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Student Fees Protests: The Real Vandals
The decimation of our public services will cause far more bloody mayhem than the student protests
This week, tens of thousands of students and teachers demonstrated their commitment to the vanishing idea that the interests of the ordinary majority should prevail over the will of the powerful few. Most adhered to the prescribed rituals of peaceful and legitimate protest. But, as we should expect in times of great injustice, some departed from the script. They lit bonfires, smashed windows, occupied the roof of an unlovely building and ill-advisedly hurled the odd inanimate object.
As the same few pictures of broken windows and bonfires were flashed across television screens, out scuttled the politicians to deplore "bloody" mob violence and those who "ruined it for everyone else". Union officials vied with them to see who could use the strongest language ("despicable", "disgraceful", "contemptible"). In most of the media the protesters became "thugs", "rioters" and "criminals".
Meanwhile, a coalition government with no mandate for what they are doing demonstrated that their declared commitment to legitimate protest is no more than symbolic, with politicians such as Nick Gibb, the education minister, insisting that a largely peaceful protest by tens of thousands of students will not change the government's planned course of action in the slightest.
Focusing on damage to buildings usefully distracts attention from the much more far-reaching and systematic violence now being visited upon our education system and society more widely. It is as if we are being asked to believe that reparable damage to windows matters more than the lasting decimation of the nation's public property – schools, universities, public transport and hospitals; or that young people in search of social justice will undermine the fabric of Britain more viciously than those who would systematically degrade this country's welfare system, employment prospects, wages and pensions.
The wilful infliction of injury on human beings is violent and must not be condoned. Hurling a fire extinguisher into a crowd is clearly wrong, but the broken glass and bonfires of Wednesday were more visually spectacular than actually harmful. It is the coalition's policies that are going to generate bloody mayhem. Cancer patients endure violence as they wait longer for fewer tests. Those sleeping rough in the winter cold suffer violence. As for real destruction and vandalism, let us begin with our libraries, recreation services, public transport and school buildings. As some lecturers at Goldsmiths college in London have pointed out, the "real violence in this situation relates to the destructive impact of the cuts".
Those who inflict such violence through laws, budgets and the hypocritical language of shared pain feel entitled to demand non-violence. As the basis of protest, non-violence has been perverted from its once effective use as a weapon of the people – with actions such as sit-ins, boycotts, bonfires of goods and picketing – into a subterfuge for rulers, a pious excuse to protect them from the consequences of their actions. When that fails, out come the arrests and intimidation, as with the police hunt for those who occupied the Millbank building. We must not tolerate this demonisation of those who attempted to symbolically reclaim their country.
As resistance to the destruction of our social and economic landscape gathers momentum, we need effective strategies of protest. Civil disobedience – a principled breaking of the law – can be a powerful tool. Genteel rallies do not put sufficient pressure on the political class. Tarnishing justifiably angry young people as thugs will not make the real problem – the violence of the entitled few against the disenfranchised many – magically disappear.
24 Comments so far
Show AllThis is just the beginning. The demonstrations against austerity will increase in militancy.
This is not a staged middle class morality play. This is the people fighting for the quality of their lives against the oligarchy.
All options should be on the table...
You don't ever want to be advocating violence. Violence will not stop the oligarchs. Power is needed, not violence. Our power is in numbers, and in resistance and solidarity, not in violence. Violence will come from - is coming from - the authorities.
Socialists in Europe are now condemning "adventurism" - and right fully so. Adventurism - improvisation or experimentation in the absence or in defiance of accepted plans or principles - is a form of self expression and self-expression is anathema to working class solidarity and effective action.
In any movement for social justice, the "unenlightened" masses are chomping at the bit and anxious to move, but lack literature and leadership, lack organizational strength. This is the condition here now, in contradiction to the oft-repeated idea from the activists that the people are "asleep" or ignorant or stupid or lazy. The "enlightened" and knowledgeable intellectuals grow impatient, and fantasize that what is needed is a "spark" to "wake people up," and seek to provoke violence rather than to do the hard work of organizing, agitating, and educating. This is inherently self-centered, it is animated by the needs and desires of the "enlightened" ones, and not by what is best for all.
Provocations to violence are forms of self-expression - "look how radical I am!" - self-indulgence - "I am willing to pay the price as a function of my exalted personal state of moral superiority!" - elitism - "if only those stupid sheeple were as enlightened as I am!" - and exaggerated self-importance - "I could make a difference by throwing this rock and setting the example for those sheeple of how to be a real radical tough guy sort of person!" I, I, I, I, I.
