Civil Disobediance
Haven't had any work since the beginning of the week, which is worrying, but I have a big brief coming in on Thursday morning so they probably won't sack me before then. Leaves me plenty of time for blogging. I'm going to make the focus of the blog more political, since I'm not writing for Conservative Future any more, and it makes it less of a self-regarding exercise.
On Sunday I joined the protest against the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act which I'd seen announced on Bloggerheads. My reasons for this deserve some explanation. I am not a fan of serious organised crime. One of the police activities that I would condone is the prevention of the kind of organised crime that extorts money, smuggles people into the country, runs DVDs and heroin across borders and generally cheats the system that the rest of us have to take part in. I'm talking about stony faced Albanian gangsters basically. I'm not keen on people blowing themselves up on the tube either, but I don't think changing the law in this country is the best way of dealing with terrorism.
But I find particularly annoying a law which says that in order exercise my right to protest around Westminster I have to warn the police, wherever possible, 6 days in advance. (Ok, I don't often mount protests, but were I to want to.)
The law was written, apparently, to try and get Brian Haw off Parliament Square. Only, since it couldn't be applied retrospectively, it hasn't got rid of him at all.
But the whole tenor of the law if fucking annoying. It coincides with Blair's "I don't want to go over all that again" way of thinking on Iraq. They should not be allowed to forget about a bad decision, merely because it would be more comfortable for them to do so. Even if only a minority are still bothered about something, that minority should be allowed to make itself as visible as it likes. Such a minority is the nagging of conscience that they would like to obliterate and move on.
Apparently the law has been devised to protect them from terrorists, who might conceal themselves in a crowd of demonstrators. Quite how giving the police notice would prevent this is completely beyond me. Furthermore, it was not Westminster that was a target last time was it? It was us, on the tube. For me the right to protest is takes much higher place in my priorities than the safety of politicians. There will always be politicians, they are an eminently expendable element of society.
But, more than all these things, is the fact that this a part of a programme of policies, including ID cards and The Prevention of Terrorism Act designed to change the relationship between the individual and the government.
They work quite neatly together after all. You go a to spontaneous protest, you have an ID card that shows your participation in previous protests, you're confronted by the police, they demand your ID card, if you refuse to produce it they arrest you. If you produce it they detain you until the protest is over. Or longer.
This is quite a serious issue I think. The protest I went to on Sunday was not.
I was quite pleased with myself because, having spent Sunday mid-morning and early afternoon working with Alex, I motivated myself to go out into the rain to meet my fellow activists at the Imperial War Museum. I was worried I would be late, and hurried to be there at 3pm when the protest was due to leave for Parliament Square.
I need not have worried, as when I arrived the protesters were still waiting for the Hari Krishna to arrive with lunch. In the intervening hour or so I had plenty of time to examine my companions. There were only about 30 protestors, most of them in the eco-warrior mould. There was a man about my age with a beard and guitar who was smoking ostentatiously powerful skunk. Two or three of them looked like they were homeless and had just come for the food. There was an alternative family, rat-faced father, barefoot child with painted face, doughy mother in gypsy skirt, so looking much like a Notting Hill mum, but dirtier. The women wore stripy tights and those ugly techno boots with a rubber mouldings and platform soles. A few people on bikes who were part of a bike movement, Cycology, I think it's called. The protest was led by a barefooted man wearing his hair in two small buns toward the back of his head (a la Bjork) and pink glitter on his cheek bones. When I say led, I don't know if he was the organiser, but he had what seemed like a practised protest manner. That is, the ability to address large numbers of people in loud voice and without embarrassment. He could switch this voice on in an unusual way, a kind of talking to everyone voice. Later, when we encountered the police, he would use this voice to address them, for the benefit of the cameras that had come with us.
I borrowed an umbrella and stood around smoking roll-ups and talking to people who tried to share it with me. I met a film maker called Ricky who had been recording the whole process of the bill through parliament as well as the enforcement of the act. I also met a girl called Helen who was one of the bicycle people. She come from Runnymead (?), or wherever the Magna Carta was signed, that morning.
Two stoned teenage boys danced around the sound system that was fixed to the back of someone's bike. The playlist consisted, interestingly, of Big Youth, Bob Marley and Bowie. The boys did a ridiculous ska trumbone dance and also a jerky Bob Marley jogging on the spot dance. One of them wore a long white beard, the other a policemans helmet, both carried plastic swords. Watching caused me to smile in a faintly embarrassed way.
