Harold Wilson once said Tony Benn’s problem was that “he immatures with age”. “Wedgie”, as he was popularly known as all those years ago, has since achieved “national treasure” status. But is he still the one counter-example of an otherwise inevitable trajectory: as you get older, you get more reactionary or more realistic and less idealistic?
Two incidents in the past week left me pondering this question. Last Wednesday, I appeared alongside Baroness Helena Kennedy, Labour MP Sion Simon and others in the plush surroundings of the House of Commons’ Grand Committee Room to debate the possibilities of Web 2.0 (the second generation of internet development and web design) and social activism.
Then, on Friday, I made it through the heavy police presence and camera crews outside Brentford County Court for a ringside seat in the case of Alan Keen and Ann Keen versus persons unknown, in which the two Labour MPs won an interim possession order against the squatters who had, as they put it, “occupied/recycled/liberated” the couple’s nearby house.
For me, both events were a flashback to 1994 when, for the purposes of my PhD, I began frequenting meetings of the ravers’ campaign against the then proposed Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill in search of evidence that social activism was alive and well among Margaret Thatcher’s children. The public spectacles or “actions” mounted by the anti-CJBers included the occupation of then Home Secretary Michael Howard’s back lawn.
I wrote in Red Pepper at the time that the old order was finished. People would no longer settle for just putting an “X” in a box every five years. They wanted direct democracy and they wanted it now.
A key argument was in favour of rebalancing the ratio of empty homes to homeless people. I really believed in the potential for non-violent direct action and a new politics for new times. Since then, perhaps I’ve become more realistic – well, older and wiser. I’ve come to accept that using official channels are often the best way to achieve lasting change.
The packed-to-the-rafters crowd at the Commons had come to see the unveiling of director Ivo Gormley’s new documentary, Us Now. This is described on its website as “a film project about the power of mass collaboration, government and the internet”. The result is a supremely good-looking film with an uplifting message that draws on range of examples, including a mutually-run bank.
After we had watched the film, a question-and-answer session examined the extent to which recent political events represent a fundamental break from what has gone before.
Some good may well come of the MPs’ expenses fiasco, but it is likely to be limited in nature. Transparency in public and political matters now has to be a given, not something which has to be fought for.
Other panel members saw a defining moment. I saw myself in the role of an old fart arguing that “my generation” had “seen it all before”.
Two days later, also filled to bursting point was the courtroom where the colourfully-attired squatters in dreadlocks and ill-fitting comedy-style suits decorated with anarchist symbols represented themselves and faced up to the bewigged and robed Robert Latham, the Keens’ barrister. The MP couple were absent.
This crusties’ day in court had no named respondents at the start. However, one by one, squatters stood up from various places in the courtroom, providing names and spellings, putting their case, which they
did in well-spoken tones, but also becoming liable for any damages sought further down the line. By the end, there were 11 defendants.
District Judge Plaskow referred to the intense media coverage and acknowledged “the attractiveness of the arguments” presented by the squatters. Ultimately, though, he concluded that he had no powers to grant the pleas for the house to be turned into a community centre for Iraqi refugees, as had been suggested. The Keens were able to produce Land Registry deeds dating back to 1987. Game over.
A sense of déjà vu set in for me – of anti-climax and winning an argument only to be crushed by process. If you can pay the daily rate for a QC, they will run rings around any self-defended party. However, 15 years on, I am less starry eyed. The misguided, muddled, addled squatters were not in-and-out-of care homes down-and-outs, but middle-class and educated – dropping out because they had something to drop out from.
The “Mr and Mrs Expenses” among our MPs – Julie and Andrew, Nicholas and Anne, Ann and Alan – have been as symptomatic of “expenses-gate” as the duck house which adorned the Daily Telegraph’s recent pull-out supplement.
In the light of the whole macro-saga in which the Brentford squatters were just a micro-detail, Us Now and its pleas for online participatory democracy could not be timelier.
Let’s hope Web 2.0 can speed up the ascent to direct democracy and that the recent scandal, which has turned our parliamentary system into a laughing stock, can still have a positive outcome.
William Gibson once said: “The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed”. Judging by what has happened since 1994 though, change does take place in this country. It’s just that it’s glacial in its pace.
