December 23, 2010
Books of the Year
Things are obviously winding down around here until the New Year, and I imagine most readers are as burned-out politics-wise as I am.
So let’s have a bit of fun, and try to re-exploit what turned out to be very productive exercise over the summer.
Norm recently posted his annual Books of the Year blog, and I’m duly stealing the idea. Please share your books of the year in comments below; I find this to be an especially useful “crowd sourcing” technique and I’m sure fellow readers will too.
The only rule is that you must have read the book between 1st January and 31st December 2010. But it can have been published at any time. List as many or as few as you like.
Top 10 Non-Fiction Works
- Leviathan and the Air Pump - Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer
- The Case for the Enlightenment – John Robertson
- Politics in the Ancient World – Moses Finley
- Lords of Finance – Liaquat Ahamed
- History and Illusion in Politics – Raymond Geuss
- In the Beginning was the Deed – Bernard Williams
- Political Hypocrisy – David Runciman
- The Battle for Spain – Anthony Beevor
- Reappraisals – Tony Judt
- On Film – Stephen Mulhall
(Though if I cheat my own self-imposed imperative and have an 11th, Jealousy of Trade by Istvan Hont gets a mention because although I read much of it in 2009, I read it again more thoroughly and with more fruitful results this year).
Top 10 Fiction Works
- A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemmingway
- Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
- The Man in the High Castle – Philip K. Dick
- Towards the End of the Morning – Michael Frayn
- The Night Watch - Sarah Waters
- L’Etranger – Albert Camus
- The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
- Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
- Burr – Gore Vidal
- Beyond Black - Hilary Mantel
5 To Avoid
- Ordinary Thunderstorms – William Boyd
- Le Horla – Guy de Maupassant
- Britons – Linda Colley
- Voyage au Centre de la Terre – Jules Verne
- Ill Fares the Land – Tony Judt
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Update: I probably should have included Graham Swift’s Waterland in my top 10 fiction, for being a 350-page indictment of the philistinism and incoherence of those who say history is unimportant because all that matters is the future.
December 22, 2010
The Chimera of Impartiality?
Health Warning: This post rapdily degenerates into a very techy piece of philosophical navel gazing. Not for the timid.
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Vince Cable is probably still a minister for exactly the reasons he originally boasted to The Telegraph’s undercover journalists: that if he leaves Cabinet, the Coalition will likely fall. But whereas the original Telegraph story would merely have embarrassed Cable, further leaked revelations that he had personally “declared war” on the “Murdoch Empire” were greeted as a wholly scandalous revelation.
Assuming we all accept that individual politicians have personal political opinions, the current scandal can’t centre on what Cable himself thinks of Mr Murdoch’s doings. Clearly, the issue is that in his role as Business Secretary, Cable is supposed to be impartial. Although Sunder Katwala subtly challenges the political realities of such an assumption, he also captures and perpetuates it somewhat:
“Cable’s comments about Rupert Murdoch are in a different category. This was a bad error – and the government’s decision to remove Cable’s role in media regulation is an appropriate and correct response.
After his comments were made public, Cable could not claim to be in a position to judge the News International/BSkyB issue impartially. One might, however, be forgiven a sceptical thought as to how far Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt may find Solomon-like wisdom and detachment on offer to him in inheriting these responsibilities.”
Yet I have deep conceptual suspicions about the nature of “impartiality” in political decision-making, which run as follows.
The standard charge against Cable is that, as Business Secretary with a quasi-judicial role, he was required to make a decision on the BSkyB take-over without political bias, and only according to the rules of economic competition as defined in law. If he made a decision based on his own personal political preferences that would not be “impartial”, and therefore it would be wrong.
But why would it be wrong? Presumably, because Cable would be trying to bring about a kind of political situation, rather than simply applying the relevant political rules. That seems fine as it stands (at least for now). But let’s also examine what would happen if Cable acted “impartially” and (for argument’s sake) decided to approve the BSkyB merger on the grounds that it was permissible under competition law.