The ruling class uses, and will use violence against us for the very reason that they have nothing to offer, have no moral standing, have no program for the working class people. We do not suffer from those handicap they are under. Our strength is in numbers, and our success is dependent upon our educational and organizational efforts. Violence, and incitements to violence give a temporary thrill and little more.
Mutual defense? - yes. Militancy? - yes. Resistance? - yes. But provocations to violence, especially incitements to violence as a form of self-expression and individual action? - never. There will be enough of that without any of us promoting it, and it will almost always be counter-productive.
Smashing inanimate vertical sheets of SiO2, burning cars made of inanimate iron, aluminium, nonliving hydrocarbon compounds, and more of that SiO2, is not violence.
Period.
Right. Is that what the people advocating violence are talking about? (I am not sure, and wanted to make a point about the importance of discipline, self-sacrifice and organizing.)
If the people actually decide to rise up they will be met with not just that military unit Bush created, but I read that the rich have a bigger army than the US. Can't remember the source. Those FEMA Camps are real. Look at all the executive orders written in the past 30 years. They can relocate you to labor camps, consfiscate our food supplies, break up families. And of course , force us to take their murderous vaccines that are designed to kill. Google 'Depopulation, vaccines on Rense.com if you don't believe me. The banks and the Gates Foundation are behind this. The article was well researched. Crossing monkey kidneys used for vaccines with cancer cells. Again, google it. Very scary stuff. Me? I am accepting the fact that facism is here to stay. The banks will continue to steal our wealth. Obama and anyone that follows will continue to invade countries. Jobs won't come back and Social Security will be stolen. Call me a coward. But the world wide coup is complete.
The worse it is the more reason to resist, not the less.
Sorry but I have always had a jail phobia. See, I am a coward. Good luch tho to those who choose to fight for me. Not meaning the murdering soldiers saying they are fighting for my freedoms. Wish they would wake the F up and realuze they are fighting for the oil, defense ect companies.
Well, keep on wishin' for good things, and stay comfy, I guess.
Exactly right. Demonstrations in response to deteriorating conditions - when the rulers are determined to continue the assault on the working class and conditions are therefore certain to continue to deteriorate - have staying power. Staged middle class morality plays do not. "Staged middle class morality plays" are what we have been seeing here - "speaking truth to power" and "expressing our values" and trying to get the attention of the mass media and self-expression in lieu of political action.
The news I watched about this event (BBC? RT? Al-Jazeera? -- can't remember which) carefully made the point that a VERY few students committed violent acts.
I wonder what might happen to the Prime Minister's plans for pretty much disassembling Britain's social safety net and other programs - including affordable higher ed - if Nick Clegg woke up to what he has signed onto, withdrew the Liberal Democrats from their coalition with the Conservatives, and allied with Labour against Cameron and all his sorry plans.
I would hope England's poor and middle classes soon join students in declaring that they are Mad As Hell and Won't Take It Anymore!
Nick Clegg is fully aware of what he signed onto, and whom he got in bed with. It turns out that, as per the Guardian, all the while while he was making promises to students about student fees, there were already secret plans by the Lib Dem leadership to ditch those promises once the elections were over, and do what they are doing now.
The Lib Dem rank and file have a simple choice: they can stage a coup and eject Clegg, or they will see decades of work go down the drain.
non violent civil disobedience would have been the perferable way of taking the milbank, but vandalism is preferable to marching and chants which no one pays attention to. I also believe that in order for a protest to be effective it has to cost the powers that be money. The civil rights movement did that, because employed costly sitins and boycotts.
The purpose of marches and protests is not merely to get the attention of people, and vandalism brings the wrong sort of attention. Getting coverage on the MSM is not a worthwhile goal.
The reason that "no one pays attention to" the liberal and progressive marches is because those marches have no organizational strength or purpose, they are merely opportunities for "expressing values" - people gathered together but only as an exercises in self-expression - and for the purpose of getting attention from our opponents, as though that will do anything. The MSM is never going to deliver a left wing message to the general public, and will always try to put anything we do in the worst possible light. Better if they don't cover what we are doing, and instead we organize for the purpose of communicating directly to the general public and develop our own networks of communication.
Word of mouth is far more powerful than mass advertising in any case. All corporate mass advertising is done in the hope that it will be translated into and carried by word of mouth. The quality and relevancy of the message is a factor as well, and the message from most liberal and progressive organizations is not very powerful and is not anything that has any relevance to most people.
