There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you cant take part; you cant even passively take part, and youve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and youve got to make it stop. And youve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless youre free, the machine will be prevented from working at all! (Mario Savio, University of California, Berkeley, 2 December 1964)
Mario Savios words still resonate today, almost forty years after they were screamed on the steps of Berkeleys Sproul Hall in defence of civil rights. Yet had the radical who is largely credited with starting the free speech movement been alive to see the activities in central London over the month of September, he might have been amazed at how his brand of radical dialogue is now used by all manner of groups to promote their causes. From the developed to the developing world, from the anti-Berlusconi rallies in Italy to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) demonstrations in Washington DC, these strategies have taken root on a global level. Britain is no exception.
On Sunday 22 September over 400,000 people one of the largest ever demonstrations in British history passed down Whitehall protesting against a range of government rural policies, including proposals to ban hunting with hounds (see an interview with Karen Bartlett and Richard Burge). The following Saturday, at least 250,000 anti-war demonstrators marched against war with Iraq, as witnessed on openDemocracy by Rosemary Bechler. Within six days, over 1% of the British population with views from across the political spectrum had felt compelled to resort to extra-institutional methods to be heard. Some would argue that this is a sign of healthy democratic foundations in so far as they are allowed to happen at all. Others see these two demonstrations as an indictment of the British democratic process.
How new is this trend? As the government increasingly uses what Karen Bartlett calls novel expedients such as inquiries and hearings that operate as an adjunct to parliament, is the electorates only option to use similar tactical innovations as a means of self-defence? I contend that the Countryside Alliance illustrates the new phase that British protest is entering.
An uncomfortable fit
The rise of radical, Savio-esque non-violent direct action strategies that emerged during the 1960s provoked social theorists into new perceptions of mass movements. Before the 1960s, sociologists had seen mass demonstration as displaying a sort of contagious collective irrationality that was more social disease than social fact.
It was not until the 1970s that theorists such as John McCarthy and Mayer Zald contended that social movements and demonstrations were in fact normal phenomena. In 1981 Jurgen Habermas defined these novel types of direct action, calling them New Social Movements (NSMs). Habermas and a consequent school of post-Marxists sociologists including Claus Offe and Alberto Melucci argued that it was their post-material emphasis upon largely class-free, quality-of-life issues that made NSMs different from previous mass movements such as trade unions.
For all its deficiencies when applied to the Countryside Alliance, this NSM theory still provides an intriguing approach with which to examine todays mass movements. Although this may not be immediately apparent, the ideologies and tactics of textbook NSMs such as freedom of speech, peace, green and gay liberation movements do correlate strongly with those of the Countryside Alliance.
First, both the Alliance and the classic NSMs listed above are founded on the idea of personal autonomy that resists intervention by higher bureaucracies, be they governmental (as described by Burge and Bartlett), economic (articulated in Roger Scrutons argument, in his response to Adam Lent, that todays social theorists have a strong empathy with left-wing causes.
A drifting democracy
Here we have a part of society that sees itself as having once been the core of British culture, but that now perceives itself as, in Burges words, an imperial colony. As a result, this segment has learnt to embrace mass mobilisation tactics more typical of the urban left. But if the Alliances popularity as a social movement proves anything, it is that the Establishment that readily definable elite layer of society has ceased to exist and that, as the cliché goes, we are all minorities now. As Tim Jordan states, now perhaps is the time to move beyond the traditional division of new movements into the discrete categories of left-wing and right-wing (although I have yet to be sold on his alternative axis of proactive and reactive organisations as social movements by definition are reactive entities).
But, as Burge and Bartlett describe, the British democratic process is not equipped to deal with these novel constitutional pressures. Without a strict constitution, our political system is drifting rudderless as it struggles to maintain its accountability and reduce voter disillusionment. The result of these weaknesses is two of the largest demonstrations in British history, almost incredibly within less than 150 hours of each other. British politics, it seems, is now so egalitarian that it screws everybody over in equal measure.
Protest is changing, incorporating new segments of society and moving so fast that not even social theory can keep up. But democracy is not. Reading the interview with Burge and Bartlett brings to mind the legend of Cassandra, daughter of King Priam of Troy, who was endowed with the gift of prophecy but also the curse that none would believe her. The Countryside Alliance and Charter 88 may well be the Cassandras of our political age, predicting unrest and disenfranchisement but being ignored until it is too late. It is widely accepted in the rural lobby that its own non-violent demonstrations risk snowballing into widespread civil unrest. If such acceleration occurs, it is British society as a whole, not just British democracy, that risks becoming our 21st century Troy.