In that case, a political situation would nonetheless arise, but now as a consequence of Cable’s decision not to take his own personal counter-veiling political preferences into account. (That political situation being: the further takeover of the British media by a foreign billionaire with vociferously right-wing views, who openly uses his media outlets for partisan political ends.)
So the alternatives we are faced with are:
- Cable acts “partially”, and a political situation (anti-Murdoch) is brought about
- Cable acts “impartially”, and a political situation (pro-Murdoch) is brought about
Now what we want to know is why the first outcome is worse than the second, and specifically because of partiality on Cable’s behalf (I’m here leaving aside considerations about which set of consequences is itself more desirable, to concentrate on the issue of partiality vs. impartiality). In order to avoid arguing in a circle I urge again that it is vital to remember that the consequences of Cable acting partially or impartially are, in either case, the generation of a political situation. It is thus simply no good resorting to a blanket position such as “it is wrong to make decisions about applying political rules from personal partisan judgement” and expecting that to do any convincing moral work in this individual instance, because
a) whether Cable is partial or impartial, a political consequence results, so the blanket position can’t be founded upon a claim about the value of the not bringing about political consequences per se; in fact impartiality does lead to the bringing about of political consequences – just different ones to those which a partial agent would have brought about
yet
b) it is no good making an intrinsic value claim about partiality either. To run that sort of claim, it would have to be seriously maintained that it just is morally superior to apply political rules without reference to personal political preference. But unless we are to fall back on some form of un-argued-for rule-worship (which is thereby untenable ipso facto), that position looks simply unacceptable: for the point of having political rules, after all, is to secure certain kinds of consequence. But that puts us back in the situation of noting that whatever the decision-making agent does, consequences arise. Precisely because political rules are put in place to effect consequences, we are back where we started and cannot appeal to the intrinsic value of “impartial” rule-application without begging the question as to why the rule should be followed.
Thus the concept of “impartiality” as a value in individual political decision-making apparently emerges as a conceptual chimera. If acting according to his political preferences, Cable brings about one set of political outcomes. If acting not according to his political preferences, he brings about a different set of political outcomes. But in either case, the responsibility for the ensuing consequences must come back to Cable. Cable is thus either active by commission in facilitating one set of political outcomes, or passive by omission in facilitating another. But as there is no moral weight in any commission-omission distinction, we remain without a relevant moral difference.
“Impartiality” in political decision-making apparently emerges as, at best, a piece of innocent cognitive self-deceit about the back-flow of responsibility, or at worst a cowardly conscious attempt to abnegate political and moral culpability for the generation of a set of political outcomes, by appeal to the exculpating force of omission as oppose to commission. (Deciding how cases are to be classified will depend upon context and judgement.)
There thus appears to be a case for suggesting that Vince Cable is not – deep down – morally at fault because he failed to act “impartially”. He’s at fault because he got caught waving the banner of partiality in a political environment which doesn’t tolerate such things.
But there may, as it happens, actually be very good reasons for having a political system that overall doesn’t tolerate such things. It’s fairly easy to see that, over protracted periods of time, the most desirable sorts of societies are likely to be those in which decision-making agents apply political rules “impartially”, at least much of the time. This, after all, will likely reduce the scope of personal corruption, cronyism and the general abuse of power for factional ends. And indeed, history attests that societies able to minimise precisely those sorts of things generally do the best overall – and insofar as they do the best, they are likely to develop and continue existing. Justification and genesis here dovetail neatly, though of course this is by no means a claim of necessity – plenty of societies have gotten very far with political ethoi actively antithetical to “impartiality”.
Furthermore, a system under which the norm of “impartiality” was deeply internalised by the great majority of political agents (in principle even if not always in practice) – and in which those deviating from impartiality were chastised or ousted – would surely likely be the best of all, for under such a system the application of political rules would be facilitated most automatically and efficiently, with fairly obvious cumulative benefits. Yet none of this changes the fact that c) “impartiality’s” benefits and justification derive from the consequences of political rule-enforcement being best facilitated this way, and in turn d) “impartiality” remains chimerical as a concept with relation to political decision-making in each individual instance of political rule-application.
