MPs, understand this: protests are inevitable when you fail to represent the people

Andy Beckett

Politics is not just an activity conducted in Westminster corridors, with the voters locked out – as marches over the climate crisis and Gaza show

Sun 10 Mar 2024 13.01 GMT

Where should politics happen? For most MPs, accustomed to the Palace of Westminster’s inward-looking spaces and rituals, the answer is obvious. In parliament and its associated offices, corridors, committee rooms, bars and tea rooms; in Downing Street and its surrounding maze of ministries; and in the parts of the media that mould political opinion.

This country is supposed to be a representative democracy. Except for very occasional referendums, periodic elections, voxpops and opinion polls, or perhaps the odd exchange with their MP, voters are not meant to be directly involved. A sign of a healthy political system, we are often told, is one where most people get on with their lives and leave politics to the professionals.

But Britain doesn’t feel like that kind of place now. Political professionals – whether MPs, ministers or party functionaries – are regarded by many voters with contempt: as incompetent, corrupt, uninspiring, or a combination of all three. Meanwhile the public spaces of Westminster and the centres of other cities are busier with protests than they have been for years. Gaza, the climate crisis, cuts to public services, the crisis in farming and other huge and urgent causes compete for attention, week after week. On many weekends, last Saturday being the latest example, much of central London in particular has changed from a place dominated by consumerism, tourism and statues of dead politicians to a place of banners, placards, chants, speeches, blocked roads and activists climbing lamp-posts, with coloured smoke gushing from protesters’ flares and police helicopters endlessly throbbing overhead.

Rishi Sunak amid protesting farmers after he delivered a speech at the Welsh Conservatives conference in Llandudno, north Wales

For some politicians, many but not all of them Conservative, this is almost a vision of hell. The language they use to criticise the pro-Palestinian and climate protesters in particular is strikingly strong, describing them as extremists, thugshate marchersa mob – despite the protests’ overwhelmingly peaceful nature. Even slightly less intolerant members of the government have had enough. The Gaza demonstrators “have made a point and … made it very, very loudly,” said the home secretary, James Cleverly, last month. “I’m not sure that these marches every couple of weeks add value to the argument.”

Some of this Tory exasperation and outrage is selective and transparently party-political. Rishi Sunak supports farmers’ protests against the Labour-run Welsh government, despite a disruptiveness to their campaign that he condemns in other activists. Desperate opportunism and inconsistency have always been his prime ministerial hallmarks.

A demonstration against the Israeli invasion of Gaza in London on 2 March 2024.
A demonstration against the Israeli invasion of Gaza in London on 2 March 2024. Photograph: Vuk Valcic/Zuma Press Wire/Rex/Shutterstock

The more revealing thing about the reaction of many MPs to the wave of protests is what it tells us about mainstream politics in general. Both the big parties are moving rightwards, having concluded that conservative voters will be decisive at the coming election. This shift means that our revered but often narrow representative democracy is representing the country as a whole even less well than usual – for example, the 45% of voters who believe Israel’s attack on Gaza is not justified. And so, when a parliament fails to speak for enough voters, politics takes other forms. In one sense, the Gaza protests, like the climate protests, are a highly public rebuke to the House of Commons, and a reminder of its limitations – of the things that most MPs cannot or will not say. No wonder many MPs wish the demonstrators would just go away.

In London, the protests have arguably been energised further by the built environment and atmosphere of Westminster itself. Britain has long been a democracy that centralises an unusually large proportion of political power in a tiny part of its capital, yet since the 1980s this enclave has become much more fortified. The official rationale is that it’s to deter terrorists, and in this the strategy has largely succeeded, but another consequence has been to separate MPs further and further from voters, behind layers of security barriers, bag scanners, surveillance cameras and armed police – while at the same time making Westminster feel ever more unwelcoming to non-insiders.

Invading this space for a few hours as a demonstrator can feel excitingly transgressive and politically worthwhile in itself, and even more so when ministers and the rightwing media are blustering about your actions being outrageousand trying to find ways to ban them. In the 1990s the American anarchist philosopher Peter Lamborn Wilson (writing under the pen name Hakim Bey) devised the concept of the “temporary autonomous zone” to describe fleeting but politically vibrant territorial occupations, in which “a guerrilla operation … liberates an area of land … and then dissolves itself to re-form elsewhere”. One common current protest chant is “Whose streets? Our streets!” In an age when many feel politically disempowered, the potential of such small victories to be formative experiences shouldn’t be underestimated.

