I don't really understand how Paris has real protests almost every weekend, yet we're leaving the EU and we've just had a few marches. Marches do nothing, they're preplanned to cause minimal disruption, just make the people in them feel like they're doing something so that it doesn't go further than that. The march on Saturday needs to at least move off the preplanned route and actually cause some inconvenience.
Ok I get your sentiment and I agree that peaceful protest is just woefully ignored in the UK - but someone with a job and a peaceful life typically doesn't want to risk getting arrested, and potentially convicted, trying to cause trouble on a march.
Things have to be much worse before people are going to start taking that risk, and sadly, while things do not look good, the average Londoner is not yet uncomfortable enough to start doing so.
>Paris has real protests
It may not be your intent but "It's not a real protest if something doesn't burn down" is a bit unfair. If things turn violent/destructive on this march public favour will not look kindly on it in the UK.
Remember the student protests for tuition fees? Those who occupied 30 Millbank were vilified as criminals by _both_ sides. Inconvenient and disruptive for sure - but to the press they are "rioters" and to others in the movement "anarchists who don't represent us".
People have been persuaded by the powers that be that any form of non-peaceful protesting is socially unacceptable and that we should chastise it. Convenient eh? Especially because "Without a path from protest to power"[0] there is never going to be any change or acknowledgement from the government.
Any form of protest that could actually get results is a) too risky for people who are currently comfortable enough and b) intentionally socially ostracised by those in power to discourage it.
Be the change you want to see in the world? But one person in a balaclava setting things on fire isn't going to make any difference to the outcome of the protest without a critical mass of others undertaking the same behaviour for a prolonged period of time.
You don't want french protest culture, IMO. There are some good things about it and specific protests can achieve good results, but it adds up to a very stasis oriented bureaucracy/policy ecosystem. It also gives populists a hand.
Yup I wouldn't want it every weekend. But the scale of Brexit is much bigger, its going to affect our country for decades. It just seems like there should be more protests rather than marches or at least civil disobedience
True, but I think the British (my brothers to the east and north) need to remember that Brexit was ultimately a popular movement. Parliamentary shenanigans played a role, and have been making a mockery of themselves since but...
Brexit was a popular vote, with neither party actually supporting it. The interest in Brexit also grew against the wishes of major parties, industries and most centres of power. A reason parliament can't manage it decently is because parliament was and is mostly against it, including May.
This is not like ip laws, where interested lobbies co-opt the parliamentary systems with as little popular involvement (or knowledge) as possible. This was/is an actual division of opinions among the people. It wasn't imposed from above.
I hope you guys stay in, or at least close but I think it needs to be done in a way that respects the other side too.
I think it's important to recognise that about 3 million UK long-term settled residents were not allowed to vote, and they were the people most strongly affected by it. And some UK citizens abroad were also not allowed to vote. Perversely given the nature of the issue, non-EU citizens with exactly the same type of migration were allowed to vote.
There were about 3.4 million non-UK EU citizens, many of them settled adults of voting age. They would have voted if they had migrated to the UK and become citizens. But they were told all their lives, that EU citizens don't need to become UK citizens, they have equivalent full rights in almost every respect without doing so, so they lived here in a fully settled way akin to citizenship. Sometimes for decades, with children and grandchildren in the UK. Some of them had respected positions in government.
Any of them, of voting age, could have registered to vote in the referendum if they had known sufficiently far in advance. That is, they could have applied for UK citizenship to do it - though not in the timescale in which the referendum actually occurred.
But EU citizens were discouraged from adopting UK citizenship because there was no need. This led to the perverse situation where non-EU immigrants had the vote, and EU immigrants did not, through no fault of their own.
The UK citizens, of voting age, who were not allowed to vote were all abroad. I expect most of them in the EU.
I'm pretty sure both groups would be pro-EU, and that 3 million number is more than enough to change the result.
So I would not say the Brexit referendum result of 2016 was even the popular result, for any reasonable definition of democracy in my mind.