But this actually means that we arrive at a satisfyingly holistic conclusion overall: that even if “impartiality” in political decision-making and rule application is chimerical at the level of individuals (who are by necessity causally implicated in whatever consequences actually come about, and therefore tied to them in terms of responsibility), this may nonetheless be a most useful and desirable chimera to have up and running in political societies like ours, i.e. where significant levels of political decision-making operate by the application of political rules. Utilitas and veritas can certainly come apart, after all, and sometimes we may get a little more of the former precisely if we have a little less of the latter.
December 21, 2010
The Politics of Snow
Snow and ice have brought chaos to Britain. Flights cancelled, trains delayed, motorways deadlocked. Holidays have been ruined, general frustration caused to millions, and economic productivity reduced.
As in previous years, this has led to rafts of angry declamations. Fingers are enviously pointed to Finland, Germany, Illinois, or whatever places get far more snow than Britain each winter, and yet manages to stay operational. Angry letters are written to local newspapers, denouncing councils for not gritting every lonely lane and back alley. Her Majesty’s opposition requests the Government make a statement on the snow. Her Majesty’s government obliges.
Thus, the recent snow demonstrates some basic dynamics of modern democratic politics.
Firstly, that voters are unreasonable – both in the pejorative and the technical sense. It is highly dubious, for example, that the Outraged of Tumbridge Wells spend their warmer months lobbying for higher council tax to pay for more gritters and street-salt. (Things which, of course, may never actually be used if the next winter turns out to be mild.)
Yet as soon as the cold weather hits, the local council (or for that matter, central government) has wickedly neglected its duties to look after citizens, and must be condemned and bewailed accordingly. Never mind that those demanding Government Action frequently speak from the other sides of their mouths about the rise of the Nanny State.
For you see, voters cannot be trusted. They want their problems dealt with now. Regardless of whether they were happy to sell the collective lifejackets six months ago. And it’s likewise irrelevant that, in three months time, none of them will care that for a fortnight in December snow caused chaos. People demand action when their interests are sufficiently prompted in the here and now. And those demands and interests are often highly insensitive to any long-term reasonableness.
But politicians know this. Hence why Labour calls for a statement on the snow which can be nothing but platitudinous – and the Tories duly give one. The game has to be played; voters are outraged by the ice; Something Must Be Done.
Or rather, Something Must Be Seen To Be Done. Because politicians are canny. They know that in two months time nobody will give a sod about the snow. They also know that when the council (or general) elections come around, lower tax rates and more visible permanent public services will curry most favour. By contrast, platoons of unused road gritters – sitting silently in darkened hangers waiting for a winter’s day when might be called upon – will butter precisely zero parsnips in the balmy mornings of May.
The reason Germany, Finland et. al. have adequate infrastructure for dealing with snow is because it snows there a lot, hence permanent provisions are needed. The same is not true of Britain. It would be a very silly use of economic resources for the normally mild UK to install the same level of pre-emptive preparation these other countries do. Even if that means accepting that in some years the country will go to the snowy dogs for a week or two.
But of course, no mainstream politician can risk pointing out this blindingly obvious truth. Because pointing out such basic facts would be tantamount to explaining to outraged voters why they are unreasonable and irrational. Or, in other words, why they are acting like selfish, short-sighted idiots.
And in a mass democracy, you get nowhere telling hoi poloi such things. Especially if they happen to be true. Hence, the platudinous drivel you will find yourself surrounded by. Until next week, when the ice melts and the rabble finds something else to clamour for instead.
December 20, 2010
The Conservative Party and Britain’s Universities
When the Browne Review was greeted by the Conservative-led government as a welcome model for higher education reform, it was possible to believe it wasn’t anything personal against Britain’s universities.
Sure, Lord Browne knew nothing about higher education before being appointed. (Though he had been forced to quit as boss of BP after, er, lying in court.) And the rest of the committee consisted of two policy wonks, a journo-turned-economist, a banker and two vice-chancellors…but no student or working academic representatives.
