March 31, 2011
Fight Back!
Last December and January a group of extremely dedicated bloggers and activists assembled an e-reader – Fight Back! - collecting some of the best writings related to the student protests.
Dan Hancox did huge amounts of spadework, but Laurie Penny, Guy Aitchison, Siraj Datoo, Cailean Gallagher, Aaron Peters, Anthony Barnett and Niki Seth-Smith all made huge contributions too.
I – on the other hand – was mostly useless, dealing rather badly with a relationship breakdown whilst engaging in some hardcore academic navel gazing. Nonetheless, the others were kind enough to put my name on the cover, which I didn’t really deserve at all.
The original e-reader ran to 350 pages with contributions from 43 authors (one of them being myself, where I did actually contribute something semi-useful in the form of a chapter). It picked up a staggering 13,000 downloads in its first four weeks. Thanks to this enormous demand, Fight Back! is now being launched as a proper book.
Here’s the press release, for your information.
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Fight Back! A Reader on the Winter of Protest
Tasha Bell, 16, describes her experience in a kettle: “The police have pushed us from the top of the road to the bottom, using their thick lines, their horses and their batons. The crowd has thickened, and now I’m not on the front line anymore I’m deep in the middle. I have no control. I can feel my phone vibrating and I’m trying to move my arm to get it but I can’t.”
Joanna Biggs (LRB) describes the UCL occupation: “I hear words like ‘alert’, ‘critique’, ‘offensive’ and even ‘Marxism’. At the edges of the room students sit around circular tables hunched over their laptops, as if they knew how much they look like the photogenic Harvard students of The Social Network.”
Laurie Penny in “You Say You Want a Revolution”: “There can be no question that the conditions are right for a youth movement. The young people of Britain are suffering brutal, insulting socio-economic oppression. There are over a million young people of working age not in education, employment or training, which is a polite way of saying “up shit creek without a giro”.
For review copies, interviews, or for details of the London launch event on 6 April, contact the publishing team on fightback@opendemocracy.net // 07824 807 142 // 07552 569 196
March 30, 2011
A Matter of Perspective
Imagine a private security firm whose agents shoot an innocent man 7 times on a crowded tube, at close range and without warning. Imagine this security firm systematically lies, attempting to cover-up what really happened. Imagine no agent ever stands trial for what happened.
Imagine the same security firm instigates a riot situation at an otherwise peaceful demonstration, its agents concealing their identities with premeditated intent. During the ensuing trouble, imagine one of the firm’s agents pushes a man to the ground, from behind, for no reason. He dies within the hour. The firm then lies to the media, and hires a tame pathologist (already scheduled to face misconduct hearing) who returns favourable results and destroys key evidence. Imagine the security firm’s agent never stands trial for this unprovoked attack – revealed after private footage is released to The Guardian - and at a later inquest his colleagues smear the victim, claiming he was drunk.
Imagine the same firm sends officers into deep cover, infiltrating activist groups. They act as agent provocateurs, conducting sexual relations with activists. One even gets married to an activist and has a child – whilst under cover.
Imagine this same firm is put in charge of policing another mass demonstration (despite its appalling earlier failures). Imagine the firm “kettles” the protest on Whitehall, keeping 15 and 16 year old children out in literally freezing conditions until midnight. Imagine the firm needlessly charges the kettled protestors with horses.
Imagine the same firm is yet again put in charge of managing another mass demonstration. When this protest turns violent, the firm again pointlessly charges demonstrators with horses – despite protestors having nowhere to go, because they’ve been kettled. At the same time, a student is batoned over the head and nearly dies from internal bleeding. The security firm attempts to prevent him being admitted to “their” hospital.
At this same demonstration, evidently peaceful protestors are prevented from leaving the riot zone. Security agents systematically lie to them about being able to go home. As the cold December night stretches on, packed-in demonstrators are advanced upon by horses, before being herded onto a bridge where space is so scarce many fear for their lives.
Imagine this same security firm is again put in charge of yet another demonstration. When activists proceed to stage an entirely non-violent protest inside a luxury department store, security agents promise them they can leave shortly without fear of being detained. That they are being kept inside purely for their own safety. But it’s a ruse: the security firm is simply taking the time to set up a kettle and detain nearly 200 activists they’ve just freely admitted on camera to be peaceful.
