freedom

Land of the Free

~ Jim Hindle ~ Leave a comment

These are the days when we welcome the sun, perhaps because we need it more than ever; the kindled dream of Spring in store even when war is with us: far away in distant cites they are already mourning the dead and counting the cost of bombardment.

Is it ever enough, even at – or especially at – a time like this, to seek some kind of antidote, some measure of a newfound warmth we can still find in our hearts even when the headlines tell another story?  Spring comes round consistent as the bulletins but of another calibre entirely, promises something that lifts us above what we all now have to face.  Can we take any measure at all from any of this, seek to find a way forward like navigating alleys of an ancient city – to find the way through, to be surprised at unexpected vistas?

We may be able to excavate some degree of consolation; not in that we’ve seen it before – those scars are too fresh – but in that we may find some kind of consistency of spirit, some constant of humanity, of the will to live and endure and do what we can to aid the suffering.

We can measure our way by the sunrise, by the knowledge that some things will always live on, that even when things seem at their most bleak there are amelioratives, that any tyranny can overplay its hand, that, even when they’ve barely finished mopping the Tehranian streets of the January blood the American people might look again at just who has led them to this latest bout of institutional insanity where instigators struggle to agree on even the reasons for engagement other than a kind of bloodlust for explosives, for rubbing in just who may be top dog when power seems to only understand or respond to an embodied threat from the very vestiges of mirror images.

That, for a time at least, we are all going to have to live with seemingly likely repercussions of this is a given.  For as long as it persists, a newfound flux of refugees, the peace of mind of those in the desert resorts and the repercussions for the prospects of tourism there, eye watering rises in fuel costs and energy bills, a hit on the global markets already struggling to right themselves to say nothing of what may happen if missiles begin to run out or the bitter attrition of those emboldened by blood-of-their-own being spilled in another round of tit-for-tat that, to say nothing of the sorry toll of the actual casualties themselves, adds up to a brutal calculus: none of this comes as a particular surprise.  Was it ever too much to ask that somewhere, somehow, some kind of lessons might have been learned?

Two regimes then, face to face; disruptors, revolutionaries.  And what hopes for freedom beyond?  That this is, at best, a high stakes gamble and – in all likelihood – something more inchoate barely needs stating, like banging a drum on a march that needs no further addition.  Thank God then that, in this country at least we are not currently burdened with leaders indoctrinated with hues of Churchillian aspirations – the walking cliches blinding us to other circumstances than fascists on our borders even if fascists are sadly not thin on the ground – not so much reds under the bed as neo-nazis over the Pond.

Perhaps, when all of this has played out in the timeframe it takes, America; still counting the cost of historic invasions may come to a new reckoning of the men who have led them to this.  Perhaps they will see all the clearer their true calibre – not pundits for the people, not erstwhile drainers of any given institutional ‘swamp’ but brokers of a sought-for unparallelled power in all its terrible apparent might – bloodlusting, dizzy with its own top-heavy magnitude, serving no one but their own means and ends, ensconced in golden towers decked with gold, encrusted not with gems but with innocent blood and the bones of the future they currently risk bequeathing.

We are all of us better than this.  We all have it in us to rise above such a bitter inheritance.  That takes more than wishful thinking or harsh words.  But perhaps all the more of us will be able to see all the clearer the kinds of men currently running the show.

That Iran is a brutal regime there can be no doubt.  But neither can there be doubt regarding the risks and recklessness of Israel and America’s current ‘adventure’.  Wherever it leads we can perhaps take some succour from the thought that only the most wilfully blind will ever be happy to be led again by the kind of kabal now occupying the Whitehouse.  We can take some comfort that, beyond the touted drubbing of Maga in the mid-terms and come the next US election – as if in a puff of white smoke – they may be gone and America will be able to rise from its bonds, remembering the creeds of founding fathers, remembering what it can still mean to be part of the land of the free. 

