Tory MP and former minister Nick Herbert has an article in the Guardian this morning that reveals his (and I suspect many in his party's) contempt for modern campaigning. Contrasting those who marched on Washington 50 years ago with today's campaigners he says:
[W]e are rightly suspicious about many of those who so readily resort to direct action today. There's something phoney about the new middle-class warriors with their cod philosophies and casual dismissal of democratic channels. The Occupy protesters outside St Paul's Cathedral in London named their camp "Tahrir Square" while they sat cross-legged, sang songs and consumed Marks & Spencer sandwiches, oblivious to the obscenity of a comparison with freedom fighters who risked their lives in Egypt.
I feel almost sick when reading that. I was proud to be a small part of Occupy by taking part in some of its sessions. I was proud it when it adopted tax justice as a major demand. I was proud when that pressure - from Occupy and UK Uncut backed by data from people like me - forced David Cameron to put tax on the international agenda. I was pleased he took the issue to the G8, even if the outcome was far from all I wanted.
None of that change in Tory thinking would have happened without protest; not one bit of it. We challenged the world in our different ways, highlighting a massive cause of global social injustice, and we've changed the world just a bit as a result; probably rather more than Nick Herbert ever will.
I am revolted hat he says we ignored democracy: no, we engaged with it.
I'm disgusted that he says our concern for social justice is 'cod philosophy'. No, it's mass concern for social justice and an end to exploitation.
My revulsion only increased when I read this that he wrote:
These were at least peaceful protesters, unlike others who have taken to the streets. The looters who carried armfuls of goods from shops during the London riots two summers ago displayed more greed than grievance. In Birmingham they even shot at the police.
That he might dare to compare criminal rioting with the right to protest is beyond contempt. No one, anywhere that I know claimed that events in Birmingham, were political. And yet Herbert seeks to imply that those who engage in campaigning would condone shooting the police.
After which he says we should give up our causes and engage with 'democratic channels'. That, sadly, is denied to many. When most in this country despair that the 'democratic channels' he espouses deny them choice because there is one neoliberal agenda on offer - and I hear this, albeit expressed in many different ways, time after time again - what Herbert's actually saying is that we should not confront the power of the elite in which he has a comfortable role.
The unsurprising result of this attitude is the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill which as even the FT notes today, will massively restrict freedom of speech in this country, and no doubt deliberately so. In which case it is ironic that Herbert concludes his piece with the claim that:
King's heirs are not the pygmy protesters who move from one fashionable campsite and cause to another. They are those who fight courageously for human rights that are still denied across the world. Let freedom ring for them.
It is he who is seeking to restrict human rights.
It is he who is seeking to remove union rights.
It is the companies and the City of London who funds his party that are fleecing Africa - as we, as protestors, have proved.
It is he who lacks courage by removing our right to speak.
It is we who protest who have the courage to speak out against the abuse of power in the name of democracy that is happening on our country today.
And we will continue to do so, Precisely because there are people like Nick Herbert.
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Nick Herbert just another Tory Knob he and his ilk are the main reason I spend time canvassing for Labour.
It just surprises me that many others do not and that voters do not seem to mind this attitude from many Tory Politicians.
Mr Gove is a disgrace if his outburst in the House Of Commons is true
I sort of have a suspicion that this is less a Tory characteristic and more fo a class issue – It smacks of a dig at ‘new middle class’ for which read – ex working class and not quite real middle class!
Tere’s a nsty undertone of associating the rioter with working class and associating ‘new middle class’ with that working class and hence by his logic with the rioters.
Pain nasty.
The class divide-and-rule tactic is working very nicely for them, isn’t it?
His criticism of being anti-democratic doesn’t really stand up. The state of affairs that Martin Luther King protested against was ‘legal’, sanctified by Congress and the courts.
The Chartists, Suffragists and Suffragettes, trade unions, GLBT campaigners all protested against the laws of the day.
Not too long ago protesters were poor people who may have been in trade unions. The only others were student types protesting against bombs or wars in far flung lands – the ordinary people could not relate to them that much.
The fact that ordinary middle class people (their core vote) can organise and protest, and not be in an identifiable group to castigate in their media rattles the Tories. Recently even the lawyers were protesting on the streets. The middle classes protesting on the streets !!!! This they cannot comprehend and is against the grain of their mindsets.
55 years ago about 97% of the electorate voted for the two main parties. Today it is about 60% and dropping. The disenchanted, and now more informed, middle class are turning away from the Tories. If the UK had a decent PR voting system the Tories would driven out of sight.
True
Seconded – which makes the fact that this wretched government is only able to be in power due to the support of the Liberal Democrats (Lickspittle Democrats?) even worse.
