After the G8 and 7/7: an age of 'democratic warming', Tom Nairn

Sun, 10 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000

Since the 7 July attacks, London and the world have rung with slogans of depleted Britishness: steadfast grit, business as usual, we can take it (especially Londoners). Understandable in the immediate context, these reflexes won’t do for democrats. Now more than ever, the latter should be looking for new business, and for the sea-changes offering hope of a real end to “terrorism”.

The explosions were aimed both at the United Kingdom government and the military occupation of Iraq. Their timing provided an extra bonus, by deflating G8 complacency. However, tunnel-vision seems to be inseparable from terrorism. For the bomb-makers were either ignoring or (more likely) despising another, broader alternative printed on the very fabric they were attacking: one might call it “democratic warming”.

Also in openDemocracy on the London bombings:

Isabel Hilton, “Letter from wounded London”

Mary Kaldor, “London lives”

A democratic warming

The Madrid bombings of 11 March 2004 preceded a general election, those in London have followed a British one – the dismal, faded rubber-stamp of 5 May, equivocal enough to re-ignite demands for democratic fair-play, even inside Blair’s own party.

This was followed by an interminable rehearsal for the G8 conclave at Gleneagles, designed to rebuild Tony Blair’s standing and self-image without such tiresome quibbles. New Labour’s state remains a world power, he was claiming, albeit with dwindling support from Brits themselves. Thus an increasingly pretend-democracy propped itself up by PR management of the G8 spectacle.

And with good reason: for the G8 is itself a theatrical pretence – a kind of stand-in committee for pseudo-global governance. It dates from the days of cold-war détente in 1975, when it was set up to restore stability after the upsets of the 1960s, and the big oil-price rises. This precursor of neo-liberal globalisation tried to promote all-round aid and trade, notably between east and west. In those circumstances, only minimal gestures towards democracy were allowed: while desirable, it was of course never indispensable that peoples vote for the policies agreed on. We find the same gestures and tone of voice deployed in today’s G8, aimed at the sole survivor of second-world autocracy, the People’s Republic of China.

Happily, the globe itself has altered in the meantime. In between the Battle of Genoa (July 2001) and July 2005’s “Make Poverty History”, the largest mass demonstrations in human history have taken place. These were for more than peace. The millions who took part on 15 February 2003 sensed something else, baffling and unattainable on the day itself – a latency approximating to what had energised people in Prague, Paris and San Francisco in 1968 – but almost inconceivably larger. After 1989 an alternative, benign spectre had begun to haunt the world; and it wasn’t from Heaven or outer space.

The hearing-aids of the cold-war politicos were turned down, or in some cases off, to this democratic warming. Professionals of the pulse could hardly help knowing better: “the heart” is a metaphor, but they happen to live by it. Live Aid appeared, followed by 2005’s Live 8 and the huge white-band procession of Make Poverty History around Edinburgh. Annie Lennox sang it better than Gordon Brown ever could. Music turned into another stand-in for democracy, bent upon turning up the hearing-aids of the G8. In a society of the spectacle, one show competes with another: Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had to incorporate Bob Geldof and Bono, even as the latter were trying to take over their brain cells.

Although no one was going to win or lose such a contest, 2005 has shown a balance of forces unimaginable in the previous history of the G8. After George W Bush and Iraq, neo-liberalism is badly in need of song-power. Given the opportunity, people are voting against it, as in the foundation-country of modern times, the Netherlands; or determinedly opting out, as in Great Britain (modernity’s number two). The 1989 enchantment-meter is plunging, and the Gleneagles control-room could do little to conceal this: it was no longer enough to half-heartedly join in Live 8’s warm-up choruses.

A new political arena

Then came the London explosions: a lifeline to exploiters of all lands, who dread “peace” (i.e. democracy) far more than war. On 8 July they woke up feeling safer, not more scared. This was a world they can count on. “Terrorism” restores healing tensions, fosters recompositions of national willpower, causes first things to be put first (e.g. identity cards), and brings indefinite postponement of wimpish tunes about unmerited poverty, reforms and rights. “Cool it!” is the coded message: equal-temperature malcontents, get back in line while more policemen are recruited.

This won’t last long. Nobody should be carried away by it. But the shock may also serve to focus the minds of democrats — along the lines so forcefully proposed by George Soros in his contribution to openDemocracy’s debate (“Santiago is the next step”, 17 March 2005). Stand-ins, substitutes and soulful simulacra are no longer enough, whether in tune or tone-deaf.

The Club de Madrid’s international summit on 8-11 March 2005 and the Community of Democracies’ Santiago conference on 28-30 April lead the way towards a direct association of democratic networks and governments, potentially far more important than either G8 or its pop-cultural pressure-groups. This is because they put politics first, and acknowledge that workable democratic practice is the sole genuine enabler of both aid and trade. This is also the “common approach” that will, in the long run, disable terrorist reactions: as Soros put it, the connection is that “the lack of democracy can be a tremendous security threat to all of us”.

More than most, George Soros is in a position to understand that connection. His Open Society Institute’s original goal was to foster political democracy in post-communist east-central Europe; however, success there has driven him to recognise the miserable condition of political democracy elsewhere in the world, notably in the United States (see “America after 9/11: victims turned perpetrators”, May 2004) and the United Kingdom.

A supreme irony of history whisked away the emperors’ robes, just as they went on parade. The saviours turned out to be in need, not just of crowns, but of vests and underpants. What had been tolerable under cold-war conditions proved insupportable under globalisation, as much of humankind found itself exposed to free trade without democratic-national protection.

In other words, after Madrid and London democracy is no longer a fine-words principle, or a noble long-range goal. It is, disconcertingly, much more like the sole technology now available for societal survival and humane development. A subterranean reclassification has accompanied the earth-shifts of post-1989, and is still finding its way into different kinds of discourse.

Let’s hope the underground bangs and the bloody remains of “7/7” will help it on its way. There’s a red thread out of them, and it doesn’t lead to Kingdom Come or Baghdad, but to (again in Soros’s words) “modest but constructive operations” around the world, linked to forming a “Democracy Caucus at the United Nations … to strengthen the UN’s ability to promote greater respect for human rights and the principles of an open society”.

Average rating

(0 votes)

open Democracy News Analysis - After the G8 and 7/7: an age of 'democratic warming', Tom Nairn - Comments

After the G8 and 7/7: an age of 'democratic warming', Tom Nairn