Yet this was a Labour-appointed committee. And if a Labour-appointed committee argued for the tripling of tuition fees and the thorough marketisation of higher education, it was surely harmless co-incidence that such proposals fitted the ideological preferences of the Tory Party like a glass slipper.
When the Conservative immigration cap kicked-in – causing administrative chaos at British universities – it was natural to assume that the Tories just hated foreigners. (“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”) Indeed, when the Home Office website recently appealed for ideas on how to prevent foreign students entering the UK – even though foreign students pay vastly more in fees, and contribute enormously to academic research – this conclusion looked pretty certain.
And when the Browne Review fee-hike was recently passed, it could be similarly concluded that this Government just dislikes the poor. That whilst lecturing us on the unfairness of passing debt to future generations, the ConDems could nonetheless square a cabinet of millionaires (who received their university educations for free) saddling tomorrow’s students with £40,000 of financial obligation.
Thus, the willingness to introduce this headline figure of debt (despite the prospects of dettering those from lower income backgrounds) could be explained under the mechanisms of good, old-fashioned, top-down class war, as waged by the traditional party of privilege.
But when it was revealed that universities would be facing overall cuts of 40% – with 80% cuts to most teaching budgets – it became harder to keep believing that the present government is simply motivated by a ferocious ideological preference for marketisation, plus a desire to kick foreigners and disregard the poor.
Indeed, with the latest announcement that University funding is to be slashed several months before the fee-hike kicks in – leading to a massive shortfall in funding, and some institutions warning they will face bankruptcy – the obvious conclusion seems increasingly unavoidable.
That despite offering fantastic value for money, being consistently rated amongst the top institutions in the world, and playing host to no less than the top-ranked bastion of learning on the face of the planet, this Conservative-led government simply hates Britain’s universities. And quite possibly wants to destroy them.
Or is there some other, more irrational explanation? One perhaps better-fitted to the manic character of this most unconservative Conservative party.
December 18, 2010
Gender and Protest
Following my recent posts on the student riots, Clifford Singer (of The Other Taxpayers’ Alliance) posed me a question:
“There’s one thing you don’t discuss: gender. Is the violence you explore all about men vs. men?”
As regards the violence that took place in Parliament Square, the answer is at some level “no”.
At the start of the protest, I watched as a group of Cambridge students linked arms and stood firm to prevent around 15 police horses entering the Square. There were, by my estimation, more women than men in that human barrier. As the police walked their horses straight into the line, each stood firm – literally shoulder-to-shoulder with a 600kg horse.
Eventually the police gave up, and the horses retreated (temporarily) to Millbank. Whatever you think of the student protests as a political endeavour, it takes guts to physically face-down a police horse. Anyone believing women to be somehow inherently timorous should think again.
When the protest degenerated into a riot, and the violence-proper began, it was clear that many women remained on the front line – even as the batons, boots and horses rained down. It is true that overall there were more men than women in the riot. But that mostly reflects the skewed demographic of political participation which, for social and cultural reasons (“politics is for men”), tend to ensure males are over-represented at any political event. Though the police did not hesitate to target women (their being typically both smaller and weaker), pulling them out of the lines to baton and kick them to the ground.
Women can be as brave (or foolhardy) as men. The conflict thrill of rioting does not divide on gender lines. At the London riots the commonplace clichés of female passivity and male aggression were shown up as complacent and boring stereotypes.
Yet if violent protest serves to discredit the mythology of female gender passivity, peaceful protest can sadly reconfirm the extent to which ours is a deeply patriarchal society. A society pervaded by macho and aggressive sexual norms, characterised by discourses infused with metaphors of male sexual dominance.
