… or you get the politicians you deserve pt2.

Like a million other people, I attended the London demonstration against the Iraq War in early 2003.

And like a hefty minority of people there, I had a few concerns about a lot of the opposition to the war as well as about the war itself. I won’t rehearse these now, but I blogged about it elsewhere a few years ago.

But the thing – on that demonstration – that particularly annoyed me was the ubiquitous ‘not in my name’ placard. It’s a question that has been nagging at me ever since. Why did I find a throwaway slogan that annoying?

This came up again recently. Reading Dave Osler blogging about the attacks on the Moscow subway recently, this bit jarred:

“The first point to make is that those whose lives have been ended do not include Putin, or any of the military commanders behind the wars in Chechnya. Almost all the dead will have been office cleaners and shop assistants and others in routine employment.

Those are by definition the only kind of people to be found on tubes in rush hours, and they were no more complicit in Russia’s crimes then their London counterparts on 7/7 were responsible for the invasion of Iraq.”

I asked myself, and the readers of my personal blog, if – by living within a particular polity – we could absolve ourselves of all responsibility for the actions of a government. After all, we pay taxes, we have the option to vote and campaign against a government and it’s policies. Surely, within the arithmetic behind The Social Contract, we bear a corporate responsibility as citizens for the actions of our governments?

This is not to say that I’m arguing that the individuals traveling on the Moscow subway deserved what is apparently the vengeance of Chechen separatists. It was a troubling question though, and Prof. Norman Geras weighed in with a few pointers:

“…political guilt – arising from the fact that everyone ‘is co-responsible for the way he is governed’ – while it can involve, for example, the indirect penalty that would fall on individuals through a state’s liability for reparations after a war, is not said by Jaspers to legitimize acts of violence against individuals who have a share in this general co-responsibility.”

Personally, I buy this argument hook-line-and-sinker. In a democracy, we are responsible for the actions of our government, and it is within a framework of International Law that compensations should be made – and no individuals are legitimate targets. In the case of Chechen separatists in Moscow, or Islamists in London, one could – in their defence – suggests that the inadequacy of international law legitimises some sort of vigilante action, though it wouldn’t be my predisposition to do so – and certainly not against individuals.

But it’s an important point to bear in mind in the run-up to this election. Most people will be ordering their preferences on polling day. Few of us – even party members – will be fully personally endorsing a manifesto.Yet we bear a responsibility to stand by the election’s outcome. Nothing the government does is not in your name, and don’t think that any kind of abstention makes it so.

(Ta to MatGB for a pointer in this post)

The England Citizenship Survey for April – December 2008 was published the other day by CLG (pdf, Excel data). Overall, despite the onset of the financial crisis, attitudes to and participation in politics don’t seem to have changed much.

A few headlines:

• Only one fifth of people (22%) feel that they can influence decisions taken by national government, though two-fifths (39%) think they can influence decisions taken in their local area. 2001 (an election year) had higher numbers, but since then these figures have been stable, only moving a point or two each survey.

• Also stable were statistics on participation. 10% of people had engaged in ‘civic activism’ (being a magistrate, school governor, councillor or in other way being directly involved in decision making). 20% had taken part in a consultation or completed a questionnaire about public services. 38% had taken part in a demonstration or protest, signed a petition or contacted an elected representative.
• Taking part in demos, signing petitions or contacting elected representatives was least prevalent among the 16-24 age group. Only 23% of them had done that during the preceding twelve months, compared to 38% for the population as a whole.

There were some interesting results in the breakdown by ethnicity:

• White people were by far the most pessimistic about their ability to influence events, but were also much more likely to sign petitions, contact elected representatives or respond to consultations.
• At national level, 39% of non-white respondents thought they could influence things, compared to only 20% of whites. At local level the figures were 51% for non-whites and 39% for whites.
• At the same time 40% of whites had contacted an elected representative, protested or signed a petition, compared with less than 30% for every other ethnic group.
• White people were less likely to feel a strong attachment to Great Britain than Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indians. Overall, 86% of non-whites (91% of Pakistanis) said they felt strongly that they belonged to Great Britain, while only 84% of whites did.

'Not in my name' Pic: Rightee on Flickr

Scottish left-wing political blogger Shuggy had a good post up about the G20 demonstrations that took place in London a couple of weeks ago. I think that he’s right about the ‘they are all just Trustafarians’ question (they aren’t), though I think that some of the critics of the demonstrators are onto something with this line of attack.

Like Shuggy, I’d suggest that, in an affluent society, protest is increasingly becoming a means by which people dissociate themselves from the decisions of a democracy, rather than a means of changing policies. Interestingly, the slogan that brought the protesters against the Iraq War in 2003 together was ‘Not In My Name.’

