Read it, it’s intelligent, workable and is the best offering on the subject in th UK. Ever. Because it contains and demonstrates the wisdom of people.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

do what you love, it’s your gift to universe

Thus Policemen and Soldiers will follow orders, even if they are potentailly harmful to people who are not threatening anyone. As we have seen, and been discussing above.

And party members will adhere to the Party Whip. Every now and again someone makes a principled stand, and resigns publicly. Robin Cook. But they also give up their role. They are lost to the process.

The Power Inquiry Conference of 2007 was very interesting, in that Menzies Campbell was there to speak, and formed part of a panel, for a Q&A session in the afternoon, as did Ed Milliband. David Cameron left after his spech in the morning.

A question was asked of the panel concerning the voting age, and the usual arguments AGAINST lowering it were given voice. They’re too young to understand. etc etc… and so it went for about 10 minutes.

A hand was raised at the front. A young boy of 13 had something to say.

He said ‘Why don’t we take all the money being spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, and spent it instead protecting the elderlys pensions’ (Pensions had been discussed earlier).

The hall erupted with applause. The panelists ignored his comment, and continued it’s deliberations. This is the nature of top-down organisation – those at the top ignore genuine input from those ‘below’ them.

Children have no voice in this society. That is authoritarianism.

Those who wish to see real change, and who have done their homework, many of whom are engaged in workable solutions (that undermine POWER and FINANCE as we know them). And they have no voice in Parliament.

The are forced to take to the streets.

In order to undemine this, Governments and corporations have long took to using a combination of covert Agent Provocateurs, heavy handed policing (or troops) tactics, and media demonisation. Read EP Thompsons astounding “The Making of The English Working Class” for a detailed history of these approaches in the 1730s onwards. Little has changed in the dynamics of POWER.

The Power Inquiry was dismissed by Labour and Tory alike as ‘impractical’. The LDs did precious little to help promote the very sound, common-sense ideas that The Power Inquiry threw up, ideas that were generated by ordinary people, all over England and Wales. Ideas that were tested. Ideas that work.

Because those ideas threaten the very concept of top down leadership.

The incidents in The City must serve as a warning to all people to get serious about our childrens futures, and soon. If the voices and sensings of decent people are ignored, then the anger and pressure will only increase.

The fear of those who form leadership as we know it is coralling the people. It is a ‘kettle’ in it’s own way.

If you want change, then our present system allows you to put together a platform of ideas and gain power if you can convince others that you are right. It’s not perfect but many, many people fought extremely hard to secure what we have. There seems to be a lack of respect for them in some of the positions I see here

The above is only true if you have money, or can get backed by money. Also, it is only true if you can convince either Labour or the Conservatives to put you on the front benches. The two-party system is so entrenched that instead of acting as a facilitator for democracy it is now acting as an Establishment counter-weight, driving the entire weight of British parliamentary politics to the right as Labour fight for the Conservatives’ ground.

Regarding respect: I disagree entirely. In my view, the highest respect for the many extraordinary people who fought to improve their world (most of whom would have been shocked and appalled by the extent of personal freedoms in ours: such odd things as universal suffrage and freedom from slavery) is to continue their work. Make it better. When the system doesn’t work, work around it til you have the power to change it. Learn and teach: the determinant factors in the type of society you build are what do you know? How well do you learn? How fast can you spread the word?

Just a little idea of how the police behaved on the 1st of April.

I am not going to discuss anything about the causes of the protest anymore.
It was a paceful protest at climate camp and the police used violence. I was really concerned about the way they were beaten people on their heads as you can die from a head injury!
It was not fair!
There has to be more footage out there because this was not right.

Politicians may not prioritise climate change in the same way as you do, but they do talk about it and put forward policies, so your measure is subjective.

Moreover, the ’strong’ climate change campaigners ask politicians to restrict people’s liberty in the name of the future – an incredibly difficult challenge, especially when these politicians are also on the rack for attacking people’s freedoms. The politician who arguably pushed this the furthest – Ken – was voted out, partly because of such actions, highlighting such difficulties.

If you want change, then our present system allows you to put together a platform of ideas and gain power if you can convince others that you are right. It’s not perfect but many, many people fought extremely hard to secure what we have. There seems to be a lack of respect for them in some of the positions I see here.

I don’t agree that the protest was focused. Yes, it had a slogan that we could all agree with. But then so does New Labour.

Politics is about conflicting and colliding interests, ideas, individuals and moments. Self-styled radicals adore the purity (and luxury) of avoiding this, and – too often – preach upon high whilst undermining the real efforts of others. It is rare that protests help, oftentimes they don’t. (Jubilee 2000 was a good example of this, as were some of the road protests. Belfast in 1968 is an example where protests really didn’t help at all – listen to the recent R4 documentary about it!)

