According to Peter Hain, “the approach to Palestine Action is contrary to every form of peaceful protest in British history, whether that’s the Chartists and suffragettes or anti-apartheid and anti-fascist protesters” (Peter Hain says UK government ‘digging itself into hole’ over Palestine Action, 13 August). Mr Hain, I’m afraid, needs to return to his history books.
Describing those radical and sometimes violent movements as “peaceful protest” domesticates them and ignores the role that street fighting and property damage (for example) have played in successful protest in the past. From attempted armed uprisings, through bombings of cricket pavilions and churches, to Cable Street and elsewhere, those examples he gives of “peaceful protest” saw activists exercise violent resistance.
Furthermore, the repression of Palestine Action and those protesting against its repression is very much not contrary to approaches to past protest movements. Excessive action through police and courts, and violent repression from the British state, have been common. From transportation (and sometimes execution) of early reformers, through the force-feeding of imprisoned suffrage activists, to the beating to death of Blair Peach by police officers, the state has often responded to serious challenges to its authority in ways that defy reason, and used the criminal justice system to do so.
Mr Hain is repeating a longstanding liberal story that seeks to domesticate radicalism. It’s the story of a reasonable people interacting with reasonable governments to ensure slow and steady progress. Unfortunately, it is a story that runs contrary to historical (and present) reality.
Mark Nixon
Blackford, Perth and Kinross
• As a 57-year-old participant in the 9 August Palestine Action protest, I find the tone of slightly surprised celebration of older participants to be rather patronising. There’s nothing exceptional about older people’s participation in political refusal, and I’m not up for the kind of argument that things must really be bad if old white women are coming out to protest in force.
Older people – black, brown and white – have been central to civil disobedience as long as there has been protest. So while of course there will have been many people at the 9 August protest who were facing arrest for the first time, there were also many seasoned activists who were there in solidarity, in leadership and in persistent refusal to accept state curtailment of rights.
These solidarity politics, which were beautifully in evidence among those waiting for arrest with their placards, come from feminist, queer and anti-racist histories of organising, solidarity and ethics that older people inaugurated.
Today’s protests are possible because of the refusal of people to keep quiet about poverty and inequality, racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia over many years. They are possible because of the risks that organisers have taken that have challenged police brutality and the hierarchies of social justice that prevent a full life – including freedom of expression – for all. People over 50 will continue to show up as long as there is public space to occupy.
Clare Hemmings
London
• What would happen if people wishing to demonstrate against the outlawing of Palestine Action carried banners emblazoned with the words “inept escalation” – a description of the government’s legislation that happens to be an anagram of the banned organisation’s name (Protester arrested over ‘Plasticine Action’ T-shirt: ‘How ridiculous is this?’, 18 August)?
Philip Hoy
Church Enstone, Oxfordshire
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