Why Radicals Need A History Lesson

ANTHONY BARNETT SEES WORRYING PARALLELS BETWEEN THE SELF-ABSORBED VIOLENCE OF THE MAYDAY PROTESTS AND THE COLLAPSE OF 1960s RADICALISM.

THE NOW-NOTORIOUS demonstration which took place on May Day 2000 in central London harmed the environmental and social justice movements it was supposed to advance and benefited the authorities it was supposed to defy. Perhaps because the demonstration was so small, the policing so skilful, and the exploitation of the event by Turkish Stalinist groups so crass, the harm will not last. Nonetheless, an image of the politics of opposition to social and environmental degradation has been created which itself degrades all of us who want a sustainable world. This image will be exploited by the authorities just as it will be used to sell newspapers by the corporate media.

There has been talk from those behind the demonstration, directed especially at high-profile campaigners like George Monbiot who were once part of Reclaim the Streets, that there should be no criticism in public, no division in the face of the enemy'. Such talk is little different from the desperate rhetoric wheeled out by mainstream political leaders to protect their own policies as things go wrong. It is the language of control freaks.

If there is any one overarching principle for the environmental movement it is that we must be able to debate and discuss truthfully. Our authority resides in the claim that we can see the reality of what is happening more clearly than others. This claim must always be willingly tested and retested. One of the weaknesses of those who work for a sustainable world is a tendency to turn their beliefs into a quasi-secular religion. There is even a desire to remain a voice in the wilderness. But as David Hayes has pointed out, the image of oneself as a lonely and spurned voice is a cliche of bourgeois individualism and a consumer society.

If we remain voices in the wilderness, all will be lost. Including what is left of the real wilderness, from the Arctic glaciers to the Himalayan redoubts. To succeed we must become first a central part of the argument and then win it convincingly - as democrats in a democratic process. A process that itself will be improved and opened up as we succeed.

This means engaging in a non-sectarian, non-violent dialogue with the public.

If this sounds dull and off-putting, then that is only because a peculiarly British education all too often leaves a large residue of childish, lumpen suspicion in the heads of those it is supposed to assist towards the freedom and facility of adulthood. Good arguments may be hard, they should never be dull. Once, Reclaim the Streets used to be witty and inventive in the cause of its points of view. It broke the law, but in a way that engaged the sympathy of many law-abiding citizens. It expanded the forms and attractiveness of a debate which, because it wants to be taken seriously, needs colour.

There was a moment of such imagination on May Day. As the Square opposite Parliament was dug up and reclaimed, women sowed hemp across it. As the demonstrators left, an official lawn was relaid and appearances returned to normal. But now, below its surface, marijuana has begun to germinate. It will push its way up alongside the more acceptable grass, only to be mown down by the forces of order. Nonetheless, as the elected representatives of the people get stoned on alcohol in the countless bars of the Palace of Westminster, and agree that it is too soon' to consider the legalisation of substances which most of their children offer to their friends as a matter of course, one or two little shoots of weed will escape the landscape gardeners and poke their defiance into Parliament Square. All of its grass will hide their slender illegality within its midst, and the whole Square will mock the politicians who hate nothing more than to have their pomposity exposed.

A familiar point has been made in a fresh way. If heroin poppies had been planted, it might have been different. But so far no one seems to have died from a overdose of pot. The relative harmlessness of the marijuana plant, and therefore also the injustice of imprisoning those found to have it in their possession, and therefore also the stupidity of which our rulers are capable, have all been neatly demonstrated.

This was hardly an Earth-reclaiming point. Perhaps its modesty in the face of our planetary crisis seemed to justify more extreme measures. But all that the violence which followed achieved was to proclaim the futility even more loudly. Worse, it did so in a manner which invited the public as a whole to regard all such 'protest' as strategically pointless and personally dangerous, all too likely to claim them as its victim.

Some of it was truly mindless. I've been told by one of the demonstrators that as the crowd surged up Whitehall, some of those who scarred the Cenotaph with their graffiti probably did not even know what it was they were desecrating. All they saw in front of them was a bit of blank wall. They probably had no idea that the memory of their own great-grandfathers was symbolised by its white stone.

There was also a more willed and motivated violence. Part of this came from ludicrous groups such as 'Dev-Sol' who even paraded portraits of the authoritarian mass murderer and great-power junkie Chairman Mao. Do they not know the cynical manipulation which lay behind his so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution? Are they going to reclaim the streets by endorsing the conqueror of Tibet?

I witnessed a similar, if much larger and graver escalation in the late 1960s. Then too a movement of protest -- at that time against the Vietnam War -- began with colourful and thoughtful demonstrations and teach-ins. This, the original 60s movement, was nonsectarian. It encouraged debate and celebrated difference. But the limitations of such an approach became more obvious as the War escalated.