Put crudely, I think that good governance depends on the ability to manage and marginalise ‘active citizens’ (unless they get elected!). So the problem is affluent citizens (time-rich) but not really trustafarians.

It strikes me as, at least in part, a waste of everyone’s time.

There is no question that we have a fundamental right to demonstrate against policies that we oppose. But do we have a fundametal right to be heeded by anyone with any influence?

This raises the wider question: Should democratic policy-making simply be a means by which a process is applied mechanistically in order to produce a product? Is it simply the model whereby….

• MPs are elected,
• they listen to evidence and speak to the voters between times in order to make sure that their policymaking is being done properly,
• make their decisions and frame legilation accordingly
• face the music at the end of their term of office

Surely there is more to democracy than that? Or is this the least-worst model open to us?If politicians should only be swayed by the quality of evidence, and never by the number of people that hold an opinion (and I’d argue that – for the most part, this is what they should do) is there a legitimate role for effective protest at all?

Here are some examples of how protest can add to the process:

1. The ‘this isn’t really a democracy’ gambit

The fairly rigid rules I’ve applied so far assume that elections are free and fair, that we all have equal access to elected politicians in order to submit evidence, and that those politicans aren’t coerced to allow insubstantial evidence to outweigh the good stuff against their better judgement in any way. If this isn’t the case, citizens could even argue that they have a right to bear arms in order to sort the situation out. It would have to be a well made argument though….

2. The ‘my politician is corrupt’ gambit

Similar to the ‘coercion’ element in point 1 (above) except that the politician is soliciting the coercion in question. Again, raising a mob to impeach the culprit is, in theory, justifiable. In theory….

3. The ‘we’re an oppressed minority’ gambit

The reason that the words ‘liberal’ and ‘democracy’ are bound together so strongly are because – as John Stuart Mill argued, no functioning democracy has the right to oppress minorities. We all have basic human rights, and a majoritarian political system still has boundaries. The right to protest – and, if necessary, civil disobedience – is surely a basic one under these circumstances?

4. The ‘we need to illustrate our evidence more effectively’ gambit

Imagine you had a very arcane point to make – one that is good in itself, but it’s very hard to explain or promote. Advocates of simplistic points enjoy an advantage that is not necessarily in the public interest.Wealthy pressure groups can pay PR people and ad agencies to solve this problem – street-theatre of one kind or another – is clearly a democratic response from under-resourced protesters. Thus the idea of detournment. I’d go further – civil disobedience to counter the work of well-heeled pressure groups can be justified as long as it’s proportionate. And, I’d argue, the purchase of democratic power could justify quite substantial civil disobedience in some circumstances.

However, this kind of expression doesn’t really rely upon weight of numbers – more upon a small number of people doing something creative and eye-catching.

5. The ‘because so many people will refuse to co-operate with this law, it isn’t practical’ gambit.

The Poll-Tax riots and the Countryside Alliance demonstrations were both cases in point. Both were highly contested peices of legislation that would criminalise large sections of the population for doing things that they thought were reasonable. Both of these arguments appear to be close to the ‘oppressed minority’ gambit, and I’m concious that it would be possible to drive a coach and horses through it if one wished to. The argument for referendums is that they are needed to ratify ‘constitutional change’ – and while I have reservations about the legitmacy of single-issue plebiscites, it would be hard to argue that a government can simply change the rules in a wholesale way on the back of a general election victory (unless the proposed changes were a centrepeice of the election campaign, perhaps?)

6. The ‘look – there are lots of us who are annoyed – maybe if people see us on TV they will act themselves or rethink?’ gambit

This appears to be the ‘Not in my name’ gambit. Of the six gambits, it seems to me to be the least convincing one, though it’s also the most popular. I can’t think of any other reasons why demonstration may be justified or could be effective but I’d be interested to hear counter-arguments.

For gambits one and two (imperfect democracy), the means of redress are potentially drastic, and I’d suggest that you’d need to have a coherent outline of how democracy could practically work more effectively than it does currently. I aways find it difficult to take this argument from people who are members of ‘Democratic Centralist’ political groupings on the far left, or for people who argue for a more direct form of democracy.

Gambit four (and possibly, Gambit six?) isn’t really a protest against the government at all. It’s a protest against rival elements within civil society. It’s partly about persuading politicians (as opposed to bullying them – which is good) or countering the claims of rival pressure groups (which is good as well).

But for me, the big question is this: If elected politicians should only be swayed by demonstrations in exceptional circumstances, does this make most demonstrations completely pointless? And if so, does this add to a popular sense of impotence in the face of organised power?