Violent direct action?

[Toby Austin Locke]

Following the events at Milibank House, I would be very interested in hearing different peoples view of violent direct action when fighting this political agenda. I take the stance that Such action should be taken but only when it is directed at institutions and ideologies... not people or groups of people. What do others think?

[David Graeber]

yes, it really does make one think of the mutilation of the herms - which, for those who are (unlike Keith) not classically inclined, was the famous scandal of 415 BC in Athens concerning the little statues of Hermes, the god of mediation, boundaries and those who go in and out across them, which took the form of simple pillars adorned only with a head on top and erect penis, which stood at the gates of Athenian houses, mediating the oikos and polis, domestic and public sphere. Right before the going out of the Sicilian expedition a group of drunken revelers went through town knocking all the penises off, and Alcibiades, who originated the idea for the great (and incredibly stupid and ultimately disastrous) expedition, was accused of the crime - whether accurately, we will never know. He skipped town and went over to the Spartans. Anyway, it seems to make sense, since Alcibiades, Socrates' most famous pupil, was known at the time as a beautiful and charismatic boy who had, effectively, seduced the Athenian public, thus threatening that very boundary.

The breaking of the windows of women accused of sexual incontinence is pretty obvious in its symbolism - they are accused of making a false declaration of bourgeois respectability, erecting a kind of symbolic hymen between themselves and the public world, when in fact, it is being said, they are really public women, and thus penetration of the window by a rock is considered appropriate. It's telling that if someone accused of either rape or window-breaking at the time could prove their victim had ever taken money for sex, they would be found innocent. When the practice inspired an apprentice riot in 1668 when young men tried to systematically pull down houses of ill repute, some declared that if anyone tried to stop them they'd turn their attentions to the "great bawdy-house at Whitehall." So one can see how the Suffragettes really were an inversion - especially because, in attempting to demand entry from the domestic into the public sphere, and therefore trashing windows at Whitehall, they also insisted that as women, they were motivated by a respect for life, men with their wars hurt and kill people, they declared, women would merely damage private property since that seems to be what men care about. They would destroy that which they were confined to (the private sphere), or at least the membrane that separated one from the other. The obviously public nature of so much "private property" - especially, that sort of private property surrounded by large panes of glass - clearly played into all this. But it also makes you think of the media images from the last few days, also from Whitehall, of the virginal schoolgirls linking hands to surround and protect the police van (left as an obvious lure) against those supposed hooligans who might wish to break its windows. What shall we do with this?

As for Keith's question - I guess the obviously public nature of so much of what's called "private property" has always been the weak link in the chain. But we can also think about debt and credit if we like, since this has always been part of the equation. The point of breaking women's windows was to destroy their public reputation, and the immediate result, according to victims, of having a window broken and thus being labelled a "whore", was that suddenly shopkeepers wouldn't sell them, or their servants, goods except for cash. Doesn't that seem telling? The radical Suffragettes were socialists, at least in their window-breaking phase. The welfare state compromise Keith speaks of was of a respect for private property and bourgeois propriety combined with an extension of the ability to live something like that sort of life to at least a large portion of the working class through redistributive policies; this is being threatened by a supposed "debt crisis" where everyone else supposedly has to pay so the state can pay the bankers for the cost of... well, bailing out other bankers. Debt is clearly the weak link. I'm sure Keith agrees with me on this. But how is it evoked in this sort of play of images? How to come up with an even more compelling image of our own that will bring that back to peoples' minds?






Keith Hart said:

I love David's riff on window-breaking as an English custom, gender inversion and all.

What strikes me about this is the need to identify the cracks in the London synthesis of politicians/bureaucrats/media/finance.The Guardian treads a very thin line between conformity and opposition that might deserve close scrutiny.

I was very impressed with Gareth Stedman Jones' discussion in Outcast London of relations between the East and West Ends in the 19th century, of periodic rampages from East to West, finally negated by Herbert Morrison's Labour Party organizing the working class to march peacefully from East to West with banners and brass bands, precursor of the class compromise that made the welfare state (now in ruins).

I would like the forms of direct action to be placed within a historical framework that identifies the class interest of university teachers and students at this moment of contradiction. What alliances might make protest an effective lever for change? Or if the government said, 'OK we won't raise the fees by so much', would that put a stop to it? If violence is a symbol of tearing up the class compromise, what goes in its place?