by I Fought the Law- A Riotous Romp in Search of British Democracy (epub)
I also recalled, after the success of his school dinners campaign, Jamie Oliver saying he suddenly realized one day that anyone who didn’t agree with him that children deserved good food from their schools was a ‘wanker’, and from that moment on he knew he couldn’t lose. That’s an ideal cause, something that reduces your opponent to the status of ‘wanker’. For me, the right to free speech and the right to protest outside Parliament is the political equivalent of Jamie’s gastronomic campaign. Of course free speech can incite hatred if it’s used out of context. You could hardly complain if you went to a wedding and started shouting ‘This is absolute cock!’ at the top of your voice and found everyone slightly nonplussed when you explained that you were simply exercising your right to free speech. But if anyone living in a democracy, especially a member of its Parliament, tries to argue against the right to protest and free speech outside its seat of power then they are simply ‘wankers’ too. So the campaign was perfect. All I had to do was not ruin it.
However, Jamie Oliver is a celebrity so he had that other vital thing on his side, a media profile. That was something I didn’t have, but I did have a few tricks up my sleeve. Nationalism in this country today means you’re a racist or you’re talking about cheering on England in a sporting event. When SOCPA became law on 1 August 2005 England was on the verge of winning the Ashes on home soil for the first time since 1985. Everyone in the country went cricket crazy because of the typically English way we went about winning it. The iconic moment when Freddie leant down to console a distraught Brett Lee after we’d won the Edgbaston Test was as English as you could get. Our team was strong and creative and it fought till the bitter end, despite having to carry a few plucky, but ineffective, team members. Now I don’t usually go in for tacky sporting metaphors, but in this case I thought it appropriate, so in an attempt to harness some of that feeling I decided to organize a protest cricket match in Parliament Square.
A cricket match on its own might tempt the tabloids but 1 doubted it would work for the broadsheets, so 1 had to come up with something clever to interest that audience as well. Which is when I hit on another idea: why not organize a protest cricket match in Parliament Square for the ‘Ashes’ of the Magna Carta, seeing as the government had binned its last few remaining clauses in the name of protecting us from someone statistically less dangerous than Linda Barker? That made the whole thing highbrow, funny and mainstream. For a bit of added zest I wondered whether we could do it on St George’s Day. Then we really could bring patriotism into the mix. On paper I was convinced it was genius. A celebration of nationalism based on our status as the mongrels of the world, where we have always thrived precisely because of a diverse ethnic mix, mongrels who fight tyranny wherever it dares show its face and who drink too much ale when it doesn’t. That was what I wanted to celebrate on St George’s Day.
There was only one problem. Being charged with organizing, rather than just participating in, an illegal demonstration carried the risk of a possible fifty-one-week prison sentence. Now I was prepared to do just about anything to get people to read this book, and that included being arrested, but being jailed for a year was pushing it. If only I knew someone prepared to go to prison.
‘Hey, Mark, where are you? I’ve had an idea...’
Mark Barrett was very keen on the plan. He had already been thinking of organizing an alternative to the right-wing flag-waving spectacle our national day has become. His plan was suitably unconventional. ‘I was going to call it St George in Drag. Getting drag queens to hold aloft the cross of St George in Parliament Square would be truly subversive and would highlight the problem of the exclusion zone at the same time.’
We met in a pub a few days later, and as we became lubricated the plan trickled off into strange places. I wanted to go on a pilgrimage before the match, because I was drunk and I thought it was the sort of thing Gandhi would do, and Magna Carta Island was only thirty or so miles from Parliament Square along the Thames. Mark was very excited. ‘We could bring a replica of the Magna Carta to Parliament Square before burning it and playing for its ashes!’ Admittedly, this meant the plan was beginning to get a bit Spinal Tap in its complexity, especially as St George’s Day 2006 happened to be the day of the London Marathon. The runners would arrive inside SOCPA’s exclusion zone after their professional marathon with the legal corporate sponsorship message ‘Flora’ on their shuts; we would arrive after our amateur marathon for liberty and end up inside the exclusion zone with the illegal political message ‘Terrorism: It’s Just Not Cricket’ written on ours. We hoped that by the time we got to the square (teatime, naturally) the press would be bored of photographing exhausted runners and would cover our protest cricket match instead.
