Saturday, June 17, 2017

Protest - or revolution?


I'm not politically tribal, and I am disturbed by the suddenness and intensity of the "protests" that have sprung up in the wake of the terrible fire at Grenfell Tower.

For sure, there are questions to be asked. For example, I'm amazed that Grenfell residents were advised in a 2014 newsletter that "(unless there is a fire in your flat or in the hallway outside your flat) you should stay inside your flat." I've never seen that on a fire safety notice in any hotel room.

But protests are not spontaneous. They have to be organised. And in the picture above, culled from today's Daily Mail, the protest at St Clements' Church yesterday looks very organised.

By whom? Who are the placard-holders here, and why is the fellow at mid-right, front, wearing a copy of Socialist Worker like a tabard? Someone on the left has already got a printed T-shirt. That was fast.

We are in a very volatile period, and modern communications offer the chance to whip up trouble double-quick. When people protested and rioted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they did not have the right to vote. But now they do - and a third of them don't bother.

I'm suspicious of direct democracy. We need a representative democracy, but one that does listen and does try to act in the best interests of the country. Perhaps these dangerous signs are a measure of the failure of the current, gamed systems in our councils, regulatory organisations and the Palace of Westminster.

2 comments:

wiggiatlarge said...

. Perhaps these dangerous signs are a measure of the failure of the current, gamed systems in our councils, regulatory organisations and the Palace of Westminster.

So true and very worrying, the left are well organised, that has been obvious for years, especially in the protest dept, after all they have been protesting unaposed for yonks about everything.
But this is different, we are talking about a Marxist based Labour party that with Momentun behind it is devouring all the minority groups like a basking shark, all want things, Labour now promises they will get it and and a few organised violent protests sits with that.
What is the answer, buggered if I know, the Conservative party isn't Conservative and is lead by an inefectual PM te other parties are non starters, we desperately need a phoenix like figure to emerge and get a grip of things and smartly, but there isn't one.
The returnees to the Labour party fearful of losing there jobs say it all about politics today, when the likes of Harman and Cooper can say after trashing Corbyn they will all pull together, ie save my job, we are stuffed democracy with any meaning is finished in this country and god knows what the next generation will have as a future.

Sackerson said...

I hope British Phlegm and mutuality will pull us through.