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For many people decades now we have had to put up with media people like you telling us how we should relate to the positive aspects of dog turds on our pavement!

thinkov
30 March 2011 at 15:23
no but i've thought of a smack in the mouth cheaper etc feel better already.

Why don't you have a wank instead, you seem to have a great deal of frustration.

I think we need to keep the idea that acts of property damage are violent. Obviously They are violent in a different way than police violence, which is always violence done to a living person - that this is ignored and violence done to inanimate objects is news says a lot about our values.... But I digress... the violence against property conducted by protestors is very specific, it is directed at companies and institutions (the Treasury for example) who are committing economic and political violence against people. Whether in the third world, in the case of FTSE one hundred companies; in war zones; in the case of our government and attendant arms companies (perhaps arms companies and their attendant governments, it's hard to tell) ;or internally through financial privation; our government again, the damage to property is a symbolic act against the far greater damage being done to property and people by corporations and institutions above the law. The protestors show something much more powerful and 'liberal' than towing the line: they show the actual playing out of individual soverignty. The principle is clear: We cannot believe in the rule of law if it allows so much criminality to occur within the State and the business world. It ceases to appear as the source of justice and becomes instead the means of oppression.

This is a ridiculous question because you do not seem to know if you are asking whether or not political violence is permissible on an ethical or on moral a basis. If ethical, whose ethics are we talking about? Surely this is about a clash of ethics: of one considered corrupt and the other considered rigteous. In this context, it does not matter to the insurgent whether or not their behaviour is deemed criminal since they no longer recognise the authority of the state. In this sense, your question is pointles: yes, of course their behaviour is illegal, but do you think the protestor really gives a shit?

But is it "permissible" (to which I infer that you mean 'legitimate')? Quite possibly. If the truth of the matter is that the state is no longer able to operate within the ethics that it proclaims then insurrection is perfectly legitimate. Today, it's not just the left that celebrates Paris 1968 and Italy 1977 as they are widely accepted as being events that proclaimed they universal freedom of humanity in the 20th century.

This is indeed an interesting discus. I think Mr. Ben-Gurion the leader of the Zionist terrorist group that bombed the King David Hotel in the late 60s or so was working on this presumption as he was latter rewarded with the position of Israeli prime minister and was latter awarded a Nobel peace prize. Whatever political violence you can undertake to get the state power, do it because you will be recognized as soon as you get there.

@Mortmer Bloomington; Whatever makes you think we have reached 'such a point'? Was there not an election last year?

I see the police only managed to arrest and charge 11 people for 'violent' offences last Saturday. I find that number surprisingly low.
Makes me wonder who the 'rioters' were and why they were not arrested.

Luddite and thinkov: Oh come we can all be friends. Stop this petty bickering and shake hands.

Why don't you both apologise to one another and then resume hostilities? Start with a clean slate and then spoil it.

It is all relative. If protests don't become mechanical, protestors will eventually be arrested for just breathing, or some other state excuse.

Chile and Argentina years ago come to mind.

Good site here to go with this thread - The Men They Couldn't Hang,
http://www.tmtch.net
http://www.seherr.de/tmtch/downloads/ironmasters.mp3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJkWNcbmKDE
It'll all come out in the wash.

thinkov, The Japanese will bounce back it's the nature of the Japanese people, also there's nothing imaginary about New Labour's appalling deficit, and as for your 'anger' problem, have you thought about therapy.

When, slowly and surely, every avenue of protest is becoming "illegal", this question is more important than ever.

Isn't whether to prosecute or not always subject to the "public interest" test anyway? In the case of the Fortnum and Masons "sit-in" then I suspect the test should be over whether significant financial damage resulted. Personally I've always been on the side of those who are engaged in lawful activity over those who would use coercive methods to attempt to stop it.

Of course where the democratic system is highly deficient, as it was in the case of the Suffragettes or the 1960s civil rights movement, then we are in a fundamentally different game to when a group of activists feel aggrieved that the democratic process has not produced the result they would wish.

The legal system is bound to defend the status quo of economic and political hierachy. The democratic process, although ment to allow change to happen is part of this status quo. Any attempt to change it will therefore automatically be perceived as criminal. Only if it effectively and irreversbly changes something, this perception will be revisited. As in: Nelson Mandela (a violent revolutionary in his days) was put of the terrorist list, when he was president and apartheid was made history.

Is anyone claiming exemption from the law though? If you deliberately break a law to promote a political end you do so in full knowledge and expectation that you are liable to be punished for it.

