By Cameron Baillie
A certain understanding, all-too prevalent in Western liberal democracies, understands power as something unilateral and homogenous. This deeply corrupting and corrosive notion, is the same monolithic conception of power employed by despotic generals and maddened supreme leaders, theocratic ayatollahs and tyrannical party chairmen. It is the notion that power is something to be possessed only by governments, or their particular heads, and that this is the way things should be. This view was also recently expressed by UK’s Shadow Foreign Secretary, David Lammy.
While giving a speech on the future foreign policy plans of a Labour government at the FEPS-Fabian Society Conference on Saturday 20th January, Lammy was interrupted multiple times by disruptive pro-Palestinian protestors. He was visibly irritated by the ordeal, though he played it down. He began to express support for ‘sustainable ceasefire’ in Gaza, before laughing frustratedly as he was further interrupted by more activists, with jeers from the crowd accompanying their forced removal.
The affair prompted him to declare that he wants “change through power, not protest”, and reiterate this new slogan at least five times, rather madly. A fellow student at LSE and friend of mine, who was present at the conference, reported him even saying publicly “I’m sick of protest. I want power.” This zealous admission of apparent megalomania (defined by the Cambridge dictionary as ‘an unnaturally strong wish for power and control’) is somewhat amusing, conjuring in my mind imagery of some Foucauldian cartoon villain like Emperor Palpatine.
But such a statement should not amuse. To come from a central figure in what was once the party of popular politics, completely deriding protest and ignoring its place in political change, is ignorant of both history and current affairs. Lammy didn’t acknowledge the root cause of why these people feel the need to protest: precisely because his party, the (probably) soon-to-be super-landslide-majority government, offers little more than our current government to address the ongoing massacre of Palestinians, despite clear, live-streamed and film-documented evidence of war-crimes committed by one of our ‘long-time allies’. Lammy is likely not a despot, but his unitary view of power to me appears corrupting, and offers a glimpse at much about our problematic common conceptions of politics.
Lammy’s statement was deeply irresponsible in multiple ways: firstly, in the literal sense that it absolves Lammy himself and those in elected positions of power of their responsibility. As such, it rescinds all perceived power to just those in government only or, its central leadership figures. Yes, he’s served in opposition for 13 years against three variably disastrous governments, but Lammy does have much political power. His central self-positioning in an unprecedentedly authoritarian party, which expunges diversity of opinion (without appeal) and expels any left-wing ideas contrary to Starmer’s line, will be his legacy. That’s how he’s decided to use his political power, rather than to bear with any conviction the responsibilities supposedly bestowed upon him by election.
As the PLP slides further to the right in desperate pursuit of electoral victory, despite being unable to maintain a position on anything – from the landmark £28bn ‘green prosperity plan’ to the abolition of tuition fees to fairer taxes on tech companies – its leaders have shown themselves to be spineless and devoid of principle. Given this, it is hardly surprising that those with principles and compassion, above mere political salience, have turned out in their millions to stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine. It is all the more important to do so when governments refuse to take meaningful action against atrocities committed by the Netanyahu-Ben Gvir terror regime, and especially when the central opposition offers no difference. If they cannot offer the public anything other than u-turns, it is unsurprising that Labour MPs are now targets of protest campaigns.
Lammy’s sentiment is further irresponsible as it comes at the worst time for protest rights in this country’s recent collective memory. Separate legislative measures enacted in the UK – the Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Act in 2022 and 2023 Public Order Act revisions – have been condemned by the UN’s special rapporteur on environmental defenders, Michael Forst. At least 630 arrests were made for peaceful protest within a month last autumn in London alone, for the explicitly non-violent, valid, and time-honoured act of marching down a public road in collective protest, specifically at our government’s disastrous environmental policies. This figure was condemned by civil rights group Liberty, while Forst drew particular attention to the case of one protestor imprisoned for up to six months for the peaceful demonstrations. This precedent is gravely concerning for democratic ideals.
Protest is vilified by government and opposition alike, with Rishi Sunak recently declaring that “mob rule is replacing democratic rule”. This itself is, as a matter of course for the current government, deeply undemocratic nonsense. Yet, by side-lining legitimate peaceful protest, Sunak and Lammy not only overlook the increasingly prevalent contemporary role of protest, both here in the UK and around the world, on matters from women’s rights to climate justice to anti-colonial struggles in Palestine and elsewhere. They also drastically misunderstand our social and political history, and the instructive role played by regular people who refused to accept systemic ‘political realities’ as they were, and instead took political action of their own accord. This is notably embodied in Labour’s founder Keir Hardie, a strike organiser and union leader before parliamentarian. It was only with the spirit of Chartism and later Suffragette campaigns that the British public finally won the right to vote for all.
The social and political rights of black, Asian, and ethnic minority Brits has also been hard-fought and won only through political organising, like the Bristol bus boycotts, the New Cross Massacre Action Committee protests, the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination which eventually won the Race Relations acts, and the Mangrove protests and trial (fantastically memorialised 50 years later by Steve McQueen’s Little Axe series). Even more recently, protests were central to BLM, Grenfell Tower demonstrations, and the ongoing battle around the Windrush scandal. Similar battles have been fought and won by feminists and LGBTQ+ activists over decades, and continue today. These movements happen because, time after time, the monolithic conception of power fails, especially for the marginalised.
The UK is in serious need of reunderstanding our conceptions of politics, power, and democracy. We are told that the benefit of the UK’s ‘uncodified’ constitution is its malleability. For centuries, who held democratic power changed, with the end result being universal suffrage within the political system as it was. What ceased, somewhere along this progression, was our developing conception of what democracy should be. Of course it should include everybody. But how that democracy looks is deeply flawed, as an election looms and any notion of political agency is apparently reduced to that of a pendulum swinging back from right towards centre.
How can we expect meaningful democracy when our collective agency is reduced to consultation every five years? How can we expect political leaders to provide sensible policy for us when they have vested interests in finance from careers in the City, second and third jobs, or promoting bare-faced cronyism and undemocratically selecting lords and baronesses? They stoke culture wars and seek only political wins according to whatever zeitgeist or buzzword works today (nefariously vague ‘woke’ is currently popular). Who is voting for Labour, and not simply against maniacal Tories? There is no democratic system without democratic culture, one which truly offers agency to its people, which is so sharply lacking in politics today. We need to put people at the heart of decision-making, not vested interests. Whether this takes the form of regular citizens assemblies, a House of Citizens, or a jury-style sortition of policy-checkers to curb political corruption remains open for debate.
All of these questions and suggestions are beyond scope here. But trust in politics has plummeted, and requires drastic revamping: our issue is not with the principles of democracy itself, but rather with how it is done. Starmer’s Labour is not remotely radical, and will not offer these necessary (not to mention its u-turns on Lords reforms and recent dismissal of citizens’ assemblies). Until ordinary people are offered genuine space for political expression and true agency in politics, the disillusioned and disenfranchised will continue to manifest their power through protest. For now, under this corrupted system, the real potential for change remains with those acting outside it.
