Zoe Williams (Guardian Utd): The demo in democracy

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK)
Dated Tuesday November 18

The demo in democracy
By Zoe Williams

Jack Straw, I've come to the conclusion, is slow on the uptake. I arrived here via his comments on the anti-Bush protests scheduled for Thursday. First, he wondered whether the weather might limit attendance. Many people found this insulting, suggesting that anti-war protesters were a bunch of pussies whose ceaseless campaigning on behalf of the oppressed would only stand up till a really strong wind came along.
He continued: "Whether sees the protesters or not, he certainly should not be kept away from them." Here, we witness his trademark subtlety - if Bush isn't to be kept away from the protesters but there is still a question mark over whether or not he'll see them, we can only conclude that the protesters will be few, or very small... possibly, they're children.
This kind of belittling insinuation was a popular way to deal with marchers in the 80s, when decent people were decent, miners were greedy thugs and CND were a bunch of whining lesbos. Since then, there's been a sea change - figures of authority now like to divide protesters into "legitimate" and "illegitimate".
From there, they heap praise upon the legitimate ones, extolling their hallowed place in the democratic/civil rights/good egg tradition. The illegitimate ones are the troublemakers who ruined it for everyone, and can be trussed up and popped into the backs of vans much as they have been since marching began, the key difference being that the police now get to look like good guys while they do it. It's a neat paradigm shift, actually, so neat that you hear it from every single politician with a view on the matter, apart from Straw, who never got the memo and failed to work it out for himself.

Read more.

[T_i_B]

1. Jack Straw and his straw men

Typical "new" labour bullshit really. Blatant use of the straw man argument without any reference to the facts and the diversity of the people who object to being lied to by Phoney B:liar is one of the hallmarks of "new" labour. Here is fellow Wednesdayite Roy Hattersley to explain.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1051721,00.html

When in doubt or difficulty, the prime minister always completes a diversion from the facts by traducing his critics. So he told David Frost that newspapers have often reported the Hutton proceedings inaccurately. No examples were given. For a moment, I felt proud, not because Tony Blair had worked for me in his leftwing days, but because it is people like me on whom he has honed his skill at misrepresentation. The finest flowering of that talent came during his visit to this year's meeting of the Trades Union Congress when his speech rejected "the fantasy of an extreme leftwing government". He was about to face criticisms of foundation hospitals, top-up fees and a two-tier workforce. The implication that only Bolsheviks have reservations about those policies illustrates how flimsy the rational arguments in their favour are.

The desire to remain in permanent opposition is not the most damaging smear that is spread across the government's critics. Any Labour party member who has doubts about the Project is dismissed as outdated. For years, hoping that rationality would break through, I suggested that ideas should be judged on their merits, not on their age. Then I realised that the more intelligent members of the government knew that to be true, but found it inconvenient. The argument against PFI is not that everything should be publicly owned or that we should follow the precedent of 1945, but that it is a wasteful and expensive affectation.

Last week John Reid complained that the government's critics were dogmatists, not ideologues. It is the belief that private enterprise and the market produce efficiency that displays indefensible dogma. And the notion that competition, which the government wants to extend to hospitals and schools, is the answer to the problems of performance and accountability, is hardly modern. New Labour has moved through space not time - to the right, not to the future.