Everything seemed to be falling into place until I dropped a plate on my toe while cleaning Wilf’s sick off my T-shirt at two o’clock one morning. It wasn’t actually broken but it hurt like hell and I couldn’t walk very well. So that was the end of the pilgrimage. Mark was philosophical. ‘Don’t worry, we can do the pilgrimage in June instead, which is when the anniversary of the original signing of the Magna Carta is, anyway. I’ve got in touch with some cyclists and they want to cycle the route, so they can bring the Magna Carta with them instead.’ So the event became a cycle/march to Parliament Square from outside the exclusion zone, a patriotic tea party, and then an illegal cricket match before a night in the cells. If Neil got arrested for standing on his own with a placard, surely we’d get banged up for organizing such a blockbuster event. And if we got arrested for playing cricket on St George’s Day then surely even the Sun would be moved to make some kind of response.
So we were all set. I got some T-shirts printed with that Tony Blair quote, a cricket bat, stumps and a ball. I even got hold of some proper cricket clothes and a flag with the cross of St George to carry on the march. Mark had planned for us to meet in the Peace Gardens by the Imperial War Museum, which was outside the exclusion zone, at one p.m. Then we would have some food before marching to Parliament Square for the tea party and the cricket match once the marathon was over.
I drank a cold beer the night before and prepared myself for the day ahead, but then the apologetic phone calls and emails began. By ten p.m. a large chunk of my cricket team had cancelled. A few blamed family commitments, one had the cheek to cite the weather forecast, others had got cold feet at the prospect of being arrested, but afterwards they all admitted the reason was work. They were all terrified of being sacked if they ended up spending a night in the cells. One of them told me, ‘It’s all right for you, you’ll never have a regular job, but I just can’t have a criminal record. I’ve got a family.’
In the weeks and months leading up to the event people had been very keen to be involved. All the people I spoke to about the exclusion zone thought it was a disgrace, but as the day loomed the threat of arrest began to change their minds. SOCPA’s exclusion zone was working. When it came to the crunch, people were now simply too afraid to voice their opinion outside Parliament. They felt they had too much to risk. Only a handful - Jamie, John Mark, Katie, Alan, Edward and some of his mates - were still prepared to come. ‘Well, someone’s got to keep an eye on you, dude,’ Jamie wrote in an email.
I found this change of heart fascinating. I love my friends dearly and don’t blame a single one of them for not coming, but their reluctance to participate made me realize that I had already crossed a line. One of them even said ‘I really admire you for doing this, it’s really impressive’ after apologizing for not being able to make it himself. I rang Mark and told him about the second thoughts I’d encountered, which were beginning to affect me too. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ he said, ‘we won’t get arrested for playing cricket!’ But Mark had stepped over the line a long time ago and didn’t understand the reticence of people who had mortgages, credit cards and children to feed.
As I hung up the phone I felt proud that I had changed slightly in the eyes of my friends. The local elections were just around the corner
and the polling card, printed on bright orange paper to try to make it stand out from the junk mail when it came through my front door, seemed rather pointless in comparison with what I’d discovered on my journey around Britain so far. I would vote — the Greens had a chance of getting in down in South London so my opinion could actually have an impact, and I wanted to play whatever part I could in giving New Labour a bloody nose - but the reason I felt politically awake was the cricket bat and rucksack full of T-shirts in my front room, rather than that piece of orange paper pleading for my attention in the hallway. I didn’t care how silly it might seem to other people. For once I was actually going to do something I cared about. I was putting something on the line for what I believed in, and I had never, ever done that before.