Here I can do no better than quote from this excellent set of reflections:
“In London it was the placards. The casual misogyny was rife: David Cameron was warned that if he fucked the country, SamCam was in for the same and Nick Clegg’s mother can apparently ‘bend over and take it’ just like he will learn to. As a woman, this was a pretty alienating experience: here I was marching shoulder to shoulder with people for whom I was meant to feel solidarity, but could really summon little but disgust. The language they chose to criticise the Coalition evoked the very real practices of London’s gangs, where the rape of a female family member has become a tool retribution amongst mini-mafiosos…I don’t want people paying more for Higher Education, but neither do I accept that there is ever a case for constructing political protest on these terms.”
What’s perhaps interesting is whether the people carrying the placards invoking sexual degradation and casual misogyny had any awareness that they were thereby deploying and perpetuating aggressively misogynistic gender values.
My guess is actually not: that the use of sexually-offensive and degrading language is unreflectively employed as a useful (political) weapon. The weapon’s relation to systems of social ordering and hierarchy largely goes unnoticed, even by those (i.e. men) who typically benefit from the hierarchy of gender embedded in the social status quo. Accordingly, misogyny and sexism are manifested and perpetuated even without conscious intention of the agents responsible.
In short, exactly what you’d expect to find in a thorough-going and deeply entrenched patriarchy. QED, as they say.
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See also the condemnation by Cambridge Defend Education of misogynistic protest language.
December 17, 2010
Buy This
Not much time for blogging as I’m busy building a PhD-related website, organising a PhD-related conference, and simultaneously trying to actually do a PhD.
So for now, spend 30 seconds and 79p on Captain Ska’s tune Liar, Liar.
Imagine if this was Christmas number 1 on Sunday. What a poke in the eye that would be for Dave, Little Dave and that square-faced idiot who owns Cheryl Cole.
Get it on iTunes, or from any of these places:
http://www.tescoentertainment.com/store/mp3/captain-ska–…
http://www.shockhound.com/
http://mog.com/hp/b…
http://www.emusic.com/promo/browse.html
http://www.napster.co.uk/
http://www.thumbplay.com/
Proceeds to: Crisis, Disability Alliance, FalseEconomy and Women’s Health Matters.
December 14, 2010
EMAs and Real Politics
I am increasingly drawn to the view that politics is not – and can never be – an exercise in “applied ethics”. That means having something like the following views:
By necessity politics is about horse-trading between political actors, and the juggling of competing interests. In particular, “competing interests” will relate both to groups who directly support one’s cause or position (e.g. by voting for, or funding, it), as well as those who oppose it but who nonetheless possess power to be reckoned with now and in the future. Achieving any kind of political decision or action means mediating between competing interest groups, to reach compromises that look nothing like what individual groups would have chosen in an ideal world of directly-applying their preferred outcomes.
What makes things even more difficult is that competing groups will at some level not share the same ethical priorities, commitments or beliefs. After all, if they did share (all) such things, we wouldn’t have any politics in the first place – politics being, by definition, the phenomenon of groups who hold different values attempting to triumph over each other (sometimes by force).
Further, individual political actors by necessity each bring personal histories to the negotiating table (or street rally). As a result, whatever individual actors say and demand is refracted through the prism of their past actions, and judged accordingly by other political agents. For example, if Tony Blair tomorrow called for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, and for Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders, other political actors would not interpret this as a simple application of politically-worked out principle, but as a suspicious u-turn out of step with Blair’s previous commitments and actions.
Given these factors – and more – politics is not, and can never be, the simple application of ethical principles. It is inherently about the struggle of irreconciled values, powers and interests, and then of the search for compromise which (in western democracy at least) stops short of dominating violence.
Within the academy, such considerations are increasingly used to urge a re-thinking of political philosophy, which has for the past 40 years predominantly been conducted as though its core purpose is to distil essential abstract “values”, regardless of whether they can or cannot be applied to the currently existing “facts” of the real world. (See, for example, some of the late work of G.A. Cohen, as well as the vast industry of Rawlsiana). Against this, recent political “realists” claim that if political philosophy is actually to be about politics at all, it would do better to theorise about the process of politics as it actually occurs, not just as some would like it to, in an ideal world.
