It seems protesting is bad for your health - and must be banned

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The Mayor of New York has form. He is a high priest of the Church of Public Health, a fan of the ban, an obsessor about health risks. And he has deemed protesting to be unhealthy:

Police wearing helmets and carrying shields evicted protesters with the Occupy Wall Street movement early on Tuesday from the park in New York City’s financial district where they have camped since September, dismantling their tent city and arresting about 70 people.

Authorities declared that the continued occupation of Zuccotti Park - which had become a sea of tents, tarps and protest signs with hundreds of demonstrators sleeping there - posed a health and safety threat. 

Another triumph for the health fascists!

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It's not democratic to stop other people going about their business...

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Apparently Anne Minton thinks this is terrible (although I’m not sure the ordinary member of the public would think so):

A defining characteristic of privately owned "public" squares and spaces is conditional access. Members of the public are only allowed in if the company controlling the place is agreeable. This is private property in the same way that someone's house is private property, which means that the owner can decide who is or is not allowed to enter and what they are allowed to do there.

These are not democratic spaces. Instead rules and regulations are enforced by uniformed private security and round-the-clock surveillance. A host of seemingly innocuous activities such as cycling, rollerblading and even eating in some places are forbidden. So is filming, taking photographs and political protest.

I struggle to see how this differs markedly from those “democratic” spaces?

Conditional access? Most public spaces these days are subject to conditional access – think of the parks locked after 7 pm, the ‘keep off the grass’ signs, the strictures on busking, begging and drinking. And yes the banning of those “seemingly innocuous activities such as cycling, rollerblading and even eating”. All these are features of the most public of public spaces. Places now policed by a bewildering variety of uniformed officials – street wardens, parking enforcement officers, PCSOs and the occasional really copper all with powers to move you on, fine you and stop you from doing ordinary everyday things like taking photos, having a fag or resting tired feet.

The truth about all this is that privately owned “public” spaces are not a new invention, nor are they the “privatisation” of previously public land – it suits the owner to ensure that the place is managed in the interests of users and, if that means stopping people from “occupying” the space with a load of mostly empty tents then so be it.

The truth is that these “occupations” are intended to prevent other people from engaging in lawful activity, from going about their daily business. It seems reasonable that private owners should seek to prevent this infringement of the liberty of those who wish to use the spaces they own.

Ms Minton says this is undemocratic but does not ask how those people who wish, for example, to attend St Pauls Cathedral can exercise this right when the “occupiers” prevent them from doing so. Indeed, it is profoundly undemocratic for protesters – a few in number – to try and prevent thousands from going about their daily business simply for the sake of a political “protest”.

Of course people have the right to protest, to march and to gather (although I’m willing to bet that Ms Minton will be near the front of the crowd calling for the EDL, BNP or other unpleasant fascist group to be prevented from protesting). But those protesters, marchers and occupiers have no right to prevent others from doing their business or to “occupy” private places without the agreement of the owners.

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Why we are the 1%...

We are the “one percent” it seems.  We look up from the mess on the floor, point at the most likely culprit, and say; “them, there, they did it – it’s their fault, they made us.”

As we sit in our warm homes with HD TVs, computers, walk-in fridges and other wonders of modern living no-one remembers how the terrible things the bank did helped us to have those things – how we got a slice of the pie too.

And next time we leave the house – sliding into plush, fast motor cars with in-car music systems to visit exotic restaurants or shining picture palaces – we won’t consider that that bubble created these things.

And gave us better health services, improved school facilities, new roads and subsidised care for old folk. Not to mention a gold-plated welfare system and a seemingly endless production line of government jobs and grants.

As these marvels of modern consumer living arose, we didn’t ask; “excuse me sirs, where does all the money come from to make these things, to buy these things?” No, we got out our credit cards, took out the equity release loans and went on a binge. A binge fuelled by governments entirely to serve a political end – the justification of two things.

The first was the consumer society – not the caricature painted by Naomi Klein and others but the real one. The idea that government, through the maintenance of low interest rates by fiat, could ensure the permanence of economic growth. The pseudo-Keynesian canard that it is demand that drives that growth – so forget savings and spend, spend, spend!

Secondly, we saw the absolute triumph of the so-called “mixed economy”. With Blair’s “third way” and Brown’s end to boom and bust, we were present with the culmination of social democracy’s dominant idea – that the heights of the economy can be directed by the state. And that the profits of that direction could be directed to wider social benefit.

We voted for this. Not just once – never to do so again. But repeatedly – we allowed politicians to promise us the moon and stars without asking where those celestial baubles were to come from or how we would pay for them. Mostly, our reaction was something like: “he’s got loads, you can take more off him”; or else, “take money off those doing bad things – we don’t like fags let’s tax that more.” And when we got stuck, hey we could borrow a little more. It wouldn't notice.

The deal failed. It failed because governments got ever greedier for power and cash and bankers exacted a bigger price for the Faustian bargain with financiers.

Today we see protestors unsure whether they should call for some nihilistic endgame, the destruction of the state and its agents, or for the restoration of what was, for the rebuilding of social democracy through borrowing and printing money.

Not one of these protestors seems to point at the Emperor’s nakedness – to point out that the mixed economy failed, that we all tried to borrow ourselves to prosperity.

Maybe it’s because we're the Emperor. It's us that have the new clothes. 

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