When and if the Tories go into opposition, it’s possible that they will suddenly develop their own appetite for street politics. During the most dominant phase of the Blair government in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the pro-hunting Countryside Alliance organised large marches in London, which became important rallying points for the Tories and conservative Britons in general.

Pro-Palestine protesters with flags in Westminster, London

Awkwardly for today’s Tory critics of disruptive protest, the pro-hunting movement had a militant fringe, which compared itself to the IRA, and threatened acts of sabotage such as draining water reservoirs and even planting fake bombs. These militants received coded support from parts of the rightwing press, such as a Telegraph editorial in May 2002 suggesting that opponents of Labour’s rural policies should “take the gloves off”.

Two truths of our politics are that memories are short and the Conservatives are shameless. It’s not that hard to imagine Tory MPs and voters marching down Whitehall in protest at the policies of prime minister Keir Starmer, while the former prosecutor tries to silence them by taking the current Conservative anti-protest legislation even further. Some controversial Tories, such as the MP Miriam Cates, are already concerned about government plans to create a new, broader definition of extremism, and the restrictions it could place on the right as well as its enemies.

One day, more MPs will hopefully see protest as an essential companion to parliamentary politics, rather than its barely legitimate rival. But as the clampdowns keep coming, that day feels far off.

  • Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/10/streets-mps-protesters-politics-gaza-climate-parliament

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Kodak Carousel S-AV2000 Slide Projectors on interval dissolves

Kodak Carousel S-AV2000 Slide Projectors on interval dissolves. With long focus 250 mm lenses. One Eye on the Road.

This is how it was done, back in ye olde days!

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Socialism, anti-fascism and anti-abortion on Prevent list of terrorism warning signs

Communism also among ideologies on document as human rights groups say UK scheme has been politicised

Vikram Dodd Police and crime correspondent Thu 7 Mar 2024 13.38 GMT Share

A document from Prevent, the official scheme to stop radicalisation, includes believing in socialism, communism, anti-fascism and anti-abortion in a list of potential signs of ideologies leading to terrorism.

It comes as the Conservative government considers widening what it will consider to be extremism.

The document is part of online Prevent awareness training for those covered by the duty to inform if they suspect radicalisation. That includes teachers and youth workers.

The guidance was updated last year and published with little or no fanfare, after William Shawcross’s controversial government-ordered report on Prevent was released.

A former head of counter-terrorism said it risked damaging Prevent, and human rights groups said the government was playing political games under the guise of stopping terrorism.

In a section on the left wing it states: “Two broad ideologies: socialism and communism. Each are united by a set of grievance narratives which underline their cause.”

In a section on single-issue ideologies, the document reads: “Narratives are likely to come from those who seek to change a specific policy or practice, as opposed to replacing the whole economic, political or social system. Examples include animal rights, anti-abortion or anti-fascism. Single-issue narratives can be politically agnostic, meaning they may be neither right nor left aligned.”

Neil Basu, a former police head of counter-terrorism, said: “That is far too nebulous, and there is no qualification. It might lead to unforeseen consequences such as overwhelming the system and bringing the system into disrepute.

“The reputation of Prevent is still very fragile. It makes the haystack unnecessarily bigger in which you are trying to find the needle.”

Those completing the online course get a certificate to say they have awareness of Prevent.

The government commissioned a review of Prevent by Shawcross, whose appointment led to a boycott of the review because of his alleged anti-Muslim and rightwing views.

The guidance for those covered by the Prevent duty was updated afterwards in July 2023.

The document details the main two ideologies driving the terrorist threat to the UK: Islamism, which makes up the bulk of the caseload, and the extreme right wing, which makes up about 20-30% of the caseloads, according to counter-terrorism sources.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “Prevent deals with all forms of radicalisation and it is important that this is effectively communicated within our training products so that frontline professionals are equipped to take the appropriate action.

“All training products are regularly updated to ensure they are reflecting the latest threat picture.”

Jacob Smith, from Rights and Security International, a human rights advocacy group, said: “For years, we have expressed concern about how the government’s broad concept of ‘extremism’ could be open to politicised abuses. It appears that this concern has now been realised through a blatant distinction between how the government wants to treat people on the ‘left’ versus people on the ‘right’ under Prevent.

“Our concern is only heightened by government rhetoric during the past few days that appears to be targeting British Muslims and protesters for Palestinian rights. If ‘extremism’ can mean anything the government wants it to mean, that’s a clear problem for democracy.”