Of course that doesn’t mean somehow abandoning value assessments. That would be very odd – arguably impossible – and also defeat the point of any political theory that aspires to the name. But it does mean moving away from an emphasis on “ideal theory”, and the formulation of ethical propositions which (purposefully?) bare no relation to the realities of practical politics as it occurs on a daily basis.
Interestingly, the latest findings of the Institute for Fiscal Studies – and my anticipation of the Coalition Government’s response – push me further into this “realist” camp.
The IFS has slammed Coalition plans to remove the Education Maintenance Allowance from Britain’s poorest kids. In brief: the EMA is good value for money, it’s removal is likely to have adverse affects on the attainment and schooling rates of the poorest kids in society, and even if it doesn’t improve educational standards for the worse-off it nonetheless represents a valuable redistributive measure from rich to poor.
I anticipate, however, that the Coalition will respond to this awkward IFS finding the way it’s responded to other reports criticising the regressive and unfair economic policies emerging from the Treasury. Namely, by either ignoring the IFS, or by dispatching Nick Clegg to redefine “fairness”, or “progressivity”, or whatever other word needs to have its meaning re-arranged, so as to save the Coalition (and particularly the LibDems) some face.
And it’s not hard to see why this will (probably) happen. If the Government were to back down on EMAs, it would arguably look weak. After going through the fire of recent protests – which, after all, turned rather violent – the Government is unlikely to want to appear as though it lacks resolve. It is also unlikely to want to appear as though its policy terms are dictated by some poxy little think-tank. And in particular, the men who lead this Government – proud egomaniacs all, as by necessity politicians generally must be – are unlikely to want to admit that they have gotten a big, controversial policy decision wrong – especially at this late stage of the game.
But here’s where it gets interesting. Most (and I stress “most”) Conservative and LibDem MPs are not out to intentionally hurt the poor. It’s just that they have very specific ideas about how best to help the poor (ideas which are usually wrong – but that’s another story). And it happens that for whatever reasons (multiple cognitive biases not withstanding) many have already decided that scrapping EMAs is compatible with these pre-existing ideas of how to help the poor.
Unfortunately, this means that the IFS report is not going to change anything – even though it shows that if politicians do want to help the poor they should keep EMAs.* The reality of politics as it happens in practice is thus that even when ethical principles (“help the poor”) are agreed upon, it does not mean policies which promote those principles are actually enacted (or in this case, kept). Other principles – including (especially) power-considerations and demands of strategy and positioning – trump ethical principle.
If that’s not a demonstration of how politics quite quickly and easily becomes anything but “applied ethics”, then I don’t know what is. Of course, it doesn’t follow that there will be no value in formulating principles of abstract ethical value in the academy. But it may well bear on the question of whether the formulating of such abstract values has anything to do with politics, and thus whether such an activity can really be called political philosophy.
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* And as a general rule, if the IFS says something, it’s a much better guide to reality than any political party’s approved policy documents.
December 13, 2010
Reflections on a Kettle
Much has been written about the police use kettling at last Thursday’s riots. Here’s an attempt to say something different.
The kettling of thousands, by rows of armour-clad and masked riot police (never mind the batoning, punching, kicking and horse charges) demonstrated a fundamental truth of politics:
“That a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory…Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it. The state is considered the sole source of the ‘right’ to use violence.”
Standing in the shadow of Parliament, as fires burned and smoke billowed, Max Weber’s words received practical purchase.
The old anarchist saying – that the state creates the violence which it uses to justify its existence – also took on a dimension of vivid reality that night. I watched (and dodged) as fellow citizens were beaten by an organised, armoured and armed militia. A militia which prevented even the peaceful from leaving the fray.
And yet that is only half the tale.
When the kettle had gone into effect my friends and I wandered aimlessly. Suddenly a commotion erupted nearby. Youths wearing ski-masks and raised hoods were attacking a reporting crew. We watched as they threw a cameraman to the floor, where he received kicks and blows.
