"The movement should be regarded as violent and their outrages will potentially have a detrimental effect on the outcome of the campaign."
"I think a policy of sanctions would harm the very people you are trying to help."
"Tell them to use the powers that are offered and make the thing a success and if they do I will advocate your getting more."
"There is a fanatical portion of society, and that they are trying to fool the ignorant, the weak, the young, and the thoughtless."
Yes, it really is open season on protest in British politics and the Scottish media is as all up for it as ever. Almost all of them recognise that protest is an essential part of democracy, except any protest that actually happens. They are in favour of a platonic ideal of protest and support that completely notional version of it.
But real protest in the real world never quite crosses their threshold for acceptability. If it is disruptive then it is always, always counterproductive – when it isn’t terrorism. And if it isn’t disruptive then it is ‘virtue signalling’, self-serving nonsense that shames the participant because they made it about them.
Of course, none of them say that the purpose of the protest is itself wrong. In fact, the current onslaught on protest in the media is generally very quick indeed to make clear that it is the critic who is writing who truly feels for the cause they are not writing about and it is the people who do anything about it that are the problem.
I mean here is the usually good Marina Hyde making the case that it is the virtue signalling over Palestine that is really the thing we should be criticising given it is self-serving. Oh, and the genocide too, but mostly the Instagram stuff. Don’t they understand that it is always the establishment who make these things stop, and if they’re not making them stop then you’ve not been patient enough?
Or the generally excellent Marissa MacWhirter explaining to us that the pro-Palestine protesters should stop their shenanigans because it might interfere with a gallery exhibition. Of course we’re all upset about Gaza, but can’t we all just shut up about it for the sake of a one-person show about a spiritual journey?
It is very, very difficult to achieve that perfect protest in a hostile environment
They’re all getting together to denounce protesters in industrial volumes. The writers rush forward to write letters decrying people who want them to distance themselves from their sponsors. That one was about climate change which they assure us is very serious and something they really care about.
Not enough to write a letter though. In the scheme of things it is essential that the book festivals survive; low-islands in the Pacific come and go, right? I mean, do they even have book festivals?
And that’s the good people. Don’t get me started on the usual suspects. There is no passing go and no collecting $200 for them – its straight to jail for the lot of us making trouble. Because their people ‘don’t feel safe’ in the presence of peaceful protest.
Let me get my caveats out the way now. I get so frustrated with a lot of protest. Because I do public influence for a living I have a pretty good grasp of the practices and techniques which bring an audience with you. A lot of protest is indeed designed in a way that is not going to achieve that. I sat watching people throw soup at a painting and wondered ‘what’s that saying about climate change?’
Then there’s someone gluing themselves to the top of a London Underground train, seemingly sending the message that their two prime targets are ordinary people trying to get home and public transport. It doesn’t even make coherent, internal sense.
I’ve also seen no shortage of shallow, virtue-signalling bollocks which look awful to me. Changing your social media profile pic to some symbolic image while you send selfies of yourself on a night out is tone deaf. I’ve been on more than one march which felt perhaps just a little too self-satisfied.
And I’m not totally sure that protesters pick their targets well all the time. I would target Ballie Gifford for boycotts on the basis that they are the awful engines of ever-growing economy inequality, elite privilege and the marginalisation of the poor. Picking on them for climate change seems slightly like an own goal given how many are worse.
But for the most part I hold my criticism back. And this is the reason I do it – it is very, very difficult to achieve that perfect protest in a hostile environment, that perfect protest that everyone seems to want. I start from the other end – is the objective right? Is it urgent? Is this roughly the right message?
The more those things are true – the more righteous the cause, the more urgent the problem, the more vital the message – the more leeway I am going to give for getting things wrong. But I will always give them leeway to get things wrong because I know the British establishment won’t and now, in Scotland to my great disappointment, the liberal establishment are going the same way.
The thing that is so important in all of this and which is so awful is that when people like Ms Hyde claim that they are sympathetic but only those fabled ‘grown-ups in the room’ can do anything about the problem and so we should ask them politely to do just that, I wonder what planet they’re on.
The condition that we can’t have protest until there is ‘the right kind of resistance to fight alongside’ is a coward’s charter
I can’t state this clearly enough; you think India would have gained independence without protest? You think they’d have ended Apartheid without boycotts? You think there would be civil rights for black people in the US if they hadn’t marched? Do you think, if the suffragettes had just been patient, they’d have got the vote just because and without the fuss?
I mean, do you literally know a fucking thing about history? Any of it? Any part of history? You think change for the better comes from the top? You think that people with real power sought it out to do the right thing by the people? You think the ruling classes ever really gave a fuck about injustice until they were forced to?
Do you really believe any of this? Do you? When Labour MSPs read out from their cheat sheet of reasons why Palestine Action should be deemed a terrorist organisation, they lead with ‘Palestine isn a noble cause’ and segue into ‘and there are many fine organisations fighting that fight’.
Well could someone ask them to name one? Because I’ve never heard a loyalist Labour politician ever say a single thing about a pro-Palestine organisation that wasn’t a condemnation. Ever.
The condition that we can’t have protest until there is ‘the right kind of resistance to fight alongside’ is a coward’s charter. There is and never has been an acceptable resistance. It is silly to think otherwise. Power will never be challenged and believe the challenge is legitimate. Or at least I’ve never seen it.
The resistance is always untidy and never perfect. The people decrying Palestine Action would have decried the French Resistance (whose practices were often less than savoury) or those who fought Franco (who had a list of their own war crimes). But if you find yourself more concerned about that than Nazis and Fascists, I don’t think the primary problem is with the resistance.
I of course have been pulling your leg on this since the first paragraph. None of those (lightly edited) quotes are contemporary. They are, in order, anti-suffragette, pro-Apartheid, pro-colonial control of India and pro-Slavery. That the words of so many of today’s liberal commentators could be slipped in there and look quite at home should worry them.
Yes, protest leaves a lot to desire. Yes, it is sometimes self-satisfied. Yes, it can be stupendously annoying. Yes, we get it wrong. But there is no perfect protest and there is no perfect resistance. We have injustice, we have people trying to do whatever they can about it and there are those in the middle who think they’re the heroes yet always seem to side with the villains.
You get the resistance you get. If you want to change it, join it.