If you’ve been a reader of this blog for any length of time, then you will know where I stand on the issue of democracy. I like it and I want a whole lot more of it and ideally democracy by the way of the ballot box is the way to go. I’d also like to see many more local and national Referendums on key issues of importance some of which are far far too important to be left entirely to politicians. But to achieve the change that Britain badly and seriously needs by the ballot box requires there to be competent and sensible alternative political parties that people can vote for. Alternatives to the Uniparty of LibLabConGreen need to be politically savvy, knowledgable about the workings of government, aware of second order consequences of any of their chosen policies and blessed with workable policies that will achieve what they set out to achieve.

Although it may have been thought at one time that Reform might be that solid alternative to the Uniparty, it’s really not looking that way. Whilst I concede that Nigel Farage the Reform leader is a great political showman and figurehead, I don’t believe that he’s Prime Minister material. He’s too much of a martinet, too fiscally sleazy, too unwilling to delegate power and as we’ve seen following the Dover protest, too willing to suck up to the Establishment by denouncing those who peacefully take to the streets to protest Britain’s immigration disaster. I’d still vote for Reform in a General Election or a by-election if my chosen party of ideological sympathy, the Social Democratic Party, is not on the ballot or stands little chance of being elected, in large part because I now cannot bring myself to vote for any Uniparty candidate. I’m a ‘hold my nose and vote Reform’ type of guy at present.

I truly and desperately want to see change coming via the ballot box but what if that doesn’t happen? What if we get a Reform majority in the Commons, or a Tory / Reform coalition which crashes and burns, or their policies get stymied by the Establishment blob in the media, the third sector and the Civil Service? I believe that Dominic Cummings has warned of this possibility. If a democratic ballot box-related route to change is cut off, then what next? Many have talked up the possibility of Civil War, Revolution and extra-Parliamentary violence or even the emergence of a General Pinochet type character to attempt to bring order to chaos. I most certainly do not want to see any of that. I’ve seen enough political violence, mostly from the Far Left I need to say, for that not to be on my wish list.

However Dr Richard North, in discussing the recent massive donations to Reform and the possibility that Reform will waste this money or spend it wrongly, has brought up the issue of non-violent resistance and non-violent direct action becoming part of any attempt to initiate change for the benefit of the majority of Britons. He said that it is not an either/or choice between protest and electoral politics, he is suggesting a twin track approach. This twin track approach has been used by Irish Republicans, Zionists during the Mandate Palestine period, the Basque separatist movement and the movement for Indian independence. Some of these twin track or as Dr North puts it ‘an inside track and an outside track’ examples have in the case of Irish Republicans, Basque separatists and Mandate Palestine Zionists, been made up of an inside track of those using the political system, whilst others supporting the same cause have been on the outside track and have engaged in political violence.

Now, of course, I neither condone nor encourage political violence, I’ve seen too much of it to even think that this is an answer, I’m only giving historical examples where this sort of political / protest twin track has been used. However there have been examples, such as with the Indian Independence Movement, where there was an inside track working within the political system and negotiating with the British Empire, in this case the Congress Party and an outside track led by Mahatma Gandhi and his followers who employed non-violent resistance and non-violent direct action (NVDA).

Dr North said:

“This is not to say that the dual-track strategy must necessarily embrace violence. In the manner of Ghandi and his campaign for Indian independence, he famously adopted a programme of mass non-violent non-cooperation.

While the Congress Party acted as the formal political body on the “inside track”, he developed a separate “outside track” (Satyagraha), giving expression to the withdrawal of public consent, rendering the Indian state un-governable, while winning moral legitimacy for an alternative.

In the UK, where we no longer have a functioning democracy but have not yet descended to violent conflict on the lines of Betz’s civil war (even if we are close), the non-violent ethos of Ghandi is more appropriate to any dual-track strategy which we must adopt if we are to make any progress.”

Dr North has a point here. There are a lot of Britons, including myself, who would baulk at the idea of violence or supporting violence, but supporting non-violent stunts or non-violent non-cooperation is something that might be more palatable for many Britons. For the record I parted company with the Revolutionary Left in the early 1980’s because they could not answer the question about what happens once they’ve had their violent revolution? – how do they keep people fed and safe? how do they keep the lights on? etc etc.

Britain does seem to be in some sort of in-between stage at present. We don’t have the sort of properly functioning democracy that accurately expresses the will of the people, but then we are also not yet a failed state where violence becomes the answer, because the population feel that they’ve nothing left to lose but their chains.

Dr North quite rightly draws attention to the great successes achieved by Mahatma Gandhi and his followers, but said that much has moved on since then with regarding non-violent direct action or non-violent non-cooperation. Dr North highlighted the writings of the late Gene Sharp in his book ‘From Dictatorship To Democracy’ that Dr North said was an influence on the Arab Spring.