It was then that I realized why we, as a nation, have such little interest in politics. We simply don’t know what it means any more. Politics has got nothing to do with voting once every four years. It isn’t about red, yellow, green or blue. It’s about how you spend every single day of your life. That’s your political allegiance - what you actually do with the short time you get to spend on this planet, not just what you Uke to think you believe in. You don’t vote by placing a cross by someone’s name on a ballot paper, you vote by having the courage to be who you are, to live the life you want to live and to stand up and say ‘No!’ to people who want to control and exploit you, whether it’s the government, your boss, credit card companies, the people offering to consolidate your debt, careers advisers, newspaper editors or the purveyors of satellite TV. Politics isn’t about Parliament, the House of Lords or MPs. The Palace of Westminster is just a big place full of jobsworth bureaucrats desperately trying to tick all the boxes their bosses have asked them to tick so that one day they can become bosses themselves. Rather like Ian Nairn’s problem with the planners of yesteryear, politics has also been reduced to the lowest common denominator, the mindset of a tedious office job instead of the amateurism and hope of life.
Politicians have managed to make us believe that they have the answers to our problems and that paying a subscription to a political party, being a member of one, or even just voting for them once every four years means that you have an interest and a voice in our political system. The truth is, they don’t have the answers. You do. When you act on something yourself rather than allow yourself to be paralysed by fear - of terrorism, poverty in old age, bird flu, Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen or Osama Bin Laden — you suddenly become a citizen of this country rather than a consumer of it. Then you have a stake in something larger than yourself and you begin to forge your place within your community. That’s the moment when your life will begin to change beyond measure.
The morning of the protest arrived, and the day started well. Henry Porter, the Vanity Fair and Observer writer who had been fighting passionately to defend our civil liberties in a newspaper column, had been having a frank exchange of emails on the subject of civil liberties with Tony Blair. The story was published on the front page of that day’s Observer. It was an illuminating article that gave Blair the chance to sound tough on crime in the run-up to the local elections. It was basically a re-run of his ‘Tough on crime’ speech fourteen years earlier, the argument being that civil liberties had to be compressed to protect the law-abiding majority. Having the debate as front-page news on the day of our protest was a good omen, though. I gulped uneasily at the prospect of Mark burning the Magna Carta in a Blair mask in front of the cameras, but at least there was only a small chance of being arrested now. With this much publicity the police were bound to leave us alone.
St George’s Day was graced with typically English weather - light drizzle. Decked out in full cricket whites under my long coat and carrying a rucksack full of T-shirts, St George’s flags and cricket equipment, I walked from Waterloo station to our meeting point, the Peace Gardens by the Imperial War Museum. It was an appropriate place to start. The museum is a wonderfully patriotic place. An enormous chunk of the Berlin Wall sits outside it beside a mind-boggling double cannon that seems to be the length of a tennis court. Inside, a Spitfire hangs gracefully in the entrance hall. Most nations would be too embarrassed to invite the Dalai Lama to open a peace garden in such close proximity to the glorification of the memory of war, but we did, and that’s Britain at its contradictory best. I met Mark, Steve and another protester called Mark by his car and we were assembling our deliberately blank banners and flags bearing the cross of St George when the police put in their first appearance of the day.
A squad car pulled up beside us and the two officers inside began to laugh as they wound down their window. The WPC in the passenger seat leant over the policeman driving and said with a smirk, ‘Er, this is really embarrassing, but, um, we’ve been told by our inspector, er, to ask you if you’re, um, planning on engaging in any criminal behaviour.’ They carried on laughing after that but pressed us for information about our plans, which seemed odd considering that every detail had been outlined clearly on the website for months. Steve told them we were just planning on meeting some people in the peace garden, and the police smiled, thanked us and left.
