewing up between some protestors who had
clearly been on the booze and with police moving down the streets of Soho.
These people really were spoiling for a chance to show their 'Rage Against the Machine'. When Hartshorn talks of a Summer of Rage' he might be including May Day too.
Two points.
Firstly, the protest organisers could have chosen to officially distance themselves from other signatories of the 'G 20 Meltdown in the City' who do advocate violence like the Whitechapel Anarchists and Class War.
Secondly, what good is served by referring to a 'meltdown' in the city. It reeks of almost craving apocalypse more than putting forth more than just a list of inchaote demands and producing slogans.
As for the Newsnight review, Bew referred to 'recreational rioting' and that it represented a total discontinuity with the tradition of protest.
Perhaps, because Bew as head of Democritaya thinks grown up leftists should debate serious issues like whether its ever right to torture Islamists if it advances the 'war on terror'.
The protests cannot be summed up: different protestors are trying to make different points but whether publicity stunts will really engage more people on global warming is not clear.
Tristram Hunt was right to argue that these protests had no coherent political agenda but nor are they like eighteenth century riots which were given edge by poverty and material deprivation.
That might be the case in the presence of those whose pensions have been wiped out by the irresponsibility of the banks and those who have lost their jobs. But such people are not really represented in any organisation.
For these protests are a melange of different protestors protesting for different reasons linked only by some general sense of anger at 'the system' that has let them down.
The problem is that those who do try to choreograph the protests are often hijacking popular revulsion for wars like Iraq and trying to pretend that all those who are against them can be claimed as having followed the slogans of Murray and the StWC.
Yet the StWC has no broader political aim other than ramping up outrage and making sensational claims about how any conceivable terror threat is the 'retaliation' or 'reprisal' for 'British Imperialism'.
That kind of crude oversimplification and the fact the StWC is lead by ranting totalitarian fanatics like German and CND by Kate Hudson just puts off those who want to prevent the government going to war in the way it did in Iraq again.
That means reform of the political system: the StWC would hate that because they see war as inherent in a 'capitalist democracy' and so wars are there only as opportunities that can be converted into domestic revolutionary agenda.
The most obvious way of doing that is by instilling into British Muslims the idea Iraq was attacked just because it is Muslim and that this is part of a demonic Sadean strategy to just kill them and nick their oil.
The great shame is that ordinary people who feel so angry at a supine Parliament and the failures of British democracy are between two false alternatives: lunatics like Respect, the StWC and a Parliament jammed with pathetic halwit careerists who could just as well be working for either party and are subservient to US geopolitical imperatives.
The StWC have no coherent aims other than the one they have downplayed publicly-destroying capitalism, imperialism and the 'bourgeois state' in favour of some pie eyed return to Soviet Russia which is not either possible nor desirable.
From the point of view of left wing democrats who want a renewal of British democracy, it is essential that new political formations are created that reject the StWC and other rebranded front organisation for the dregs of the various British Communist parties.
Hi Karl, thanks for your comment.
On the question of distancing one movement from another: I think it is almost impossible to do without forfeiting one's right to protest. It is an argument put forward by those who supported the war against those who voice their opinion in some shape or form (e.g. "you are rubbing shoulders with pro-Hamas sympathisers"; even when it isn't the case).
And this is where Hunt made a good point: It is reminiscent of 18th century riots, yet - as he mentioned, too - it has political potential. What John Bew - the Cohen-Johnson hanger-on - alleges, by contrast, is that this is solely a 'leisure class' activity.
To be sure, the 'leisure class' (needs definition even if we sense what he means, but it's still too loose to be accepted per se) was present, and will always be there; but it is the presumptuousness of Bew and other 'decents' that really riles me. Sitting on a couch and not being aware of rising unemployment, but still dismissing it without nuance is indeed very grating.
For sure, oversimplification and indeed hijacking takes place, but is it really avoidable?
I'm going to go to as many demonstrations as possible this, to really try to assess these movements. Will they change? What agencies are in place? Are there new voices, or do the old ones still dominate?
"On the question of distancing one movement from another: I think it is almost impossible to do without forfeiting one's right to protest".
I don't know if it's impossible but it might be impractical : if people sign up for a protest organised by certain groups only, then it might not gain any media coverage at all.
It's often the numbers that count: that was clear with the March 2003 anti-Iraq War march which I joined.
I held no banner, made no noise and walked alone. It seemed the most fitting thing to do given this was a decision in which hundreds of thousands would die and in a land where they had already.
Other anti-war demos did not keep up the momentum because the march did not and did not have any chance of 'stopping the war'.Interest dropped off as the StWC had nothing to offer than changing the slogans to whip up sectarian Islamist anger or just blind hatred.
A protest movement needs some kind of political program: so a real civic renewal movement needs to come into being.
It might be a bit more staid and a bit more 'boring' but in the long term it would be able to persuade through rational conviction instead of a neurotic outrage that burns itself out.
There needs to be a written constitution, more checks and balances on the Prime Minister and the replacement of the Lords with something better than a picked chamber full of Blair's and Brown's nominees.The name 'House of Lords' could be kept though.
That kind of protest would threaten New Labour a lot more than protest of the sort that can be dismissed as 'juvenile pranks' that the New Labour grandees themselves grew out of after 1968.
A new civic movement would prevent hijacking because it would clarify whats at stake, made broad yet penetrating criticisms about Britain's political, social, economic and cultural malaise that could appeal across the political spectrum.
You mention the media, and rightly so, because in the end it is the media that plays a huge role in dictating what's important and what not. They invent slogans and mantras, and we all parrot them. The demonstrations over the last week were 'important', because the media sent people there to make them so.
What would be nice is a movement against the media, but that is so utterly absurd, but we can all dream, eh?
A civic movement as you describe is even more difficult to galvanise, partly because people largely don't care until they can feel the detrimental effects of a particular situation. This is why I think there is potential in this year's protests being more than 'fashionable' (though I agree with you that they have tended to be just so).
The very myth of globalisation and neoliberalism is being exposed. What beggars belief - for me - is that at the demos on Wednesday people were calling for 'global solutions' (I was informally interviewing a few); the very aspect that has become the dominant myth is what they still clamour for. Bourdieu describes this quite well, and I've never recognised it that evidently as on Wednesday.
How will people, by and large, figure out that it is very difficult to be 'anti-globalisation' whilst demanding 'global solutions'? One of the great victories of the neoliberal myth has been to discredit anything that looks remotely protectionist as 'xenophobic nationalism'. That's why they still clamour for 'global solutions'. The myth has worked.
Far from steering a new course, the G20 and Obamania have intensified this myth.
So in short, I am as clueless as anyone else. There ought to be greater 'attacks' (I mean challenges to) against the media and its dominance - they are instrumental in perpetuating meaningless 'global speak' - ,and against the myth itself. Whether protest is instrumental in this remains to be seen, but it's certainly a good occasion to probe and challenge people's comfortable ideas (those who are there).
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