What do we want? Er...

I popped over to St Paul's yesterday, on the way back from actual church. I thought I'd go see the protests before I passed judgement. It's rather better than I thought: there is no aggravation, it's quite tidy (with refuse separation that would make any council glad), it doesn't really affect the church at all - more on that in another post - and everyone seems very good natured. They have put up a lot of posters, but it's impossible to be angry with them. It's like a picturesque cross between a student protest* and a festival, with a few crusty hippies and a lot of nice youths taking things very seriously indeed. Many of them have beards, which every ex-student knows is a sign that you are very serious about politics (this only works on the left).

Not that I am any clearer about what they want. For the last week, I've been asking that question of those who might be in sympathy with them and they don't know. I'm thinking of adding it to my list of fun games to play to bait the left (current favourite: which of BP, BA and BT should the government own? Hint: till 1997, the Labour party thought the answer was all three). Going there doesn't help either. Their posters are the usual ragbag of radical socialism, anti-capitalist hoo ha, along with an amusing placard against usury.

'Helpfully,' they've posted their statement up online. It's not entirely clear this is a good idea for them. Of the nine points, three aren't debatable or are meaningless (2,5,8) and four are just poorly thought through left of centre posturing (3,4,6,7) - I don't believe for a second that they have thought through global justice and equality issues. However, it's the remaining two points that are most irritating.

It's because they think that they have arrived at some profound critique of the system: 'this is what democracy looks like. Come and join us!.' This strikes me as a depressing and deep failure to understand the world and a childish refusal to accept that it's more complicated than they think. This approach is widespread and I would categorise the Tory rebellion on Europe in exactly the same way. In this case though, it's why they can't put forward a coherent position forward - they simply haven't done the work, and they're not equipped to. They have diagnosed that something has gone wrong, and they think that having a lot of meetings will help. It won't.

By itself, this wouldn't be an issue. They're not important, real politics gets done elsewhere. But it adds to a public debate that will not consider trade-offs, only propositions, and that's a disaster. Take the banks for example, the line that we should not pay for bank's losses is seductive, but obviously nonsense. There's an oddity anyway about taking tax from bankers to pay for the state and then declaring you want nothing to do with them. In making this argument, the protests ironically are making the same antisocial transactional calculation they would accuse the bankers of. However, the obvious real issue is that that's the wrong question; the right one is to ask what would be the best way to minimise pain for everyone, given we are in this situation. Governments can stop the bankers making money, but will it help? In this case therefore we are really debating between flavours of how best to regulate the financial system. That's not very seductive, but it's very important, and it's hard. We aren't going to navigate that or any other problem by sitting in tents and having daily discussions without decisions. Such an approach is at best self-indulgent, and at worst outright dangerous. It doesn't matter that I can't point to specific demands coming out of the St Paul's camp, it does that people in general don't seen have any, because it means they can't discriminate between options in anyway. To govern is to choose, not to express your dislike about things.

So, I hope they enjoy their protest; and I really hope no-one listens.

 *As an aside, my favourite student protest story ever is when Oxford's left occupied some university buildings, and about an hour before they were evicted, the leadership told all the lawyers to leave as it might affect their careers if legal proceedings were taken against. And they all left. I wonder if the same spirit pervades the St Paul's protest.

BIbliography, September 2011

Read: 11
BOTM: E. Ladurie, Montaillou


C. Bourret, Un Royaume transpyreneean? La tentative de la Maison Foix-Bearn-Albret
E. Brockes, What would Babra do?
M. Dobbs, House of Cards
W. Fotheringham, The passion of Fausto Coppi
E. Ladurie,  Histoire du Languedoc
H. Mount, A lust for windowsills
E. Waugh, Brideshead revisited
P.G. Wodehouse, Something fresh
P.G. Wodehouse, Leave it to Psmith
[the name isn't important, what is is that it was in comic book format], Henri IV

Something of an inevitability in the BOTM this time. Ladurie's Montaillou is a classic of medieval history, concerned with the complex networks of individual relationships in a heretical town - what is not to like? It's a pioneering work that really uses the almost unique source material to really reconstruct a fascinating account of medieval life in Occitania. I wish I had read it as a undergraduate, and everybody should. If ever there was an antidote to 'olden days' thinking, this is it. It's not perfect, and could have been a bit shorter, perhaps with some diagrammatic representations of the relationships in the village, but otherwise ace.

Elsewhere, don't read Harry Mount's book on architecture - it's patronising and annoying, and reads it a bit like he's typed up the notes from his Masters in the subject, and added some silly conversational asides. On reflection, one suspects that is exactly what he has done. Lazy.