The Old Road and a New Path

~ Jim Hindle ~ Leave a comment

So after many months going through the process of approaching publishers, I have decided to launch a crowdfunder for the book I wrote about here earlier this year.  I intend to launch the campaign early next year and will be providing more updates closer to the time.

The new book was always partly intended as a means to break out of an apparent cast set by my previous writing, not least ‘Nine Miles’; my account of the British roads protest movement of the ‘nineties.  That does not negate the value of those times but as anyone who has read the book will know, those protests took their toll on many and for my part I have carried those scars a long time.  However much I hold true to what happened all those years ago, however much I believe in the power of protest, however much I believe that the spirit of those times can inform anyone acting on behalf of the environment and society at every level, it was always difficult, in some respects for me, to continue to – in any explicit or inadvertent way – advocate a particular means of action I am no longer in a position to engage with myself.  I can’t expect or encourage anyone to do something I am not able to myself and so some kind of change of tac has been in order for some time.

The new book is a product of that desire for change and that of several years of writing and research.  We all know the seriousness of the times we are in regarding the climate.  For my part, in so far as I have the space and capacity to do so, I have chosen to put my shoulder to the wheel of civic engagement: protest is nothing without the role of civic society.  The latter to my mind offers the best way ahead as we move forward to collectively tackle the crisis.  Protest and civil disobedience can certainly serve to up the anti and help stir us out of our slumber.  It is understandable that so many people may choose to engage in them.  But equally the message has got through to every level of society by now about the immediacy of the climate crisis.   We do not need, and it may well be counter-productive, to seek to set the way ahead by constant disruption, however understandable the wish to continue to do so may be.  And to my mind, defacing irreplaceable art really does not serve the cause.  At times like these, communication and clarity counts for a lot.  We should be realistic about that which we face just as a better sense of direction is always helpful.  But ultimately the need for mutual survival should inform us all.

Given the pace of change needed we need good catalysts.  For my part, to some extent, I always felt that that with Nine Miles I was preaching to the choir.  The new book is an attempt to help broaden the message and not continue to be defined solely by those things I took part in a long time ago.  I believe there is still time to turn this ship around but only if we can act with sufficient alacrity and pace.  Efforts like that of ‘Zero Hour’ – the cross-party campaign behind the Climate and Ecology Bill – hold great potential.  The campaign is one we can all easily play a part in, whether that part is sharing a link, setting up a local group or actively lobbying your MP.

Such are my thoughts in these times.  But – as figures like Greta Thunberg and others are quick to point out – it is not, and never has been, for one person alone to help carry these things forward.  We can all play our part, bolstered by the best elements of our collective history.  There may be a long way to go but, as I hope my new book – which after all recounts a tale of pilgrimage – can help show, we can meet those miles with pace and will and some kind of sure determination.  It falls to us – to all of us – to now do what we can, without a sense of any guarantee but bolstered by the moral need to do our best.  When all is told it’s always been that way, only now we can all see it all the clearer.

Heist?

~ Jim Hindle ~ Leave a comment

Can anything surprise us anymore?  As we all hunker down and attempt to deal with the realities of the omicron surge, another threat to national society is not far from the horizon.  Specifically, as I write, the Lords are debating the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill – often dubbed simply the ‘Policing’ Bill.  Last minute amendments by Priti Patel have made the Bill all the more controversial with critics likening it to a power grab worthy of Putin’s Russia or Egypt.

Salient among the justifications are the touted necessity of robust response to the activities of the likes of Insulate Britain and XR, famed for their acts of disruption.  Protestor tactics have changed in recent years, the thinking goes, and the police need the powers to respond effectively.  While there is no doubt that obstructing stretches of motorway, blocking trains into the capital and shutting down various printing presses are far from popular, the case made for the kind of legislation we’re currently looking at tends to gloss over issues as to what constitutes ‘legitimate’ protest, how much power is to be handed over to the Home Secretary and the police and what she and they might – or are perhaps even likely – to do with it.

