The tension between legal and illegal protest at the anti-cuts march is not the preserve of the left, nor a modern phenomenon
'We condemn this demonstration, which was selfish and self-indulgent and took away from the actions of law-abiding protesters." While this could quite easily be attributed to a trade unionist reacting to the violent disorder that accompanied last Saturday's TUC March for the Alternative in London, it was in fact uttered seven years ago, by a spokesperson for the Countryside Alliance, after a breakaway group of activists led by Otis Ferry stormed the chamber of the Commons at the height of the pro-hunting protests. Which serves to remind us that fringe elements practising extreme tactics with minimal apparent concern for the broader cause are not the preserve of left-aligned popular protest. Nor of the early decades of the 21st century.
Tension between legal and illegal activism is a historical constant ? as is the pressure on and within the peaceful wing to distance itself from those who break the law. The Chartists of the 19th century famously split into a Moral Force and a Physical Force, with the latter arming itself and marching on towns like Newport before facing mass deportation to the colonies. The suffragette movement similarly fractured over the use of militant tactics, with Sylvia Pankhurst rejecting the call of her mother and sister for a "ceasefire" during the first world war.
As Clive Bloom, author of Violent London, notes, such splits can be beneficial: "Violence can be successful, but you need an argument too. Often extremists will convince the establishment to make a deal with the more palatable protesters." Harder to quantify is how much illegal actions have diminished the strength of popular support.
This has certainly been the anxiety since last Saturday, with tax avoidance campaigners UK Uncut coming in for particular criticism over their refusal to condemn the black bloc who damaged property and taunted police. The recriminations that have echoed across the blogosphere, claiming protesters for family-friendly or kettle-chasing camps, ultimately serve only to drown out investigation into the police response: it would appear, from footage obtained by the Guardian, that the authorities used the disorder outside Fortnum's as an excuse to arrest those involved in peaceful civil disobedience inside. And it was, after all, the police tactic of kettling that put off some would-be demonstrators before the march, imposing a split in advance.
It's important to interrogate the description "violent protest". Certainly, firecrackers, smoke bombs and raucous teenagers with faces obscured make for dramatic footage against the night sky. And they are undeniably threatening. But the vast majority of damage on Saturday was sustained by property, not persons (84 people were treated for mainly minor injuries); nor was this vandalism mindless, but targeted at banks and other emblematic high street institutions.
But if it is the depth of popular feeling that makes history rather than a few acts of political vandalism, then surely the relevant question is not whether or how to condemn those acts ? but if any coherent agenda lies behind them and how important it is for that to sit neatly with the agenda of the whole.
Likewise, UK Uncut's hands-off insistence on acting as a kind of activist franchise, definitively without hierarchy, within which there are as many reasons to protest as there are protesters, can come across as mealy-mouthed, as well as bewildering to an older generation that is more comfortable with top-down accountability. But this structure, learnt from the anti-capitalists of the late 90s (who, incidentally, predicted the financial crisis at a time when the rest of society was still enamoured of its credit rating), offers a certain strength in the face of a political and media establishment desperate for leaders to co-opt or reveal as corrupt. And its ad hoc diversity has appealed to a mainstream that constitutes something different today.
The TUC was rightly overwhelmed by the vast numbers who turned out last weekend. For all the branch banners, this was not a traditional trade union demonstration, but an example of the labour movement at its very broadest. The turnout was testament to the organising power still held by the unions and, in particular, their capacity to reach out at a local level. The key is how the union movement puts its resources into maintaining this momentum without giving way to the dead hand of upper echelon bureaucracy that has so often stifled progress in the past.
Further action, especially at a local level, demands the creativity employed by the likes of UK Uncut. Traditional industrial action can be just as alienating as anarchist chaos, especially when it is called against the very public services that are under threat, or Labour councils reluctantly implementing cuts.
Just as a tension has always existed between the moral and physical tactics of protests, so mass mobilisation and detailed intellectual argument have never cohered. Nor have they needed to. Protest movements are by nature messy, oppositional and finite. The formulation of a lasting alternative agenda and the ultimate success of an economic argument against coalition cuts won't be achieved on the streets, or while occupying the library at the end of the precinct. But acceptance of this co-existence and diversity of purpose will pave the way to a genuine alternative.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/01/protest-chartists-moral-physical-wing
Jimmy Carter Fidel Castro Hugo Chavez Dick Cheney Noam Chomsky
No comments:
Post a Comment