The goodwill of those involved was then exploited by those who claimed the answer already existed in doctrines of Trotskyism and Maoism. They used the protests and exploited a natural and proper desire to change a system which was slaughtering the innocent.

The result was that non-sectarianism and openness became a gateway for the most vicious sectarianism and bunkered cynicism. The protest movement against violence proved unable to oppose an escalation into violence from within its own ranks because it offered its generosity to all views however extreme they might be. It was thereby fatally drawn into its own self-destruction.

Good things came of it, of course. The feminist movement saw women turn the egalitarianism and militant self-expression of the 60s against an extraordinarily male chauvinist culture of chicks and birds. The modern environmental movement also started then, as socialism put its attachment to material production before the realities of ecological limits and deeper human needs.

And by the early 70s, the sects and militants that moved in on the genuine grassroots political mobilisation scorned such 'petit bourgeois' concerns.

This brings us to the heart of the matter. For the uptight, hard-nosed, supposedly practical revolutionaries reproduced forms of domination from the very order which they supposedly opposed.

Always beware of those who offer a quick fix and a direct route in place of a long revolution. In all likelihood, they have absorbed the call for instant gratification which is the essence of consumer capitalism.

We can see this in the so-called 'anarchism' of those who joined Reclaim the Streets. When unrestrained by the proud traditions of tolerance and mutual aid which the historic anarchist tradition can lay claim to, anarchism becomes the purest expression of market individualism. It is Rupert Murdoch on stilts. It glorifies the punch-up, moralises against violence (in this case of the police) which it itself has encouraged, presents gut instinct as wisdom and 'whooa gotcha!' as pride. In short, it is desperately humiliating and inhuman, and no more reclaims the streets for humankind than does a traffic jam.

It is quite natural for a sensationalist media to seize upon its hoodlums clowning around and scribbling on the Cenotaph or pelting McDonald's with chairs. The images could not be better designed to make ordinary people feel so powerless that they end up by feeling that they have no alternative but to stay at home and watch digital TV.

The images of violence also strike at the heart of the environmental movement. Images are vital to it. Our world is characterised by action at a distance.

This is hardly new; it began in its modern form with the telegraph and the railroads. But it has intensified in the range and speed of movement and in sheer size. The consequences, from gridlock to global warming, suggest that the opportunities offered to each of us can turn into 'unfreedom' for us all. That what seems to extend the range of any and every individual can lead to a terrible, irreversible fatality for every one of us.

To respond to the threats this represents demands that a great majority of people see, feel and understand how their own actions lead to outcomes beyond their immediate horizon. They -- we -- need to imagine the community of the millions who are acting just like ourselves, so that we can see the consequences. This process of imaginative self-understanding is best grasped through images. These bring home the argument, make tangible what seems abstract and allow us to feel for ourselves what is beyond direct experience.

The movement for environmental sustainability and social justice lives off images. Not because they are superficial but, on the contrary, because they need to persuade others of the fact that they see further thanks to the reach and ambition of their arguments. This, however, makes them especially vulnerable to being wounded by images.

The symbolic actions undertaken by Reclaim the Streets in London on May Day were criminally negligent with appearances. They allowed themselves to be used by those who wanted to escalate the images of opposition into an all-or-nothing confrontation that is the opposite of democracy and the negation of politics: a symbolism of despair masquerading as hope.

A great opportunity is opening up before the environmental movement. World inequality has become insupportable. In both human and global terms, the call to make the way the world is governed genuinely open and accountable is becoming increasingly hard for those in power to resist. Many have started to support it. To achieve the success that this makes possible, one thing is essential: constitutional democracy -- not the rule of the majority but the protection of the rights of all. It means we have to recognise the need for our own diversity as part of our larger survival and prosperity. We must preserve our vulnerability, not subordinate it to the spiteful rage of sectarian violence. Hesitation must be resolutely defended from the taunts of those who claim to know best. The capacity to doubt needs to be extolled as the constant companion of determination.

Reasoned opposition to our own arguments should be welcomed as a kiss of life.

In these circumstances, the reckless thuggery of Reclaim the Streets can be seen not just as an old-hat refusal of revolution in the name of the vicarious pleasure of shocking others, but also as something more dangerous: the last hope for an old order which needs us to retreat to the gesture politics of the futile now that it has lost the mantle of practical wisdom and political credibility which it enjoyed throughout the Cold War.

Anthony Barnett was the founding Director of Charter 88. His books include Iron Britannia, Power and the Throne and This Time.

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