Here, I have concentrated on Plane Stupid and Climate Rush. This is protest at its silliest. And it certainly isn’t harmless. I mean that real people were put at inconvenience or expense (and maybe worse) in what amount to stunts on well-publicised issues which were already receiving plentiful political attention.

Most media commentators seem to believe that these protests are attractive signs that democracy is not quite dead. The only commentators reliably against it are from spiked online and its general stable of writers. Some commentators seem rather stuck on a “Posh Protest” angle, as though greenery had not always been fairly high-tone.

8 December 2008
Stansted shutdown by Plane Stupid
This protest attracted mostly friendly coverage from the media, though there was some comment that these were “toff’s stunts”.

There was an interesting comment response to this Guardian piece by one of the Plane Stupid activists. My quick reading of the posts suggests that about a third, maybe less, were wholly for the Plane Stupid action. Most of the ohers were more or less onside about climate change, but resisted the Plane Stupid protest as being wrong or counterproductive.

28 November 2008
The “Green Banksy”
A lone individual seems to have sauntered into Kingsnorth power station and certainly shut it down.

19 November 2008
Tamsin Omond (of Climate Rush)
Fined for her part in February’s Plane Stupid action

14 October 2008
Tamsin Omond
Banned from Parliament for October 2008 Climate Rush

12 October 2008
Westminster protester prepared to risk jail in cause of climate change
Tamsin Omond ready for protest

July 2008
Number 10 Super glue to PM

14 April 2008
Plane Stupid’s Scottish Parliament protest

27 February 2008
Plane Stupid at HoC
A deliciously pseudo-dissident piece by Jackie Ashley in The Guardian

No related posts.

Blog note: This piece is available as a Word document with references and good web links.

Handling protest, whether it’s vociferous, vigorous, vicious or violent
Evidence to the UK parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights:
Inquiry into the human rights issues arising from policing and protest.

A note
I have risked making my own recommendations to the committee. This is done out of a desire to be clear and useful.

In brief
Society should rethink its easy assumption that anyone who protests is probably on the side of the angels and that anyone who questions that assumption probably wants to oppress The People or destroy the planet.

Instead we should understand that much protest, especially most direct action, and even a good deal of Non-Violent Direct Action (NVDA), is problematic. For every example of protestors being over-policed, there are several more important ones of their being under-policed.

The committee should firmly declare that the rights of targets and victims are as much a human rights matter as the rights of protestors.

The committee should emphasise that representative democracy is itself an important example of human rights at work and that much protest attempts to trump it.

The committee should encourage authorities to learn from their occasional heavy-handedness: it produces a potent dissident folklore which plays into the hands of protestors.

Non-Violent Direct Action (NVDA): A comforting fudge
The essence of any direct action is that it aims to force change rather than win arguments. Even NVDA assumes that mere demonstrations won’t cut it: civil disobedience or criminal acts are more effective. We need to consider whether each protest or direct action really has been necessitated by the failure of representative democracy. The further from peaceful, law-abiding protest an action is, the higher we need to set the bar of justification. Bearing witness is very different from bearing wire-cutters.

Background
I have been reporting and commenting on all kinds of protest for around thirty years and have tended to concentrate on the abuse of human rights by a few extremist activists of one kind or another. But I have been equally concerned by the cultural damage done by the reluctance of authority to assert its rights over those of protestors.

There are two main reasons for my anxiety. The first is that the NVDA rubric has given a number of protestors too much freedom to cause serious disruption to democratically-legitimated research and commerce. The second is that the media and many campaigners believe that almost anything done in the name of NVDA is somehow superior to nearly anything done by the formal processes of representative democracy and its institutions. It is as though everything the protestors do is beatified by Ghandi and everything the politicians sanction is cursed with chicanery.

In discussions with audiences I have been very struck by the willingness of educated people, and especially sixth formers and university undergraduates, to believe that they are living in what they call a “police state”. Whilst this belief would be legitimate if it arose mostly from heavy-handed policing or legislation, it has in fact much more arisen from the rhetoric of civil liberties and other campaigners.

I am inclined to say that we live in one of the freest states in the world and that there is no sign of the legislature having allowed any serious change in that.

Whilst it is right to deploy the lightest effective touch with protest of any kind, it is fair to note that the “liberal elite” is too little inclined to understand protest from the point of view of its targets and victims.

In general it is fair to add that in the past few years the targets and victims of direct action have got a rather better hearing in the media, and often better protection and redress too. But there is plenty to worry about.