Popular movement sponsored by a weird coalition of lying press, controversy-driven TV, illegal use of personal data, and (seemingly) foreign intelligence services?
The inability to force a clear Leave manifesto is the root of the disaster. What "should" have happened is either a Leave PM, or the 2017 election should have been run on a clear Leave manifesto specifying a realistic deal to be sought against a Remain opposition.
Nothing in politics is ever clean, and all those things are problems. But, we have a tendency to notice these things more when we don't like the outcome. Treating Brexit as illegitimate is not a recipe for a good way forward, IMO. Democracy works better with respect
Ok here's an angle. I can completely understand you if you are concerned about wanting free trade, free migration; but abstracted representation? Foreign authoritative bureaucracies?
I don't mean to say you're wrong. I'm just saying there appears to be obvious, legitimate concerns here, and your suggesting otherwise seems possibly disingenuous.
Yes, the EU representation is quite distant. The UK has an unelected upper house.
> Foreign authoritative bureaucracies?
This isn't great, but at least the EU one is elected. The alternative in all the other trade deals is unelected. Hence all the opposition to things like TTIP, and earlier complaints about GATT etc.
Fundamentally, voting against the EU doesn't make it go away. Some sort of framework always needs to exist to make agreements with other European countries. If the EU didn't exist, it would probably be necessary to invent it.
Hence the Norway/Switzerland situation: not in the EU, has to follow EU rules without having a vote on them.
> legitimate concerns
Here's the thing: hardly anyone talks about those anymore. Brexit has been absolutely dominated by antipathy towards immigrants, both EU and non-EU (despite this not being anything to do with the EU). There's no way to "unwind" EU immigration without ripping families apart.
(I was a Euroskeptic about the treatment of Greece, for example. But ultimately Greece realised that however bad a situation it was in, crashing out would be worse. The same applies to the UK, with "Tory Syriza" running it)
I do think that Karen Bradley's explicit support a couple of weeks ago for the army murdering unarmed demonstrators on Bloody Sunday was not quite the coincidence or "mistake" it was made out to be. It was instead a warning.
Historically, the citizens of the UK and former British Empire have never managed to pull off a revolution. I don't know if complacency is ingrained in the culture (plenty of evidence for the opposite), but the French started beheading kings when they were not happy. The UK still supports a figurehead monarch. No evidence of correlation or causation, but just saying.
I don't think either of those count as popular revolutions; more the layer below the monarchy deciding to switch out the monarch for a more compliant one. Parliamentary, rather than popular, sovereignty. (This is partly why I'm fed up with all this pretending that "will of the people" was a thing in English politics - it wasn't until 2015. Different in Scotland with the Claim of Right.)
So what would count as a genuinely popular revolution? I'm always reminded of Orwell's view:
'Cyclically, the Middle deposed the High, by enlisting the Low. Upon assuming power, however, the Middle (the new High class) recast the Low into their usual servitude. In the event, the classes perpetually repeat the cycle, when the Middle class speaks to the Low class of "justice" and of "human brotherhood" in aid of becoming the High class rulers.'
You’re not wrong – though history could have turned out differently.
After the First English Civil War, there were two broad factions within the New Model Army: the Grandees (aristocratic wing) and the Levellers (the more radical, egalitarian, democratic and progressive republicans). Unfortunately, Cromwell’s faction won that particular power struggle and the rest is history. Nevertheless, this period of revolution acted as inspiration for the colonists in America, which in turn inspired the French republicans, thus influencing countless other revolutionary movements.
> I don't really understand how Paris has real protests almost every weekend, yet we're leaving the EU and we've just had a few marches.
The French make themselves unrulable, while the British have been utterly subjugated by the state. Positive change has completely exited the British imagination, to the point where even progressives can't articulate a positive program, only a defence of whatever happens to exist at the moment.
That would do nothing good. At this point only illegal things (black mail, kidnapping, etc) can force the brexitiers in parliament to call for a new election.
Since it is illegal, I do not endorse it; instead I will just watch the UK burn itself.