It's a moral issue. Yes the law was broken, but for a morally acceptable reason. A morally defensible action which is punished by law, makes the law look immoral and appear unjust.

In that way it undermines the reason for upholding the law.

But you have to accept that the action is illegal and be prepared to accept the punishment for it, rather than expect to be excused for this to work.

@ David Allen Green

Last night, I watched 'See You In Court' and released how unfair Libel laws are to the middle class and the poor. I alway remember my fantastic Tort Lectuer saying; "If you are going to sue someone under English Libel laws, you will have to pay out of your own pocket and be prepared to make a loss."

Political violence and unlawful behaviour is beyond the pale!!! This is why I'm for Punch and Judy!

Saturday was a smokescreen for Looters looting Retailers and Pubs. Ed Miliband's Labour Party and his Unions need to say sorry!!!!

By using Nelson Mandela you are demonstrating the false analogy that many have used in a UK context to justify their own actions. South Africa was simply not a democracy in any reasonable sense during the Apartheid era in that the state very explicitly denied equal rights. There simply was not democratic mechanism available.

I would also fundamentally disagree with your theory that a democratic system is incapable of reforming itself as it is locked into the status quo. There have been many changes to the UK constitution since universal suffrage, not least of which is the relationship with the EU. We have also had devolution of powers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I'm not aware that the promoters of any of those changes were perceived as criminal unless they engaged in criminal acts (as some did with bombing, shootings and arson).

Other countries have more formal constitutional systems and almost all have some means of amending them.

To argue that democracies can only be reformed through violent acts is an excuse made by the revolutionaries for achieving through violence what they can't through reason.

I remember that Martin Luther King told his followers that black people had the US Constitution, and Nelson Mandela reminded his followers that blacks in South Africa had no such protection. King, as we know, was shot dead, while Mandela lived to win an election.

Perhaps, as well as asking whether unlawful behaviour is justified, we should ask how we can best use the freedoms that the law has already granted us.

For a few months now, Johann Hari has been reporting on UK Uncut, saying "this is protest - it works!" (David Allen Green has blogged about UK Uncut elsewhere on this site.) When we discuss the events of last weekend, we would do well to talk about which tactics work, as well as which ones are legal.

Violence, the threat of violence and War are the main movers of change and progress in society. The ballot box is a sham by comparison.
Does anyone truly believe that our democracy and welfare state were created because the ruling classes thought they were a good idea.

War and violence have been causes for good in Britain from the Civil War to the Chartists, the Suffragettes and threat of revolution in the 1920's,30's and 50's.

Anyone who proclaims that peaceful demonstration and parliament brings lasting change is in a dream world.

thinkov. Sorry shouldn't have said that, you probably havn't started your erections yet.

Paul Hillyard New Labour was the ruling-class for 13 year's, they ran the country they made the laws. The only ruling aristocracy we have these days, is the new aristocracy of the public sector.

No mainstream political party in Britain has a completely non-violent history, apart from possibly the Greens. the Tories nearly provoked a Civil War in 1914, whilst their ancestors lost two in the 1640s.
http://clemthegem.wordpress.com/

As for agent privocateur, this is a crap defense. It basically says you have no free will or ability to distinguish between right and wrong to think for yourself. No court on earth would.entertain that as a defense for the thugs on Saturday.
The same thugs one of the UK uncut leadership seems to be moving towards completely destroying any claims they aren’t acting as UK uncut.
See – http://thethirdestate.net/2011/03/a-message-to-critical-uk-uncut-activists/

Police are people doing a tough job, caught in the middle between rightly disgruntled people and a power elite that is running society into the ground.

It was sad to see police officers being attacked and having paint and other missiles thrown at them, these people have families, and loved ones, but when you have a parliament that seems unresponsive indeed, working against the interests of the people, then issues arise.

I think peaceful protest the most effective, if enough people get together as shown in Egypt there is next to nothing the government authority can do, people power has enormous potential. Violence will be used as justification to bring in more draconian legislation and is thus highly counterproductive.

Each state sets about establishing it's own laws and rules. These are "The Law" within that particular context unless of course that state acknowledges a higher authority such as say in Europe. Over and above that we have international law which is more politically driven than most law making.

So two points from me:-

1 Does anyone else find irony in the fact that the very government that is tightening the law here is assisting "law breaking" rebels in Libya?

2 I think the key issue is mitigation. If I help a close friend or loved one in pain to end their life, at their request, I am without doubt breaking a law and I would not want it otherwise. What I would want would be the chance for the charity and love that underpinned my act to mitigate the outcome and sentence I received.