Roy Lilley asked this question this morning in his daily email, which usually focuses on NHS issues:
“Instead of asking, ‘How do we stop protests?' policymakers should ask, ‘Why do people feel the need to protest?'…”
That question should be everywhere this morning, and most especially in the government. Answering it would define the difference between governing by fear and governing with consent. The first seeks silence. The second listens, understands, and responds.
The fact is that in a democracy, protest is not an inconvenience to be managed: it is a constitutional safety valve. When governments act in ways that ignore the needs of the people, protest is how democracy breathes. To criminalise protest is to asphyxiate democracy.
That is, firstly, because protest is a form of information. It tells us that the systems meant to meet needs are failing. When people have access to food, warmth, housing, healthcare, dignity, and freedom to be themselves and express their opinions, they tend not to march. They march when those things are denied. So, if there are protests, the question is not how to stop them, but how the state, which has the power to create and deliver well-being, has chosen not to use that power.
Second, the real constraint on creating well-being is never money, but always political will. If there is hardship and anger, that is not because there is “no money left.” It is because those in power have decided not to use it to serve the public. Protest, then, becomes the democratic reply to deliberate neglect.
Third, those in power mistake quiet for stability. It is not. Aggrieved people may stay home for a while, whether out of exhaustion, fear, or lack of hope, but that is not consent. Real stability comes from fairness, inclusion and a sense that everyone has a stake in the future. When that breaks down, legitimacy fails, and the sound of protest is not disorder; it is a warning.
Fourth, spending billions on policing discontent is absurd when the same resources could remove its causes. When governments choose not to use their power to provide jobs, fund decent housing, ensure fair pay, invest in climate transition, and invest in justice, they guarantee unrest. In particular, austerity is not a cost-saving measure. It is a cost-shifting exercise from the Treasury to households, from the rich to the poor, and from the present to the future. Protest makes that visible.
Fifth, protest is democracy in motion. When the state treats dissent as a threat, it says that only those already in power have the right to speak. But in a genuine democracy, government must always be accountable to those who object. If protest is driven underground, society begins to die because dissent is the oxygen of public life.
So what would change if policymakers really asked why people protest, as Roy Lilley suggests they should?
First, they would acknowledge that the causes of discontent, whether they be inequality, insecurity, collapsing services, unaffordable housing, climate anxiety or concern at injustice, are the result of deliberate fiscal and political choices. In most cases, this is the result of the Treasury's obsession with arbitrary debt and deficit targets, which is a deliberate choice to maintain inequality, rather than an economic necessity. In others, it is the decision to support the politics that demands that these anti-social choices be maintained.
Second, they would rebuild trust by spending with purpose. People want to see evidence that government works for them: schools rebuilt, transport restored, homes insulated, care services improved, and justice delivered. The state can always create the money to do these things. What it cannot create is legitimacy once it is lost.
Third, they would ensure that the economy serves the people, not the other way around. That means taxing to shape society, not to fund spending. In other words, they would use taxes to curb inflation, close inequality gaps, and redirect excessive wealth into productive use. It also means offering safe savings routes where people can invest directly in the public good, such as green bonds and local development funds, rather than feeding speculative markets. If this were to happen, people would feel they have a stake in their society, when they suspect they have none at present.
Fourth, they would protect the right to protest itself. The right to assemble and dissent is not a nuisance but a constitutional duty. The police should be trained to facilitate protest, not suppress it. Governments should respond to protests with listening, not legislation.
The consequences of ignoring all this are not hypothetical. When governments deny that they can act, people stop believing that politics matters. Despair breeds disengagement, or worse, extremism.
So the conclusions follow:
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Protest is a sign of failure in government policy, not failure in policing.
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The government has the power to end the causes of protest by using its fiscal and political capacity to meet real needs.
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The constraint is political, not financial.
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Peaceful protest must be protected as the most visible expression of democracy.
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Listening and acting on the causes of protest is the true measure of a government's strength.
If those in power truly wish to “stop” protests, they could do so tomorrow by ending needless austerity, investing in people and places, and proving that democracy still works by respecting calls for justice that must be implicit within it. But if they choose instead to criminalise dissent, they will learn a certain truth, which is that you can silence a protester, but you cannot legislate away the reasons people protest.
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As has been said before, if voting changes anything, it would be abolished. The same applies to effective protest.
Powerful people lobby. Protest is what everyone else has to do in order to have a voice. Both are forms of dissent.
Protests represent the will of the Pele more than lobbying does, so politicians should listen more, not less.
There will be competing and sometimes unwelcome voices, but you can only address those you disagree with adequately if you first listen .
Politicians aren’t silencing dissent. They’re spending dissent by the majority while supporting the dissent of the wealthy. That’s why policies are getting so skewed.
Protest is about the absence of something and asking for it. It’s a form of asking.
Nature abhors a vacuum. So the message should be ‘fill it’ – at least with something useful.
This will not happen because our politicians in this non-democracy of ours have been paid to ignore us.
As Bill Hughes points out above, voting is merely performative in a non-democracy.
I think that this is what a protest should be. It is about signaling to politicians “do this and you will have our support”. It is when individual human beings realise that the self can only exist when it is recognised as such by others.
