2019: a year of protest?
According to Blair in one of his regular interventions in Labour politics the Election on 12th December was lost because Jeremy Corbyn was really interested in leading a protest group rather than winning office in Westminster.
One can understand why Blair thinks this. He clearly still remembers, as he should, the protests against the Iraq War in 2003 and the central role that Corbyn played in those.
However if we focus on the present, one would have to say looking back over 2019 in Britain, where actually was the protest?
Certainly Labour and Corbyn himself addressed many large meetings around the UK (and perhaps there should have been even more) but that is not protest in itself.
Of course protests go on all the time, against NHS cuts or late in 2019 over Trump’s latest visit to the UK (in so far as he actually knew which country he was in, since his entire world seems to focus on Planet Golf Course).
The really large protests in 2019 however came from Extinction Rebellion over climate change. I certainly joined them in Cardiff and in London. I’m sure there was lots of Labour supporters and members present but the presence wasn’t always that obvious. To be fair Labour did make it clear they supported the protests but that is not the same as putting the Party as part of the lead in what was certainly the most dynamic, and young, movement seeking change in the last year.
Of course there is well known dynamic between a focus on Parliamentary politics and a focus on street protests here which will I suspect become more important in 2020.
We don’t need to look too far away, and it often puzzles why in particular we don’t hear more from those keener on the EU than I am about this (I voted remain), to see effective struggles taking place.
There was a lot of questioning earlier in 2019 about the precise composition of the Yellow Vest protests in France. However they continue still and have more recently been joined by a long running if partial General Strike. They have succeeded in getting Macron on the back foot and they continue into 2020. Perhaps there is a lesson here about how to deal with Johnson when its clear Parliamentary numbers wont unfortunately do the job.
As a final footnote I am of course aware that the People’s Vote organised several very large protests in 2019. I’ll post separately on that since for anyone interested in protest they remain something of a puzzle…
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