By rejecting the pro-Palestinian protests the government is making a terror attack more likely

By rejecting the pro-Palestinian protests the government is making a terror attack more likely
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
24-25 February 2024

There have now been nine national pro-Palestine demonstrations since October 7 2023.

Every two or three weeks hundreds of thousands of people have marched through London – and cities and towns across the UK – to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The biggest protest took place on November 11 2023, with organisers estimating 750,000 people on the streets of the capital. After climbing over a fence in Hyde Park (the opened gates couldn’t deal with the enormous number of people trying to get onto Park Lane to start marching) it took me a couple of hours to shuffle about a kilometre before I gave up and headed for home.

This tenacious movement has almost certainly had important impacts – think of how the government has become more critical of Israel, Keir Starmer’s shift to saying the “fighting must stop now”, and how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted being worried about “the huge demonstrations in western capitals”. However, it has been unable to compel the government to end its support for Israel and call for a ceasefire.

No doubt some in Number 10 are revelling in the fact they have been able to stand firm in the face of this intense pressure. But it would be naïve to think at the end of every march people have simply gone home grumbling that nothing has changed.

Consider, for a moment, just how strongly someone must feel to give up one day of their weekend, travel to central London and walk achingly slowly in very cold temperatures. And then do it again and again. Seeing the passion and anger on display when I have marched it seems unlikely people will forget how the government and Starmer’s Labour Party have backed Israel’s mass slaughter of Palestinians.

As Iraq War architect Alastair Campbell told the Iraq Inquiry: “I always have a rule of thumb that, if somebody goes on a march, there are probably ten others who thought about it.” Fast forward to today and polls have repeatedly found a majority of Britons support a ceasefire in Gaza – 71 per cent of respondents in a December 2023 YouGov survey.

Campbell was commenting on the February  15 2003 anti-Iraq War march, which was also broadly reflective of wider public opinion. And though it’s often dismissed as being a complete failure, it provides a teachable case study, and an important warning, about the significant and unexpected influence large demonstrations can have on participants, national politics and society.

The biggest demonstration in British history, February 15 was the high point of an anti-war movement that started in the wake of the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on the US and continued putting large numbers of people on British streets several years into the US-UK occupation of Iraq.

In the May 2005 general election, the first since the invasion, support for Labour fell by five per cent, with their governing majority dropping from 167 to 66 seats. “One of the last polls conducted [before the election] by the BBC… suggests hostility to the war was a bigger issue than has so far been acknowledged,” the Guardian noted. “The poll found 23% of people surveyed cited opposition to the war as a reason for being reluctant to vote Labour, while 21% said they did not trust Mr Blair”. There are echoes of this today with reports of Labour scrambling to stop the exodus of Muslim supporters, and voters “in affluent, predominantly white parts of the country, such as Bournemouth, Bristol and Brighton, where many voters also feel strongly about the Palestinian cause.”

And the strength of the anti-Iraq War movement arguably played a key role in terminating Tony Blair’s premiership and political career. By 2010 a ComRes poll found 37 per cent of voters thought the former prime minister should be put on trial for invading Iraq. Starmer, who is still only the leader of the opposition, has already been on the receiving end of a huge amount of flak over the war in Gaza.

The anti-Iraq War movement also led to a shift in activist tactics. Groups like anti-airport expansion group Plane Stupid and anti-austerity UK Uncut turned to nimble, media-friendly direct actions out of a frustration with the A to B marches of the anti-Iraq War movement. Ditto Black Bloc, the now largely forgotten masked activists who vandalised shops and banks during 2011 in opposition to the savage Tory cuts. “All of them said the failure of the peaceful anti-Iraq war march to overturn government policy was formative in their decision to turn to violence,” the Guardian reported after speaking to a number of people involved in actions.

Sadly, another small group of people turned to far more deadly violent action. We know at least one of the 7/7 suicide bombers, Germaine Lindsay, and three of the 21/7 failed suicide bombers – Muktar Said Ibrahim, Yassin Omar and Hussain Osman – attended an anti-Iraq War protest. When he was captured in Rome, Osman said “I am against war. I’ve marched in peace rallies and nobody listened to me.”

Speaking to me for my book on the anti-Iraq War movement, author and activist Mike Marqusee provided a plausible explanation for this journey from non-violent protest to suicide bombings: “It is definitely true that the more you reject a community’s legal, lawful and non-violent expressions and aspirations the more some of them are going to turn to illegal and violent responses”.

When I asked terrorism expert Raffaello Pantucci about this in 2014, he urged caution about making any sweeping claims. “The link between the non-violent protest, subsequent frustration and action is not as linear as you might suggest”, he told me. “I would say that in both the 21/7 and 7/7 lot, there is considerable evidence that they were very radical before the invasion of Iraq. Iraq seems to have acted as an accelerator, but I would say that they were headed down that path long before the 2003 rally.”

The 7/7 atrocities will not have been a surprise to the government – before the Iraq War Eliza Manningham-Buller, the Director General of UK security service MI5, warned ministers and officials that an invasion of Iraq would increase the terrorist threat to Britain.

Similarly, in January the head of counter-terrorism policing in the UK warned there has been an “unprecedented” spike in terrorism threats since October 2023, with Israel’s war on Gaza creating a “radicalisation moment” with the potential to push more people towards terrorism. This follows European security officials reporting in November 2023 they are seeing a growing risk of attacks by Islamists radicalised by the war. “A British security official said the war in Gaza was likely to become the biggest recruiter for Islamist militants since the Iraq war in 2003,” according to Reuters.