*
Any private security company with such a record to its name would surely be unsuitable for rehire by the state. If such a firm did exist, it seems unimaginable there would not be widespread outrage about its receipt of public funds. But none of the above actually need to be “imagined”. I’ve simply described the recent record of the Metropolitan Police Force.
If you don’t go on protests, and you’ve never had bad experiences with the police, it can seem bizarre that the boys in blue arouse such hostility from some of my generation, and political activists in particular. You may think “if you’ve got nothing to hide, why conceal your face?” You may think “the police are fundamentally decent – you can trust them even if there are a few bad apples”.
But if the above press fairly strongly on your political awareness – because you’ve been on a lot of protests, or been on the receiving end of police trickery and force – then it all looks very different.
Increasing numbers in this country hold the justified opinion that the Met is a fundamentally mendacious and violent outfit. That it is untrustworthy and deceitful – and sometimes dangerous to the point of lethality. Is it surprising that increasing numbers see no point in trying to play by the rules that London’s Finest themselves so egregiously flaunt? This is a dangerous dance. But if your instinct is to side automatically with the police, remember that it takes two to tango.
March 29, 2011
Disrespect and the Media
Reading Stuart White’s Next Left piece on the media’s disrespectful coverage of minority violence, I’m left unsatisfied. Whilst the article – written with typical intellectual incision, accuracy and the parsimony – has been well received by almost all I know, I just don’t buy it.
I have to be careful here. Whereas I generally don’t care if I annoy people on the internet, Stuart is very much an exception. I greatly respect him not only as a blogger and political activist, but as an intellectual and an extremely talented political philosopher.* But in this instance I think he’s quite seriously off target, and it’s worth spelling out the (rather depressing, though these are hardly Stuart’s fault) reasons why.
Stuart wants to make two central claims, both captured in this paragraph:
“But let’s stop and consider ‘the media’. Nothing forces the media to focus, as much as it does, on the violent behaviour of a tiny minority. This is a choice. And in dealing with the media – for example, in launching a complaint to Sky or the BBC – we need to insist on what a profoundly disrespectful choice it is.”
The first claim is that the media is choosing to focus on activist violence, and moreover (and most importantly) that this choice is relatively free and (by implication) could easily be substituted for a more palatable alternative. The second claim (pursued in the rest of Stuart’s article) is that the media can be induced to switch from its unwelcome focus on minority violence to a more welcome focus on wider peaceful events, and this can be achieved specifically by emphasising how “disrespectful” its behaviour is to non-violent protestors and ordinary people generally.
Unfortunately, Stuart’s first claim is untenable when properly examined. The second claim rests upon the tenability of the first. Insofar as the first claim fails, so must the second. We see this as follows.
Stuart says that “Nothing forces the media to focus, as much as it does, on the violent behaviour of a tiny minority”. In a certain, very narrow, sense, this is true. Nobody holds a gun to “the media’s” head and says “focus on the violence”, or anything of that sort. But to set things up that way is to rule out far too much, far too quickly. Instead we must look at the environment within which the modern media operates, in particular the economic circumstances of the modern news industry.
Mass media organisations are almost all profit-seeking firms in a fiercely competitive industry threatened by obsolescence. The Guardian is a partial exception with its basis in the Scott Trust – but if it doesn’t find a way to make revenue soon, then like its competitors it’s headed for the toaster. The BBC is also a partial exception – but then in order to justify its license fee it must be able to show big numbers. So in a very real sense, it necessarily plays the numbers game too (competing especially with Sky News, who are always happy to scrape the bottom of the barrel).
How does a major media outlet secure numbers? By focusing on and pushing news stories that grab attention. What grabs more attention: thousands of people plodding along listening to some rather dull speeches, or face-covered anarchists smashing windows and lighting fires? QED.
Certainly it would be nice if individual editors took a bold stand. But then their superiors higher up the food chain would quickly come knocking. The same goes for the guys on the ground feeding in reports. “You don’t like it? No problem, the doors over there – somebody else will gladly do it for us. Oh, and how’s your pension fund?”
