Peaceful Protest

I watched a news item relating the growing surge of protest outside St. Pauls Cathedral, in the heart of London, close to the Stock Exchange and financial hub of the nation. I was fascinated to see hundreds of enthusiastic protesters camped in little domed tents on the pavement. It was reminiscent of the 60's, CND marchs and the like - the good old days of protest! The same phenomenon seems to be repeated in other financial centres - in Frankfurt and New York - and in numerous other high profile centres of population in the modern global village we call our world today. The activities began in New York, Wall Street, so the media tell us, and have spread into a large scale movement of (so far) peaceful protest.

Another news item showed marchers from the North East of England, repeating the historic Jarrow to Westminster march of a bygone age, anxious to highlight the injustices of unemployment and hardship in their region, one of the hardest hit of any in these days of economic crisis.

I was both intrigued and shocked. Intrigued because for many years, it seems, the voice of protest has been dormant, if not dead. Since the heady days of the 'winter of discontent', when half the British population seemed to be united in protest at economic conditions, growing costs and dwindling pay packets, the unions have been quiet, the strikers and protesters silenced, hounded into resignation and submission through government measures and public opinion, social pressures too hard to resist.

Suddenly protest is on the increase. What's happening? As an advocate of freedom of speech and the right to protest I applaud this development. The battles won by our early trade unions and political reformers cost too much to abandon now. Are we simply seeing a ground swell of complaints and grumbling at the current public measures to recover from the economic crisis we all face or are we witnessing a movement of radicals, similar in kind to the 'flower power' radicals of the '60s, who are sick to the back teeth with materialism and 'corporate greed' and want to see a paradigm shift in the way we conduct our lives?

A part of me is shocked that protest comes in so many unwelcome forms. In the last few months it has been expressed in riots, in looting, in the form of violent and anguished demonstrations in Greece, in Portugal, in Spain... And what are we protesting against? It's all about money! Too much money in some hands, too much power in the hands of some, too little money in the hands of others and too little power to change things. The campers are protesting about capitalism and greed; the rioters and the marchers are protesting about unemployment, poverty, rising costs and a decreasing benefits safety net. Long live protest and the right to protest! When we are fighting for survival we understandably lose some of our polite veneer and our tone becomes aggressive and urgent. We have seen a lot of excessive violence and a minority of people stirring up social unrest and criminal behaviour on the pretext of economic need.

But peaceful protest is a wonderful thing and I must confess a large part of me is impressed that there are people in the world who are prepared to stand up and be counted and say 'enough is enough'. Maybe there is another way to live which can cut through all this focus on getting and spending and find some more worthy things to live our brief lives for. Corporate greed has a corporate solution.