As with Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, these warnings confirm the UK government, by continuing to support Israel diplomatically and militarily, and therefore prolonging the brutal onslaught, is fuelling an increase in the terror threat in the UK. So, far from protecting British citizens, the government is actually endangering Britons. Indeed, the repeated expert warnings point to a dark truth: the safety of British citizens is ultimately a low priority for the government, and certainly a lower priority than supporting Israel’s bloodbath in Gaza.

Ian Sinclair is the author of The March That Shook Blair: An Oral History of 15 February 2003, published by Peace News Press. Follow Ian on X @IanJSinclair.

Never forget: grassroots protest is a crucial driver in securing positive change

Never forget: grassroots protest is a crucial driver in securing positive change
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
16 October 2023

The mainstream political culture – from the media to politicians to academia – often has a hard time recognising the decisive role of grassroots activism and protest in securing political change.

For example, last month the Guardian reported on the latest British Social Attitudes survey, noting “From attitudes to gay sex and single parenting to views on abortion and the role of women in the home, Britain has evolved into a dramatically more liberal-minded country over the past four decades.” According to the liberal newspaper, the study suggests “the evolution of liberal public attitudes… have been driven by profound social changes such as more people going to university, more women going out to work and the decline in marriage and organised religion.”

Missing is any reference to the decades of essential work done by the feminist, gay and left-wing activists, with groups like the Women’s Liberation Movement, Stonewall, the Gay Liberation Front and Outrage dealing with violence, threats and abuse in their struggle to win equal rights, changes in the law and shift public opinion.

The tendency to conflate “politics” with “Westminster” is a common way in which grassroots action gets sidelined.

Writing for the Hansard Society blog in August, Dr James Strong, a Senior Lecturer in British Politics and Foreign Policy at Queen Mary University of London, highlighted four factors which determine whether parliament gets to decide on military action. These are: the prime minister’s position, the balance of power between the political parties, what prior experience MPs have had of voting for war, and the nature of the proposed military operation. Missing again is any reference to the role of social movements or public opinion, which the historical record reveals as being crucial in determining the shift in parliamentary norms on matters of war.

As Strong’s research shows, the constitutional convention that parliament be given a vote in advance of military action was set in March 2003, when Labour Party prime minister Tony Blair held, and won, a parliamentary vote to invade Iraq.

However, as Milan Rai, the Editor of Peace News newspaper has explained, “Tony Blair did not want to have a vote in parliament on whether or not to go to war with Iraq. It was the anti-war movement, both inside and outside the Labour party, that forced Blair into holding the vote”.

Indeed Strong himself helps to corroborate this reality in a 2014 article, noting that “until after January 2003” Blair maintained “he would decide and then parliament would discuss, but not vote on, war with Iraq.” The problem for the prime minister, as Andrew Rawnsley set out in his 2010 book The End Of The Party: The Rise and Fall of New Labour, was that the impending war “was already hugely contentious”. The growing anti-war movement held huge rallies in London in September 2002 and February 2003, engendering rising discontent within the Labour Party itself. In January 2003 The Guardian noted ICM polling was showing support for the war had slumped to its lowest level since it started tracking opinion on the question in summer 2002. According to Rawnsley, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, told Blair if MPs were denied a proper vote “people will go berserk.”

The flagship BBC news programmes also seem institutionally prone to framing politics as whatever happens in SW1. “Since we… see ourselves as public policy journalists then necessarily we look at what is happening in public policy i.e. politicians and officials” rather than “those who were not in a positon to make decisions, like the anti-war movement,” Kevin Marsh, the Editor of the BBC Today Programme in 2003, told me when I interviewed him about the run-up to the Iraq War.

Another reason why what happens in the streets is disregarded is because politicians sometimes have the audacity to claim responsibility for positive changes that were in fact fought for by grassroots campaigns – often in the face of elite opposition.

Appearing on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions in the summer, Chris Philp, the Minister of State for Crime, Policing and Fire, did exactly this. “10 years ago, or 15 years ago, a huge proportion of our domestic electricity was generated by coal-fired power stations, which are unbelievably polluting in terms of CO2,” he noted, before bragging “We now have virtually zero electricity generation in the UK from coal-fired power stations.”

In contrast, when no coal was used to generate electricity in the UK for a week in May 2019, environmental campaigner Joss Garman tweeted: “It’s not an accident. A decade of activism and organising at all levels made it happen.” The first Camp for Climate Action rocked up at Drax coal-fired power station in summer 2006, Greenpeace campaigners occupied Kingsnorth coal-fired power station in October 2007, and activists ‘hijacked’ a coal train in June 2008. The same month the Conservatives did propose a policy of only supporting new coal-fired power stations if they incorporated carbon capture and storage (which was, and still is, unlikely to happen). But note the circumstances and date – it was when the Tories were in opposition, keen to rebrand, and in the wake of the civil society-led campaign. And, surprise surprise, when they got the keys to Downing Street they weakened some of their proposals.

“The recession is E.ON’s stated reason for… pulling the plug”, an editorial in the Guardian noted when the energy company withdrew their plan to build a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in October 2009. “The awkward squad of activists who have variously agitated, camped and campaigned over two years will take some persuading that this account represents the whole truth.”

Ignoring role of activism in political and social change is problematic for a number of reasons. As the examples above show, campaigning often play a key role, so ignoring this means people will have trouble understanding how the world works. Second, important figures and organisations will not receive the recognition and respect they deserve. And third, it means the general public will find it more difficult to comprehend its own agency and power to influence government policy.