For me, Herbert’s article typified the Tory/wealthy attitudes to ordinary people. The sneering arrogance and the unconscious racism, which are simply dressed-up bullying of the ‘little people’. The comments from no.10 about Miliband being a f…ing c… and a copper-bottomed s… are the less polite end of the same assumptions. These are the attitudes of our bankers and the financial sector. As Citicorps wrote in the 2005 blurb, only the elites matter because they constitute 60% of the global economy. The rest of the population are irrelevant.
Do we assume that the Guardian put it on their front page to give him enough rope .. or did they lack copy for today?
I think it was rope….
I hope so
The idea that the issues of human rights are all outside our borders is utterly farcical, hubris-ridden and cloud-cuckoo-land -surely this was an April-fool style article. he’s wrong – just because someone bought an M&S sandwich invalidates nothing as food bank numbers rise. He’ll be benefiting from the latest bubble and more vacuuming of wealth away from those who need it. The sneering contempt typifies the rentier class who regard the populace as idiots to be laughed about in board rooms. Unfortunately the populace is proving itself to be so as the neo-con agit-prop machine steamrollers over freethought.
He’s one of those people who think ‘democracy’ means that people vote once every five years and then leave the representatives to just get on with it. He’s a clueless, obnoxious fool. His characterisation of the Occupy movement only demonstrates that he never visited the site or even read their blog. He quite simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about on any level.
Protest and dissent are parts of the democratic process – in fact they are necessary conditions.
Bring on the Courageous State and Courageous Politicians! The time is now.
I am sure that once we have them, they will have the courage to listen to activists and protestors and hopefully give them what they want. That is true courage.
This is true given the activities & protestors are the true voice of society. Thanks to Dr ML King Jr, they brought Americans their Civil Rights. Thanks to the Uncut group, progress has been made to get us a GAAR, country-by-country reporting, a better resourced HMRC etc. The list goes on…
The only exception I can think of is those awful fox hunting protestors. Remember them? I would expect a Courageous State to have the courage to get the hoses onto those spoiled, chinless, neoliberal toffs.
“Bring on the Courageous State and Courageous Politicians! The time is now.”
Mr. M’s support for even more expensive energy would kill industry like steel and chemicals dead in the UK.
Forgive me if I’m not keen on people wanting to put me out of a job.
You’d rather kill the planet for your children?
I think it would be helpful to be more intelligent on our carbon taxes although they should not be any less heavy.
Taxing people on their consumption seems, to me, obviously the right way to go. It will, I hope, change their behaviour & if it doesn’t at least they will start to make a contribution to dealing with the disaster they’re causing.
I’m not so convinced on taxing manufacturing if, as seems likely, the only effect will be to lose us our last few manufacturing jobs & “export” the pollution to places like China & Malaysia where, I’m sure, the pollution considered allowable will be far higher. This is, after all, a global problem.
Again, I’m not sure you’ll publish this but I really would like to have answer if you’ve got the time Mr. M.,
You wrote, “You’d rather kill the planet for your children?”
Okay then Mr. M., so what jobs am and thousands of people going to do in the UK when ‘green levies’ finally shut down major industry? I know Mr. M., you’re a clever chap, so please answer that question – there are about 4,500 people at work just on the site I work on plus thousands of jobs in the supply chain (And the local unemployment rate is about 7%).
What jobs are we going to do instead?
Incidentally, when we’ve shut down steel and chemicals, do you think the rest of the world is going to go (a) What an example, we’d better do the same thing or (b) Hellfire, what are those loony Brits up to. Excellent….less competitors, more chance of business for us.
Try insulating the UK and turning every building into a power station
That’s that problem easily solved
Next?
“Try insulating the UK and turning every building into a power station”
Hmm, Mr. M., respectfully, how do you think solar panels are made? There isn’t a manufacturer in the UK that can compete with the Far East – unless of course you plan to ban the import of foreign made PV panels? That might be tricky given the vast natural resources required to make the cells, frames, cabling etc.
Of course if you also plan to make buildings feed into the Grid, you’re going to need to upgrade the Grid (a massive ‘dirty’ job) plus if you want major public transport like light rail or electrification of the network, you’re going to need tens of thousands of tonnes of steel – of course you could get that from abroad if you don’t want ‘dirty industry’ in the UK. I’m not sure though that other taxpayers will be keen on that idea if UK steel plants are stood idle.
I appreciate your concern for the planet I really do, but if you care about the planet, why do you think so many Greens use PCs and cars and possibly even mobile phones – all made in vast industrial processes and powered using fuels extracted in huge processes as they race from conference to conference on aircraft.
I seem to recall your wife is a Doctor. I bet she uses needles and scalpels and such like. Surgical steel made in the UK is some of the finest, if not the finest in the world, but again its made in huge industrial processes otherwise it would be too expensive for anyone to make or use.