Given the rain, it was an impressive turnout with about thirty marchers by two o’clock. We assembled our banners and flags while a few Hare Krishnas served up hot food under huge umbrellas to help us on our journey to the square. One couple stood out among the cyclists, the men in drag, the people with painted faces and the lone idiot in cricket whites. They were very well dressed, very well spoken and very angry about the way our civil liberties were being eroded. The man seemed to find the colourful company slightly more awkward than his wife, but then perhaps I’m being unfair. It was equally likely that he felt awkward purely because he was among total strangers. I offered them a T-shirt each and they accepted gladly but refused to take them for free. The lady put a £10 note in my hand like my granny always used to when my parents weren’t looking. They took a dim view of the police, who kept sniffing around trying to find out what we were planning. ‘Look here,’ the man said, ‘are they trying to intimidate us or something?’ I told them it was good to see them and thanked them for coming. ‘Well, you’ve got to do something, haven’t you?’ said the lady. ‘I mean, it’s complete madness what’s going on.’ We spoke about why so few people seemed to be taking a stand and to her mind the reason for their reticence was clear. ‘Even the ones who have noticed are too frightened, that’s the problem,’ she said. ‘We’re both retired so we’ve got nothing to lose. It’s different if you’re young. I mean, you could lose your job if you got arrested for protesting about something like this.’
I wondered whether that conversation was a prediction of the future for political protest in this country. There is a generation for whom the dream of a secure pension has become a reality, but the current economic system has peaked for the majority of people living in Britain. That’s worth thinking about for a moment. I am part of the first generation that will have a lower standard of living than that of their parents, so from now on the model our society is based on, with its ever-expanding shareholder economy, will be failing the vast majority of us who live in Britain who are not already rich. However, a large number of the current retired generation have money and no longer have to work so they are perhaps the only group within society truly free enough to make a stand for what they believe in.37 Happily, they also have the most knowledge and wisdom to share. Never mind the black panthers, it’s the growing army of grey panthers that may yet hold the key to securing fairness and freedom for the people of Britain. It’s time Saga stopped selling cruises and mobilized their swelling ranks. We are approaching a time when the old will outnumber the young. It’s spoken of in apocalyptic terms by the government because of the threat it poses to our growing economy, but why can’t we harness their knowledge and use it to our advantage? A growing militancy among the retired and soon-to-be-retired could well be on the cards as more and more people discover at the end of their working lives that building their lives around ov
erwork and over-consumption delivered neither happiness nor security. It’s a lesson the younger generation need to learn before it’s too late. Before they’ve fallen into line and got themselves into the debt-ridden cycle of work and consumption that passes for Blake’s Jerusalem these days.
It was time to go to Parliament Square. By now, four other officers had joined the original two and a police van had appeared outside the gate. As we moved off, an unmarked police car with two more uniformed officers inside began to follow us down the road. One of the cyclists was pulling a small sound system, and Bob Marley sang out through the rain ‘Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights’ as we set off down the road. That felt bloody brilliant, I can tell you. We doubled back a few times and dived down back streets to try to avoid the police cars, but they always kept up with us while, not for the last time that day, a helicopter buzzed around over our heads.
We made it to St Thomas’s Hospital by around half-past four, which is when the police car stopped in front of us and one of the policemen called out, ‘Westminster Bridge is closed to all pedestrians. There’s no way you can cross there so you’ll have to find another route across the river.’ They looked apologetic and shook their heads. ‘You just can’t get across there, that’s all.’ This was a major blow to the plan. It would take hours to walk all the way to Lambeth Bridge and then double back to Westminster. If we couldn’t get to Parliament Square by five then it would all be a complete disaster. At that point, one of the protesters came over and whispered to the group, ‘That’s bollocks. They’re just lying. Everyone keep going.’ Inside 1 felt a twinge of surprise, and said, without thinking, ‘Surely a policeman wouldn’t just blatantly lie to us all like that? The bridge must be closed if he says it is.’ A few people looked at me as teachers might look at a naive child. Someone else patted my back supportively, as if recognizing that for me the penny might just have dropped. So we carried on, shouting through the rain.