Ilyas Nagdee, from Amnesty International, said: “This is yet another crackdown from the UK government to stifle freedom of expression – including political speech and activism – using the blunt instrument that is Prevent.

“Prevent is brazenly being used here to target political expression as it has long been criticised of doing. The government should not be in the business of rolling out training and guidance on what they deem acceptable or unacceptable political ideologies and forms of activism.”

Other official training documents for Prevent state that “under the Prevent duty” those covered by it must “support” anyone at risk of radicalisation.

It says: “It’s not your responsibility to risk assess the level of radicalisation,” and urges providing “as much context as possible before it’s shared with the police”.

Other official material says details that should be provided to the authorities about anyone being referred to Prevent should include name, religion, social media name, ethnicity, nationality, main language, immigration or asylum status, and any additional family details. It also says data that can be shared can include, neurodivergence, mental health, details about emotional health and cultural factors.

It also asks any referral includes details of the “ideology of concern … provide details of the ideology which may be contributing to making the person susceptible to radicalisation”.

“This training is designed to make sure that when you share a concern that a person may be being radicalised into terrorism: it’s informed; it’s with good intention; the response to that concern is considered, and proportionate.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/07/socialism-anti-fascism-anti-abortion-prevent-list-terrorism-warning-signs

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Facebook Pix : Council Cuts Demo. 9 March 2024

Protest against Nottingham City Council Cuts to services

https://tinyurl.com/2cavehh3

Government Commissioners have been appointed to ‘oversee’ Nottingham Council Finances. It is expected that this will mean significant cuts to public services.

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Protest against Nottingham City Council Cuts

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Councillors warn of ‘threat to local democracy’ in England after budget cuts forced on Nottingham

Elected officials say they are no longer in control of financial decisions affecting hundreds of thousands of people

Tom WallSat 9 Mar 2024 12.31 GMTShare

Councillors elected to run a financially stricken city have warned that local democracy is “under threat” as they no longer have full control of budget decisions affecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of people

David Mellen, the Labour leader of Nottingham city council, said elected members did not have the final say over “devastating” funding gap that led to them approving more than 500 redundancies, council tax rises and millions of pounds of cuts last week.

The levelling up secretary, Michael Gove, last month sent commissioners into the struggling east Midlands authority, which declared itself effectively bankrupt in November.

“[Last year,] we banished the Tory party because no Conservative councillors were elected and yet somehow, by the backdoor, people appointed by the Conservative government have considerable levels of power in our city,” said Mellen. “Our mandate has been impinged upon. These commissioners, and by extension our officers, have more power currently.”

The commissioners arrived after a government-appointed improvement board spent seven months overseeing the council’s efforts to balance its books. The last act of the board was to give the authority’s unelected senior officers the power to effectively write the budget.

“We tried to amend the budget but we weren’t given permission,” said Mellen. “Usually, officers and council members work together. We come up with an agreed set of [budget] proposals to be brought forward to consultation. This year that didn’t happen. [The budget] included things we could live with and things we absolutely opposed.”

Ministers have sought to portray councils such as Nottingham, pictured, as one-off victims of poor management.

The budget included cutting funding for all voluntary organisations and community centres in the city, stopping lunch clubs for the elderly, closing the last two remaining youth centres, potentially closing libraries, and charging for toilets used by homeless people in the city centre.

Mellen, a former headteacher, added: “We have balanced our budget but it has pretty dreadful consequences for communities in Nottingham.”

The city’s troubles stem in part from the collapse of the council’s not-for-profit energy provider in 2020. But councillors point to deep austerity-era cuts and increasing demands on their statutory services, such as social care and support for homeless people. Core government funding has fallen from £127m in 2013 to £32m in 2024.

One in five councils in England say they are most likely to follow Nottingham and issue a section 114 notice, which means they cannot balance their budget, this year or next.

Birmingham, which has also seen some functions taken over by government commissioners, last week passed what has been described as the largest-ever cuts in local government history.

All but one Labour councillor in Nottingham voted for the cuts last week. Mellen said the alternative would have been even worse: “We were strongly advised that the duty to set a legal budget was paramount – that if we didn’t, staff wouldn’t get paid, services wouldn’t get delivered.”

Labour party officials also appear to have exerted influence over councillors behind the scenes. Mellen said the party’s regional office and Keir Starmer’s office indicated that councillors would be thrown out of the party if they opposed the budget, as Labour is trying to project an image of economic responsibility.

