Or how about those who see mundane banal almost local buildings being used to murder innocent human beings? Are
Posted in General on 23. Aug, 2010
Or how about those who see mundane, banal almost, local buildings being used to murder innocent human beings? Are they not justified – these anti-abortionists – in doing anything they can – within or outside the law – to close these places? Eh, Bruce?And this was the thing that Melchett couldn’t see. That direct action was all fine and dandy, and that it did indeed “question the authority of those who govern”, but that – in the absence of that authority – it left us without a form of mediation It left us, in short, at the whim of each other. Are we to be a country in which there are no GM foods – not because of an electoral revolt, but because of direct action – but also where we cannot meet emissions targets because of the threat of direct action over fuel costs? It’s all very well for these activists to salute each other’s right to take action, but what about the rest of us? Where does it leave us?It’s too much to hope that the various protagonists could slug it out with each other to save the rest of us having to be picketed and lobbied and delayed by the agents of both But this won’t happen So one alternative is for us to be drawn in. Leanda de Lisle wants to bring English cities to a standstill. Well, after my piece about heckling lorry drivers in Holborn last week, I received dozens of e-mails from people who said that they wanted to heckle them too.
We could easily get organised and take direct action against the city-blockers We could form the Citywide Alliance. Arguing that towns are taken for granted, we could drive pied-à-terre owners from our best streets, set fire to Fulham, stop yokels from driving down streets paid for by city taxes and send them back to the shires, bull bars wrapped round their red necks. Best of all, we could go and park buses across farmyard entrances and parade through Crediton with placards saying, “Leave Us Alone”.It’s not an attractive prospect. But we are not going to put up with this kind of thing for ever.
Some of the new direct action is a long way from Gandhi’s satyagraha and Martin Luther King’s non-violence. It has little of the willingness to suffer, and none of the self-questioning that gave those movements their moral authority. Without these characteristics, direct action can easily be just another form of bullying.David.Aaronovitch btinternet . In a week when we have all been worrying about what Gordon said about Bernie, about idiotic panic-buying at the petrol pumps and about our heroic pedalers and shooters down in Sydney, it was perhaps inevitable that the unhappy events taking place on pig farms across East Anglia should be virtually ignored in the national media.