The media isn’t “forced”, in any simplistic sense, to focus so dogmatically on violent outbursts amidst otherwise peaceful mass demonstration. But to assume it does so for trivial, petty, vindictive or any easily escapable reasons is a mistake.
You really want to know why the mainstream media focuses on violence and unrest so excessively? Look in the mirror, meet your neighbours, and speak to your colleagues, all whilst considering the crisis of news reporting against the backdrop of early 21st century information technology capitalism. This is the media’s iron cage, and your friends and family are some of its bars.
I completely agree with Stuart that what the media does is disrespectful. But when we get clear on why it is so disrespectful it seems to me a hopeless pipedream to suppose that pointing out the fact of disrespect is likely to change anything at all. Respect may be part of the currency of egalitarian justice, but it doesn’t keep copy rolling.**
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* I can honestly remember reading his work as an undergraduate, and feeling proud to be at the same institution he worked at.
** That’s a cynical little joke for Oxford-trained political philosophers.
March 27, 2011
On Violence and Recent Protest
As previously noted, I have no problem per se with political violence. Its use and justification must be assessed on a case-by-case basis, with reference to myriad factors such as likelihood to succeed, ability to justify harm to victims, long-term advantages gained, greater evils averted, and so on. Use and justification of violence – like any other tool of politics – depends on firstly the judgement of those who deploy it, and at a later stage the judgement of those (if different) who must assess it (and quite possibly, sentence it). As a general rule, it is wise to hope for better judgement than worse, and from all concerned.
Some situations allow for more judgement, particularly with regards to strategy, than others. The leaders of the ANC, or the ETA, or Hamas, typically control the means of violence in hierarchical command structures. A few men will decide when and where to use violence, and dictate orders to subordinates. In such cases, judgement (including strategic planning) is in the hands of specific individuals with relatively high degrees of control. In turn, moral judgement by other parties as to the justified or unjustified use of that violence will in large measure focus on the decisions of the commanding individuals. The same, incidentally, goes for the aparatus of the modern state – though for complex and important reasons we tend to shy away from recognising the deeply and necessarily coercive natures of the states we find ourselves in and under.
But certainly not all instances of political violence fit this model. When the so-called “Black Bloc” of anarchist militants attacked stores on Oxford Street yesterday they were not part of a (para)military organised hierarchy with a leadership exercising strategic-tactical judgement – still less the militant wing of the 250,000 peaceful marchers congregating in Hyde Park. When UK Uncut protestors launched their non-violent direct action against Fortnum and Mason, they can hardly be held responsible for the spontaneous vandalism that enthusiasts in the assembled crowd promptly launched.
In these latter cases the problem with considering the use of political violence from the perspective of strategic judgement in particular is that it quite simply doesn’t apply. Before Saturday’s outbursts of violent direct action no hierarchy of command could exercise the sort of command and control upon which strategic judgement is predicated. Yet after the violence talk of strategic judgement seems largely besides the point. Insofar as there was any, it was exercised by individuals or small groups in loosely organised ways, in a situation of mass happenings over which nobody had meaningful control.
In turn, this makes the task of passing retrospective moral judgement over the uses of political violence on Saturday a nuanced affair. For a start, we must distinguish between the actions of opportunistic vandals, committed anarchists, young enthusiasts caught up in the moment, and those goaded and provoked by police tactics (if any of the above indeed turn out to apply).
Nonetheless, it remains possible to assume a third-party perspective in order to analyse yesterday’s events. Specifically, we can adopt a position of hypothetical strategic judgement. It is quite sensible to ask: if I had absolute control over what actions people did and did not take yesterday, which would I permit? Personally, I would have preferred an entirely peaceful protest. Not because I’m opposed to all political violence (I’m not), but because yesterday’s outbursts were unambiguously counter-productive, and predictably so.
By contrast, my strong sense is that if the student movement had remained entirely peaceful at the end of last year, it would certainly have achieved absolutely nothing. The broken windows at Millbank and the riots in Westminster attracted levels of attention that peaceful marching never could have. And importantly, I believe that the student violence did not lead to the same outcomes that purely peaceful protest would have (failed to) achieve.
