by Don Franks
The NZ Herald reports that police outnumbered around 80 students and Poverty Action Group protestors at this weekend’s National Party conference.
Poverty Action Group spokeswoman Sue Bradford said: “We’re really pleased with the turnout, especially on such a wet and windy morning and I think it just shows how many people actually care about these issues, and want to let National know that we’re not sitting down and letting this be done to us.”
Those who turned up and protested outside the Auckland National party conference have my unconditional support and respect. Successive Labour and National governments have presided over decades of increasing poverty in New Zealand. The human cost of these parties’ capitalist policies may be counted in a steady increase of Third World diseases, family violence, wasted human potential and miserable stunted lives.
However, in terms of political weight, this weekend’s protest turnout could only be accurately described as a pitiful few.
There are close upon one and a half million people in Auckland. Even if the Herald report was ten times wrong and there were more like 800 than 80 protesters outside the conference, should anti-poverty advocates really be “pleased with just how many people actually care about these issues”?
It can be hard taking a radical stance in New Zealand. The considerable remnants of the welfare state, long-running plethora of small business, collaborationist labour union tradition and the establishment’s fostering of mindless nationalist culture raise barriers for radical activists.
On top of such barriers, we have a bad habit of making obstacles for ourselves.
One such persistent bad habit is talking up or inflating small protests, instead of frankly admitting, and examining why, they were small.
An early memory of my own activism is hearing a critic of the Communist Party of New Zealand complain: “There were just 20 people at the demonstration, but another hundred joined them in the pages of the People’s Voice“.
The People’s Voice was the CPNZ’s party paper, and for some years its reports notoriously exaggerated demonstration numbers to try to impress overseas comrades.
We no longer have such an incentive. Yet, today, the tradition continues. Inflating or talking up tiny numbers serves to make us feel better about a disappointing effort. Or, to try to convince the working class that we matter, that we are big and significant enough for them to come along and join us, just as the gods took pity on Mao’s Foolish Old man who tried to move the mountain.
However well intended, leftist lies are in vain. The working class is not, at the moment, feeling revolutionary and false words will not alter that fact.
When we pay workers the respect of telling them the truth we will become more entitled to their political support.
Reassuring rather than pitiful. Protest politics, which the left mistakenly equates with activism, will lead only to failure and disillusion. This kind of activity – protesting at a National Party conference – is ridiculous. Who does Sue think is listening? If anyone is listening, how will they effect any change?
I think the value of protest politics is quite limited and the activity has been rather thoughtlessly over played for some years. In recent years too, protests have become smaller and too ready to stage gimmicks in pursuit of “good media coverage”. Self satisfaction with such events is futile.
Still, I believe protest politics have their place as one component of activism. A large militant protest can give a public voice to radical alternative opinion, provide a venue for new and experienced activists to meet and thus help build a movement for change.
Even small protests have a place when that’s all you can mount. New Zealand anti apartheid protests began that way, and, combined with various persistent forms of agitation and propaganda, eventually constructed a political force.
If I’d been in Auckland I may well have gone along to the demo simply because I hate the smug bastards at the National party conference but I would not have been pleased with a turn out of eighty people or claimed the event as any sort of victory.
I can accept most of the argument, but “hating the smug bastards at the National Party conference” is the kind of sentiment which keeps a small group of leftists constantly engaged in futile and self-demeaning expressions of emotional frustration which go by the name of “protests”. People need to seriously ask the question “What will this achieve? Will it cause the National Party to change course? Will it attract the attention of the mass media? Will it cause llarge numbers of people to convert to my point of view? Or is it just a way of letting off steam and venting frustration?” The way I see it only the last is true. These “protests” are for the most part an exercise in self-deception
Well, I take your point Geoff. As a participant in quite a few of these events, I look back and admit a sizable component of them was venting frustration. A very human response, but not politically productive, consequently some of us are trying to learn.
Yes, I have attended many demonstrations myself – sometimes in hope, sometimes in anger but more often in recent years simply out of a sense of duty. Now I feel that I have to do better than that. I want to know that what I do will make a material difference, and that it is part of a plausible pollitical strategy for fundamental change. I was not setting out to “knock” Sue Bradford or any of those who joined her in showing their energy and commitment to matters of social justice. But the things you are saying need to be said, and the “activiists” among us should take the time to listen.
From Gordon Campbell, Scoop July 24th :
” Reportedly, only about 70 protestors turned up to protest at the conference, and that was enough for the NZ Herald and the Dominion-Post to read into those numbers not only a change in the national mood about asset sales, but a mandate for the government’s entire programme. Here’s John Armstrong in the Herald:
John Key and his senior ministers will take the paucity of protesters as confirming National is on side with majority public opinion in pushing ahead with controversial policies such as more welfare reform and much more oil and mineral exploration.
Yesterday, the Herald even linked to Don Franks, always a reliable Eeyore on the state of the left, to support this analysis. Just how many protestors turning up at the conference, one wonders, would have been sufficient for the press gallery to form a different opinion? Say…somewhere between two to four thousand? Yeah, that might have done it. But hang on, that’s how many marched against asset sales in Auckland only last week. And back then, did the Herald conclude that the jig is up for asset sales, welfare reform and mining, and announce that revolution in the air? Well, no. As usual, it all but ignored the event. For the Herald, the only visible protestor is one who isn’t there.”
Which I would venture to translate:
The right wing press report the Auckland protest as some sort of plus for the other side. Ok – let’s shuffle the same deck for a bit and then deal it out again.
Look!
Not nearly so bad when you face the cards around that way is it!
So boo to the Herald and negative grumpy old Don.
Never mind facts, however the naysayers read it, the protesters really won.
Thanks Gordon, for the useful pot to put things in.