Right to Dissent

For many the acts or terrorists are so heinous, such a threat to civilised society, that any measures  that might thwart their evil deeds is fully justifiable. Under this blanket of fear the Government gets a free ride to introduce its innocuous sounding IPB, Investigatory Powers Bill, better and more correctly known as the snoopers charter. A Bill which grants powers that the European Court of Justice has already stated contravene basic human rights. The Government is granting itself the right to open, read and store any electronic communication it chooses, from anyone to anyone. A blanket right to listen to phone calls, read EMails, anything sent electronically is open book to them.

Totally justifiable you might say if it stops another terrorists attack that we have been warned to expect any minute. Except of course a terrorist to one party is a freedom fighter to another party. All depends on your point of view. The Establishment, the upholder of the status quo, gets to label all dissent against it. Any group of people that gather and agree to disagree with the Establishment will be labelled but that label can range from 'protesters' to 'pickets' to 'mob' to 'uprising' to 'revolution' and so on all the way out to the extreme fringes. What we do know is that the Establishment will always seeks ways to supress dissent, any dissent. The only possible restraint will be their perception of public support and how far they expect to be able to 'manage' it. By manage we mean of course to bend, swerve, falsify, distort events and news to shift perceptions.

With this snoopers charter the Establishment, our Government elected to serve us, has given itself powers which enable it to monitor all dissent from what ever source and for what ever motive. Anything that suggests it is contrary to Government intentions, will be flagged. Once flagged, all participants, all associates of participants, all previously contacts of participants will be scrutinised for possible intents. All their past and present actions and comments will be reviewed in the light of possible threat, signs of contrary thoughts, evidence of lack of support for the Government aspirations and will be re-examined for assumed indicators of future actions. The data mining, the algorithms, the 'Case Officer'  will be working with so much information there will no scope for subtleties, for nuances or even common sense. So that jest, that floating of an idea, that game of devils advocate, that day dreaming, that idle speculation are all at risk of being taken out of context, just bundled up as proof against you. Just remember you cannot ever prove innocence. 

With the power to collect and interpret as they choose ideas at their very point of inception the Government gives itself the ability to step in and take avoiding actions. Actions that can range from isolating individuals, surveillance, planting of decoys, warnings all the way to arrest search or other life disruptions. They put themselves in the position to totally control any developments as the initiating ideas and membership grows. They are all seeing, all hearing and only they get to decided on the rights or wrongs.

If it stops another terrorist its okay then? Any dissent? You may not agree with the Coal Miners actions to save their industry.  You may not agree with the sit-in at Greenham Common. You may not agree with the HS2 protests. You may not agree with collect actions against the Single Past the Post system. You may not agree with the discontinuation of the Monarchy. You may not agree to bring an end to Party Politics and reinstate direct and accountable democracy. But you must agree the right to dissent from the Government is paramount. Dissent which can only be by collective action, actions that may fly close or even beyond what the Government of the day decrees legitimate. We should never ever give up our right to revolution as a final resort. Our right to collective action should be free of Establishment intimidation. Our friends and all the people we come into contact with should never be put under the microscope of suspicion just because we choose to dissent. Any more than our own innocent pasts should never be subjected to prejudiced retrospection just because we shared an EMail with the parent of our daughters friend who just happened to be radical. Dissent is what keeps us safe not the Snoopers Charter.

Acceptable Blackmail

Strikes put me in a bind. In principle I consider the ultimate sanction for any individual is to withdraw their labour and in parallel we are each responsible for our own actions and the anticipated consequences for any affected by those actions. But handing in your notice and going to find another job is a very middle class option. What if there is only one very large employer able to use your skills? You have the sanction of taking your labour away but you have to accept a dramatic change, probably for the worse, in your circumstances.

In an ideal world the the employed and the employers are always in dialogue and each pro-actively helps the other achieve the mutually agreed objectives. Might be difficult sell if, as an employer, you need to work your existing plant even harder to generate cash stream, so you can invest in new plant, which will lead to two thirds of your employers losing their jobs but increase your productivity threefold. It is very unlikely the workforce will be able to exercise the maturity to work their way through that one. It is of course not an ideal world and many employers just see their workforce as a tool to extract extra profit, unable to recognise that their fate depends on the morale and goodwill of each and every worker. They are in it together, like or not.

It is no wonder that resentment builds in groups of workers and collectively they decide to withhold their labour. To use the economic sanction of their labour withdrawal, to impose their collective will on the employer and force them to accept new conditions. Collectively they have greater clout than individual actions. Just coordinated individual actions in essence, but of course orchestrated. My problem with this is that the consequences for not just the employer but the people dependant on that employers product or service goes way way beyond the mere costs at the root of any disagreement. The traveller on an urgent trip is denied that trip or worse is subjected to hours or even days of delay, costs and inconvenience. Or the schoolchild's education future is put in jeopardy with a distinct possibility that they will never be able to recover from the lost lessons. As a direct consequence of the decision to strike, people completely unconnected to the negotiation, are used as pawns but have to suffer the consequences without any recourse. This is no more or less than blackmail and coercion. Do as we say or see the costs, pain and suffering we can inflict. Yes, there are all sorts of exceptions, rationalisations, excuses to offset or justify but in essence this is what any strike is about. Some groups of workers have more blackmail impact than others. Why not immediately concede? At the root is a leader, led issue but there may also be a wide variety of future implications which make it foolhardy to concede. We perhaps could still have a car manufacturing industry if only employers had not given in too easily to the workers short-term demands.

Even with good communications, implacable conflict can result and is even more certain when there are just plain bad parties, whether employer or employee, or resistance to change, or fraught economic pressures and uncertain futures, all the grist of every day life. When the trust falters you have entrenchment. Collective action by individuals is perfectly acceptable. Work to rule is an excellent example. If management decree this is the right way to work nothing wrong in following it to the letter. Wake up management. The rub is of course what on earth do they do when they are working normally? So withdrawal of labour is a legitimate action, collectively and individually. But the collective and each individual has to accept responsibility for the foreseeable consequences of their withdrawal of labour. It is their obligation to ensure innocent bystanders are not used as hostages, putting them in jeopardy, or else accept the financial retribution from the innocents so used. Very limiting on what actions are acceptable. Better that the collective takes the employer to court to prove or disprove the reasonableness of any refusal to accept a settlement. This will only result in even more fat lawyers and deferring to someone to decide between two sides, both with right on their side! That is life, sometimes it is plain unfair and there is no rational explanation.

Ultimately there only is one choice. Either put up and shut up or walk away, even it is to your severe detriment. For the employer, they have to respond, when individually each employer walks away. Life is unfair and stacked against you. This particularly so when well meaning agencies interfere and upset the natural order. The government decision to withdraw benefit from the unemployed that refuse to take a job actually is a remit to employers to continue offering unacceptable terms. The government has just tipped the scales heavily into the hand of the bad employer. The only tenable recourse is to hope for a favourable response to very limited constrained collective action or to walk away. Tough.