Is Bach only a great composer because he thought that he was; or is he great because he has been recognised as such for generations?
If the social recognition that is needed does not exist then the second best thing is to act to bring it about. And that is protest.
This also clarifies when protest is unhelpful. When protest is designed to obstruct institutions that create concepts of ‘self’. When it turns itself into a lobby group for the advancement of a group identity that already exists and wishes to further its advancement at the cost to others.
Roy Lilley has posed a simple yet immensely powerful question. Why do none of the journalists in the mainstream media not ask their political clients this when they appear on their programmes, podcasts etc? I think we know the answer. Perhaps this simple question requires constant repetition on the various non- mainstream media outlets which appear to be gaining in relevance. I think I may begin by contacting my local MP.
Please do.
Done! I have just had the auto reply to say my MP has received it. I will keep you posted. My MP is not the quickest of correspondents though.
Good thoughts. Meanwhile, I hear that with the second anniversary of the Hamas attack Keir Starmer has urged young people not to join pro-Palestinian demonstrations because they’re “unBritish”. Really?!
I believe it is un-British to ignore and facilitate genocide. I heard Starmer also said it was unpatriotic. Unpatriotic??
Never mind Un-British it’s inhuman not to protest against genocide. Starmer implies that all protest in support of Palestine automatically expresses hatred of Jews. I don’t believe this, I think the majority of protestors hate violence, murder, cruelty and terror and don’t want to see it directed at anyone.
The Problem the Government has is that they are dominated by corporate interests who are dictating policy decisions.
The banks want high interest rates and shortages of money.
The American multinationals (and others) want ineffective tax regimes allowing them free access to Uk markets without paying appropriate taxes.
The Utilities and energy companies want subsidies and high prices.
The Pharmaceutical industry wants subsidies and guaranteed markets and prices.
Big business generally want lower pay and easy immigration.
The big consultancies want juicy contracts from government to tell the government what to do for their clients.
The Building industry want to control supply and to maintain high prices.
Political Parties appeal for funding based on their ability to deliver corporate wishes.
All this is increasingly obvious and is stirring unrest.
Policing unrest and criminalising protest isn’t going to work.
But as in France continuing with the old policies has hit the buffers.
It is not clear what comes next.
But the political Parties will have to learn to reject corporatism.
Political Parties and politicians will have to be funded not bribed.
The Media needs to be subsidised , regulated and freed from its corporate moorings.
And policies will have to be geared to long term needs not feeding from the corporate trough.
The Govt says “don’t protest Gaza today” because it’s an anniversary of mass killing of Jews – yet it arms and aids Israel’s genocide. Remembering past victims means stopping new ones, not silencing those who speak for them.
It is selling armaments in record amount to Israel right now – Channel 4 reported it last night.
The people are revolting!
Protest is so deeply woven into Britishness. We are a Protestant country after all. There appear parallels between our Government and the clerics in the wealth accumulating medieval church which was part of a supranational elite beyond our shores…
Just as a well run and successful business welcomes complaints from its customers as the best source of continuous improvement of its products an services, so a well run democratic government will welcome protests as the basis of the continuous improvement of the services it provides to its electorate.
To summarise: they are ‘tough on protest’ rather than ‘tough on the causes of protest’. It can’t end well that way, can it?
No.
One very important reason for protest is because it confirms to people that they are not alone – others share their concerns, no matter how much politicians or the media try to claim otherwise.
From Twitter
https://x.com/kennardmatt/status/1975525642583085278
NEW: A source very close to the senior leadership of MI6 has got in contact. They wanted to make public the opposition within the intelligence agency to the proscription of Palestine Action.
Senior figures are said to feel it is a distraction from the battle against real terrorist threat – and should never have happened.
The source has been verified.
It just gets worse…………..
Maybe, maybe not. The sentiments are justified. Anyone could easily work out why they might think this.
Everywhere that neoliberalism is foisted upon a country, there is protest.
And then laws are tightened to suppress the protestors, and in many cases arrest the protestors and subject them to physical abuse.
People protest because they can that their governments are unjust.
For a history of this from the 1950s, read
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein
https://amzn.eu/d/4X4Bo4z
I really don’t know where to start? It seems we are living in a giant ball pit from which we might drown! .
Negotiators in Tel aviv decide to try kill the Hamas negotiators and America said very little in a diplomatic sense.
Trumps 20 point peace plan will leave nothing for the people of Palestine. I fear it is all geopolitical and trying to fill pockets, rather than a peace process. (My view)
Meanwhile the world is up in arms, people have been exhausted by protest and little has changed with regards to them doing so.
Of course we may not see multinational diplomacy but right now I I believe that the diplomatic effort is completely wrong.
No Western government has said this is genocide and We are sucking up to Trump and that should never have been on the world stage.
If there is a god and not this biblical fascist nonsense then please help
A particularly timely and effective position; it’s what many Labour Party members and affiliates pursue now more than ever. And if debate on the floor of this year’s Conference wasn’t particularly confrontational , the motions overwhelmingly passed with trade union support call for substantial changes in policy like never before. Starting with public spending sufficient to get things going.
Thanks