The Power In The People
How We Can Change the World
Michael Mansfield
Having read it
★★★★★
Amazing.
A well written and concise book that is clear about the achievements some people have had against the oft-lumbering and unaccountable state.
The book acts as a light shining on some of the efforts and sheer doggedness of those (supported by people like it’s author and associates) that have been ripped apart by unfortunate events yet they turned up and fought tiredly for acknowledgment of them and their cause(s) and to seek state and/or corporate accountability and continued to speak up and against the injustice, ineffectual leaders and the seemingly brazen ignorance that seems to power contemporary politics rather than just getting the basic human right to search for truth through fact, which would actually be more relevant, helpful, cost-effective and efficient.
It is remarkable how a time constraint focusses the mind and concentrates the argument.
The reporting of changes to protest law in the book’s last words section should worry all of us. Here’s a segment:
[...] A right is an entitlement – moral and legal – imbued with the characteristic of inalienability. That’s why the conventions and treaties speak of rights first and foremost. Otherwise, the freedoms risk becoming illusory. And that’s why the people who cherish these rights are now branded as examples of ‘woke’ and have become the new ‘enemy within’ for the people in temporary power.
The proposals have led to a panoply of legislation enacted to curtail the voice of the people in the same manner as the Restoration Parliament treated the Quakers, the most recent rushed through days before the coronation in 2023. On top of the older offences of riot and unlawful assembly, a huge range of public order offences has been added. The cherished right of peaceful protest has been steadily eroded by a plethora of legal restraints and preconditions, violations of which constitute further offences in themselves. The nadir was reached in 2022 with proposals (defeated twice in the House of Lords) to even cap noise levels.
It will surprise no one, therefore, that this steady decline in respect for basic rights and the rule of law – both in policy and practice – by successive governments has placed the UK on a slope that ends dangerously close to a regime akin to those in Belarus, North Korea, Afghanistan, China and Russia, regimes that brook no opposition. In March 2023, Civicus Monitor, the annual global index of civil society and civic freedoms, downgraded the UK to ‘increasingly authoritarian’ and ‘a hostile environment’. The latter words are strikingly familiar, having been uttered in 2012 by a British Prime Minister seeking to promote exactly that as a deterrent to those with aspirations of becoming British citizens!
However, as of this review, a ‘new’ government is in place that may better respect and even empower the people to correctly and safely protest to keep the state working with accountability and transparency and for all and be rid of these (Tory-led) amendments so that real, constructive protest and debate can happen and productively empower and change things, collectively and responsibly.
A good passage
Whether we like it or not, nothing stays precisely the same – in our own personal universe or in the astronomic one. Expanding, growing, moving, transcending, transforming . . . society is in a constant state of metamorphosis and mutation. Our own daily movements and encounters, however seemingly static, incrementally alter our relationships with others and with the environment that surrounds us. We may notice it in others more than we do in ourselves, but when we leave a room, in a sense, we are not the same person as we were when we entered it.
A second good passage
For generations ‘they’ have banked on the fact that the ordinary person does not have the time, the energy, the resources or the patience to keep going and will just fade away. But commensurate with the recent decline and bankruptcy in our thinly democratic state, times have changed dramatically. The bare bones of indifference and autocratic authority have been exposed. In response, the citizen has stepped up more often and more strongly to provide a persistent challenging presence. Governments and Met Commissioners may come and go, but no matter what or who tries to sweep the shortcomings under the carpet, the continuing pressure of conspicuous injustice remains to remind each new person in power that the job is far from finished.
A third good passage
Presently, the gamut of need is vast, augmented by global forces impacting our daily lives – the recent pandemic, the energy crisis, global warming, the cost of living crisis, poverty, famine, pestilence, numerous war zones and extreme climate events such as floods, wildfires, avalanches, mudslides, drought and earthquakes. Human responsibility runs throughout, allied to a dire deficiency in national and international organs of governance. Big questions arise from all these dreadful circumstances. Was it foreseeable? Who knew? Who should have known? Was it preventable? What can be done?
It is time for the people to get the answers and reset the clock before it’s too late.