Certainly, the Parliamentary vote was passed and in that sense the student protests failed. Yet the carnage witnessed in Parliament Square – chronciled by myself, Jeremy Gilbert and others in Fight Back! – will have sent a shiver down many Coalition MPs’ spines. Lib Dems in particular must know that the ferocity of student anger means that particular constituency is lost for the very foreseeable future. Tory MPs must know deep down that if things can get that bad that quickly before the cuts have even started to bite, the next 4 years will contain some very difficult fights. Perhaps this will only make the present Government even more determined and bullish – but my sense is that it will quietly make key decision-makers more wary, and Lib Dems more skittish. And even if all of that is wrong, I still think that the student protests stood a better chance the way they actually happened than any peaceful alternative could have offered.
By contrast, Saturday’s march needed something entirely different. It needed the other face of protest: the face of hundreds of thousands of ordinary, reasonable and respectable people calmly registering their disapproval. As Paul Mason has noted, if you can get your entire workforce out to a Saturday demonstration, this means something. The scale of yesterday’s protest, quite obviously not made up of the “usual suspects”, would have been very powerful just because of its sheer size. If only it had been the main news story.
Instead, much coverage was given over to actions initially started by the “Black Bloc” idiots. I call them idiots because that is exactly what they are. Either they like to smash things just for the thrill (in which case they are Basic Idiots), or they are so politically deluded they think throwing paint bombs at TopShop will light the fuse of revolutionary explosion (in which case they are Advanced level Über-Idiots). Whichever camp of idiots yesterday’s Black Bloc thugs fell into, they did the anti-cuts campaign huge damage. By distracting attention to the loudly spectacular and meaningless away from the quietly awesome and meaningful they ruined it for everyone. Except the Tory Party.
Yet, crucially, there is more to say. For although the actions of the Black Bloc started the trouble – as Ryan Gallagher has noted – it is undeniable that many others quickly joined the violence without premeditation. Likewise the kids who stuck it out in Trafalgar Square, or who angrily confronted police outside Fortnum and Mason, cannot be dismissed as merely extended members of the Black Bloc.
Rather, they were the people who don’t any longer see the point of maintaining peaceful protest if the opportunity to descend into confrontation arises. And at a certain level they have my sympathy, for two reasons. Firstly, my generation learned quite spectacularly in 2003 that even enormous peaceful demonstrations of over a million people can make precisely zero difference. Tony Blair invaded Iraq, and didn’t give a flying damn what any of us thought.
Secondly, anybody who has been on even a handful of protests – especially in London – knows full well that the police do not hesitate to use violence, and frequently instigate aggressive confrontational situations amidst previously jovial and peaceful atmospheres. At the G20 protests in 2009, trouble only started when the police moved in – and it is probably significant that following that experience increasing numbers of protestors are drawing the obvious conclusion: if you know the boys in blue will baton you regardless, why wait around passively for them to do it?
It is significant and telling that so many recent protests have seen flare-ups of violence. The Black Bloc has been around a long while now and they cannot alone explain this. A better explanation is that many people – especially the young – are angry, justifiably untrusting of the police, and contemptuous of the old (failed) channels of political expression. As the cuts really start to bite, their numbers must surely increase.
So whilst I regret yesterday’s violence – if I could have had my way, there would have been none at all – I can understand why these outbursts of wider political violence are happening. And they do not make me optimistic about the future.
March 23, 2011
Deep Pathologies
According to Liberal Conspiracy:
“The TUC held a 60-second ad contest, with a theme of public spending cuts, last month and received a record-breaking 41 entries.
Fourteen entries were shortlisted – many of which will be shown on the big screen in Hyde Park at the March for the Alternative.”
This is the winner:
I hope you will join me in agreeing that it is absolutely terrible.
What, exactly, is the video’s message? That ordinary people are in the position of pre-pubescent infants? If so, that’s hardly a very flattering portrayal. Indeed why exactly is this a father-daughter relationship at all? Are the makers of the video implying that our rulers and masters stand in relation to us as controlling parents – more precisely, exploitative and abusive parents? Come to think of it, who is the father figure supposed to represent, exactly? A banker? The Government? If these are metaphors, they are mixed indeed.