Thank you, you've nailed it.
If the media is biased, the solution isn't to do stuff to attract the media's attention, because, since they are biased, whatever coverage they provide is going to be twisted anyway.
This is something that political activists in countries with more overt media control have long realised.
Ignore the media elite, let them rot, organise from the grassroots.
Yes!
The Strike! provides a good model for organized action that mobilizes the power of the workers and is not merely self expressive or "begging the mighty."
This is why the oligarchy is first and foremost anti-union.
Billions have been spent on anti-union campaigns and propaganda and there is no limit on those expenditures.
At least Bush feared labor to a degree. He backed down on his first Labor Sec'y and did not attempt any body blows to the unons, ust allowed them to wither.
Obama can take labor for granted and drain the union coffers to play in the rigged electoral ad casino. In return he has given nothing back legislatively.
The American union model has been in decline ever since McCarthy, Meany, Reagan and Hoover got the red out of the unions. What's left is basically co-opted, corrupted and incoherent.
A new model of labor organizing is needed to organize the illegals in the US and all exploited workers who constitute the exported and abused proletariat of the capitalist system.
In New York City: Carpenters Embrace Immigrant Organizing
http://www.labornotes.org/node/1489
Immigrant Organizing and the New Labor Movement in Los Angeles
This article traces the transformation of Los Angeles, which was considered a show- case of anti-unionism a century ago, into a key site of labor movement revitalization and a model of successful immigrant organizing. It traces the history of unionization in L.A. over time, and analyzes data from the 1990s on the characteristics of L.A.'s union members. Although immigrants are still less likely to be union members than native-born workers, this is because of their sectoral location, not because they are "unorganizable." On the contrary, in some respects foreign-born workers tend to be more receptive to unionization efforts than their native-born counterparts, despite the vulnerability non-citizens and undocumented immigrants often experience. Here the dynamics of recent immigrant organizing successes in L.A. are analyzed, highlighting the importance of Latino immigrants' propensity for militancy, on the one side, and the key role of the new activist leadership of a number of key unions, on the other. While the recent successes are impressive in quality, they have not had much impact on union density in L.A., which remains low. Yet they indicate the potential for a larger-scale transformation.
http://www.geog.psu.edu/courses/geog497labor/Readings/Milmand00_Immigrant_Organizing.pdf
Organizing Against the Odds
Among the growing industries involved in this new form of independent contracting, New York's black-car industry—luxury personal transportation service—involves drivers who almost all are recent immigrants. Immigrants from South Asia, the Middle East, East Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa and Central and South America have entered the black-car industry because they believe they can earn high wages. But black-car drivers increasingly are recognizing the job can be even more onerous than taxi driving. As a result, they are joining together to form a union with the Machinists to win a voice at work, a campaign that illustrates how unions can work successfully with immigrant organizations to facilitate both greater strength in numbers and rank-and-file solidarity.
http://www.aflcio.org/mediacenter/speakout/Immanuel_ness.cfm
Labor Unions Now Recruiting Immigrant Workers
Times are changing when it comes to labor unions and immigrant workers.For more than a century, organized labor has had a wary attitude toward immigrant workers. The reasoning was that the more foreign workers in the labor market, the less bargaining power for unions — especially if those workers were undocumented and easily exploited. But in recent years, some labor unions have made a dramatic shift: They're now recruiting immigrants, no matter their legal status.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96191758
Fear of Firing - Immigrant Organizing Boosts Labor Union
Despite a sputtering economy and declining union membership, there are still bright spots for the labor movement. Those with the most to lose -- immigrants working in dangerous and often transitory jobs -- are fighting back, winning court decisions and breathing new life into union organizing.
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=4ae986dd8c9b0f4d5c60691a6b27a514
Equality and Rights for Immigrants — the Key to Organizing Unions
Through bailout and loan conditions, the U.S. government enforces a low-wage policy on the Mexican economy, with the Mexican government’s active cooperation, in order to encourage maquiladora construction. As a result, labor conflicts have broken out in plant after plant for the last two decades, from one end of the border to the other. And as those conflicts have grown more intense, a movement to support the workers involved has been painstakingly organized to the north, in the United States and Canada.