A protest spectrum: vociferous, vigorous, vicious and violent
Vociferous protest is the birthright of all democrats. At the other end of the scale, it is obvious that violent protest can very seldom be acceptable in democracies. However, the state and the media have had and still have great difficulty in handling protest I characterise as ranging from “vigorous” to “vicious”. By “vigorous” I mean activity which aims to force change by damaging (say) a research crop or a power station chimney. “Vigorous” action is normally directed at property, not persons, but that doesn’t make it acceptable. By “vicious” I mean protest which takes the form of covert activity against individuals and firms in private, often in the form of “home visits”, telephone calls and email and “slow” mail. The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 has made it easier to characterise such activity as the menace it is, but perpetrators remain hard to catch.

Protest: recent UK and US history
In some evidence for a US Congressional inquiry 2002 I attempted a small history of protest and direct action in the UK and US, so I won’t repeat that here. (It is available online.)

For all sorts of reasons (including the fear of giving the activists the oxygen of publicity), the targets of much vicious and occasionally actually violent direct action often left the incidents unreported to police or media. Worse, for many years when incidents came to light the activists wrong-footed the legislators, courts and police.

Since 2002, we have seen much of the most vicious and violent protest curtailed by a mixture of fresh legislation, judicial action (especially injunctions in the High Court) and police effort. This has been achieved with very few instances of heavy-handedness. However, every incidence of excessive state force is regrettable in its own terms and because it gives ammunition to people who want an excuse to abuse the right to protest.

A modest proposal
The committee ought to advocate the production of an authoritative source of information on protest. The easiest way of publicising both the scale and nastiness of some activists and the (patchy) success of dealing with the perpetrators would be a government, police or judicial website which listed the outcomes of criminal and civil cases involving protest of every sort.

A less modest proposal
There is a wide and confusing rag-bag of Acts which affect the policing of protest. The Committee should review these and make an argument one way or the other for a thorough-going rationalisation. This review might usefully include consideration of the law of trespass and criminal damage as they apply to protest. (Legislative tidiness may not be justified by its demands on scarce parliamentary time.)

Protest, direct action and terrorism
In recent years the state has had to deal with Islamist extremism which goes way beyond the kind of protest – even vicious and violent direct action – we are discussing here. There is an important distinction between protest or direct action and terrorism. They are linked of course, but it is useful to note that terrorists are people who use violence of a quite different order to even the worst of the animal rights campaigners. I would resist characterising even the most violent US anti-abortion activists as terrorists. Terrorism is a word we ought to reserve for some kinds of insurgency, or guerrilla or asymmetrical warfare. Terrorism is usually distinguished by its being aimed at scaring the whole of society and often at provoking a disproportionate state response. Direct action, on the other hand, is usually aimed at stopping an activity or scaring target individuals or firms, though it often enjoys and seeks lapses from good behaviour by the state.

Theatricals, protest and direct action
“Direct action” and “protest” and “demonstration” are often used interchangeably. This is a dangerous habit because it allows what are essentially forceful protests to disguise themselves and be accorded the same respect as peaceable protest. Direct action is undertaken by protestors who aim to force change rather than to argue for it and whose exploits show a disregard at least for the convenience of fellow-citizens and often for the law. Of course, in the UK even people who break the law know they will be treated with consideration and considered gentleness. Thus, much direct action, and especially NVDA, is premised on being more theatrical than threatening.

Few people conducting direct actions with the ostensible aim of shutting down an operation actually believe they ever could. Indeed, such protest is often highly disingenuous: much direct action deliberately affects to be about forcing change when really it is about staging confrontations with the forces of law and order. Victory in such cases depends on provoking some hapless policeman to hit a protestor, on the principle that nothing is so radicalising as a truncheon.
Further protest types
If we take some examples we can see a spectrum of theatricality and threat.

(1) Protest and street theatre
Brian Haw’s protest outside the House of Common is a sort of street theatre, and has actually achieved the status of being treated as installation art by the capital’s leading gallery of our national art. Reluctantly, I accept that Mr Haw and his protest are very widely regarded as classic and valuable examples of several sorts of British untidiness.

In general, it is worth noting that recent legislation against protest near Parliament has attracted much opprobrium and the committee will need to judge whether its effectiveness justifies its unpopularity. [ ,  ]

(2) Potentially dangerous direct action stunts
Fathers4Justice has produced various stunts (hanging out on cranes, for instance) which disrupt local life and strain people’s patience whilst getting their attention. [ ] Much more problematically, F4J have “occupied” the roofs of the private houses of politicians, as have Greenpeace and others.[ ,  ,  ] This form of direct action is dangerous because it strains the ability of police and others to keep people and property safe. At some point, it is quite possible that a police marksman may misread such a protest and hurt or kill a protestor. In the meantime, it is reasonable to ask whether politicians should have to accept such invasion of their privacy, and the anxiety that such events may turn nasty.

