Who's Listening? Protests remain effective only while the political and economic consensus that governments should respond to their citizens' grievances persists. New Zealand's neoliberal revolution of the 1980s and 90s overturned that consensus. All that protests do now is convince neoliberal politicians that their policies are producing the intended effects.
RELIABLE ESTIMATES of the size of the weekend protests
against the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) put the number of
participants at a modest 2,500. Martyn Bradbury, colourful editor of The Daily Blog, speaking to more than
1,000 “It’s Our Future” protesters in Auckland, said:
“I think
that it really shows that economic sovereignty issues are actually quite
central to New Zealanders’ concept about who they are and how they see
themselves and losing that kind of sovereignty is a major concern — it’s no
longer just a fringe issue.”
Bradbury
later described the nationwide protest effort as “an incredible turnout for the
esoteric intricacies of free trade deals”.
Placed
alongside the great protests of the past, a nationwide turnout of 2,500 in
defence of New Zealand’s “economic sovereignty” is indeed “incredible” – but
perhaps not in the way Martyn meant!
But even if
the “It’s Our Future” protests against the TPPA had reached the 50,000 benchmark
figure established by Greenpeace’s highly effective protest against mining in
national parks, it is highly debatable whether it would have been sufficient to
make this government reconsider it iron-clad commitment to free trade.
The
presence of large numbers of protesters on the streets no longer seems to give
governments pause. Evidence of widespread public dissent long ago ceased to be
politically decisive because policy-makers are no longer driven by the need to
preserve a broad political consensus. Opposition is generally anticipated by
today’s politicians, and provided it does not come from those economic and
social actors deemed critical to their re-election, it is also generally
ignored.
One has
only to think of the hundreds-of-thousands of “indignacios” (indignant ones) who poured onto the streets of Spain
during the worst months of the Global Financial Crisis. Or, recall the grim
street-battles between police and protesters outside the Greek parliament in
Athens as that impoverished country’s legislators voted to accept the European
Union’s rescue package – along with the vicious austerity measures that
constituted its political price.
What was
it, then, that made the maintenance of a broad political consensus so important
in the past and why is that no longer the case?
In the
three decades following World War II – a period sometimes referred to as “The
Age of Consensus” – the maintenance of social peace and prosperity remained the
No. 1 political objective of both the centre-left and the centre-right. The “historic compromise” between
capital and labour (big
business and the trade unions) which had given birth to the Welfare State
required both sides to restrain their radical extremes and cleave to the middle
way. With memories of the Great Depression and the War still fresh in the minds
of most citizens, any other course of action would have been most unwise.
Throughout
this period, any manifestation of widespread social and/or political dissent
was, accordingly, regarded as a direct threat to the prevailing bipartisan
consensus. Prime-ministers and Leaders of the Opposition, alike, responded
quickly (and often favourably) to the protesters’ demands.
The
socially levelling effects of consensus politics could not, however, endure
beyond the point where they began to undermine the power and persuasiveness of
capitalism itself. The extraordinary success of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald
Reagan is largely explained by their willingness to challenge the core elements
of the Age of Consensus by attacking the unions, abandoning progressive
taxation and reducing the responsiveness of the state. The neoliberal
revolution which Thatcher and Reagan unleashed was thus predicated on the
assumption that if the minority who mattered in capitalist society were to go
on mattering, then the majority was going to have to learn to be disappointed.
Hence the
dwindling impact and effectiveness of protest. Far from spurring Governments to
reconsider their policies, mass protests actually provided them with evidence that
the contested policies were correct. The 300,000 workers who protested against
the National Government’s Employment Contracts Bill during the first fortnight
of April 1991, far from constituting proof of the Bill’s inequity, merely
confirmed for the Right the urgent necessity of its passage.
But if
protest no longer works how are we to explain Greenpeace’s success? Or, for
that matter – Ukraine’s?
In the
former case it was not Greenpeace’s mobilisation efforts alone that made the difference. Tens
of thousands of National Party members and voters had directly communicated
their outrage to National’s MPs through letters, e-mails and phone-calls. These
were the government’s core supporters in rebellion. They counted.
The protesters
who overthrew the Ukrainian Government possessed an advantage that all the
protesters described above lacked: the covert support of the armed forces. They
knew that violence against the police would not be answered by violence from
the army. What happened in Kiev’s Independence Square wasn’t a protest – it was
a coup d’état by crowd.
Strip the
state of its armed protection and mass protest rapidly escalates into
full-scale revolt.
This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 1 April 2014.