This is especially concerning when it comes to the climate crisis because, to stand any chance of a liveable world in the future, we desperately need to building huge social movements that can exert an unprecedented level of pressure on governments to force them to implement policies that rapidly reduce carbon emissions. And this needs to happen as soon as humanely possible.

The UK government recently approving the development of the Rosebank oil field – which could lead to the equivalent emissions of running 56 coal-fired power plants for a year – has significantly raised the already high stakes.

The good news is in December 2021 the Stop Cambo campaign won a huge victory, forcing Shell into announcing it was pulling out of the controversial oil field project off the Shetland Islands. The role of protest was confirmed by media coverage at the time.

“Shell say the economic case for investing in this project just isn’t strong enough. There is more at play here than just economics and making money,” Paul McNamara reported on Channel 4 News. “Senior city financiers have told us the blowback they would get from shareholders, from pension funders, from the press, from the public, mean that pumping yet more money into firms with so-called dirty investments often just isn’t worth the hassle now. With Cambo oilfield there is a reputational liability for Shell, and ultimately it is one they’ve decided to walk away from.”

We know too that Equinor, the oil and gas giant which is set to develop Rosebank, has U-turned on other projects. Earlier this year it paused its development of Bay du Nord in Newfoundland, Canada, and in 2020 it abandoned plans to drill for oil in the Great Australian Bight. While Equinor, which is majority-owned by the Norwegian government, said the latter project did not make commercial sense, the Guardian described it as “a significant win for environment groups and other opponents of the project, including Indigenous elders and local councils.”

Of course, the very existence of a grassroots campaign doesn’t guarantee success. Far from it. But, to quote the playwright Bertolt Brecht: “Those who struggle may fail, but those who do not struggle have already failed.”

Follow Ian on Twitter @IanJSinclair.

A guide to the UK’s new grassroots climate groups

A guide to the UK’s new grassroots climate groups
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
5 September 2023

Perhaps it’s because of the pandemic, but Extinction Rebellion’s public opinion-shifting occupations of central London in 2018 and 2019 now feel a very long time ago.

Since then successive Tory governments, ignoring increasingly loud warnings from scientists and the intensification of the climate crisis, have maintained their addiction to fossil fuels and have missed their own Net Zero climate targets on nearly every front.

In response to this inaction numerous grassroots groups have sprung up in the UK, often led by young campaigners.

If, like me, you sometimes get confused by all the actions and organisations, here is a summary of some of the key players and what they’ve been up to.

Just Stop Oil

The most obvious descendent of Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil’s confrontational – always non-violent – actions have the fingers of XR co-founder Roger Hallam and his supporters all over them.

Established in February 2022 with the aim of stopping the UK government licencing new oil, coal and gas projects, the group has undertaken a huge number and range of actions, including gluing themselves to the frames of famous paintings, slow-walking on roads to hold-up traffic and disrupting high profile sporting events.

By May Just Stop Oil had reported over 2,100 arrests, with 138 people spending time in prison, many without trial.

There has been a lot of discussion about whether their actions are effective. And while a February YouGov poll found 78 per cent of respondents thought disruptive protests hinders, rather than helps a cause, a more hopeful July survey of 120 experts found nearly seven in 10 rated disruptive protest tactics as “at least quite important” to the success of a movement.

https://juststopoil.org/

Green New Deal Rising

Launched in August 2021, Green New Deal Rising is a movement of young people working to win a Green New Deal for the UK – that is a rapid and radical transformation of the economy to address the climate crisis.

They regularly release videos of activists challenging politicians about their actions, and gained lots of coverage last month when they interrupted Keir Starmer’s speech on education.

In March Green New Deal Rising commenced their Labour Be Bold campaign, with activists picketing Labour Party MPs constituency offices every Friday. “Labour have been backsliding on their commitment to climate action, so we need to put pressure on them to do the right thing and back a Green New Deal,” a Green New Deal Rising spokesperson tells me. “We know that a Green New Deal will tackle climate change and improve living standards. The public are in favour of bold climate policy when economic justice is prioritised, and the Green New Deal does exactly that. We want wealth taxes, public ownership of essential services, a green jobs guarantee and a secure income for all. This is about investing in our future.”

The Labour Be Bold campaign is building towards the Labour Party conference taking place in October. “There is more to come. We will keep organising, keep mobilising, keep the pressure up.”

https://www.gndrising.org/

This Is Not A Drill

“We’re an action reporting website which focuses on amplifying anonymous direct action against fossil fuel companies and their partners,” This Is Not A Drill explains. “Anyone can take climate action and report it through us provided no harm is caused to people, animals or other types of life.”

They don’t have any formal aims or methods, though are guided by three basic principles – carrying out direct action against fossil fuels, decentralisation and anonymity. “We are sceptical about the idea of arrest as a strategy in environmental movements and we support an alternative,” they note. “We know that sometimes it can be tactically necessary to take that risk, but we specifically focus on the types of actions where people aim to get away safely without being accountable to their oppressors.”

The most recent action reported on their website is of activists smashing windows at the Schlumberger Cambridge Research Centre in protest of the oilfield service’s company’s extractivst activity.

Fossil Free London

With their media-savvy, creative actions, Fossil Free London feels like the progeny of mid-2000s non-violent direct action groups like Plane Stupid and Climate Rush.

They aim to make the capital “inhospitable to the fossil fuel industry and the banks that fund it,” their website notes.

