In our national mythology, John Bull liked to protest. He did it well and with inventive good humour, standing up to the powers that be when they trod on his toes. In truth it has always been exceptionally hard to protest in Britain. In recent months much of the country has been shocked at the response of the police to protests. It's not British, some people say. Others see it as evidence of a looming police state. Most clearly it shows that people in power share a barely articulated belief that civil society is so vulnerable that a puff of breath will send it crashing to the ground.
In this respect our current leaders are in step with history. The mob has always been the bogeyman of leaders in this country. The Peasants' Revolt of 1381 haunted the medieval and early modern official mindset, as a horrific example of what happened if you did not act fast to stamp out the first spark of violence. Memories of the civil wars traumatised generations. The watchword of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was "passive resistance" – a weedy hope that bad men would go away if you wished for it hard enough. Certainly, the peaceful nature of the revolution appeared to show that liberty in Britain came from polite discussions. Above all, the lesson learnt was that once the people had a taste of power they would become rabid.
It might sound like a paradox but the fear of protest was closely bound up with the defence of liberty. Liberty in Britain has been most closely associated with privacy and private property. "Your home is your castle" has been the uninspiring slogan of freedom in this country. What could jeopardise this more than the property-less mob? Britain achieved many important liberties early in its history. Politicians and public opinion was very proud of this fact in the 18th and 19th centuries. The happy state of affairs, this organic evolution, could only be disturbed by popular protest. It would destroy all those subtle balances which had developed through the course of history. In the 1930s the lord chief justice could say that "English law does not recognise any special right of public meeting for political or other purposes".
Protest gets written out of the history of the development of civil liberties in this country. Taking the long view of history shows, indeed, that few liberties came from revolution or direct action. Yet that is to misread history. I argued in my previous post that the struggle for liberty is more like a guerrilla campaign than all-out war, the victories of which are obscure and often incomplete. Never is this so clear than when we consider protest. Many of the victories of the 18th and 19th centuries were only achieved because behind a John Wilkes, a William Hone or a Henry Hunt stood a crowd. When the state gradually backed down from restrictive measures and began to reform itself it was partly because the threat of violence stalked in the background. Yet protestors have always been seen as being part of the losing side of history. Wat Tyler, the Levellers, the Chartists, those who clashed with the police on Bloody Sunday in 1887 and many others had a profound impact on our politics without, as it were, winning a match.
So easily are these struggles written out of our history that protest has been seen as un-British, not the done thing. Today the same assumption that freedom and order are intimately connected reigns at the centre of power, even if it is articulated in a different way. It is the assumption that all the great causes of history have been sorted out or will shortly be sorted out by a beneficent government. Why rock the boat? And the presumption in favour of private property has been replaced with a presumption in favour of the peaceable – or quiescent. Antisocial behaviour has become one of the great crimes of the age, and what is more antisocial than blocking a street, picketing a shop, temporarily closing a power station or embarrassing the government by shouting at a visiting world leader? What is more harmful to the supposedly fragile fabric of society than words or actions which may offend? Passivity is, in this view, a civic virtue: a good citizen is someone who keeps the economy chugging along by visiting the mall. What could be less offensive than that?
This is to invent new ways to achieve the same ends. Indeed, protest can sometimes damage democracy. But it is also clear that protest has been crucial to the development of liberty and democracy. Today's unpopular cause is tomorrow's political orthodoxy. Protest is often people's first and most profound involvement with politics.
Protest has rarely had a good press in Britain and I am pessimistic that things will ever change. We live at a time when restrictions on protests in Parliament Square are supported on the grounds of health and safety and because it makes the tourist experience more sanitary. Which is to say, of course, that health'n'safety and the tourist industry trump politics: mind how you go! It has made Westminster an intimating place for anyone who has an opinion. It is little wonder that disengagement with politics is endemic. The government and the police have a daunting arsenal of laws and equipment. It is out of proportion to the threat of disorder and it is fatal to politics.
This is the case in all ages. Our statute book and common law bristle with restrictive laws and always have done. In the volatile 1930s the state was adept at shutting down any manifestation of dissent, from Communist AGMs to humble soapbox orators. Often it just dusted down long-forgotten acts of parliament. A meeting could be broken up by a police constable if he apprehended that a breach of the peace was likely, if it impeded other citizens or if a policeman considered that a person of "reasonable firmness and courage" might be alarmed (to name but three instances). Thus the meek campaigner against unemployment was lumped together with the BUF thug. The fact that the neglected statute book needed to be brought down from the shelf suggests, for the optimistic at least, that willing amnesia on the part of officialdom can allow liberty to thrive. Rare, however, is the government which possesses these liberal instincts or is scared into inaction. Taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut is an ingrained habit for those in power in this country; perhaps it goes back to 1381.
When John Wilkes was on trial the judge tried to silence his rowdy supporters. "This is not the clamour of the rabble, my lord," Wilkes replied, "but the voice of liberty, which must be heard." Sometimes it is hard to distinguish between the two, and it has been a repeated failure of British politicians to make the effort. By taking a tough line every time something looks like getting out of hand, the state intimidates the voice of liberty as much as it prevents anarchy.
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