And if that weren’t all bad enough, there’s the bombshell closing slogan: “Don’t burden your kids with a lifetime of debt – Oppose the cuts”.
I had to think for a good few minutes to figure out exactly what this was supposed to mean . For it appeared to make no sense at all. But I now think the reasoning is supposed to be as follows: if we force the next generation to bear the brunt of austerity measures now, that is effectively saddling our children with the effects of debt, manifested through the cuts, and that’s not fair, so we must oppose the cuts, so as to prevent the effects of the debt, as experienced via the impact of cuts.
Which is not exactly snappy. But what is worse, the Coalition response is likely to be far more effective, to wit: we quite agree that we must not burden out children with a lifetime of debt! Indeed that’s precisely why we are making these cuts – to bring down the debt!
On every level this video is a disaster. Yet apparently it will be screened at the end of Saturday’s major anti-cuts march in London. Which very much presses the outstanding question: how is it that such a bad video could not only be dreamed up and filmed, but then selected by the TUC as their prize-winner and flagship piece of propaganda?
It would be nice to explain this away as merely the work of “iPhone-wielding wonks“. That it is merely the product of the mental narrowness exhibited by those who spend a lot of time in Westminster, but very little time meeting real people and their real political concerns.
Yet I strongly suspect there’s a deeper pathology at work here. Namely, that many on the left are frankly uninterested in clarity, accuracy or political efficacy. What they are interested in is lumping all their preoccupations together in one ungainly amalgamation of thinly veiled incoherence, and then shoving it down the throats of passers-by whilst expecting them to happily agree and acquiesce.
So, for example, it doesn’t matter whether the father figure is supposed to represent a greedy banker or the Government. Because in the minds of rather a lot of over-enthusiastic and naive leftists, there’s basically no difference between the two anyway. Similarly, it doesn’t matter if depicting ordinary working people as exploited children is offensive to ordinary people and thus strategically stupid. Because what takes priority is not strategy, but coming up with a (supposedly) funny dig at the powers that be (whoever they might be), regardless of whether it alienates the constituency that needs to be convinced.
In short, the point of the video appears not to be the promotion of a well-thought-out political strategy to fight the cuts. Its point appears to be an enthusiastic thumping of the political drum with unreflective self-assured and self-righteous pride. The pathology runs deep: so deep that people involved in political activism can not only come up with it, but that the TUC can in turn endorse a video which shrieks of an incoherence likely to cash out in practical political suicide.
Welcome to politics on the left. Abandon all hope, ye who enter.
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Indeed what makes it all even more shocking is that there are manifestly better videos on offer, and yet which were passed over for the big prize.
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UPDATE – Here’s how to do it properly (nsfw):
March 9, 2011
That Egypt Thing
During the Egyptian uprising, I didn’t have much to say. Far too much was being said already, and little of it well-informed. I was, of course, struck by the fervent optimism and passionate belief espoused by almost all on the Left. For this uprising – we were assured by many – was a truly democratic revolution, by a people yearning to be free. These were Democrats In Waiting, slaving beneath the Yoke of Tyranny. We had only to wait for The People to cast off Their shackles and a New Age of Democratic Freedom* would dawn.
Amidst the excitement and hubristic proclamation, it seemed to me consistently unwise to pass any judgements during the heat of the moment. For three considerations in particular seemed, if anything, to tell in the direction of pessimism about Egypt’s prospects.
Firstly, that the entire Middle East sits atop a pile of what Flying Rodent so aptly labels “democracy kryptonite”, aka oil. Given this particularly pressing truth, the long arm of America was never likely to withdraw its hand. After half a century of careful investment and planning, the US was hardly going to let things go all Venezuela in a key military and economic hotspot. At least, not if it could help it – and so on into the future.
Secondly, and closely connectedly, even the most cursory glance at the political situation during the Egyptian uprising revealed that the army always held the final balance of power. It was clearly with the support of the army that Mubarak would stand, or fall. In the end he fell. And now the army’s ruling council runs Egypt, following what was technically a military coup d’etat. Of course, it is quite possible that the army will cede power following elections in September. But it’s actually unclear whether there will be any elections in September. And as there has been no effective opposition in Egypt for decades, it’s also unclear whether will be any viable political alternatives on offer even if the ballots go ahead.