“The climate crisis is made in London,” Joanna Warrington, spokesperson for Fossil Free London, says. “The capital’s financial sector is the global engine of the fossil fuel industry, with banks like Barclays pouring millions in oil and gas production every day. London plays host to some of the world’s biggest climate wrecking oil companies – like Shell and BP – as well as the UK government which enables them.”

In May they gained lots of media coverage for their singalong disruption of Shell’s annual general meeting. “Go to hell Shell, and don’t you come back no more, no more!” they sung to the tune of Ray Charles’s hit song.

“We’re preparing for our biggest mobilisation yet – Oily Money Out,” Warrington reveals. “On the 14-20th October, mega-rich oil bosses and their financiers are all coming to London for the ‘Energy Intelligence Forum’ – formerly self-named the ‘Oil and Money’ conference (yes, really!). We’re organising six days of workshops, demonstrations, and disruptions to protest those accelerating climate catastrophe, and say no to oily money in our city. We’re inviting climate activist groups from across Europe to join us, and you should too.”

This Is Rigged

This Is Rigged, a Scottish non-violent direct action group set up in early 2023, has two demands. First, that the Scottish government oppose all fossil fuel projects in Scotland. And second, that the Scottish government create a clear and fully funded transition for oil and gas workers.

“This Government is all talk no trousers,” spokesperson Emma Brown says about the SNP-Green government. “When it comes down to it, on the big questions and the local issues, they’re not brave enough.”

Brown continues: “Climate is not a separate issue from progressive campaigning. We are being let down on multiple fronts, from the silence on new oil and gas projects in our North Sea, the destruction of social housing, the selling off of community land to an oil tycoon (Sir Ian Wood) for bullshit carbon capture in Torry, to the scrapping of our night bus services in Glasgow.”

Their brilliantly quirky website highlights recent actions including activists smashing the case holding William Wallace’s sword in Stirling, repeatedly disrupting First Ministers Questions and spraying red paint on the Scottish Parliament.

“Into autumn and winter we’ll be actively taking inspiration from successful Scottish movements which challenged poverty, and developing ways to connect the crises we face,” Brown explains, noting “Direct action is an effective tool to force political and social change.”

“Business-as-usual is maintained by our isolation, our depression and our hopelessness but collective action, defiance and a bit of cheekiness are our best weapons against it.”

https://www.thisisrigged.org/

Climate Majority Project

Founded in June, the Climate Majority Project is based on the idea there are huge numbers of people who agree with the aims of groups like Just Stop Oil but don’t see themselves as activists, or may not be able or want to take non-violent direct action that could lead to arrest.

“Climate Majority Project works to find the common ground where Swampy and Lord Deben can both stand,” Co-Director Dr Rupert Read tells me. “We are engaging with communities, businesses, actors and producers, farmers, scientists, and beyond to help various sectors of society organise amongst themselves and with each other to address this civilizational crisis. There is no way we get to actually win this without the majority on board.”

They are currently working with advertisers trying to use the dark arts to help the environment, Lawyers For Net Zero, and MP Watch, a network pushing MPs to take urgent climate action.

Jadzia Tedeschi, the group’s Operations Manager: “Climate Majority Project is refreshing as it understands and isn’t afraid to say that most people, workers and leaders alike, are becoming silently sick of business as usual, and are determined to do something effective about it.”

Book review: Saving The People’s Forest: Open spaces, enclosure and popular protest in mid-Victorian London by Mark Gorman

Book review: Saving The People’s Forest: Open spaces, enclosure and popular protest in mid-Victorian London by Mark Gorman
by Ian Sinclair
Peace News
June-July 2023

Following the January 2023 mass trespass on Dartmoor, the campaign to stop the felling of trees in Sheffield and the government U-turn on the privatisation of the forests in 2011, Saving The People’s Forest is a timely reminder that activists working today are part of a long lineage of popular struggle to protect public access to nature in the UK.

The book’s title refers to Epping Forest, at 5,900 acres the largest open space in the London area and visited by millions of people every year. Mark Gorman tells the story of how it was saved from enclosure (landowners grabbing public land for private use) by a hard-fought campaign, peaking in the late 1860s and early 1870s.

Choosing to focus on the role of ‘ordinary Londoners’ rather than elite actors such as the well-known Commons Preservation Society, the insights he gives into the mobilisation, and the many parallels with contemporary protests, will likely be of interest to Peace News readers. For example, like all struggles there were links to other movements active on overlapping issues, with the Chartists and Reform League pushing for universal (male) suffrage forming the background to popular participation in the anti-enclosure movement.

Like the 15 February 2003 anti-Iraq war march, the government tried to stop an 1867 Reform League national demonstration from taking place in Hyde Park in central London, offering alternative venues, which were rejected by the organisers. ‘The League’s leaders believed that only by protesting… near to the seat of government would they achieve the political impact they were seeking’ – exactly why Extinction Rebellion chose to hold its historic April 2019 mass civil disobedience in the heart of the capital.

The campaign to protect Epping Forest included a range of actions, including open-air demonstrations, petitions to parliament, public meetings, legal action, lobbying the Liberal government and, in a decisive turning point, the pulling down of enclosure fences on Wanstead Flats, the most southern part of the forest, after a huge protest in 1871. Though the use of ‘physical force’ was controversial, Gorman argues the visit to Wanstead Flats by Prime Minister William Gladstone the following week ‘seemed ample vindication of the demonstrators’ tactics’. An Epping Forest Act was passed later that year, with another in 1878, ‘preserving it for all time as an open space for the recreation and enjoyment of the public’.

Based on Gorman’s PhD, this local history study is academic in tone and content, though broadly accessible to non-specialists like me – and a valuable examination of an inspiring, if largely forgotten, example of successful environmental protest.

