I don’t know if this is true or not, but one of the left-wing channels on YouTube posted up a video stating that Starmer had abstained from voting on the bill to give the police increased powers to close down demonstrations.
If it’s true, you really do wonder what the point of him is. Democracy and free speech in Britain is under attack from both left and right. From the left there’s the intolerance of the militant trans movement, which is seeking to shut down any opposing debate on the issue through loud, angry and threatening protests. Kathleen Stock, a feminist professor at the University of East Anglia, was subject to such a demonstration when students let off smoke bombs. There was opposition to her from within the university, who tried to sack her. One of the reasons they gave was that they could no longer protect her safety. She was also met with protests from the students when she spoke at the Oxford Union. On the right, the Tories are trying to strangle the right to strike and demonstrate. This campaign has been given fresh impetus by the stupid antics of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil in blocking the roads. This is not just an inconvenience, but dangerous as they have held up ambulances and ordinary people trying to get to a hospital appointment. It’s also massively counterproductive, as it seems designed to infuriate the very public, you’d think they’d want to appeal to. I’ve noticed a lot of coverage of these demonstrations on right-wing channels like GB News, and it seems to me that they are being used to produce a background of feeling against both the demonstrators and their cause, and against left-wing demonstrations in general.
As the leader of an ostensibly left-wing party, Starmer should be expected to stand up for the right to demonstrate. Unfortunately, I find it very easy to believe that he did abstain from voting against it. Starmer’s an establishment authoritarian who wants to appeal to the Tory-voting middle class. Hence he’s broken just about every promise and pledge he’s made and done his best to purge Labour of traditional, socialist, members and activists. And the party has form for abstaining on voting against Tory legislation in the commons. Back c. 2015, I seem to remember, Ed Miliband ordered the party to abstain when it came to voting on a yet another set of welfare cuts. Starmer himself has also described himself as a Conservative when advocating a set of policies recently. Well, there is a Conservative argument against clamping down on demonstrations. A few years ago Lobster reviewed a book about the expansion of democracy, free speech and human rights in Britain which clearly stated that every freedom we now enjoyed has been won through real hardship and struggle. The book was written not by a member of the Labour party, but by a Conservative. The Canadian right-winger, Kathy Shaidle, put on her terrible blog, Five Feet of Fury, the argument that Conservatives should be wary of passing legislation limiting free speech, because they knew that such laws could be used against them in opposition. It’s a good argument, especially as I remember the furore that erupted when Blair was met with demonstrations from the traditional Conservative-voting hauliers. The situation, according to Private Eye, was suddenly reversed. The party that had originally stood for the right to protest was now complaining about it. I’ve no doubt something like this will occur again if Starmer gets his way and occupies No. 10. Whatever individual Conservatives have said about preserving free speech and the right to demonstrate, the party itself is determined to clamp down on them. And if Starmer really abstained from voting against the recent legislation, he’s really not standing up for traditional British liberties either.
You wonder how he would have voted during the Peterloo Massacre, the 19th century outrage when Castlereagh sent in a squad of dragoons against a crowd gathered to hear the radical politician, Orator Hunt. Coleridge or one of the other Romantic poets had no hesitation of denouncing it in his ‘The Masque of Anarchy’. Similarly, would Starmer have protested and condemned Churchill sending in the army to shoot down the strike miners in Tonypandy, another bloody Tory atrocity that’s left a deep feeling of bitterness in working class politics? I wonder if he would have, or just abstained in case it alienated the establishment he is so desperate to appeal to.
Our fundamental rights are under threat, and we need someone to stand up and preserve them. Corbyn would have, and did. He inspired crowds with Coleridge’s poetry appealing to working people against their oppressors. But Starmer and his coterie allied themselves with the Tories to lose him the last election, unseat him as head of the party, and are now trying to throw him out.
So how far can we trust Starmer to defend the right to protest and demonstrate? Or is he going to concede them to the Tories