Re your points about effectiveness, I’m not onside at all. It wasn’t the media or the police that made the protests ineffective, it was the nature of the protests themselves. It just seemed petulant, childish and all-too-predictable. And I talk as someone who sympathises with these causes and knows many people on the protests. Imagine how it looks to others, the conservative masses outside of the political bubble.

Discipline, duty and imagination will help the progressive left’s cause. Another decade of gloom-mongering, cynicism about process, romance about revolution, and capture by single-issue campaigners will see it remain ineffective for another 20 years.

Let’s turn to the part you do address. You set out some tests for whether protests satisfy the proportionate response to grievous injustice condition:

‘Are politicians rejecting your case out of hand? Have all other options been explored? Are you absolutely sure that your facts are completely straight? Are you just protesting for the sake of it? Are your protests focused, effective and with a clear point?’

‘Are politicians rejecting your case out of hand?’ They certainly are not taking action of the kind necessary to contain the risk of irreversible and catastrophic climate change. Yes, they will talk the talk. But their actions, to date, show a repeated failiure to back the talk with the necessary action. The G20 summit is no different in this respect.

‘Have all other options been explored?’ I vote at every available opportunity. The conventional mechanisms of representative democracy do not seem thus far able to bring pressure to bear on the political class, as evidenced by their failure to act.

‘Are you absolutely sure that your facts are completey straight?’ I am absolutely sure that we face a high and growing risk of irreversible and catastrophic climate change. The vast bulk of scientific opinion tells us this.

‘Are you just protesting for the sake of it?’ No. I hardly ever go on protests. I have a busy professional and family life.

‘Are your protests focused, effective and with a clear point?’ The Climate Camp had a clear message: ‘Nature Doesn’t Do Bail-Outs’. That is focused and clear (and true). The protestors did nothing to diminish the effectivess of the protest, though effectiveness also depends on things that they/I cannot reasonably be held responsible for: (a) the attitude of the police; (b) the attitude of the mainstream media; and (c) how many other citizens come out to protest.

Taking (c) first, if more people like me – people who are very far from being ‘lifestyle protestors’ -joined such protests they would be a lot more effective; so I support their effectiveness by joining such demos.

As regards (a) and (b), the appropriate response to police and media failure is not to stop demonstrating, but to work to correct these failures. Otherwise, one is basically surrendering a basic democratic right because others – the police, the media – don’t respect it.

So far as I can see, my rebuttal of your posts in 40 stands.

I agree with your background, but we are talking about history now. events of 20 years ago or more. but the protesters didn’t move on. police tactics, on the other, did.

But you’ve completely ignored mine. Hippies are the most famously pacifistic and relaxed of political movements. “Testosterone-fuelled”? In my experience they tend to be fuelled by guarana, weed and an addiction to Facebook.

Protest as a life-style choice; well, yes, Arthur Scargill for one. But you’re varnishing some pretty broad political trends with a very dry brush here. Protest got to be a life-style choice because too many people’s life-styles came under attack. The clamp-down on off-grid living, the changes in the law to prevent atypical rural communities, the closure of Stonehenge in the 80s, the road protest movement in the 90s; Pride marches, Reclaim the Night, Stop the War. A good deal of good work being systematically ignored by the forces of authority except when they’re forced by attrition and persistence to recognise a legitimate interest.

Protest has become a way of life because the Thatcherite revolution was as much about social conformity as it was about money.

Indeed. But if you claim such a high moral ground (the highest) then you had be pretty sure of your territory.

Are politicians rejecting your case out of hand? Have all other options been explored? Are you absolutely sure that your facts are completely straight? Are you just protesting for the sake of it? Are your protests focused, effective and with a clear point?

I remain thoroughly unconvinced that only through anarchic protesting will there be change. I also suspect that protesting only serves the extremes at the cost of the effective. (And no, this isn’t because I’ve swallowed police propaganda, it’s because I have grown tired of listening to the self-righteous mouth cliches for their own advancement).

And John, yep, protesting is a lifestyle choice for some. I think that’s half my point really.

It was in the mid-late 1990s that I first noticed the link between testosterone fuelled louts and hippies and realised it was probably doing more harm than good. That was when I – and many of my age – stopped going to protests

You’re presumably talking about the road-protesters?

Regarding your first sentence, though: good lord. I started hanging out with hippies partly because everyone’s so chilled out; your mileage clearly has varied.

I don’t remember King putting on a balaclava and implicitly approving of kids in balaclavas fighting the police. I also don’t recall Gandhi scrawling unfunny puns on pavements and threatening violence against those he opposed. Again, I could be wrong.

It was in the mid-late 1990s that I first noticed the link between testosterone fuelled louts and hippies and realised it was probably doing more harm than good. That was when I – and many of my age – stopped going to protests because the people involved had very different (often advocating ‘revolutionary’ (ie highly reactionary) violence) agendas to the rest of us.