Believing the attackers simply to be angry protestors, I confronted one youth. He was not wearing a ski mask, but his mouth and nose were covered. He was about 15, and a lot smaller than me. He shot me a look that sent a shiver down by spine. But he weighed his options, and backed off.
I got lucky.
As other protestors confronted the remaining youths, there was a sudden palpable rush of fear. We all saw the hammer come out. Everybody took a step backward. For a few terrible seconds, I thought I was about to witness a murder. Mercifully, the situation defused as quickly as it began. Somebody with a leveller and braver head than mine calmly shouted to “put the hammer away, mate” – and away it went. The gang ran off, to another part of the kettle.*
And that’s when the second wave of fear – the reflective wave – hit me. I couldn’t get out. I was trapped here, with the hammer-wielding gang; one of whom I’d just confronted and had clearly seen my face. The police? It wasn’t their problem anymore: “there’s nothing we can do pal – it’s your fault for being in the kettle”.
It is true that the police enforce the will of the state by monopolising legitimate violence. One of their functions is to impose social control; protecting politicians from the betrayed, the wealthy from the poor, the rulers from the ruled. But that is not all they do. The police also protect ordinary citizens from those who would prey upon us. Protestors who wish to live under the safety of laws must acknowledge the janus-faced relationship we stand in towards the police.
Trapped in the Westminster kettle, it was ultimately the words of Thomas Hobbes I recalled most clearly:
“Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
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*As the night progressed they distracted themselves, attempting to destroy any available windows. Let nobody tell you that the attack on the Treasury had no positive dimensions.
December 11, 2010
Reflections on a Riot
In the press reports and police statements surrounding what happened in Parliament Square on Thursday, we’re often told that “violent extremists” ruined it for “peaceful protestors”.
But is it really that simple?
I was stood in the crowd next to Westminster Abbey on Thursday, where I saw riot police striking people with batons after they had fallen to the floor. When a young man trying to help others get away from danger took a baton to the back of the head, and came out streaming blood and unable to walk. When people around me started panicking, running, crushing and screaming in terror – and I turned around to see 15 police horses charging a packed crowd with nowhere to go.
Was I a peaceful protestor, or a violent extremist?
Certainly, I was not one of the people who brought weapons. I didn’t throw missiles at the police horses, or light flares and fireworks. The people who did that (and despite my earlier scepticism, it was true that prepared troublemakers were there on the day) can accurately be classed as violent extremists. Waving red and black flags, dressed in plain black with faces purposefully covered and snooker balls in hand, these were anarchists in the technical sense. I was not with them, or one of them, and I do not defend their actions. It would have been better for all if they had not been there.
But the prepared troublemakers were a very small minority. And yet the images you have seen of the riot in Parliament Square show police battling with thousands of protestors. So what happened?
Quite simply, ordinary people joined in. As I was not on the front row of the protest – or riot, as it quickly became – I stayed clear of the violence. But I’ll be honest: I was swept up along with the enthusiasm of the situation just like the thousands around me. Very quickly it became us versus them; the ordinary people dressed in plain clothes taking batons to the head and facing horse charges, and the masked riot police trying to get at and hurt people like us.
So how and why did the situation deteriorate so quickly? Because it was exhilarating to be part of it.
Insincere apologies for breaking the taboo, but this is a brute truth the pious po-faced tut-tutters of the media and political power dishonestly deny to be the case. Riots happen because they are exciting, because they are fun, because ordinary people who did not come for any violence or trouble suddenly find themselves in the fray and simply do not want to leave. The shackles of society are off, and the animal thrill of conflict is pumping through everybody’s system. And whilst fear and the instinct to run can get the upper hand – like when the horses charge you – adrenaline for the most part takes over. And hence people stand, and they fight.
Those who would now dismiss me as a mindless thug should be aware that this equally applies to the police on the other side. It is simply obvious to anybody who’s seen riot police in action that they enjoy the ruck every bit as much as those they are fighting. And why should that be a surprise? They are only human too; ruled by the same passions and suddenly unleashed animal instincts as the rest of us.