This cross-border solidarity movement not only provides immediate material support for embattled workers. Moreover, because the maquiladora-style of production itself transforms the economies of developing countries such as Mexico, the cross-border movement in response to it offers a proving ground for a new model of international relationships between workers and unions. Today grassroots solidarity across the U.S.-Mexican border is developing in different areas, using a variety of strategies. These share a general democratic and grassroots character, which differentiate them clearly from the top-down approach to international relations that characterized Cold War international union relationships. The new cross-border campaigns give a voice to workers themselves.
Border labor conflicts are largely the product of the imposition of economic reforms on Mexico by the International Monetary Fund, backed up by conditions on U.S. bank loans and bailouts. The most important of those conditions—beyond even ending subsidies and opening the Mexican economy to imports—has been privatization.
http://www.monthlyreview.org/101001bacon.php
The Other Immigrants
The immigration debate does not often recognize and include the distinct issues facing Latina women in the United States and particularly in the workforce. Not only are women left out of the debate, they are often left out of the planning of those creating the solutions to poor workplaces and unfair wages.
STITCH has created a program to support and lift up immigrant women workers in the United States in their struggle for economic justice. We recognize the United States labor movement has been continually challenging itself to become more representative of the working population and this project is designed to assist the labor movement as it diversifies and grows. Latina women themselves have the most to gain from joining unions, as both women and Latinos report the biggest increase in salaries and benefits from unionization. Yet there are still many cultural barriers that stand in the way of unions becoming more diverse and Latina women feeling welcomed in the labor movement.
http://www.stitchonline.org/otherimmigrantspageone.asp
Austerity- don't knock it 'til you've lived it.
a bit of a cheap-ass-- MD
Excellent! Prof. Gopal really gets it!
Kudos to the demonstrators. While I don't advocate violence, a kick in the pants can make a huge difference. Go UK ! :)
Meanwhile, Clegg is sucking up to the zio.
Thank you Priyamvada Gopal for your article and Two Americas for your comments.
While strongly agreeing with TA on the necessity of organization and education in order to seize real power rather than indulge in middle class self-expression, I'd like to point out some of the hopeful aspects of these demonstrations. First, the leadership role of everyday people. The fact that unions and other "left" organizations are struggling to keep up is deeply encouraging. Real change comes about when ordinary people take power into their own hands, when they don't wait to be rescued by saviors or political parties. "Participation, protagonism in all spaces, is that which allows human beings to grow and increase their self-confidence, that is to say, develop humanly." Marta Harnecker, "Latin America and 21st Century Socialism"
Next, we should consider the background to the violence that is being inflicted on the majority. An excerpt from an article by David McNally: "...we're probably in the area of a $20 trillion intervention to bail out and stabilize the system. This was the scale of the ruling class panic and, as I say, it produced something unprecedented in the history of the system. Never before had world central banks coordinated an intervention like this and on this scale.
But what they did in the course of this was simply push the problem out of the private banks and into the public sector. They socialized the debt--they made taxpayers take on the burden of all the toxic waste that the banks had been selling and holding onto...MY VIEW is that this is the first global and systemic crisis of the neoliberal phase of capitalism. When I say it's systemic, I mean that it's not just a crisis in one sector. It's not just a real estate or housing crisis. It's not just a banking crisis. It is a systemic crisis. Capitalism is struggling to reproduce itself on an expanding scale, which is the essence of the system--it must do that or perish, and it's struggling to do that as a system." David McNally, "The mutating crisis of global capitalism" (http://socialistworker.org/2010/07/12/mutating-crisis-of-capitalism
The governments involved in this crisis will not back down because of demonstrations. They are faced with a systemic crisis and they must slash social programs because their only alternative is to default on their massive debts which would endanger the capacity of the system to continue its expansion.
In fact, the current cutbacks are likely to be only the first steps in a fairly rapid transition to a yet more brutal phase of neoliberalism that will eliminate social safety nets throughout the world. The lesson of Chinese capitalism is that capitalism no longer requires even the appearance of democracy. The customary linkage between these concepts has been broken.
The reason I find this hopeful is that it will break through the illusions that keep the middle class complacent. One of these is the illusion that choices can be purely "personal" with no political effect. This illusion provides a psychological space within which workers can make "free personal choices" which in fact support the interests of the ruling elite. This psychological space isolates workers from the reality of class warfare. The new power alignments now forming will force hidden class warfare into the open.
In the words of P.B. Shelley:
"Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number.
Shake your chains to earth like dew.
Which in sleep has fallen on you.
Ye are many--they are few."
Reality is on our side - if we have the courage to perceive and act on it.
Good post, many good points. Thanks.