“We were advised that [voting against the budget] wouldn’t be beneficial for continuing membership of the Labour party,” Mellen said.

A seated Shuguftah Quddoos wearing ceremonial clothing
Councillor Shuguftah Quddoos, who is the sheriff of Nottingham, was suspended by Labour after refusing to vote for the city’s budget cuts. Photograph: Tracey Whitefoot/Nottingham City Council

The one Labour councillor to rebel, Shuguftah Quddoos, has been suspended by the party. Quddoos, who holds the ceremonial post of sheriff of Nottingham, said all measures to minimise cuts to services put forward by the city’s elected councillors were not included in the budget.

“Local democracy has been completely undermined. I don’t want to be a cog in the wheel,” said Quddoos. “It felt like a complete and utter sham.”

Quddoos said she urged her Labour colleagues to follow the example of the Poplar rates rebellion in 1921, when councillors in the East End of London were imprisoned for defying what they saw as an unfair funding system. Their actions led to fairer funding for poorer areas.

“I’ll go to prison for six weeks. I love my city that much,” she said. “At the end of the day, I need to look my residents in the eye.”

Ministers last month told 19 councils, including six of the eight English councils that have effectively declared bankruptcy, that they could sell off assets, such as land and buildings, to pay for services.

But Mellen said cities such as Nottingham, which was permitted to use £41m from asset sales to fund services this financial year, needed genuine financial assistance from the government.

“We need real money,” he said. “It’s certainly not a bailout and it doesn’t make economic sense. I’ve only got economics A-level but you can’t sustain this way of funding public services. It is like funding the country’s defence by selling Whitehall. It doesn’t make sense.”

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said it had “appointed independent commissioners to guide members and officers to deliver the best possible outcome for Nottingham residents”.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/09/councillors-warn-of-threat-to-local-democracy-in-england-after-budget-cuts-forced-on-nottingham

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What I learned about Photography Projects from Edward S. Curtis

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Revisiting the site of the ‘Battle of the Beanfield’ July 1985

Google map:

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.1921722,-1.6660082,1337m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu

At a meeting of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), in early 1985,  it was resolved to obtain a High Court Injunction preventing the annual gathering at Stonehenge. This was the device to be used to justify the attack at the “Battle of the Beanfield” on the 1st June in Hampshire.   Well it wasn’t a battle really. 

It was an ambush.

It was a magnificent convoy stretching and snaking its way over the Wiltshire Downs,  as far as you could see in either direction.  It was a warm Saturday afternoon as we drove through villages, people stood outside their garden gates, smiling and waving at us.  A carnival atmosphere with little evidence of the ‘local opposition’ that we had been lead to believe was one of the reasons for obtaining the court orders.  A police helicopter watched overhead but there was little other sign of trouble until……..

Seven miles from Stonehenge  (the exclusion order was for four and a half miles),  just short of the A303 and the Hampshire / Wiltshire border,  two lorry loads of gravel where tipped across the road.  Up to this point, no laws had been broken.  I got out of my truck to take photographs when I first saw some twenty policemen running down the convoy ahead of me smashing windscreens without warning and ‘arresting’ / assaulting the occupants, dragging them out through the windscreens broken glass.

I and others who saw this were fearful of the level of violence used by the police in making arrests. Clearly we were in for a beating,  again!  Running back to our vehicles, we drove through a hedge in to the adjacent field.

The scale of the police operation was becoming obvious.  The same level of violence had been applied to the rear of the convoy.  Large numbers of police in many lines deep could be seen on the road forming up.

From then on, the situation grew more tense.  More police reinforcements were brought up wearing one-piece blue overalls  –  without numbers!, ‘Nato-style’ helmets with visors and both full length perspex shields and circular black plastic shields.  A ‘stand-off’ situation developed with sporadic outbreaks of violence.

They charged.

The scenes that followed were recorded by media that had evaded the police blockade.  The story was international news.  ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ type policing was dead.  That which Britain was noted for had now changed to para-military operations against minority groups.

Kim Sabido of ITN, a reporter used to visiting the worlds ‘hot spots’ did an emotional piece-to-camera as he described the worst police violence that he had ever seen.

“What we – the ITN camera crew and myself as a reporter – have seen in the last 30 minutes here in this field has been some of the most brutal police treatment of people that I’ve witnessed in my entire career as a journalist. The number of people who have been hit by policemen, who have been clubbed whilst holding babies in their arms in coaches around this field, is yet to be counted…There must surely be an enquiry after what has happened today”.

There wasn’t.