I don’t mean to imply an insult, but Mr. M., it seems that some favouring the ‘Green State’ want to use and have all the things that make modern life easy but then complain about how those things are made and then want to make those items so expensive that the ‘ordinary folks’ can’t have them ‘for their own good’.
For example, please think about all the modern medical devices, from artificial hips to plastic tubes – all those items are made in processes that are inherently dirty, using raw materials that are then refined and processed into items that can be used to save lives, educate, allow communication and such like. If you tried to make them on a small scale it just wouldn’t be economically possible.
Again, I have some doubts as to whether you’ll publish my response but I thought your comment deserved and answer.
But you are only considering short term issues, as I have noted before
No one pretends going green does not involve changing the economy – or using materials
It does
The point is whether the result is sustainable or not
We use this steel anyway
The aim is to do so effectively
Allan,
as I said above, I see your point, to a degree, on levies on manufacturing but you seem to think ‘green’ levies generally are unnecessary & you are, of course, wrong.
if you look at Germany, they must create a lot more industrial pollution than us, since they manufacture about 10 times as much, but they compensate by being bike-friendly & car-unfriendly.
Even more importantly, they compensate by having a different, better, sort of culture in which people don’t measure their importance & value by how much they can consume.
The UK right now is a deeply sick society, “broken” but not in the way Cameron, or most of his party, can comprehend.
There’s nothing more undemocratic than the way the government is dismantling the NHS. I notice he never mentioned the number of demonstrations against that.
The Tory idea of democracy is simple. Lie to the electorate, get into power, do what you want, after 4 years bribe them with state money, get re-elected repeat.
Cameron said his would be the greenest Govt, he then appointed Pickles who started by vowing an end to the (non-existent) “war against motorists”.
He vowed to learn lessons from the recent bust & Osborne is now desperately trying to revive a “housing boom”.
He said the NHS was safe in his hands (haha)
He was also silent on our country being a cats paw for the interests of Saudi Arabia & Israel in the ME.
“turning every building into a power station”
Not physically possible, without restructuring the entire power grid and replacing every single transformer.
Every PV installation adds to the instability of that particular phase that the building draws grid-power from. The use of switched-mode power supplies instead of transformer in domestic equipment has meant greater efficiency, at the cost of greater grid instability.
Looking at the means of considerable power generation, in the short-term-operating-reserve (used when instant response to high demand is needed), means you are now looking at the use of thousands of diesel generating units (these are now operating, and the system uses private generating capacity in hospitals etc as well). These are used to even-out the fluctuation in the grid, some of which is caused by the massively uneven flows of power from wind generators.
Of course, if the power from those could be stored, and then used when needed, that would solve the problem. It can’t: Yet. The installation of large batteries to meet the needs of the STOR are in their infancy, but still need hundreds, if not thousands, of tonnes of high-capacity storage batteries….these look like being lithium batteries. The cost is high, their lifespan is low.
Of course, this country has decided to export most of its CO2 and industrial pollution problems to other countries, like China and Korea, but that CO2 will still be factored into any carbon tax (the price of which is dropping through the floor at the moment).
German industry has decided that the power is too expensive, so is exporting itself to low-cost-energy countries. Countries bordering Germany have decided that Germany using their national grids to balance its massive fluctuations, due to wind power, is pretty poor, so are looking at stopping the practice. One has already.
One UK professional website is fond of bragging about how industrial deaths are falling, attributing that to their skills: I just point-out that we export our deaths and industrial injuries to other countries, and that is why they are falling. We also have an industrial disease problem, some say a timebomb, that is very high. In the order of several hundred thousands per year. I doubt that the new privatised NHS is going to cope. I note the discussion about a “personalised health budget”, which basically means “sorry, you’ve gone over your allocated personal health budget; goodbye; die”
Nice country, isn’t it.
I think you account of Germany is, according to my sources, just wrong
One specific claim that Nick Herbert makes is that anti-fracking protesters are ‘undemocratic’ because the House of Commons voted to allow fracking to begin. But I just searched the 2010 Tory and Lib Dem manifestoes for the words ‘fracking’ and ‘shale’ and found no reference in either of them. I did find several pages in both manifestoes of commitments to a low carbon economy and to renewable energy, etc.
So, if the elected politicians choose to disregard their manifestoes and enact policies which are the complete opposite of what they’ve been elected on, promoting fossil fuels at the expense of renewables – WHO is really being “undemocratic”? I’d argue that the protesters are actually much MORE democratic than the Tory and Lib Dem MPs who have sold out their electorates.
Excellent point
https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/page/speakout/gagging-bill-write-to-mps