The posts on this blog were mostly considered emails written to people interested in a particular approach to addressing the problems facing humanity and our relationship to the planet. If you are interested in what you read - please leave a comment...

July 09, 2013

Protest! - an essay

This essay was written as an entry for a competition run by The Guardian, asking for 3000 words on a personal experience of protest. I rather ignored the brief, which called for reportage on a recent involvement. It goes without saying that I didn't win...
I wrote about my experience over a lifetime, really as supporting material for an argument, which is that protest over issues is all but futile - that at best it moves the goalposts (I initially miss-spelled that as 'gaolposts', and it was appropriate, as single issue protest can be seen as a call for no more than 'Bigger Cages, Longer Chains!'). The argument is that protest which is simply a rejection, which refuses to get involved in negotiations, in detail, in compromise, is more challenging to the status quo, harder to answer, more subversive - and more satisfying.

Anyway, rather than write it all again, here it is: