November 9, 2011
Why I’m Not At The Protest
Big student protests in London today, against fee rises and the perceived “privatisation” of Britain’s university system.
I’m not going. Two reasons.
1. This afternoon I have a crucial cup fixture to play in. My first loyalty is to King’s Men’s First XI, only secondarily to the future of education and the good society.
2. I often do stupid, impulsive things. I get caught up in the moment. And I’ll be honest, riot and disorder situations are exciting – heightening the chances of my doing something stupid. But I don’t want to be arrested on charges of violent disorder, for something as minor as throwing a smoke bomb, then ending up in prison for 18 months with the rest of my life in tatters.
I also don’t want to be shot at with rubber bullets. Similarly, I was charged by police horses last December, and frankly it wasn’t a very pleasant experience.
So congratulations, government, police force and judiciary (or if you like ‘The Establishment’). With me at least, it worked. Wonder how many others will chicken out?
August 10, 2011
Riot of a Time
Very quick thoughts on the recent riots.
1. Clearly it is true that poverty, alienation, deepdisgruntlement with the police and lack of opportunity are important background facts that any serious attempt at understanding will have to take into account.
2. But these alone cannot explain what was clearly, in many cases, opportunistic theft and glee in destruction.
3. So where do we go from there?
4. I take these to be true and important components of any description of modern British politics and society: that it promotes self-interested greed, materialism, the possession of ostensive goods for status, immediate gratification, and a toleration (even encouragement) of ruthless competitiveness with a deep disregard for the welfare of others. (Call this the “no-such-thing-as-society society”, if you like.)
5. Putting 1 and 2 together with 4, and adding in conditions of spontaneity, anticipated impunity and evident opportunity, a basic yet broadly sufficient explanation appears to emerge.
6. Note that the things described in 4 above constitute the core tenets of the political ideology broadly known as ‘Thatcherism’ (or if you want to bring things up to date post-1997, ‘neo-liberalism’).
7. Also note that the conditions described in 1. have been massively and continuously exacerbated by Thatcherism (or ‘neo-liberalism’), especially if enormous inequality and its debilitating effects on individual well-being and self-respect are included too.
8. So actually this may not be such a mystery after all. If you constantly tell people to be selfish, ruthless, competitive, greedy and disregarding of the welfare of others, then you can’t really be surprised when they behave as they are told they fundamentally are and must be (even if they forget about the bits to do with obeying the law).
9. However, if you happen to be the prime minister just invoke some vacuous covering fluff about ‘moral responsibility’. Continue to condemn loudly, and then get back to promoting the elements in 4. on a daily basis. Without wondering about which ways the knife may cut.
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.
January 18, 2011
Coalition Lies and the Corrosion of Politics
The sheer scale and breadth of the present government’s pre-election lying and post-election u-turning is quite something to behold. Let’s trot through the big ones, that we actually know about.
First and foremost, the stupendous Lib Dem betrayal on tuition fees. From categorical pledges to oppose all fee rises, to backing a lifting of the cap to £9,000 a year. Quite spectacular, and utterly impossible to hide.
Further down the list and marginally less egregious: Cameron denouncing as “Labour lies” any suggestion that the Tories would restrict bus passes for the elderly, cut the Winter Fuel allowance, or get rid of the pension credit. After promising to protect all these things on national television, the Coalition has done the exact opposite.
There’s also the general category of systematic dishonesty about the NHS. The Tories explicitly promised not to touch “frontline services” and to protect the NHS before the election. They are now instigating massive back-door changes. Changes described by “seriously concerned” leading healthcare experts as “unnecessary risks” which are “damaging” and “potentially disastrous”.
Less enormous (but by no means less important) lies that may have escaped your attention include: pledges from Cameron and Clegg to end child detention for those seeking asylum in Britain which have been totally reneged on, and the recent joke of the departure of Control Orders by the front door and their immediate return via the side window.
Oh, and the emergence of a video showing Cameron claiming he wouldn’t cut EMAs. And pledges to protect school funding from cuts, but instead playing jiggery-pokery with the accounts to disguise reduced funding beneath the veneer of a hollowed-out pupil premium. And Tory promises to protect child benefit. And the building of a massive snooping database both Liberals and Conservatives promised they wouldn’t pursue.
Well, you get the picture. Those are really just the ones that came most quickly to hand. I’m sure there’s plenty more.
But don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you with some sop that it Pains Me Dearly to see such dishonesty and untruth in our political class. The magical optimism fairy didn’t pay me a visit last night; I’m still as cynical as ever. Politicians lie (often by unavoidable necessity), and being a Tory/Tory-lite Coalition, this bunch lied even more than usual in order to get their paws on power.
What concerns me, however, is the sheer scale and audacity of the Coalition’s reneging on earlier promises. I know the standard line is that none of this is done joyfully, but is the necessary price to pay for “Labour’s deficit”. (Or even more ludicrously, that this is all the outcome of “coalition policy” produced by party compromise, thus wholly divorced from any pre-election pledges.) But fewer and fewer ordinary voters will believe this (if any still do), and such justification will increasingly have traction only with the already-converted.
The real problem is that systematic large-scale dishonesty in politics is corrosive. The present government’s flagrant disregard for its own promises threatens to undermine even the minimal levels of trust Britons place in their political system. If this goes too far, there’s the very real risk that lying and dishonesty will become normalised. And that spells trouble.
Because if voters conclude that all politicians are lying mendacious bastards who just say one thing and do the other, then it eventually becomes acceptable for politicians to be lying mendacious bastards who just say one thing and do the other. As voters become disillusioned and resigned, all political sides play the same dirty game because only suckers remain honest. It’s a downward trajectory from there. And where do you end up? Well, basically, you end up in Italy. Which is not a good place to be.
So whilst I’m not surprised that Nick and Dave are presiding over a pack of lies dealt by a pack of liars, I do wish they would lie a little less – or at least, a little less obviously.
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Thanks to Guy and Paul for helping to assemble and source the compilation of lies in under 30 minutes.
January 14, 2011
Cold World
18 years old is a strange age. Legally, you’re an adult. But in many ways you’re still a child. Looking back on my own late teenage years, I’m astonished at how immature I really was.
Which brings me to Edward Woolard. There’s no doubt Woolard was an idiot at the precise moment he threw that fire extinguisher off the top of Milbank. Yet whether he is an idiot through-and-through is a different matter. Certainly the national media branded him a thug in its instant witch hunt. But in truth, none of us know whether he was simply seized by a one-off moment of immature madness.
Either way Woolard is paying dearly. 32 months in jail, at the age of 18. His life prospects in tatters, and a family no doubt heartbroken.
You may think he deserves it. And certainly, it seems clear he had to receive some sort of serious sentence. Not simply to act as a deterrent to other acts of idiocy, but also to reflect that he could have killed somebody. The state can’t, after all, have private citizens behaving in ways which recklessly endanger the lives of others.
And the authorities also had to send a clear message for their own purposes. That even though they lost control at numerous points towards the end of 2010, captured perpetrators can expect to pay dearly for their actions.
It is worth remembering, however, that Woolard didn’t actually kill anybody. And surely that matters (even if the reasons why are philosophically complicated). Two and a half years in jail is a long time. Especially for not killing anybody, in an unpremeditated single act of stupidity. I can’t help but find it excessive.
And that’s partly because I keep thinking: “that could have been me”. Not because I’d ever throw a fire extinguisher off a roof (‘tis not my style). But because when I was 18 I did something very, very stupid too.
Angry and frustrated at the world generally – and heartbroken because the girl I was head-over-heels about decided she preferred her boyfriend after all – I got into a drunken fight one Friday night. Except I’d also been doing some amateur Thai boxing. And I hit the guy in the sort of way that you don’t hit people, even in organised amateur fights. Because you can kill them.
Needless to say I didn’t kill anyone. But if the angles had been a little different, the impact a little more, his alcohol-levels a little higher, it’s very possible I might have. A moment of madness, and I could have killed a man. And gone to prison for 20 years.
But I’m lucky. My moment of madness didn’t go that way. I’m free to pursue a successful and comfortable life. As I sincerely hope the guy I struck 6 years ago currently does.
Incidentally, PC Simon Harwood is lucky too. As we all know, when Ian Tomlinson was walking home from work PC Harwood struck him without warning and pushed him to the ground. Not long later, Tomlinson was dead. Yet Harwood never saw the inside of a dock, and the Crown Prosecution Service decided this particular bobby wouldn’t even stand trial for assault.
No such luck for Edward Woolard. I guess that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. Of course I’d like to say that the hypocrisy of a judicial apparatus which allows the police to kill whilst giving children lengthy prison terms will lead the The People to rise up for reform. But that’s spectacularly unlikely, I’m afraid.
So all I really have to note today is that it’s a cold world out there. If you’re lucky enough to be sitting by the fire, think on that a little while.
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 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.
November 25, 2010
Cambridge Demo: Policeman Punches Student in Face
Yesterday afternoon a spokesman for the prime minister said:
“Our position is that people have a right to engage in lawful and peaceful protest, but there is no place for violence or intimidation.”
No doubt the PM sincerely believes this, as regards the actions of protestors. More troubling is the extent to which “violence or intimidation” is employed overtly by the police.
Yesterday I took part in the anti-cuts protest in Cambridge. Starting with a demo and city-centre march, the protests began in good spirits with a calm and pleasant atmosphere. At least a thousand people attended the march, and a considerable number of them were from local sixth form colleges protesting against the abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance. Most of the rest were students at Cambridge University. There were also a handful of lecturers in attendance. And best of all, school children in uniform with their teachers.
After the main march, about 500 students climbed over railings and occupied the grounds of the Senate House building on the King’s Parade road. Occupations, of course, are a long-standing method by which students attempt to force university authorities to pay attention to their demands. Occupations are also completely legitimate, because they are effectively the only way for students to realistically guarantee that university authorities will pay attention to their views and concerns (especially as the aim is not to cause damage, but simply to disrupt).
After discussion, students decided to attempt to occupy the inside of the Senate House building. As students walked slowly en masse to attempt to gain entry, the police blocked their approach and drew batons. From there the situation rapidly deteriorated. Baton-strikes were very quickly made by the police. But this simply had the effect of heightening tensions dramatically.
Of course, the situation is difficult and we should try to see both sides. The police were seriously outnumbered at first, and it was clear that some of them were very scared. Others, however, obviously relished the confrontational nature of the situation, and were taking delight in striking students whilst shouting “Fuck off”, “Get fucking back” and “Fuck you”.
Unsurprisingly, this did not make the situation calmer. Rather a fight mentality quickly descended, as angered students pushed harder to gain entrance to the building. Given how tense the situation rapidly became, it was quite impressive that most students continued to shout “stay peaceful” and did not give-in to the temptation to hit back at the police. The same cannot be said, however, for those officers who allowed the situation to escalate further by (for example) shouting “I’m going to get you” at students near the front, and in some instances closed-fist punching them. Don’t believe me? Watch the final frames of this video [unfortunately you'll need a Facebook log-in to watch; hopefully this will be sorted out in due course and I'll embed directly here].
Ultimately, dealing with protests is a very difficult and delicate operation. From the perspective of the police on the front line, protestors can appear intimidating and aggressive. And given that few members of Cambridgeshire Police can have much experience of dealing with protest, inexperience on their part no doubt was a factor in making things worse. But yesterday it was quite clear that sections of the force deployed to control an initially peaceful student demonstration were overly-eager to use “violence and intimidation”. It was, effectively, the same situation (on a smaller scale) to that which I witnessed in London in 2009.
The media talks a lot about “hardcore anarchist” groups “infiltrating” peaceful protests and “hi-jacking” them to start violence. It does not talk anywhere near enough – if at all – about the role of the police in creating confrontational and aggressive situations. The way police handle protest in this country is simply wrong-headed: it escalates and exacerbates tension and confrontation, when it should be doing the exact opposite. As a basic start on the road to improvement, perhaps the authorities could in future teach their officers not to punch people in the face.
November 16, 2010
Domination and Welfare Reform
Over the past two decades, philosopher Phillip Pettit and historian Quentin Skinner have led a revival of interest in how freedom can be compromised when people lose their independence. Rather than freedom being lost only when a person’s actions are interfered with, Pettit and Skinner argue that freedom can also be lost if one is “dominated”, i.e. if one lives under the arbitrary power of another. As Stuart White helpfully put it:
“It is about not being subject to another’s power to intervene in one’s life at their discretion. Freedom is, in this sense, independence – the power to refuse dependency on others and their uncertain goodwill.”
Although Skinner and Pettit have tried to present this conception as a radical (and now somewhat lost) alternative to a “liberal” view of freedom, the historical story is rather complicated. In particular, theorists in the 18th century were very much alive to the threat that arbitrary domination posed to freedom – in the form of the power of rulers over subjects. Thus, Montesquieu made as a central pillar of his weighty treatise The Spirit of the Laws the claim that the state must be ordered by legal structures which constrained the actions of rulers just as much as of subjects, precisely to ensure the freedom of the latter from the dominating despotic ambitions of the former. (This vision has now come to be known as that of a “Rechtsstaat” – the state as ordered by law, not the whims of political rulers).
This view of liberty in modern mass-society was developed by French liberal Benjamin Constant, with his famous distinction between the liberty of the “ancients” (living in small, militarised, republican city-states) and that of the “moderns” who must appreciate the new and previously unknown conditions within which freedom could be practically and conceptually realised. Like Montesquieu, Constant saw legal structures as paramount: “[modern liberty] is the right to be subject only to the laws, such that one cannot be arrested, detained, executed, or mistreated in any way by virtue of the arbitrary will of one or more individuals”.
Indeed contemporary theorists are likewise alive to the changed conditions of freedom for “moderns”. Chris Brooke has specifically urged Pettit and Skinner to realise this point:
“[I]nsofar as we are egalitarian citizens today, or consider that perhaps we have a serious prospect of becoming such…this may owe a great deal to the “awesome” power (that is, quite straightforwardly, the power to keep us in awe) of the more or less Hobbesian social institutions that we have constructed for ourselves since Hobbes’s time; in particular, to the bureaucratic welfare state that is able, among other things, to humble the proud, to enforce the law, and to deliver a uniform mass education.”
But equally, we must remember that the “bureaucratic welfare state” may offer not only the potential for escaping or ameliorating domination, but also become a source of domination in its own right. And given the literally awesome power of the modern state, that domination can be profound and extremely serious – even if actualised in what may appear to be petty and minor ways.
Which brings me to my point. Amidst the new “get tough” reforms to welfare being pushed through by the coalition, there’s something that’s been widely overlooked:
“But unemployed people who persistently fail to turn up, or turned down and refused to apply for jobs, will lose their £65-a-week job seeker’s allowance for up to three years.
The allowance will be removed for three months on a first offence, six months the second time and three years on the third breach of the new rules – with no right of appeal.”
If that final caveat – that there will be no right of appeal – for those who have their benefits withdrawn is true, it is very worrying. Such reforms will put an enormous amount of arbitrary power into the hands of (presumably) administrators at Job Centres. As somebody who has had (albeit mercifully brief) experience of claiming unemployment benefit, the prospect of being made dependent upon the whim – and just as importantly, the mistakes – of Job Centre staff would fill me with dread.
For amongst the hard-working and well-intentioned, there are also the petty tyrants, the plain vindictive, and those who see everybody sat in the chair in front of them as a work-shy scrounging layabout – as well as the plain incompetent. To put the power of what is almost literally life and death – for what else is withdrawing the final safety net of meagre state support? – into the hands of individual petty bureaucrats, and not even enshrine a right of appeal, is a dangerous and profoundly troubling move. Not just for the welfare of individual claimants, but for their freedom from the arbitrary abuses of power by those placed over them, and their freedom in the independence they receive from having the guarantee of even the meagre bare minimum currently provided by the state.
The potential for individuals to become subject to domination is precisely what the modern welfare state should be trying to eradicate. The coalition is moving in exactly the wrong direction.
