Eggs, Milkshakes, Nigel Farage & the Freeborn Englishman
Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage after being hit with a milkshake during a campaign walkabout for the upcoming European elections in Newcastle, England, Monday May 20, 2019. (Tom Wilkinson/PA via AP)
The media have made great play of an incident in Newcastle where Nigel Farage had a milkshake thrown at him. Apparently he plans to press charges of assault by milkshake.
In the week when an unrepentant 23 year old fascist has been sentenced to life in prison for planning to kill a Labour MP such matters deserve to be both taken seriously and with a sense of proportion. It is a matter of what Charles Tilly called repertoires of protest and which are appropriate and which are not.
In the industrial era organised protest has been about banners, placards and chants.
The organised crowd throws, boos, hisses and groans at those they dislike, as the Chartist crowd did in London in 1842 at troops leaving the new Euston station to break the General Strike of that year in the north.
Egg throwing is a traditional if individualistic form of protest though. Crowds threw rotten eggs (& worse including dead cats) at people in the pillory(abolished 1816,1837). These were mostly crowds throwing things at criminals however. When radicals were put in the pillory the crowd threw nothing but collected money for the victim instead.
Egg throwing at political figures from Cameron to Prescott has continued in the modern age. The worse that results is a mess and the impact of protest is small. A milkshake arguably causes even less harm.
Across Europe the practice of custard pie-ing figures of public note has a developed, a reminder that politics, eggs and all, is partly theatre.
The throwing of eggs is part of the heritage of William Cobbett’s Freeborn Englishman. At the Battle of Wood Green in North London on 23rd April 1977 when several anti-fascists were arrested for throwing rotten eggs at National Front marchers they were acquitted on the basis that this was part of the traditional right of protest.
If Nigel Farage is in fact as big a defender of the rights of the English as he claims he might reflect on that. Of course Farage is not a fascist but a racist, an important distinction when it comes to the repertoire of protest. When fascists marched in Wood Green not just eggs but bricks and other things were thrown. That would be entirely inappropriate for a protest at Farage. Bricks or punches (see the recent attack on Jeremy Corbyn) can cause physical harm, potentially serious. By contrast eggs and milkshakes cause discomfort but no more.
Of course as above by far the best form of protest at people like Farage is a collective one, at the ballot box or at a demonstration. That doesn’t mean we can ignore other aspects of the repertoire of protest however.
A man has been charged with common assault. His defence might be one of legal and legitimate political protest
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