I was given a blank placard and we got going, trudging to Parliament Square through quite heavy rain. My blank placard quickly became saturated and, since it was made out of a lot of other placards stapled together, began to fall apart. The front placard fell off revealing another placard saying, Troops out Now, which is not something I believe in. Thankfully Helen had some selotape in her bike pannier and was happy enough to wait behind with me to fix it. The rest of the protest vanished with amazing speed, so that, for a while it looked like we'd be marching to Parliament Sq completely on our own. My spirits were rather dampened.
We caught up with the others just before Westminster Bridge and all crossed together. The loud-voiced man insisted on trying to walk in the middle of the bridge, despite the fact that because of the marathon, police were keeping people on the walkway. There was something a bit stagey in his defiance. After all, our protest was not about walking on Westminster Bridge during the marathon. The thing to do seems to be to involve the police officer who accosts you in an argument about the law in as loud a voice as possible. If you can confuse him in some
way, or make some terribly clever point about the law this is good to. One of the stoned boys tried to say we wanted to join the marathon, which the protest voice boy took up.
The only person really chanting was an out of work actor. He kept shouting things like "Don't give up your right to protest" but also inappropriately long statements like "You're suppose to be able to express your opinion through protest". Passersby ignored us largely.
The high point for me though was crossing the road on to Parliament Square. I was approached by a policeman who said to me quite aggressively "What are you doing with that son?" and tried to grab my blank placard. I said, "I'm protesting my right to protest," holding on to it firmly. He gave me a bit of a push but let me walk by. I was pathetically proud of this small piece of civil disobedience, failing to give up placard, snatched at by a police officer.
When we got onto the Square the bloke with the beard and a guitar started playing a tuneless and apparently endless song, singing with an affected Jamaican accent. Others played cricket and a man in a Tony Blair mask burnt a copy of the Magna Carta.
There was another man on Parliament Square holding up a placard saying "Britart Painted with my Willy" and what looked a lot like a finger painting of the Union Jack. We spoke to him later and it emerged that he had actually painted it with his penis. The police were ignoring him, I think, assuming that he was part of our protest.
I'm still not sure whether the police had been informed of what we were doing, or if they were mainly occupied by the marathon and had decided not to bother enforcing the law.
On Sunday I joined the protest against the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act which I'd seen announced on Bloggerheads. My reasons for this deserve some explanation. I am not a fan of serious organised crime. One of the police activities that I would condone is the prevention of the kind of organised crime that extorts money, smuggles people into the country, runs DVDs and heroin across borders and generally cheats the system that the rest of us have to take part in. I'm talking about stony faced Albanian gangsters basically. I'm not keen on people blowing themselves up on the tube either, but I don't think changing the law in this country is the best way of dealing with terrorism.
But I find particularly annoying a law which says that in order exercise my right to protest around Westminster I have to warn the police, wherever possible, 6 days in advance. (Ok, I don't often mount protests, but were I to want to.)
The law was written, apparently, to try and get Brian Haw off Parliament Square. Only, since it couldn't be applied retrospectively, it hasn't got rid of him at all.
But the whole tenor of the law if fucking annoying. It coincides with Blair's "I don't want to go over all that again" way of thinking on Iraq. They should not be allowed to forget about a bad decision, merely because it would be more comfortable for them to do so. Even if only a minority are still bothered about something, that minority should be allowed to make itself as visible as it likes. Such a minority is the nagging of conscience that they would like to obliterate and move on.
Apparently the law has been devised to protect them from terrorists, who might conceal themselves in a crowd of demonstrators. Quite how giving the police notice would prevent this is completely beyond me. Furthermore, it was not Westminster that was a target last time was it? It was us, on the tube. For me the right to protest is takes much higher place in my priorities than the safety of politicians. There will always be politicians, they are an eminently expendable element of society.
But, more than all these things, is the fact that this a part of a programme of policies, including ID cards and The Prevention of Terrorism Act designed to change the relationship between the individual and the government.
They work quite neatly together after all. You go a to spontaneous protest, you have an ID card that shows your participation in previous protests, you're confronted by the police, they demand your ID card, if you refuse to produce it they arrest you. If you produce it they detain you until the protest is over. Or longer.
This is quite a serious issue I think. The protest I went to on Sunday was not.