(3) Invasions of Parliament
Plane Stupid, Greenpeace, pro-hunt campaigners and F4J have all “invaded” and “occupied” parts of Parliament. [ ,  ,  ,  ]  It is important to note that this is the very worst sort of protest. Parliament is the place where representative democracy conducts its business of reconciling the tense differences of opinion in the country. We should take no pleasure in its being the scene of loud protest by non-elected special and single interest campaigners.

The committee should risk boldly defending the needs of Parliament.

More urgently, we have to wonder whether it is a good or a bad thing that campaigners have breached Parliamentary security. On the one hand, they put themselves at risk of having their protest mis-read by anxious and armed police. On the other, it may be an advantage to have parliamentary security tested so thoroughly by benign activists, since the alternative may be much worse.

(4) Vociferous demonstration
In recent years, mass protest has been rare and relatively polite. Between their debut in 2000 and their demise in 2005, London’s “Seattle” style May Day anti-capitalist demonstrations received increasingly savvy policing. By 2005, the police had developed quite good strategies for marshalling them and were also better at explaining that (a) there were legal union-led demonstrations to attend and (b) that the more rebellious and dissident demonstrations were only illegal because their organisers refused to liaise with police. Large scale pro-hunting and anti-war demonstrations mostly went off in exemplary fashion.

However, we can wonder whether it was sensible to imprison loud-mouthed Islamist extremists for six years for even the most intemperate speech during a demonstration.

(5) Ecological direct action
“Green” activists pose a variety of difficulties. Their “vigorous” actions against genetically-modified trial crops have been successful in sowing real doubt that this new science can be commercially developed in the UK. [ ] A little differently, it is likely that the next few years will see a continuation of protest against various energy and transport facilities. If these develop along existing lines as “camps” and mass demonstrations, they should be fairly easy to police uncontroversially. It is quite possible that they will revert to older “Swampy” style occupations, which produce tense evictions but have in the past not much altered the timetable of developments or raised very serious civil liberty anxieties (though they were at least disrespectful of the pained democratic planning process). We have already seen Greenpeace successfully defend itself against charges of criminal damage against both GMO research crops and a power station on the grounds that it was preventing a greater damage.[ ,  ] This disingenuous and disgraceful defence has trumped the democratic legitimacy accorded these activities for years and after detailed and continuing political and technical debate.

The committee should consider the need for a legislative overhaul of this defence.

(6) Pacifist direct action
Juries have proved unwilling to convict campaigners against the arms trade or the military even when the formal legal case against them seems self-evident. [ ] These campaigns have taken many forms but seldom been as threatening or underhand as animal rights activism. The committee will doubtless hear evidence that policing of one Fairford demonstration was unduly heavy-handed. [ ]

(7) Animal rights direct action
The focus of much police and legal action, animal rights extremism remains a serious threat to its targets. The public has recently been gaining some understanding of the viciousness of much of this covert direct action. The protestors scored a spectacular own goal when they desecrated the graves of the family of a guinea pig farmer. [ ] All the same, this kind of protest is under-reported by its victims and its horrors are not usually obvious enough to attract the public sympathy they deserve. There have been many successes in dealing with this sort of protest, but it is inherently difficult to police.

We should, by the way, assume that enthusiasm for this sort of activism may well prove cyclical and its focus may well shift. The committee should encourage the authorities to develop strategies for dealing with it, and ensure that we develop a good “institutional memory” of what worked and what didn’t.

(8) “We know where you live” activism
It is important to note how much vicious protest can be highly disingenuous. Many targets and victims of vicious protest receive at their residential address a letter discussing the (anonymous) sender’s views about the morality of the recipient’s involvement with animals, the arms trade, or whatever. Sometimes the letter will affect to be offering a friendly warning and stress that “some people” might think that such behaviour puts the recipient beyond the moral pale and that “some people” might be enraged into violent action by such behaviour.  Often, these letters could have been sent to the recipient’s well-known work address. Sending them to a residential address is threatening in itself. It is the activist offering the timeless threat: “We know where you live”.

The committee should consider making it easier to obtain privacy for residential addresses.

No related posts.

