Their Plots & Our Protests
According to the lead story in the Times on 24th February there was a plot by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign to pressure MPs during this weeks non-debate on a ceasefire in Gaza.
Reading further on page 2, it actually reports that the PSC was encouraging supporters to lobby their MPs on Gaza and also holding a related protest in Parliament Square attended by several thousand people. The protest was entirely peaceful, although the Speaker who bungled the whole debate for possibly less than the best of reasons, seemed to imply that there was some kind of terrorist threat.
I’m not an historian of Parliamentary lobbies but they have been a feature of Parliamentary politics for generations. If not perhaps from the 1832 Reform Act which began the process of constructing the present Constitutional Monarchy we have, certainly since the time of the Chartists- where in effect a mass petition was the instrument of lobby to the rise of the organised labour movement from the 1850s.
The Speaker’s words set off Islamophobes (not that they needed it)but in one of those interesting contradictions led to Lee Anderson having the Tory Whip suspended after yet another outburst.
The Times grasp of Our Island Story is unreliable but here is short guide to plots
Guy Fawkes 1605: plot
Plug Plot 1842: not a plot, General Strike
Chartist Rally,Kennington, April 1848, mass protest
Chartist Rising London August 1848, plot
The distinction between plot and protest is that the former is secretive, involves limited numbers and is uncovered, invariably by State informers and spies, while a protest involves thousands openly and is not in anyway secret
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