I was quite pleased with myself because, having spent Sunday mid-morning and early afternoon working with Alex, I motivated myself to go out into the rain to meet my fellow activists at the Imperial War Museum. I was worried I would be late, and hurried to be there at 3pm when the protest was due to leave for Parliament Square.
I need not have worried, as when I arrived the protesters were still waiting for the Hari Krishna to arrive with lunch. In the intervening hour or so I had plenty of time to examine my companions. There were only about 30 protestors, most of them in the eco-warrior mould. There was a man about my age with a beard and guitar who was smoking ostentatiously powerful skunk. Two or three of them looked like they were homeless and had just come for the food. There was an alternative family, rat-faced father, barefoot child with painted face, doughy mother in gypsy skirt, so looking much like a Notting Hill mum, but dirtier. The women wore stripy tights and those ugly techno boots with a rubber mouldings and platform soles. A few people on bikes who were part of a bike movement, Cycology, I think it's called. The protest was led by a barefooted man wearing his hair in two small buns toward the back of his head (a la Bjork) and pink glitter on his cheek bones. When I say led, I don't know if he was the organiser, but he had what seemed like a practised protest manner. That is, the ability to address large numbers of people in loud voice and without embarrassment. He could switch this voice on in an unusual way, a kind of talking to everyone voice. Later, when we encountered the police, he would use this voice to address them, for the benefit of the cameras that had come with us.
I borrowed an umbrella and stood around smoking roll-ups and talking to people who tried to share it with me. I met a film maker called Ricky who had been recording the whole process of the bill through parliament as well as the enforcement of the act. I also met a girl called Helen who was one of the bicycle people. She come from Runnymead (?), or wherever the Magna Carta was signed, that morning.
Two stoned teenage boys danced around the sound system that was fixed to the back of someone's bike. The playlist consisted, interestingly, of Big Youth, Bob Marley and Bowie. The boys did a ridiculous ska trumbone dance and also a jerky Bob Marley jogging on the spot dance. One of them wore a long white beard, the other a policemans helmet, both carried plastic swords. Watching caused me to smile in a faintly embarrassed way.
I was given a blank placard and we got going, trudging to Parliament Square through quite heavy rain. My blank placard quickly became saturated and, since it was made out of a lot of other placards stapled together, began to fall apart. The front placard fell off revealing another placard saying, Troops out Now, which is not something I believe in. Thankfully Helen had some selotape in her bike pannier and was happy enough to wait behind with me to fix it. The rest of the protest vanished with amazing speed, so that, for a while it looked like we'd be marching to Parliament Sq completely on our own. My spirits were rather dampened.
We caught up with the others just before Westminster Bridge and all crossed together. The loud-voiced man insisted on trying to walk in the middle of the bridge, despite the fact that because of the marathon, police were keeping people on the walkway. There was something a bit stagey in his defiance. After all, our protest was not about walking on Westminster Bridge during the marathon. The thing to do seems to be to involve the police officer who accosts you in an argument about the law in as loud a voice as possible. If you can confuse him in some
way, or make some terribly clever point about the law this is good to. One of the stoned boys tried to say we wanted to join the marathon, which the protest voice boy took up.
The only person really chanting was an out of work actor. He kept shouting things like "Don't give up your right to protest" but also inappropriately long statements like "You're suppose to be able to express your opinion through protest". Passersby ignored us largely.
The high point for me though was crossing the road on to Parliament Square. I was approached by a policeman who said to me quite aggressively "What are you doing with that son?" and tried to grab my blank placard. I said, "I'm protesting my right to protest," holding on to it firmly. He gave me a bit of a push but let me walk by. I was pathetically proud of this small piece of civil disobedience, failing to give up placard, snatched at by a police officer.
When we got onto the Square the bloke with the beard and a guitar started playing a tuneless and apparently endless song, singing with an affected Jamaican accent. Others played cricket and a man in a Tony Blair mask burnt a copy of the Magna Carta.
There was another man on Parliament Square holding up a placard saying "Britart Painted with my Willy" and what looked a lot like a finger painting of the Union Jack. We spoke to him later and it emerged that he had actually painted it with his penis. The police were ignoring him, I think, assuming that he was part of our protest.
I'm still not sure whether the police had been informed of what we were doing, or if they were mainly occupied by the marathon and had decided not to bother enforcing the law.
posted by william at 2:44 AM
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