Which Left feels Right?

[Chest Rockwell]

1 hour ago, SuperBacon said:

People march and protest for all sorts of reasons though.

I marched against the Iraq war with my Grandad and it's one of the most important memories I have of us together. I was 18 years old and I felt like we were doing something worthwhile.

The fact that the Iraq war went ahead doesn't make me feel that our efforts were fruitless or that the cause was invalid.

The "protest doesn't get anywhere or change things" thought process is massively invalid IMO.

I don't get what this is supposed to do to provide evidence to the contrary of Tamura's post? It was personally important to you but nothing of what you've said is an indication that it achieved anything..

 

[SuperBacon]

47 minutes ago, Tamura said:

I never said protest can't change anything, right at the start I gave specific examples of when protests have changed things with the caveat they are outside the UK. Yet, there is zero to little empirical evidence that marching from A to B and listening to a few people give speeches has actually changed anything in the UK, at least in living memory. And I say that as someone who has been on many demonstrations, they act at a safety valve for public anger and achieve little. In 1992 notoriously crap neo-Nazi band Skrewdriver planned a major gig in London with a redirection point (venues for Nazi gigs were never publicly advertised) at Waterloo Station, the Anti-Nazi League decided the best way to protest was to organise a march in Thornton Heath, about eight miles away from Waterloo. In contrast, Anti-Fascist Action decided the best way to protest was to physically confront the fascists at Waterloo. You can read more about it here,

https://network23.org/ra/2017/09/18/battle-of-waterloo-25th-anniversary/

The Thornton Heath affair was an aimless protest that made people think they were doing something, but achieved nothing. But the people who turned up at Waterloo did achieve something, because their protest had a specific objective which was to disrupt the gig by occupying the redirection point. 

Sorry, might have misread/misinterpreted what you meant. Been a long Monday. 

Edit:

@Chest Rockwell See above.

Obviously a protest should affect change, but I still don't see anything wrong with protesting/marching even if you think/know it might not change anything.

At 18, I thought it would, but 18 years later I'd still march* against a war I felt was unjust knowing petty much that it won't change politicians minds.

*I probably wouldn't. I'm very tired all the time these days.

Edited March 22, 2021 by SuperBacon

[JNLister]

Protests can still achieve a lot and/or have a lot of effects even without getting the central "demand." For example, the sheer scale of the Iraq protests arguably led to:

* (As part of the global protests) France deciding not to take part in the war, which led to the US/UK not having the support of the United Nations and raising questions over its legality.

* Blair deciding he had to get Parliamentary approval for going to war, which has now become convention and stopped the UK taking military action in Syria in 2013.

* The political reaction likely contributing to the Lib Dems having the biggest rise in vote share at the next election and their highest ever number of seats. That arguably led to them having the platform in the following election that gave us Cleggmania and deprived the Tories of governing alone.

* Blair having to go ahead with the war despite it being known it was unpopular, meaning he couldn't come out later and say "yeah, we made mistakes but everyone was well up for it at the time." The opposition already being so publicised arguably led to the inquiries and the fact that Blair's legacy is always going to have a massive asterisk and Iraq will probably be in the second line of his obituary.

* The formation of protest movements and networks in Cairo that can be directly traced to a revolution eight years on, which in turn sparked revolutions and changes government in three other neighbouring countries.

[JNLister]

God bless the woman who watched last night's events on TV and phone in to local radio today to claim "I've lived in Bristol 90 years and never seen anything like it."

 

[Carbomb]

The narrative about protests, like with so many things to do with non-establishment politics these days, has been massively distorted. There's this perception that they're expected to change things by themselves, but anyone who takes time to look at any revolutionary/rebellious/counter-authority/reforming movement will understand that protests, demonstrations, and marches were only ever meant to be one tool in the box, and possibly not even the main one. They have several aims:

1. Raise awareness - An over-used phrase these days, but in this case applicable. Protests are there to let both establishment and the wider public know that there is an issue that enough people feel strongly about to get out there, be heard, disrupt regular life, and risk arrest doing so. At best, there's the hope that it causes the authorities to realise that this is something they need to address, and at worst, it inspires more and more of the general populace to add their efforts to the movement to increase pressure on said authorities.

2. Inspire solidarity - A big part of why people don't get involved in politics in general is because they think that they as an individual can't achieve anything, and therefore won't bother. Protests present them with a visual representation that they won't be alone if they do get involved, and that chances are their efforts will be fruitful. There's also the intangible psychological boost of seeing and realising that the old adage of "united we stand" rings true.

3. Provide a starting point - Probably the most powerful aspect of protests is that they are a space from which to begin the organisation of a movement that can go on to take more effective actions. As above, they let people know that there's something going on, but they also form a nexus to connect people wishing to organise who otherwise may not have met. 

It's the same with petitions: they don't necessarily do anything in themselves - there's a similar hope that at best the authorities take notice and do something in the face of numbers, and at worst, people organise - but they provide the basic ground from which to start.

Organisations like Avaaz and 38 Degrees demonstrated it well (and showed that, in some ways, advances in internet connectivity may have caused the online petition to supersede the protest as a tool), by using protests and online petitions to organise and fund-raise for legal challenges and nation-wide information campaigns to affect elections.

Basically, protests are a statement of intent to pave the way for further action. They're a rallying call, and people need to remember they're only effective if they do rally, and help to do something about what they're protesting.

That's not to say that those who only go to protests aren't doing anything; it all contributes to a larger picture. But those who wonder why protests don't seem to be effective any more are looking at them in terms of just the protests themselves, and not the organised action on the same issues that take place. If change is achieved following a protest, more often than not it's because of other things going on behind the scenes that were made possible in the first place by protest and petition.