Furthermore, a kindergarten knowledge of history reminds us that never, ever, anywhere, has a ruling section of society willingly and freely given up power to those beneath it. Political revolutions – by which I mean proper revolutions, not eventualities which see nasty Mr Mubarak go to Sharm el Sheikh and his generals simply take over the running of affairs – are achieved by the forceful and bloody seizure of power by one group from another. The army is highly unlikely to let power go to any whom it does not approve of. Now at this point, note that democracies tend not to flourish when the military is the primary political power within a state. Now further note that for decades the primary source of American leverage over Egypt has come in the form of military aid. Things, to put it mildly, do not point in the direction of Hope and Change.
Thirdly, given that Egypt has no history or tradition or functioning democratic governance, the transition to any such regime is likely to be precarious. This is a country without democratic norms; a country where ordinary people have not yet had time to adapt to a political system which involves putting enormous amounts of trust and responsibility into the hands of parties whom one did not vote for. (Because the logic of democracy is that nobody’s favoured candidates can win every election, every time.) It is a country in which those who hold the strings of power, patronage and influence have not yet evolved the mechanisms of reciprocal deferred trust when out of power. The arrangements whereby electoral losers amongst the elite abstain from recourse to violence and thuggery, on the guarantee that their interests will not suffer too much in the short term and that they’ll get another meaningful shot at power shortly.
All of which is not to say that Egyptians – or Arabs, or Muslims – “cannot do democracy”. That is a piece of crass racism, against which we recall that less than a century ago respectable British individuals in respectable British newspapers urged the folly of democratic systems. Men who called for the imperative of strong rule; the clarity and good governance provided by Messrs Hitler and Mussolini during times of straightened economic woe. But it is to say that democracy is a difficult, complicated thing. It takes time to emerge, and requires favourable historical, geographical, social, economic and political settings. At present, Egypt appears to have none of these – albeit in significant part thanks to the grubby paws of The Land of the Free.
But then blaming everything on America just won’t do, either. For bound-up in the over-excited and premature rhetoric of Democracy and Freedom for Egypt was often the assumption that here was a democratic people simply yearning to be free. The implicit assumption being that They (what, all of them? young and old? rich and poor? muslim and christian?) were really just like Us. And that when They were given power, They would behave just like Us – a situation happily dovetailing with their new Democratic Freedom.**
But recent reports show that this is all a little too lazy. With dead Coptic Christians following religious clashes with sections of the majority Muslim population, this appears to be a society which hasn’t had the good fortune (and placatory economic development) to get beyond the bloody religious frenzies that our own blessed Isles used to play such sanguinary host to. And then there’s the International Women’s Day march in Tahir Square, which saw angry men charging the marchers, dragging them to the floor, beating and sexually harassing them, as police and army watched from the sidelines.
Certainly, these events are too isolated to tell us anything about “Arab culture” (or if you like, “Muslim mores”). Societies, religions, peoples and cultures are complex (and there’s plenty of violent hatred against women in the UK too, let’s not forget). To infer anything from the above in terms of positive substantive content would, again, be crass racism or outright stupidigy. But these happenings are nontheless enough to put the lie to the naively optimistic (and self-servingly convenient) assumption that They are just like Us, sharing Our Values, the outward political expression of which will necessarily be Democracy and Freedom.***
Those whom this piece is primarily aimed at will likely mistake the above for a sort of petty schadenfreude. They will think that I am indifferent about the sufferings and poor prospects of ordinary Egyptians, in service of some wider self-satisfied political cynicism. But that is wrong. I would genuinely like for it to be the case that Egypt could enjoy the prosperity, security and advantage of a nation like Britain (for all its faults). It sincerely saddens me that so many people’s lives must be made abject by forces beyond their control (such as the profitability of the British arms and oil industries). The point, however, is that just because I would like it to be otherwise, it does not mean that it is otherwise. And I adapt my assessments accordingly. I have this funny idea that other people should do the same.
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*notice the marriage of two complex concepts, introduced unexplained and unsubstantiated as though nothing in the world could be more obvious.
