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Direct Action Works - Monbiot

steve | 05.03.2004 00:05 | Analysis | Social Struggles | Sheffield

Excellent article by George Monbiot though sounds like the bit about GM commercialisation is wrong now since the Government have decided to allow maize now.

(See Greenpeace:  http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/contentlookup.cfm?ucidparam=20040225161718&MenuPoint=D-I-A)

EXTREME MEASURES
We can't rely on the Establishment to topple Tony Blair: we must do it ourselves.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 2nd March 2004


So now what happens? Our prime minister is up to his neck in it. His attorney-general appears to have changed his advice about the legality of the war a few days before it began. Blair refuses to release either version, apparently for fear that he will be exposed as a liar and a war criminal. His government seems to have been complicit in the illegal bugging of friendly foreign powers and the United Nations. It went to war on the grounds of a threat which was both imaginary and known to be imaginary. Now the opposition has withdrawn from his fake inquiry. Seldom has a prime minister been so exposed and remained in office. Surely Blair will fall?

Not by himself, he won't. If we have learnt anything about him over the past few months, it's that he would rather stroll naked round Parliament Square than resign before he has to. The press has a short attention span, Iraq is a long way away and the opposition is listless and unpopular. He has everything to gain by sweating it out.

In many ways the strength of the case against the prime minister has been an advantage to him: our tendency is to assume that he is so badly wounded that all we need to do is to sit back and watch him bleed to death. But we reckon without the clots who run the country.

British people know that our legal system stinks. Over the past week, the Attorney-General's conflicts of interest have been exposed three times. First we discover he instructed that a prosecution be dropped when the case threatened to reveal his own advice to the prime minister. Then we discover that he took his decision in consultation with the government. The "Shawcross principle" he invoked in the House of Lords (ministers shall be consulted over a decision to prosecute) sounds very grand. What it means, of course, is that the law is applied only when it is politically convenient. Thirdly we find that he changed his professional opinion about the legality of the war to suit Blair's political needs.

We also know that our MPs are weak and frightened, that the civil service remains in the grip of the upper middle classes and that the press is run by multi-millionaries, whose single purpose is to make this a better world for multi-millionaires. Yet somehow we continue to trust that all these twisted instruments will deliver us from evil, that the sound chaps in the system will ultimately do the decent thing. How we reconcile our understanding with our belief is a mystery, but this mystery is a perennial feature of British political life. As a result, we now wait for the establishment to bring Blair down. We could wait forever.

In other words, nothing happens now, unless we get off our butts and make it happen. This means abandoning that very British habit of expecting someone else to act on our behalf. Worse still, it means recognising that, for all the complexities and evasions of a modern political system, the motive force of politics is still the people, and the people remain responsible for what is done in their name.

The formula for making things happen is simple and has never changed. If you wish to alter a policy or depose a prime minister between elections, you must take to the streets. Without the poll tax riots, Mrs Thatcher might have contested the 1992 election. If people hadn't been ripping up GM crops, they would be in commercial cultivation in Britain today. In the 1990s, protesters forced the government to cut its road-building budget by 80 percent. Most of the cities whose roads were occupied by Reclaim the Streets have introduced major traffic calming or traffic reduction schemes. Gordon Brown stopped increasing fuel tax in response to the truckers' blockades.

Direct action, in other words, works. Not always of course: our submarines still carry nuclear missiles, our airports are still expanding, the 1994 criminal justice bill became law. But it works more consistently than anything else we do. It does not work in isolation - it must be accompanied by polite campaigns of lobbying and letter-writing - but it works because it ensures that the issue stays in the public eye, and therefore exposes the government to continued questioning. At length, if the campaign is well-organised and popular, the issue becomes a liability, and politicians seek to protect themselves by dumping either the policy or the author of the policy. In this case it's too late to dump the policy. If the Labour Party wants us to forget what it has done in Iraq, it must dump Blair.

You object that we tried this last year, and failed. If the biggest demonstration in British history couldn't change the way the country was run, what could? And of course it's true that we failed to stop the war with Iraq. (It may also be true that we helped to stop the wars with Iran, North Korea, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and all the other nations the idiotocracy in Washington had lined up for invasion.) But we failed partly because we appeared almost to give up after the march on February 15th. Before then, there had been lots of big talk (from me among others) of blocking motorways, disrupting ministers' speeches, occupying public buildings. But, as British people so often do, everyone waited for everyone else to act. Now we are in danger of doing the same thing. The roads and quarry protests are kicking off again, and they are timely and necessary. But if we can risk our lives to protect a landscape, we can surely take a day or two off work to bring down a government.

