Protesting in the 21st century

By Jim Sweetman / @jimbo9848

There has been a lot of justified anger over the way the media behaved at the weekend. Instead of focusing on 400,000 or so people getting together at Hyde Park to protest about public spending cuts they devoted their time to a much smaller and angrier protest in Oxford Street. If you went on the march, if you listened to the speeches you can’t help but feel that your individual protest was specifically ignored by the media not only in the interests of sensationalism but also as a deliberate strategy to divert attention away from public disquiet. And, one of the big gains for the status quo, if you follow that line of conspiracy and dominance, is that the opposition then appears divided and you can make the most of the divisions – real or imagined. We will undoubtedly see David Cameron doing that sooner rather than later.

The first thing to say about this is that is nothing new. From nuclear proliferation, cruise missiles and anti-apartheid to the poll tax, mass public demonstrations are typically given little media space or credibility by the UK media. Numbers are under-estimated, the police control the routes and appear, however you look at it, not to be defending the right to protest but to be organising it and diminishing it. Along the way, if there is violence or a confrontation with the police it always attracts more space and comment and did so even when we had a less instantaneous capacity for media response than we have now.

There’s also an interesting contrast with the demonstrations across the Arab world where the same media seem to assume that 400,000 people is a signal for a government to go. And, there are earlier examples in the fall of the Iron Curtain where the same assumption was made. What it means eventually is that we have a generation and a large number of ordinary people who believe that peaceful protest is a waste of time. That is an awful thing to say in a democracy but it is true. There are also a lot of people who like the idea of financial institutions and tax avoiding organisations getting a few broken windows and a smattering of graffiti. Maybe we wouldn’t do it ourselves but we can understand why it is done and we enjoy the shock and indignation on the face of corporate Britain and note another indication of how far out of touch its representatives are with real-life.

Maybe we need to turn this on its head and not to make the violence problematic but to make the march problematic. Having been on a few of these, I have often felt corralled, processed and observed by the system. Practically, the tail end of the march arrives too late so that by the time you arrive it’s time to go and everybody looks a bit tired when you want them to be shouting and cheering. Also, there is not a good media focus. 100,000 people walking along the embankment on television just looks like some people you would not really like to be living on your estate out for a stroll with a band and a banner. Television always seeks out the most bizarre or extremist protesters or, alternatively, a gaggle of nurses who the audience can sneer at because they are having a jolly day out. It is hard to convey either the passion or the sense of community and the media do not put themselves out to do it. Even Hyde Park as a destination looks more appropriate to Phil Collins than the TUC.

It is possible that these are some of the reasons why the organisers of demonstrations always feel they have to criticise the violent fringe and disown them as if they were part of the event which got out of hand. Labour and the political left are constantly pushed into that trap despite the obvious evidence to the contrary. The violent sideshows are usually parallel demonstrations with different purposes. An anarchic rage against the system is, sometimes, quite understandable but it is completely different from a call for better management of the public purse.

Where we go from here? There is enormous public opposition to the coalition policies on public spending which are going to impact on almost everybody for the next five years. The people who oppose these policies know that the bankers and the politicians will be much less affected than most and they are angry because they have heard those same spokespeople talking about the financial crash as it was something we had to get over which was nobody’s fault. They don’t want to burn the city down but they would like it to take a palpable hit and they are prepared to get out on the streets and defend public spending as they say so.

Is there another way of representing that level of feeling? Demonstrations have to be against government at the heart of government and, by and large, in a democracy they ought to be peaceful. I wonder if would be possible to get 1 million people on the streets in ten major cities and outside Parliament and town halls not in fields. I wonder if it would be possible to hold a silence for ten minutes to show the people’s contempt for this coalition in a way that the media could not ignore. The police would say there were public safety issues and would have to be seen off but the effect could be impressive and the structure of the event would marginalise and distinguish any other group who had their own issues to express. It could also be a good way of using the Royal Wedding Sunday as well as a nice challenge for Bob Crow and the RMT to keep the trains running so as to get everyone there and home.