I happened to walk past a small protest the other day occurring before the steps of a local town hall. The subject was climate change, and one protestor apparently had the wit to write ‘Gordon Green, not Gordon Brown’ on a large piece of paper. In total, I would guess there were 15-20 people – a local affair in which the protagonists’ children made up some 30-or-so per cent (I’m presuming present to symbolise that the issue is of protecting future generations, as opposed to implying they too believe in the cause).
But wait a moment; who are these people again? I’m not sure I’m seeing any authoritative scientists amongst your number (although I couldn’t admit to actually being able to recognise any). Hmmm, maybe some NVQ Environmental Studies students, a librarian, that woman you see in the supermarket all the time, a couple of PTA members and a professional protestor. At best, the whole occasion is akin to standing behind someone (in this case, a scientist) and shouting ‘yeah, yeah, what they said, yeah’, periodically gurning and making faces at the opposing team. Few would disagree that this is low-level debate.
But it’s lame for a more serious reason: it misses the more fundamental issue at play here.
If a number of experts have highlighted an area of concern – ie, we’re emitting too much pollution which will plunge us into a simultaneously fiery and watery doom – then our government should be doing something about it. Government, after all, is there to serve its citizens, right? If wrong, (government is only serving big business etc, etc) then this underlying issue is what ought to compel people to the streets.
The issue is really why the government is not listening to authoritative voices, and the reasons can be valid or invalid – financial priorities, uncertainty, differing agendas, amongst others. Protesting about a complex topic such as climate change (or otherwise economic mismanagement, foreign interventions, the justice system) is silly, if not dangerous, since it may result in the incorrect outcome based on pressures from ill-informed activistic douche-bags.
I imagine the counter argument would run something like ‘yeah, but, 1. democracy, 2. awareness’. Well, firstly, mob hysteria is not democracy, by any measure. Secondly, regurgitating (probably inaccurately) a couple of facts you heard on Newsround is hardly raising awareness. I don’t see graphs; I don’t see a list of possible consequences alongside their probabilities and how such conclusions were reached; I see inane sloganeering.
* Li-Teck Lau is a Lib Dem member, who recently graduated from university with a degree in engineering.
Follow @LibDemVoice on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Tracing the route of Butterley Tunnel on the Cromford Canal
Number 12: The Innocence Mission - Black Sheep Wall
Lib Dems see off Reform in Barnsley with double their vote
Cleanliness at Harris Academy swimming pool #dundeewestend
Welsh councils still facing financical difficulties
Joe Bourke
Mohammed Amin
Jonathan Brown
theakes
8 Comments
OK, I think there are a few assumptions that I’d challenge here.
The main one to take up now is that all protest is ill informed; that we should trust experts and politicians to get on with things and not worry ourselves about what they do and how they do it. Not the kind of position that I would expect any supporter of the Lib Dems to come up with, bluntly it strikes me as the most illiberal position to take with regard to policy creation. It’s an argument that says that Freedom of Information is without value because most requesters don’t understand the documents they gain access to.
You dismiss the arguments about democracy and accountability out of hand. I would agree that ill informed scrutiny is no better, arguably worse, than no scrutiny at all. I would suggest that what we need to worry about is how do we empower protesters; inform them and open up access to decision making.
Yes, government at national and local level should be making balance of investment decisions based on a wide range of factors; affordability, benefit and disbenefit, consequential effects, but that reasoning should be open to challenge. We should be able to ask representatives why they made a particular decision and on what basis directions are chosen.
Of course many will not take the opportunities available to them, to become informed and to scrutinise their representatives. That is a sad fact of life and a regrettable indicator of the state of the UK. Indeed we have entire, and fairly successful, political parties who trade on the fact that many electors will make decisions without any supporting information.
A further point is about individual liberty to protest. Yes it may be ill informed and ineffectual, but it’s a freedom that we have, and exercising that freedom sustains our ability to retain it.
“A further point is about individual liberty to protest. Yes it may be ill informed and ineffectual, but it’s a freedom that we have, and exercising that freedom sustains our ability to retain it.”
Ditto.
God, if I leaved in a society that tried to stop people having the freedom to prostest!? Urgh and I loathe that term of protests being ‘ill informed or ineffectual’.
It’s so patronising and condenscending.
It’s typical elitist, academic and conformist talk.
‘roll eyes’
@rantersparadise
We do live in a society where the freedom to protest is under threat;. The current government has introduced a number of measures that restrict. our ability to do so.
You seem to be arguing that it’s only valid to express an opinion on a subject which one has fully researched and understood. And yet you illustrate it with an example of a group of protesters about whom you make unresearched assumptions.
I do believe you argument just collapsed, my friend.
A reminder, please, not to lapse into posting comments that are just one line of personal abuse (hence the moderation on this thread). If you think someone else’s views are really that bad, it really shouldn’t be that hard to find something substantive to criticise about them 🙂
Hold on a moment! (sorry for late response; have been away)
re ‘protesting is ineffectual’: at no point did i suggest this. protesting sometimes does, and sometimes not, effect change. It certainly arouses publicity.
re ‘the most illiberal position to take with regard to policy creation’: if you have in anyway studied the ideological framework of which you appear to believe in, you will know that the term as understood by mill and hayek etc. is more a recipe for rational behaviour. illiberal positions are created when people conclude baseless assumptions (‘centrally planned gov is the best way to increase our material wealth’ for instance), stir up emotions and implement them viz. countless revolutions grounded in rhetoric.
OK, so which is it? Inane sloganeering, or potentially effective? If you think the former then my inference was fair, if the latter then we need to explore how peole might be supported in becoming better informed. So what is your position on the effect of protest, whether informed or otherwise.
Your second point is quite illuminating, instead of approaching the various points made you instead question my understanding of the topic. Allow me to be clear. I believe that yor position is restrictive to freedoms, based on your baseless assumptions that those protesting are ill informed and attempting to leverage the emotive involcement of children in the protest. You yourself appear to have done no research and instead rely on an unsupported emotional argument to imply that individuals should not make their views known.
Well done, by identifying as an engineering gratuate, though I note not a graduate engineer, you reinforce the lay persons impression of a profession that shouldn’t be allows out unsupervised. Regrettable.
dear mr mammal,
my opinion would be rather ‘potentially effective’ than the other option, and yes, the quest would be ‘how to support people to be better informed’ but that would probs be a veritable thesis in social science.
as for the second point – that i didn’t address the point – i think it’s fully reasonable that i state that i think protests of such scale are a bit lame (incidentally, the title was changed by the editorial team from “Protesting about policy issues by lay-people is *major* lame”). i should once again be very clear – at no point do i suggest the creation of laws to stop protests. i am simply indulging in that very wonderful liberty of making commentary. one could very well write a sister article on how blogging is silly, but that would be even more paradoxical.
i’m not sure i understand your final point regarding me having studied engineering. it is indeed very sweeping of you to conclude that the entire profession ought to be ‘supervised’!
but lastly, it is cheap of us both to, at the first opportunity, start calling one another liberal heretics (myself suggesting you didn’t know what you were talking about, and you suggesting that i wanted the end of all free speech), to be burnt, in a metaphorical sense at least, at the stake.
all the best! 🙂