As Monbiot has pointed out, proposed police powers would include being able to ban anyone from protesting who has previously committed “protest-related offences” or who has even “contributed” to a protest “likely to cause serious disruption”.  If you thought “serious disruption” counted only as sitting on a tube train roof or gluing your face to the M25, consider the breadth of the remit.  If a protest is simply noisy enough to cause “serious unease” it could be banned.  But it is entirely up to officers’ discretion as to how many decibels this might entail and ignores the fact that creating some noise is often half the modus operandi of many given demonstrations.

Other, just as worrying, and imbedded ambiguities remain.  Associating with particular individuals or using the internet to encourage a “protest-related offence” for instance.  And police could effectively impose any restrictions they like on a protest and ban static demonstrations altogether.  Other sweeping statements include mandates against causing “serious disruption to the life of a community” and “serious disruption to the activities of an organisation”.  Stop and search powers could be used without given reason and the legislation as a whole would put many more protestors at risk of arrest.

The problems with this go beyond simply an attack on our rights, as disturbing as this may be.  The Bill would undermine the relationship between police and the public and frequently place impossible choices in the hands of those officers trying to do the right thing.  Relaxing of conditions for stop and search would undoubtably impact even more heavily on ethnic groups and curtailment of protests would hinder the ‘pressure valve’ they have always historically afforded.  Pushing dissent underground and radicalising its expression even further serves no one except, perhaps, those charged with drafting even more stringent legislation in response.

Protest, not unlike the British ‘constitution’ itself has long been subject to certain, generally unclarified, understandings.  Like those of the constitution, these understandings have always been vague, have relied to a large extent on a degree of goodwill or at least the acknowledgement of their likely popularity at large.  But equally, protests have traditionally very often entailed policing costs and a degree of disruption.  To argue otherwise is to endorse their restriction to a saccharine enfeeblement that many charged with managing them would undoubtedly welcome.  There’s always been an element of metaphorical push and shove. 

Given that protestors are often driven by the scale and immediacy of planetary crisis, it’s understandable some of them resort to disruption in the face of apparent media indifference.  But while it is true that (as Digital Rebellion have stated), activism can fill gaps in public awareness left by the press, strategies as to how to bring that public awareness on board are ignored at collective peril.  Though the need for greater traction and swifter change at large is sorely needed, no one should underestimate the extent to which people in general grasp the scale and import of the climate crisis.  The question is not whether we should act but how we should go forward.  And we stand to achieve far more with greater unity.

Activism can only ever be at its most instrumental when coupled with – in service to – wider civic society.  That our ecological situation is urgent, desperate is not in doubt.  It is right that people should find and utilise channels to continue to highlight this, to push for faster and greater change.  We can all lay a hand to that and there is as great a need as ever for those in a position to do so to dedicate themselves.  And mass demonstrations to urge on and hold politicians to account are needed today like never before.

Attempts by our government to clamp down on protest would negate all this.  The PCSC Bill is drafted in a way that would at best cause confusion in its implementation and in all likelihood represents a power grab that must be considered along with other proposed legislation including the Nationality and Borders Bill and ‘amendments’ to the Human Rights Act.  When concern about these laws includes even that of a former prime minister, and in quite forceful terms, the alarm bells for us all should now be ringing. 

Acclaimed film producer and long-standing peer, Lord Puttman, has studied the German descent into fascism in the ‘thirties in some detail and his leaving speech from last October, where he says that we’re in a “very bad place” and need to “wake up” is well worth the read.  With government placemen increasingly embedded in the hearts of our institutions, with broadcasters cautious and cowed and dissent barely more than a whisper, if it were judged alone by bulletins and headlines, it’s more important than ever we stand firm.  For all the fear of diatribes, understandable caution over an undue alarm, the biggest threat we face remains that insulant complacency that clings to the assumption it could never happen here.

Please consider emailing your MP about the Bill and signing this petition.