It is true that at 2pm on Thursday 9th November, the anti-cuts demonstration could be accurately divided into violent extremists waiting to strike, and peaceful protestors only there to march and sing. But by 3.30pm, after the batons and the horse charges, the flares and the missiles, such a distinction was spurious. The riot had started, there was violence on both sides, and we were suddenly all in it together.
We can have a simplistic discourse about “violent extremists” and “peaceful protestors”, if we want; an easy narrative in which the Bad Guys ruined it for the Good. But if we stay at that level we’ll never get beyond inaccurate platitudes, and never understand the dynamics of riots as they actually happen in practice. If the police are serious about stopping this sort of thing in future they’ll take this brute truth on board. But that is to assume that they really are interested in stopping this sort of thing in future – and there’s all sorts of reasons to doubt that.
December 8, 2010
To Protect and Serve, not Dominate and Batter
Police authorities recently claimed they cannot guarantee the safety of children attending protests. This came after the same police compelled children (and thousands of other innocent citizens) to stand in freezing conditions for hours under mass arrest, as well as repeated instances of officers punching protestors in the face, and the charging of crowds atop 600kg horses.
Permission granted to choke on your tongue.
One of the primary functions of the police is supposed to be to to protect lawful citizens engaging in legal activity (like peaceful protest). And yet demonstrations in Britain are increasingly characterised by heavy-handed physical intimidation, dished out by the boys in blue. For the police to warn that children will not be safe on protests is a little like Harold Shipman warning the elderly he can’t guarantee their full recovery when undergoing medical treatment.
But it gets worse. Yesterday, the Met Police started issuing sombre warnings:
“We have seen groups of youths descending on the last few student protests as the day progresses, purely with the aim of using the event as a venue for violence and to attack police,” said Commander Bob Broadhurst, head of the Met’s public order branch.
“It has been obvious that these particular elements are not genuine protesters.
“They have no intention of protesting about cuts to tuition fees or any other issue. They have turned up purely to take part in violence and disorder.”
The claim that “violent extremists” would “hijack” peaceful protest is exactly what the Met declared in the run-up to last year’s G20 demonstrations. It turned out to be false; protests were largely peaceful except for a few smashed windows (to delight the hordes of journalists).
But the macho tough-talk duly fired-up the Met, generating an aggressive fight mentality. On the day of protests, police officers covered their faces and removed badge numbers, in preemptive efforts to avoid accountability for their actions in the anticipated ruck.
That day a completely peaceful demonstration at Bishopsgate – containing many young children and elderly participants – was violently and forcibly evicted by riot police. Even worse, the aggressive over-enthusiasm of officers resulted in an innocent man being attacked from behind as he walked home from work. As we all know, Ian Tomlinson died from the injuries he sustained in the assault. But thanks to the lies and spin of the Met, the findings of its tame pathologist, and the pusillanimity of the Crown Prosecution Service, no justice will ever be done for Tomlinson’s memory or family.
It is a brute fact of politics that all functioning states must successfully monopolise the legitimate use of violence. A police force – the institution applying coercive force against citizens – is necessary; anarchy or rampant gangster thuggery are the unattractive alternatives.
But one of the great advantages of modern liberal democracy is its capacity for instituting checks and balances which control the state-sanctioned executors of physical coercion. Indeed it is precisely the possibility of a police force ruled by the same laws it enforces which makes modern liberal democracy a far favourable arrangement to the historical and geographical alternatives.
Yet the British police increasingly behaves – and speaks – as though it is above and outside the law it is supposed to uphold. To illustrate: this article would naturally be concluded with a cliché; “that it may take an innocent death to bring the police into line”. But that’s already redundant. Last year an innocent man did die at police hands. And nothing at all was done, and nothing at all has changed.
The Met are apparently gearing up for a ruck on Thursday. Those of us taking part in the legal and peaceful protest ought indeed to worry for our safety. Not because of “violent extremists”. But because of a police force increasingly forgetful that its function is supposed to be to protect and serve, not to dominate and batter.
