COLUMNIST — OWEN JONES
Art of rebellion
When I was 16, I was almost arrested for implying a police off icer had a small penis. This was extremely juvenile behaviour and should not be applauded under any circumstances.
It was May Day 2001 in Manchester and I was with a gaggle of anti- capitalist protesters when we were abruptly kettled -— that is, surrounded by police and trapped. Eventually we were allowed out, two by two, but my friend and I were ordered to sit on a pavement by a peeved copper. It was at that point I noted the size of his footwear and wondered, obnoxiously, if there was a correlation with other parts of his anatomy.
An ice- cold glare was followed by being shoved against a wall and searched by his colleagues. I’m not one normally to be an apologist for police brutality but I kind of brought that on myself. Since then, it’s fair to say, I’ve become a protest veteran.
It’s a bit of a family tradition: when I was fi ve, my parents took me and my twin ( yes, there are two of us, the horror!) on a Glasgow protest against Margaret Thatcher’s Poll Tax. I even started a chant: that was my proudest political moment and it’s been downhill ever since. I’ve been proud to be part of protests against austerity, racism, fascism, homophobia, war, privatisation, the threat of climate change, and attacks on workers’ rights.
Recently, I stood at the vigil marking the 20th anniversary of the neo- Nazi terrorist attack on the Admiral Duncan, in the heart of London’s LGBTQ community. I’ll be marching, too, against, the Muslim- hating, trans- soldierbanning, misogynist- in- chief Donald Trump when he again arrives on these shores. But I’ve always had friends who’ve been a bit cynical about it all.
“Why bother with all these protests?” they ask. “What do they achieve? Aren’t you just wasting your life? Why don’t you just chill out and come to the pub?”
As LGBTQ people, we should know, more than most, about the power of protest. Sure, it takes politicians to pass laws to end legally enshrined discrimination. But that doesn’t happen in a vacuum: it’s the culmination of decades of queer people protesting, struggling and fi ghting hatred whipped up by the media, being spat at in the street ( and worse), and being locked up. We didn’t win our rights and freedoms by simply writing politely worded letters to MPs. We took to the streets and forced the powerful to listen.
In the past few weeks, Extinction Rebellion brought the capital to a standstill, to demand politicians tackle the existential threat of climate change; they were ridiculed and demonised by much of the press and pundits. But they’re following in the footsteps of LGBTQ people who knew that, sometimes, to get things done, you have to become a hassle, and force those with infl uence to listen. We’re not going to win the sweeping change we desperately need by making crude innuendos about the appendages of the Boys in Blue.
The lesson from our own history is: unless we’re prepared to fi ght, we can never expect to win.
“We didn’t win our rights by writing
polite letters”