** that conjunction again.
*** in for the third, whatever it actually means.
March 1, 2011
Gew-gaws
For reasons I’m not entirely sure of, I’m subscribed to the emails of the “Yes to Fairer Votes” campaign. I tend to delete messages on sight, because if I want ill thought out tub-thumping, I can just log-on to the Compass website or read something by the nef.
But I’ve been trying to put my finger on what exactly it is about the upcoming referendum on voting reform that at best leaves me cold, and at worst makes me frustrated and angry. And I think I’ve worked out what it is.
A friend who knows about these things assures me that the political science literature indicates that moves towards proportional systems correlate with marginal increases in social democracy. Which, of course, is lovely. At least in and of itself. As a good leftist, I’m all for more social democracy.
But the important word in that paragraph is marginal. Because any improvements to our political system – and to our ever more unequal and unjust society – derived from voting reform are indeed going to be marginal. Especially given the way things appear to be going in terms of long-term political and economic direction. (And don’t forget that AV isn’t actually a proportional system, it’s just a marginally – that word again – less worse system than first-past-the-post).
So excuse me for not giving a fig about whether we get AV or not. Because in case you haven’t noticed, the wolves are at the door.
We live in a world in which national elected governments are increasingly unable – or unwilling (and therefore, in effect, unable) – to set economic and social policies as they would choose. Instead, tax rates, labour laws, redistributive policies, investment decisions, employment levels and decisions regarding national borrowing are increasingly subordinate both to the direct and indirect demands of global economic actors that do not answer either to electorates or their representatives.
What the great crash of 2008 taught multinational capitalist behemoths was that they can do whatever they want, and nation-states will bail them out if they fail. Indeed if they do fail, they can just keep doing whatever they want. Including leaning on national governments (directly or indirectly) to uphold and enforce domestic economic arrangements that benefit ever more detached sections of well-off individuals and private corporate actors.
What the great bail-out of 2008 has revealed is that it is certainly not multi-national corporate entities who will pay for the great mess. It is the little people whose collective will has less and less impact upon the determination of available economic – and thereby, social – futures. So because global financial capitalism collapsed under the weight of its own hubris, the British health service must be destroyed, British education must become a socially exclusive and divisive good, inequality must grow, unemployment must rise, care for the vulnerable must be taken away, the social safety net must be removed and millions of people’s lives must suffer.
Amidst all this destruction, the financial behemoths – in whose name your health service is being taken away, your social settlement renegotiated beyond your control – see fit to pay their privileged and favoured sons and daughters bonuses which could keep some families fed and sheltered for several years. Indeed, the terms of our new economic and social settlement are so unjust, so grotesque ,and so deeply unequal that this unashamed self-aggrandisement is simply the unreflective norm for its perpetrators. And rapidly it is becoming the unreflectinve norm – last gasp editorial outrage aside – for the rest of us, too.
It is usually false when people say that it makes no difference which party is in power. British society tends to be a somewhat fairer and less unjust place under Labour than Tories (recent obsessions with spying on everybody and dropping bombs on brown people not withstanding). But when it comes to caring about whether we have, in five years’ time, FPTP or AV to elect a marginally preferable centre-right Labour leadership to replace a vociferously destructive Coalition of right-wing ideologues, seems to me gloriously irrelevant.
And indeed for many its irrelevance may be precisely its attraction. Focusing on the gewgaws and shiny baubles of polling results, campaign tactics and collective enemy-hating serves as a far more enjoyable political pastime than staring into the abyss of what the present bunch of elected representatives is actually doing. It also puts to one side the frankly terrifying promise of a world in which it is increasingly irrelevant which bunch of bastards are elected to rule, and how they are elected, because their room for manoeuvre is so drastically – and increasingly – limited by the realities and dominant conceptions of the ever more global new economic order.
But having said all that, there is perhaps one reason to care about the AV referendum. Which is that a loss would be a terrible blow to the Lib Dems, and would indeed be a fine poke in the eye for Nick Clegg. Clegg. That scion of immense privilege; that craven political bastard-child. The man who under the guise of a Liberal party has enabled and assisted the reversal of a welfare state the likes of which his political forbearers dreamt of, and fought to make reality.
And suddenly, the AV vote acquires a certain sort of meaning – even if only a human, all-too-human one.