More Power Than We Know: Public opinion and government pandemic policy

More Power Than We Know: Public opinion and government pandemic policy
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
27 April 2023

The 100,000s of WhatsApp messages sent by government ministers during the pandemic and leaked to the Daily Telegraph led to days of news coverage last month.

However, other than the being published in the Tory-supporting broadsheet, one important part of story has already been forgotten.

As the Telegraph reported on March 3 “Boris Johnson considered lifting lockdown restrictions early but decided against it after being told that such a move would not be popular with the general public.”

This refers to discussions on WhatsApp during the first lockdown, on June 6 2020, with the prime minister arguing for easing some restrictions earlier than originally planned. However, Johnson noted Lee Cain, Downing Street’s Director of Communications, and James Slack, his official spokesperson, “still think the whole package [Johnson’s wish to remove some restrictions early] will be too far ahead of public opinion.” Health Secretary Matt Hancock agreed, replying “My view is the public are right and we need to hold our nerve.”

The Telegraph notes this “was not the only time that public opinion was used to formulate policy, or at least to inform it”. In April 2020 Hancock messaged Johnson’s Chief Advisor Dominic Cummings: “We should do a Cabinet briefing on the polling – so they know that >50% of the public want the same or stronger lockdown – including >50% of Tories.” Cummings agreed, setting up a briefing from pollster Isaac Levido. In both of these examples public opinion, or at least the government’s perception of public opinion, strengthened the hand of the (slightly) more sensible actors in government.

Unsurprisingly, the Torygraph, which published lots of articles on covid from the dangerously ignorant Toby Young, framed the WhatsApp messages above as the government being driven by spin doctors rather than the science. In reality the public consensus was supported by expert opinion: in May and June 2020 scientists from the government’s own Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) group, Independent SAGE and the World Health Organisation all warned the government about lifting restrictions too early.

There are also indications public opinion played a key role in forcing the government’s hand in introducing the national lockdown in the first place on March 23 2020. In April 2020 a Telegraph report about the government’s lockdown “exit plan” quoted a “cabinet source” as saying “They [the government] are waiting for the public to change their mind. We didn’t want to go down this route in the first place – public and media pressure pushed the lockdown, we went with the science.”

Why is all of this important?

First, the influence of public opinion in compelling the government to lockdown earlier than it would otherwise have done, and also discouraging the government from opening up as early as it would have liked, likely saved tens of thousands of lives.

Despite this, as far as I am aware there hasn’t been any serious discussion about the impact of public opinion and protest on government policy during the pandemic. All governments like to project an image of themselves as one of being in control and making decisions in a timely and deliberate manner. And the media reinforces this framing by focussing their coverage on elite actors in Westminster. Not unrelated, there is a persistent, despairing notion held by some people that public opinion is unimportant, and dissent and action a waste of time. “The government will ignore you”, “Voting won’t change anything” etc.

In contrast, the evidence above suggests a far more nuanced, and hopeful, conclusion: in the right circumstances public opinion and protest can have a significant impact on government policy. In short, to quote the title of legendary US activist David Dellinger’s 1975 book, we have More Power Than We Know.

Indeed, a careful reading of the news tosses up many examples of the public’s power.

Take, for example, the government’s plan to raise the age people can claim their state pension – to 68 years of age. This was due to happen after 2044. However, in January the Sun newspaper reported “the Treasury is said to want the change to 68 to come in as early as 2035”, with Chancellor Jeremy Hunt “eyeing up announcing the move as early as the March Budget.”

Though pensions aren’t the most exciting topic they are nevertheless incredibly important. Increasing the pension age would impact millions of people, giving them less time in retirement, with poorer people being hit the hardest as they tend to have a lower life expectancy.

But there is some good news: at the end of March the government announced that the decision on whether to raise the pension age had been postponed until after the next election. Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride linked the delay to a slowing of the rate of increase in life expectancy, according to the Financial Times. However, the Guardian – in a tiny report on page 20 – highlighted two other factors behind the U-turn: “Ministers had feared a potential backlash to the change from middle-aged voters. Riots in France over a planned increase in the country’s pension age to 64 have also spooked UK officials.”

Writing in the Financial Times last month about the ongoing unrest across the channel, Simon Kuper dismissed France’s “irrelevant Parliament”.

“France today has three branches of government: the presidency, the judiciary and the street. If the president decides to do something, only the street can stop him — by stopping the country through protests and strikes.”

So it seems that even protests that occur in another nation can have a significant impact on British government policy. Moreover, it’s important to note the British government put their pension plan on hold because of how the public might react, rather than because of any protests or backlash that have already occurred in the country.

All this is especially encouraging when you consider an article in the Guardian last month analysing the government’s partial climb down on industrial action by NHS workers. “The prime minister has form on belatedly caving in to political pressure,” Heather Stewart explained. She provided two recent examples of Rishi Sunak’s susceptibility to pressure when he was Chancellor: in spring 2022 “he delivered a financial statement widely regarded as inadequate to tackle the looming cost of living crisis. A few weeks later, he was back in the House of Commons, having another go.” Second, during the pandemic he “repeatedly signalled the end of costly furlough scheme, before being pressurised into extending it rather than risk hundreds of thousands of layoffs.”

With opinion polls currently suggesting the Tory government will be kicked out at the next general election (which has to be called by December 2024), the left has a window of opportunity to take advantage of a relatively weak Tory government to push through progressive change.