(1)
Lord Lester asked me whether I approved of protest against the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968. I should have said that I can’t remember ever having argued against the right to peaceful, controlled protest. If Lord Lester was asking whether the protest was even more legitimate because it was against a rushed Bill, I should have replied that it was a popular Bill which answered a considerable national swell of opinion and was supported by HM’s Opposition. A quick Google doesn’t show me evidence that protest against the Act was problematic. (Indeed, protest against the 1962 Immigration Act seemed dignified.) Anyway, no, I don’t object to the protest.

(2)
Lord Lester asked me if I agreed with the House of Lords 1998 decision on the Shoreham protests.
My answer should have been that I can’t disagree with the law Lords that the Chief Constable had a legal obligation to balance the right to trade against the difficulty of enforcing it. As a legal matter, I can’t argue with the Law Lords that the Chief Constable was within his rights balance things the way he did.

I should have added that in the case of HLS and other set piece protests with a potential for violence we seem to have learned better ways of allowing protest whilst avoiding flashpoints.

I stick by my statement that ideally the protests should have been banned, so as to avoid their continuing to degenerate into violence. I should have added that alternative opportunities for banned protest always have to be put in place.

(3)
Evan Harris asked me how my notion that much protest was aimed at upstaging Parliament survived cases such as protest during a State Visit by Chinese leaders. I got into a muddle.

I should have said, in passing, that a pavement parade to welcome a state guest is a legitimate opportunity for people to express a dissenting view. The more dignity and wit they bring to their protest, the better.

(4)
I should more importantly have added that I don’t mean to imply that all protest upstages Parliament nor that upstaging Parliament de-legitimises protest nor that protest that doesn’t upstage Parliament is necessarily more valuable. My argument is that in a parliamentary democracy no protest has the right to be an uncontrolled nuisance.
ends

No related posts.

(1)  Clarification on the severity of different sorts of protest
(2)  Clarification on the success of different sorts of protest

(1) Clarification on the severity of different sorts of protest
Evan Harris asked me for a map of the seriousness of problem different sorts of protest presented. I should have replied that the spectrum in my written evidence (vociferous, vigorous, vicious and violent) provides a way of calibrating any particular activity.

But it doesn’t really help us spot classes of action which are likely to be, say, vicious.

I take it that we are discussing demonstrations and direct action and that merely vociferous protest is unexceptionable.

I should have given more examples of how difficult it is to detect the seriousness of vigorous, vicious and violent protests merely from, say, their targets.

In general one would say that harm to people matters more than harm to property. But screaming vile abuse at a person in a business centre may carry less menace than spray-painting their car in a private driveway. A letter bomb at work may carry less menace than a polite phone call to an employee at home. Slight damage to a small trial GM crop threatens an entire science but would be trivial in a normal potato field. Slight damage to a waste pipe threatens a giant nuclear plant in a quite different way to the same sort of damage to a smokestack in a fossil fuel plant. Occupying one crane may bring a city centre to a standstill, but occupying another might be merely comically spectacular.

(2) Clarification on the success of different sorts of protest
I stick by my statement that demonstrations and direct action have seldom achieved their goals.

More usefully to the committee, I should have said that it isn’t obvious what sort will succeed. Certainly success is not proportionate to vigour.

Protest does sometimes succeed. Theatre companies are widely said to be avoiding certain religious subjects because of Sikh and Muslim protest.  (Christian outrage has been unsuccessful.)

Sometimes protest is a bit successful. Many infrastructure projects have suffered some delay and cost increases as a result of protest, but have gone ahead in the end. (The anti-road campaigners claim indirect political success, but I doubt it.)

In some cases direct action has backfired. Britain has lost some facilities but been rendered a uniquely strong centre for animal research as a response to protest. The anti-fur campaign persuaded some firms to abandon the trade but others were emboldened to fight on all the harder and overall the trade thrives. GM crop research may go abroad as a result of field trial damage but it may just become less transparent at home.

Causes seem to succeed or fail according to subtler processes of change. Demonstrations or direct action for Ban the Bomb, Not In My Name, No Nukes, May Day, The Third Battle of Newbury, Liberty and Livelihood, Fathers 4 Justice, Fur Is Murder and other causes seem not to have much budged public opinion or Parliament. (One might count Drop The Debt a success.)

Very vigorous direct action has a surprisingly poor record. Wapping and the coal-miners’ strikes did not budge policy. The effect of the Shoreham live veal export protest is harder to analyse: the trade was unpopular without the street protest.

The record of riots is very mixed. The May Day riots irritated the public. The Poll Tax was hugely unpopular, but I suspect the riots against it were too.

Wide-scale neighbourhood riots have a better record of success. Brixton and Toxteth influenced events.

My conclusion is that the illegality of most extreme protests is not justified by an argument that they have effected change in a unique way.

No related posts.