Comment on Polluters, tax avoiders, misfits: forget Labour’s pals, Tory donors are in a different class | Catherine Bennett

• tenebrisnox@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  The BIG recent social gains in the UK (and likely Western Europe) happened after World War 2. The ruling classes were terrified of growing Soviet support and “allowed” concessions like the NHS and a large welfare state. The last 50 years have seen the slow reversal of those big gains.

  To me it looks like most social and political change in the UK has come about as a consequence of fear of revolutions abroad (French and Russian primarily).

  Day-to-day social change comes about as coordinated direct action though. Look at the successes of the LBTQ+ movement over the last 50 years and the profound progressive impact its had. You could probably say the same about animal wellfare.

  I think environmental change will happen as a mix of direct action and some catastrophes that directly affect UK and Western countries. What IS a major factor preventing positive change is the billionaire-owned media that undeniably influences how ordinary people think and behave.

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• Syldon@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Yes, I agree. We have a very biased and politically controlled media. Things which they see as intrusive on what they wish to pursue are hidden and unreported. They only ever publish items that push there own agenda forward.

  Take the Stop oil protests, the only protests that anyone hears about are the ones that put the protests in a bad light. We got to hear that expensive art was being vandalised, we got to hear that traffic was being stopped and drivers were very irate. We never got any coverage of the many other protests that are happening all the time. Stop Oil noticed the lack of coverage and decided to up their game for sensationalism. This just played into hands of Murdoch’s media. Murdoch has managed to make them look like terrorists. He even got the Tories to change the law so that we all got affected because of the acts of Stop Oil. This again does Stop Oil no favours. Protests without the right sort of coverage is a total waste of time and effort.

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  • tenebrisnox@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Protests without the right sort of coverage is a total waste of time and effort.

    Weren’t some suffragettes labelled as terrorists and locked up? Some went about smashing things up and planting bombs.

    Eventually - despite the way they were portrayed in the media of the day - they won. The suffrage movement took about 100 years (the earliest from around the time of the 1832 Reform Act and certainly from around 1870). Maybe the envirnomental movement will take that amount of time, too?

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    • Syldon@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The first petition to parliament was in 1866. 50 years later they had achieved nothing.

      4 years of war, where women were pushed into the roles that were traditionally held by males, gave their cause magnitude. This also came at a time when the population were asking why the masses were paying the highest cost and yet had no real say in what was happening. The suffragette movement did not just affect the vote for women; it gave empowerment to ask the question of equality for all. Google how Alice Paul had to contend with black women wanting to take part in the rally in 1913. The world was changing from being subservient to empowerment with a voice.

      The media back then had a lot more power than the media of today. There was no competition to give an opposing view, now we have Facebook, Twitter (X or whatever), Tiktok and many other forums. Without the world war, you could easily argue that the cause could have failed and died.

      Look at the hijab protests of Iran. This is exactly the same oppression that women were under at that time. They had to fight religious norms as well as an entrenched society of males who were supressing the population. I sincerely hope the Iranian women win their fight, but the cost will be high.

      So no, I disagree that terrorism can win the day always.

      The Good Friday Agreement was born out of terrorism. Even then Terrorism was not the main factor in achieving the end result. It took multinational efforts to get both sides in the same room. It took near 50 years of consistent bombing campaigns and murders where 3532 people lost their lives to convince the people that this was wrong. Put this into context with population size against the UK. Ireland has a population size close to a 40th of the UK. I can could the number of suffragette events on my fingers that I know of. I remember most of the bombs that the British news media posted regarding the troubles. Every bomb was given media coverage. We had much better press back then, even if it was biased towards propaganda against the IRA, they never failed in reporting an event.

      The GFA is hanging by a thread even now. Can you honestly say that the suffragette movement could have yielded same result without the world war?

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      • tenebrisnox@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Very interesting info about Alice Paul - thank you. I didn’t know anything about her.

        I think you misunderstood the point I was making (or, apologies, I wasn’t clear). I wasn’t advocating terrorism. I was pointing out that the sufferagist movement was sometimes labelled as “terrorists” by the press not that they were actually terrorists. I was trying to draw comparisons between the way they were described and the way that (fairly moderate) environmentalists are labelled today. (Though I do think that the Irish republican movement has also made big gains and it’s likely we’ll see a united Ireland at some stage.)

        I don’t think it was World War I that enabled social change in Western Europe (that’s a nice story told by the establishment to create the illusion that the upper and lower classes were all in it together). It was the fear of the spread of Bolshevism. We saw this repeated after 1945.

        My personal view about political/societal change is that direct action eventually forces longer-term political change. Voting in a parliamentary election is little more than entertainment (and, of course, distraction).

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  • midgephoto@photog.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    @Syldon @tintory
    Individual experience trumps news media, don't you think?

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    • Syldon@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Individual education trumps news media imo. I do not experience the need for the food banks in the UK, and yet I am very much aware and saddened by them. Populist media relies on people just using their own experiences. This allows them to target each group separately. I believe that people should broaden their horizons with the views of others to get a look at the bigger picture. And more so, sadly in today’s world, follow the money trail.

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