Dr North suggests that Mr Sharp’s book – see link below – which was published in 2002, might provide food for thought for Britons. He suggests non-violent stunts such as sending every MP a small model of a rubber dinghy with no letter and no explanation because the small model will in itself be the explanation. He also suggests that frustration with Britain’s dishonest media might be tackled by cancelling TV licences. This would fiscally hurt the BBC whilst also making a solid political point. The madness of Net Zero could also be protested by either refusing to pay energy bills or at the very least waiting until the red ‘final notice’ to pay as this will gum up the system and cause it problems if enough people do this. These are the sort of things that Dr North said that the average person can do from the comfort of their own home without having to take part in any street protest. What Dr North is suggesting is not people picking one big fight with the Establishment but engaging in lots of little fights.

Dr North also suggests that those who do decide to engage in street protests and humorous pranks, do so in a way that mocks to High Heaven the many rules that have been brought in that are often only aimed at one ‘side’ in a political debate. Anti-mask rules for demonstrations are, as we can see, being enthusiastically enforced by DEI-infested police forces when it comes to patriot or anti-migrant demonstrators, but not in the case of ‘Palestine’ or far left or Antifa demonstrators.

Dr North said:

“Perhaps the way to deal with the ban is to ridicule it. If people turn up to demos wearing Spiderman masks, ditto Batman and any of the “superheroes” you can think of, to say nothing of cartoon figures like Mickey Mouse and Paddington Bear as well as, of course, Count Binface.

Another idea, I thought, would be for protesters to dress up as Teletubbies (pictured) – the costumes can be cheaply bought. I can just see a mass protest being rounded up by the plod, handcuffed and locked up in cage vans. The media would have a field day and the videos would steal the internet globally. Little Mahmood would be the laughing stock of the world, bested by harmless Teletubbies.”

Dr North has a point here and I can give an example from my own life. One of my first big political memories is of a student protest in London against the Vietnam War which took place in December 1969. All the participants were dressed as Santa and the sight of all these Santas being bundled into Black Marias was not only striking and memorable (because I can still remember it) but also made the police look authoritarian and stupid and publicised the anti-Vietnam War movement in Britain. The sight of dozens of men and women dressed as Teletubbies would indeed, especially in the new world of social media, make the Home Secretary and the wider government a worldwide laughing stock.

Maybe Dr North is onto something? Maybe what might be effective is politicians who are on our side saying ‘nothing to do with me guv’ about massed ranks of protestors dressed as Teletubbies or in Spiderman outfits, whilst at the same time giving covert support to those who are undertaking non-violent direct action or non-violent non-cooperation? This tactic isn’t new, it’s one that has been undertaken by the Left and the environmental movement for decades. They support, either covertly or overtly, the street protests or stunts or acts of non-cooperation done by those willing to carry them out, whilst also pushing the same or similar views via the party political route.

Not to put a downer on things but I doubt that NVDA, especially of the more overt kind such as attending demos in Spiderman outfits, will be entirely cost free for those who take part in them. We have a failed government which will behave like a bunch of cornered rats when challenged. It’s likely that they will bite either by using and abusing the criminal justice system against protestors, or using other agencies of the state, both local and national, to harass those who’ve stuck their heads above the parapet. We are already seeing this with Danny Tommo, one of the organisers of the Dover and Portsmouth protests who, along with his family, is being subjected to some quite nasty intimidation by the police. Maybe what people need to ask themselves is whether the cost of doing nothing is greater or lesser than the cost of stepping up and saying ‘I’m Spartacus (and so is my wife*)’?

I have a hope, maybe a forlorn and unrealistic one, that Reform will discover competence in action and in policy formation and maybe that the Tories will become more conservative and eject the Lib Dems in blue rosettes who have had a stranglehold on the party since the days of David Cameron (who did some but not exclusively good things). Maybe we will get a Reform government that rules in the interests of the majority of Britons and does so sensibly and enacts laws that sort out many of Britain’s dire problems. However there’s also the darker possibility that there is not a centre Right win and we get landed instead with a cobbled together Rainbow Alliance of Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens and the ‘Gaza Independents’, who will do little more than make Britain’s current problems even worse.

If we want to see the changes that many people in Britain appear to want; namely border control, policing equality, one law for all, the end of divisive and destructive identity politics and the removal of those who have no business being in Britain, then we will have to fight for it at the ballot box and maybe with non-violent protest and non-cooperation. We might have to individually decide, as Dr North said, whether we are to be spectators or players in the great game that is afoot as we are heading, whether we like it or not, into more of those proverbial ‘interesting times’.

Links and addenda

* Sorry I could not resist a ‘Life of Brian ‘ reference there.

Dr North’s Turbulent Times article

https://www.turbulenttimes.co.uk/news/front-page/politics-spectator-or-player/

Gene Sharp’s 198 ways of non-violent protest

https://commonslibrary.org/198-methods-of-nonviolent-action/#Introduction

Dominic Cummings on how ‘the Blob’ will try to stop the Reform Party

https://spectator.com/article/dominic-cummings-on-whitehalls-plan-to-destroy-nigel-farage/?edition=us