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Battle of the Beanfield : Location

Google Map

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.1921722,-1.6660082,1296m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu

as was then…..

as is now …..

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Beanfield : Police exposed film

This is the story of the police action at the ‘Battle of the Beanfield’. The attack on ‘The Convoy’ on the way to the Stonehenge Free Festival on the 1st June 1985.

Below is the picture of the exposed film, found around my truck after the police conducted a ‘search’. Much work was lost.

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Being interviewed for the BBC2 Programme ‘Trashed’

Me being interviewed for the BBC2 Programme ‘Trashed’ at Savernake Forest after the police actions at the ‘Battle of the Beanfield’.

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I am invited to be a keynote speaker at the conference in July, University of Porto, Portugal

I am invited to be a keynote speaker at the conference in July
University of Porto, Portugal
Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto • Via Panorâmica, Portugal

https://www.kismifconference.com

KISMIF Conference is an international academic/cultural/artistic event based in the city of Porto (Portugal) and focused on discussing and sharing information about underground cultures, DIY practices, urban arts and other related topics. KISMIF focuses on cultural practices that are used to face more massive and uniform forms of cultural production/creation/mediation, by activating an anti-hegemonic ethos centered around the aesthetics and policies of the daily ‘arts of doing’.

KISMIF is, so far, the only congress in the world that analyzes the theory and practice of underground scenes and DIY cultures as increasingly significant cultural forms in a global context of precariousness and uncertainty.

The KISMIF Conference has a multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspective, open for contributions from the global community of researchers, artists and activists who work on all aspects of underground scenes and DIY cultures and conduct their research within a plural methodological approach. The objective is to debate not only about music, but also other artistic fields such as cinema and video, graffiti and urban art, theater and performing arts, literature and poetry, radio, programming and publishing, graphic design, drawing, architecture, or even cartoons and comics.

The first edition of the KISMIF Conference was held in 2014 and focused on ‘Underground Music Scenes and DIY Cultures’. The second edition (2015) was dedicated to the theme ‘Crossing Borders of Underground Music Scenes’. The third edition (2016) promoted a discussion about ‘DIY Cultures, Spaces and Places’. The fourth edition took place in 2018 and was focused on ‘Gender, differences, identities and DIY cultures’. The fifith edition that took place in 2021 focused on the theme of ‘DIY Cultures and Global Challenges’. The sixth edition happened in 2022 and it was about ‘DIY Cultures, Sustainability and Artistic Ecosystems‘.

The next edition will occur in 2024 and it will be focused on ” DIY Cultures, Democracy and Creative Participation’. All editions of the KISMIF Conference also offer a summer school / advanced seminar, where participants can discuss/analyze in more depth some specific issues around these themes.

Each edition of the KISMIF Conference, in addition to its scientific program, also consists of a diverse social and cultural program formed by a set of artistic events, with a focus on underground music and its artistic expressions. It is intended, therefore, to provide all participants with a unique sensory and scientific experience in terms of global DIY cultures.

Me:
https://www.kismifconference.com/keynote-speakers/alan-lodge

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Facebook Pix : Nottingham Council No-Cuts Demo outside the Council House. 4 March 2024

https://tinyurl.com/29l9chem

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Nottingham Council No-Cuts Demo

Nottingham Council No-Cuts Demo Government Commissioners have been appointed to ‘oversee’ Nottingham Council Finances. It is expected that this will mean significant cuts to public services. Insta360 Ace Pro – 4K Video 3840 x2160

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Pro-Palestinian Protest, Nottingham 2 March 2024

Pro-Palestinian Protest, Nottingham 2 March 2024 Photographer working at protest Insta360 Ace Pro – 4K Video 3840 x2160

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Pro-Palestinian Protest and Event, Nottingham. 2 March 2024

Pro-Palestinian Protest and Event, Nottingham. 2 March 2024

https://tinyurl.com/25ekk9lf

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Facebook Pix : Nottingham against council cuts. Save our Services. 24 February 2024

https://tinyurl.com/2yvjbbjc

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Facebook Pix : Ukrainian Protests, Nottingham. 24 February 2024

https://tinyurl.com/22n58cly

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Facebook Pix : Pro-Palestinian Protest at Barclays Bank’s complicity in the Gaza War. Nottingham. 24 February 2024

https://tinyurl.com/2cjyha67

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Facebook Pix : Pro-Palestinian Protest and Event, Nottingham. 17 February 2024 55edit

https://tinyurl.com/2244yolg

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