There is precedent. It seems likely one reason the anti-roads movement in the early 90s was so successful in stopping the government’s huge road building plans was because it peaked towards the tired end of 18 years of Tory rule. And it also seems probable Friends of the Earth’s campaign for a Climate Change Act (passed in 2008) was won partly because of the timing: New Labour’s power was waning, and the environmental NGO was able to generate a political arms race on climate policy between David Cameron’s rebranded Tory Party and Tony Blair’s government.

Rather than Labour and the Tories fighting it out in the gutter to see who can appear toughest when it comes to ‘law and order’, wouldn’t it be great to see public pressure force Westminster to the left on issues like climate policy, public sector pay, refugees and child poverty instead?

Co-authored by Ian Sinclair and Rupert Read, and edited by Joanna Booth, A Timeline of the Plague Year: A Comprehensive Record of the UK Government’s Response to the Coronavirus Crisis is available as an e-book at www.covidtheplagueyear.wordpress.com. 

Follow Ian on Twitter @IanJSinclair.

Research for the Revolution: Interview with James Ozden

Research for the Revolution: Interview with James Ozden
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
8-9 April 2023

Set up in 2022, according to its website the Social Change Lab “conducts and disseminates social movement research to help solve the world’s most pressing problems”, with a particular interest in environmental protest. This research, it hopes, will “inform advocates, decision-makers and philanthropists on the best ways to accelerate positive social change.”Founder and Director James Ozden tells Ian Sinclair about the Social Change Lab’s origins, some of its key research findings and the importance of Extinction Rebellion’s The Big One action taking place from April 21-24.

Ian Sinclair: What inspired you to set up Social Change Lab?

James Ozden: Before Social Change Lab, I spent several years working full-time for Extinction Rebellion and Animal Rebellion on their campaigns and strategy. Throughout this time, we had so many thorny questions on how to design and execute a good strategy: Who should we target? How disruptive should we be? How do we best mobilise people to join us? We had many more questions than answers and it didn’t seem like anyone was doing research that was directly helping us answer these questions.

In addition to this lack of relevant research, we also had a tough time fundraising as more institutional funders would express scepticism whether our campaigns were actually having a big impact, or even a positive impact. We would hear time and time again that our actions might be alienating people and putting them off the cause, even though there was very little research to back up these campaigns. Even though most of us had the intuition that we weren’t necessarily putting people off, based on the successful disruptive nature of previous people-powered movements like the US Civil Rights movement, we weren’t experts of the political science literature and struggled to prove this empirically.

As a result, I wanted to personally delve into the social movement literature to understand how valid these concerns were, as well as commissioning some high-quality public opinion surveys of UK direct action to understand the impact of ongoing campaigns. Then, Social Change Lab was born.

IS: The Social Change Lab has already published an impressive amount of research. What are some of your key findings so far about social movements?  

JO: One piece of research I’m particularly proud of is our work on the radical flank effect, which is the mechanism whereby radical factions of a movement can increase support for more moderate factions. This has been theorised for a long time and also demonstrated experimentally using online surveys with fictional organisations, but never in a real-life setting with existing campaigns. Using nationally representative YouGov surveys we commissioned, we managed to identify that increased awareness of Just Stop Oil after a disruptive campaign increased support for more moderate climate organisations, like Friends of the Earth. We also found that increased awareness of Just Stop Oil led to greater identification with Friends of the Earth, which is relevant as identification with a group or movement usually precludes getting actively involved. For us, this identification of a radical flank effect clearly shows the symbiotic nature of moderate and radical organisations within the same movement, and the importance of a plurality of nonviolent tactics.

Through other public opinion polling we’ve conducted, we’ve also found no evidence that exposure to disruptive tactics actually reduce support for the cause being protested about. We’ve observed that support for the particular organisation might go down, but this isn’t what grassroots activists actually care about. Ultimately, people care about overall support for the goals of a movement and their policies, which we’ve found no negative effects on. We’ve also found some positive indications of people being more willing to engage in climate action after being exposed to disruptive protests.

One smaller but quite interesting finding is the idea that politicians, and probably the public, are very affected by who the group protesting is. Particularly, this group is much more persuasive if it’s a group that doesn’t usually take part in street activism and protest. For example, Fridays for Future involved millions of schoolchildren taking to the streets all around the world – and it’s pretty rare for schoolchildren to protest! When things like this happen, it provides a much stronger signal to politicians, and the wider public, that this issue is so important that even groups that are generally less politically active are getting involved.

IS: Your research shows non-violent protest tends to be more successful than violence protest in achieving desired goals. Why do you think this is?

JO: Whilst it’s not a hard and fast rule, the academic literature suggests that nonviolent movements have higher odds of achieving their goals compared to movements who use more violent tactics. For example, research from the US Civil Rights movement showed that whilst nonviolent protests increased votes for Democratic candidates, violent protests actually increased votes for Republicans, antithetical to the aims of many activists.

There are a few mechanisms which might explain the relative strength of nonviolent tactics over violence, but most importantly, it’s the ability to turn out larger and more diverse crowds. Erica Chenoweth, a professor of political science at Harvard, studied over 300 social movements from 1900-2006. One of their key findings is that nonviolent movements tend to be larger in size, as well as more diverse. The reason for this is that violence only attracts a niche demographic, typically young men. Relatively very few people want to engage in physical violence – it presents risks to their safety if faced with police repression, which is especially true for more marginalised groups. However, movements are successful when they can attract people from all walks of life, whether that’s children, the elderly and everyday working people. As such, nonviolent movements provide a more inclusive and safe environment for broad swathes of the public, which in turn provide a compelling signal that an issue is cared about by the public at large.