Setting up a ‘climate camp’ in a street may appear subversive, but only if your definition of subversive is very, very, very limited in scope and scale.

In fact, it is what the protest movement has done since Reclaim the Streets almost two decades ago. It was fun then, it is not effective now. It neither ’sticks it to the man’, nor demonstrates an alternate way of life. In fact, it is merely another step along a blind alley a substantial section of the left has marching along for some time now.

The video is recorded from a building above the camp site and audio quality is dodgy. It starts off with 30+ seconds of peaceful hippy camp activity, and people can be seen leaving and entering the camp. It then switches to a group of coppers in conversation. In the background, you can hear somebody pointlessly shouting “F*ck off”.

An excerpt of a speech by Gordon Brown is then inserted, thus demonstrating that the recorded material that we see has been edited and is not continuous. Post GB, we see the crowd shouting and waving fingers at something that is not caught by the camera. We also see some people running in open space between the crowd and the police. At that time, the police are moving forward and close off the camp.

Somebody in the top left hand corner of the film then starts waving arms and shouts “forward, everybody” or similar words. The crowd rushes at the line of police who use hands and shields to reject the protesters. The crowd appear to be shouting “This is not a riot”, under the illusion that you have to throw bricks and light fires to behave riotously.

And the video goes on and on. The faces at the front change from time to time, because it isn’t nice to bashed by a police riot shield. Some people try to take photographs of the coppers — coppers in a full face helmet, but uniform and numbers are visible.

Coppers: Zero marks out of ten. All marks were deducted for “kettling”.

Protest Organisers: Minus five marks out of ten. You failed to steward the event (the video shows no signs of steward activity during the protester/police confrontation) and you failed to educate people how to behave when police act oppressively.

you can see them wading in whilst people hold their ground but with hands in the air chanting ‘this is not a riot’.

Naadir Jeewa – it was the same police beating heads with batons who were being all nice and cheery earlier in tyhe day.

CashandBurn – “I can’t think of a movement that has successfully engaged the wider public through disruptive sit-ins and vandalism but am happy to be educated otherwise.”

In addition to John B’s suggestion that you google gandhi and MLK, I recommend you ask a trade unionist or a Suffragette.

“The police also know this, so raise the ‘price’ of attending to levels that only the hardcore want to pay – long frustrating waits needing to go to the loo.”

So it’s OK to discourage non-smashup people want from protesting?

“This might be protesting (and gentle repression) but only of the most farcical and ineffectual kind.”

Please give me your address and I’ll baton you over the head and set dogs on you. Don’t worry, that’s only gentle repression.

There is a long tradition in liberal (left) thought which emphasizes the right – and, on occasion – moral duty of proportionate civil disobedient and protest action in response to grievious injustice.

The risk of irreverisble and catastrophic climate change is real (and high). If it happens, it would constitute a grievous injustice to future generations. Blocking one street in London for one day for a peaceful event that protests this injustice is an entirely proportionate response to this potential injustice.

Within the Camp itself, there were three workshop spaces running sessions through the day on issues such as how to reduce one’s carbon foorprint. I learnt a lot. The Camp was both protest and educative.

This hardly warrants the label ‘carnival of stupid’, does it?

Now you will say: but look, this just doesn’t get the message across.

Well, no, when the police act in a way that makes violence the issue, the message is going to have trouble getting across. When people in the media – like yourself, apparently – take their cue from the police, and report the whole issue from the standpoint of whether or not, or how much, violence there is, the message is going to have trouble getting across.

So what we are we to do? Stop engaging in peaceful protest/civil disobeient action because of the stupidity of the police and the media?

I think the right approach is to try to combat police and media stupidity.

google “mahatma gandhi” and “martin luther king”, then.

And the point is, under those circunstances the police acted with violence and disrespect, injuring young people that was not creating trouble. Why ????
It is really easy to make all kind of comments seating down infront of your computer saying this or that about the protests. I was there and you cannot imaging how frustrating it was to see the police injuring my friends that were with their hands up screaming to stop the violence. I NEVER THOUGH that in London something like this would happen. Arrest all those anarchists, yes I do understand, but what they did at climate camp does not have any reason. Any.

The protesters did the same thing they did last time, and the time before, and the time before that. The police have got smarter (it’s not pretty, nor fair, but it’s effective), why can’t the protesters?

Ultimately, the protest worked only for the protesters. As a recruiting drive it probably worked. Up the blind alley the Left go again, alienating the wider public with public displays of irresponsibility and childishness.

Why hasn’t the BBC shown this film?
http://www.nextleft.org/2009/04/why-hasnt-bbc-shown-this-film.html