And it's not just because direct action works that we should try it. If Blair goes, it should be our victory, not that of the little grey men. The people must be seen to have done it. Why? Because this is about more than punishing the prime minister for what was almost certainly a war crime. It is about making sure it never happens again.

British politics is still bound by the spell of Gladstone and Churchill. Every prime minister attempts to emulate them. To be a statesman, you need a world stage on which to strut, and if you don't have one, you must borrow it from someone who does. This is why the "special relationship" persists. The establishment might break Blair, but it will not break the spell. Only the people can do that.

If we depose the prime minister through direct action, he will doubtless be succeeded by someone almost as bad, but the political context in which that someone operates will have changed. He will be forced to govern with one eye on the people, and to demonstrate that his policies differ from those of his predecessor. And the issue he would be obliged to address first is Britain's relationship with the rest of the world. Whoever succeeded Blair in these circumstances would tone down our foreign policy until it resembled that of the other northern European states.

To become a civilised, moderate, responsible nation, in other words, we must first become a nation of extremists.

 http://www.monbiot.com

steve

Comments

Hide the following 5 comments

money where ones mouth is

05.03.2004 09:40

I wonder then if George Monbiot will endorse a bit of direct action, having again written that a) it works and b) it is necessary?

We shall wait and see with fingers crossed.

I wonder if stop the war coalition might get around to endorsing a sit down protest for 10 minutes?

I won't wait for hell to freeze over!

heard it all before


All very well

05.03.2004 13:02


But what happens when people who are not so 'nice' as Mr Monbiot start following his action plan? Would he condone direct action by the BNP? I doubt it. So what he probably means to say is 'Direct action is good when it is in a 'good' cause - ie one I agree with'.

Which is fine, since people should make up their own minds, of course, between what is 'good' and what is 'bad' (and never mind what the columnists are telling them) But it worries me when someone who should have a detailed perspective resorts to being simplistic for the sake of propaganda...

ambivalent


it works and it does'nt .depends on leadership

06.03.2004 18:41

the key to victory in any battle is solidarity.

the great miners strike involved alot of mass, direct action. the capitalist forces won.

the miners lost because the leadership of the working class were cowardsi.e the top dogs in the trade union and the labour party. we must learn lessons, the tories were prepared to fight like hell whereas we were lead by donkeys. it was not because there was not enough direct action but lack of joint action. the miners desperately needed other groups of workers out on strike, together.

when the iraq war started there were strikes (granted they were 1 hour staogaes)however workers with good leadership did make a stand. the only way the war could have stopped was for the TUC to call for a general militant strike.

george should be arguing for new leadership inside the working class. he should have therefore be shaming and naming the leadership for their inactivity and providing real solutions.

lets start the struggle for new leadership, get out there and build the respect coalition with as many trade unions involved as possible then we may be able to win.

p.s i dont think a 10 minute sit down is going to anything.
lets march on parliment

red letter


What do we need leaders for?

07.03.2004 17:06

Most of the exciting radical actions over the past 10 years have been achieved without leaders. Look at the antiroads campaigns, anti-GM campaigns or the anti-capitalist movement here, or the USA or even Argentina. There are no leaders at Nine Ladies. Leaders in positions of power sell out not because they are bad people but because, as the saying goes, "power corrupts'.

Hierarchy is intrinsically corrupt because you are no longer acting in your own interest but instead in the percieved interest of what you think is best for others. Liberation can only come from within.

Freedom


only way to win

07.03.2004 19:26

lets face it, in britian no movement has ever stopped a war, not even in the 1st world war when millions of people were being killed. therefore we need to explore new ways in how we can get the majority of people to hit back at the capitalists and force them to stop their war.

personally i think the leadership of the stwc have done a reasonably good job in historical terms.if there had been no leadership and it was left to individuals, i doubt whether there would have been as much opposition to the war as there has been today.

however, that does not mean that the leadership of the stwc should stay in their positions for ever. they should be accountable and recalled if that is the wish of the majority.

future battles with the capitalist class is certain, we need to learn lessons and build an alternative party which is highly democratic where the leadership is inferior to the people it leads, where the majority rule for their own intersets. this is not easy but is the only way to win.

whether u like it or not any movemnt throws up a leadership vacuum, in the past it has been the labour movement which has been dominant. given that they have been shown to be a bunch of corrupt bastards, it is more important than ever to build a new democractic party base on solidarity and respect.


red letter