IS: In January Extinction Rebellion announced a shift away from disruptive action, pushing for a turnout of over 100,000 people at The Big One – a more conventional, legal protest outside parliament on April 21. Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain have vowed to continue their disruptive civil resistance. What’s your take on Extinction Rebellion’s tactical shift, and what do you think the grassroots climate movement in Britain should do next?

JO: I think this was actually a pretty good move by Extinction Rebellion. The reality is, groups like Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain have been the main groups taking more disruptive forms of action over the past year. However, these actions tend to appeal to a fairly small subset of the population, so participation isn’t as large as one would hope. As a result, there are actually lots of people who want to take part in climate activism, but they aren’t willing to risk prison like many Just Stop Oil or Insulate Britain activists. This is exactly the gap that Extinction Rebellion is trying to fill – by organising mass, nonviolent protests that can draw a much larger and more diverse crowd.

I think it’s vital that the climate movement offers different levels of engagement, and think that this decision reflects that. Ultimately, we need a variety of approaches to tackle this huge problem, both disruptive and non-disruptive, and huge swathes of people getting involved. So if this decision means more people take part in climate action, I think that’s the right call.

Obviously, the proof will be in the pudding when we see how many people turn out for the Big One from April 21-24, but I’ve heard it’s on track to being the most well-attended Extinction Rebellion demonstration to date.

Fundamentally, Extinction Rebellion has always been an experimental organisation, and I think this decision reflects that. Whilst their disruptive tactics led to huge progress in 2019, significantly impacting UK public opinion and even global discourse on climate change, the results have been harder to see recently. Many people have been complaining that they support Extinction Rebellion’s goals but don’t agree with their tactics – well, this is Extinction Rebellion’s challenge to all those people: “We’ve changed our tactics, so now will you join us on the streets?”

https://www.socialchangelab.org/

Book review. The Ledger: Accounting for Failure in Afghanistan

Book review. The Ledger: Accounting for Failure in Afghanistan
by Ian Sinclair
Peace News
June-July 2022

Presumably hastily put together after the disorderly US-UK-NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, The Ledger is written by two advisors to the Western militaries and Afghan government: David Kilcullen and Greg Mills. Their roles gave the pair an enviable level of access to top level US-UK government and military sources, whom they cite regularly, but is also likely a key reason why their analysis is so restricted, generally limited to what Noam Chomsky calls the ‘fight it better’ school of criticism.

Kilcullen and Mills provide a number of reasons for the West’s failure including: an absence of strategy and political leadership, shifting war aims, a refusal to stay in Afghanistan for the long-term, insufficient troop numbers, underestimating the Taliban, and failing to address a key source of support for the insurgency – Pakistan.

As the endorsements from the UK chief of defence staff and former US chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff make clear, this isn’t a book written for peace activists. Nevertheless, it does contain some useful information.

For example, in December 2001, after the US-led invasion and defeat of the Taliban, anti-Taliban Afghan leader Hamid Karzai pushed for peace negotiations with the Taliban. This move was blocked by US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

This was a huge missed opportunity – the war’s ‘original sin’, according to United Nations special envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi – opening the door to 20 years of death and destruction.

How Rumsfeld overriding Karzai’s wishes fits with the authors’ claim elsewhere that a central objective of the US-led occupation was ‘promoting democracy’ is never explained.

Elsewhere, Killcullen and Mills mention in passing that the reduction of Western advisors and contractors in the last two years of the Obama administration ‘was driven by American domestic politics.’

This is a significant and hopeful acknowledgement for peace activists, and fits with evidence public opinion had a constraining influence on British forces in Afghanistan (see PN 2644 – 2645).

Frustratingly, the authors ignore a lot of important arguments and information. The high levels of violence meted out by US-UK forces is barely mentioned, while the idea that a police operation should have been conducted to capture the perpetrators of 9/11 is never considered, nor the argument that it was the military occupation itself that was the root problem.

Those interested in reading more critical analyses of the war in Afghanistan should seek out Fred Ledwidge’s Investment in Blood: The True Cost of Britain’s Afghan War (Yale University Press, 2013) or Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence by Sonali Kolhatkar and James Ingalls (Seven Stories, 2006).

Book review. Veteranhood: Rage and Hope in British Ex-Military Life by Joe Glenton

Book review. Veteranhood: Rage and Hope in British Ex-Military Life by Joe Glenton
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
31 December 2021

A wide-ranging memoir-polemic, Joe Glenton sees his new book is an attempt “to address the commonly held idea that we vets are all irredeemably right-wing.”

Glenton, who served in Afghanistan with the British Army’s Royal Logistical Corps before going AWOL in 2007 and refusing to fight in the war, proves to be an excellent guide to this complex and often controversial topic, deploying lashings of black humour and military lingo (explained for the uninitiated).

Rather than “a reactionary blob”, he argues the military has always been a contested space, with a rich, though largely unknown, history of progressive dissent and resistance in the ranks. This applies to veterans too, with Glenton and others working in grassroots organisations such as Veterans For Peace UK and Forces Watch. 

His brief historical overview of political and social struggles within the military is exceptional, with inspiring pen portraits of the New Model Army in the English Civil War, the radicalising Cairo Parliaments at the end of World War Two, Ahmed al-Batati’s 2020 Whitehall protest against the Yemen War, and other rebellions. Another impressive chapter focusses on the post-9/11 Militarisation Offensive in the UK – the extensive campaign by the government, military, MPs and the media “to stymie criticism of British foreign policy on the home front by popularising the military.” This, he notes, was not planned and run by the Tories, as you might expect, “but by the most violent force in British politics in my lifetime: New Labour.” 

Glenton is similarly sharp in his criticism of high-profile military veterans (“either openly reactionary or political mediocre”) and those ex-military figures who end up in parliament, such as former Minister for Veterans Johnny Mercer MP (“the sullen personification of a failed officer corps”) and “NATO-backing” Clive Lewis.

He quotes testimony from other veterans throughout the book, with one comparing large parts of military training and culture to domestic abuse, noting the commonality of “controlling, coercive and threatening behaviour”. As another veteran argues, “It is not just battlefield trauma that causes mental health issues but the conditioning associated with training have a massive part to play.”

Glenton isn’t a pacifist though: he describes his politics as mostly anarchist and libertarian socialist, and explains he would seriously consider supporting UK military action in defence of Palestinians or Kurdish Rojava. And while the book is a radical critique of the institution of the military and how the armed forces are used by the ruling class as an “instrument for imperial violence”, “the Mob” continues to exhibit a pull on him. He clearly has affection for some aspects of military culture, and respect for the men and women who have worn the uniform. “These are not simple lives, and they defy simple interpretations”, he notes.

While some non-fiction books can be a chore to read, Veteranhood, like his award-winning 2013 biography Soldier Box, is full of brilliant writing, with a certain swagger and righteous anger to the prose. 

Quite simply, Glenton is one of the most important voices writing about UK military matters today.

Shell’s U-turn on Cambo oil field: the importance of protest and public opinion

Shell’s U-turn on Cambo oil field: the importance of protest and public opinion
by Ian Sinclair
6 December 2021

After a number of high profile actions by the campaign to stop Cambo oil field against Shell, the Scottish government, at city financiers and at COP26, and no doubt a ton of other activism by a broad range of organisations, on 2 December 2021 Shell announced it was pulling out of the controversial oil field project off the Shetland Islands in Scotland.

The reporting of this decision by the BBC and Channel 4 News highlights the impact of protest and public opinion on that decision:

“The Cambo field is one of the largest unexploited oil fields left in the region. It was being touted by Shell as a 25 year investment but the oil giant now says the economics don’t justify going ahead… the project has certainly become very controversial. Greenpeace has vowed to take legal action to stop drilling and last month Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, came out against the project. So no doubt Shell will have also been worried about the rising reputational cost of Cambo.”  – Justin Rowlatt, BBC Climate Editor, 08:00 News, BBC Today Programme, BBC Radio 4, 3 December 2021

“So why walk away from a 30 percent share in an oil field that reportedly holds 170 million barrels of oil? Shell say the economic case for investing in this project just isn’t strong enough. [Directly to camera] There is more at play here than just economics and making money. Investors now care much more about how that money is made. Senior city financiers have told us the blowback they would get from shareholders, from pension funders, from the press, from the public, mean that pumping yet more money into firms with so-called dirty investments often just isn’t worth the hassle now. With Cambo oilfield there is a reputational liability for Shell, and ultimately it is one they’ve decided to walk away from.” – Paul McNamara, Channel 4 News, 3 December 2021.

Book review. Roads, Runways and Resistance: From The Newbury Bypass to Extinction Rebellion by Steve Melia

Book review. Roads, Runways and Resistance: From The Newbury Bypass to Extinction Rebellion by Steve Melia
by Ian Sinclair
Peace News
October-November 2021

Steve Melia has taken a topic that could be dully technical and written a book that is both interesting and infused with a sense of urgency in terms of the climate crisis.

Underpinned with 50 original interviews with activists, policymakers and lobbyists, he surveys the key campaigns against government transport policy over the past 30 years, from the anti-roads protests of the 90s to the fight against airport expansion, and the Extinction Rebellion (XR) mass actions in 2019. His review includes the fuel protests of 2000, which nearly brought the country to a standstill.

As a Senior Lecturer in Transport and Planning at the University of the West of England, Melia’s writing leans toward the academic, though he has a journalist’s eye for detail and a good story. He relates how one of the first targets of the 1994 Criminal Justice Act, with its new offence of ‘aggravated trespass’, was ‘a pantomime cow called Buttercup’ at the Newbury Bypass protests: ‘The front half pleaded guilty to aggravated trespass while the rear half argued that his vision was obscured when they pranced across a security cordon’.

His analysis of the impact of protest will be of particular interest to activists – all the movements in the book ‘did have at least some influence on policy and practice’, he argues. For example, the anti-roads movement triggered a significant shift in public opinion and government policy, with most of the Tories’ planned road schemes dropped by the mid-90s. ‘Swampy had a lasting impact,’ notes a government advisor in the mid-2000s. ‘To build a road now is a lot of aggro.’

However, Melia notes government transport policy tends to change for three interconnected reasons: the strength of argument and evidence, the economic context, and public opinion – often driven by direct action. On the last point, he maintains ‘the main message of this book for XR or any other protest groups is that your actions will only work if you bring public opinion with you.’ This reference to XR – Melia was arrested during the April 2019 Rebellion – is, in part, about the controversial action to occupy a tube train at Canning Town in October 2019.

‘The need for disruptive protest action has never been greater’, he concludes. With the government attempting to push ahead with the expansion of Heathrow airport and a huge road building programme (sound familiar?), Roads, Runways and Resistance couldn’t be more timely.

Roads, Runways and Resistance: From The Newbury Bypass to Extinction Rebellion is published by Pluto Press, priced £16.99.