I favour civil disobedience if it’s done responsibly and for good reasons.
Civil disobedience was practiced by Jesus; more recently Henry David Thoreau, the 19th Century American philosopher, is seen as father of the modern art of flouting authority. Thoreau had a strong impact on Mohandas Gandhi, who led protests first against South Africa’s laws against Indians (Gandhi lived there between 1893 and 1914) and later effectively against colonial powers in India. Gandhi and Martin Luther King are seen as 20th Century leaders in this field but one must include the entire civil rights movement and especially that in the Southern US in the 50s and 60s.
One must also remember the many acts of civil disobedience in BC in recent decades, especially those against killing old growth forests and the good that’s come of them.
Precise principles are hard to make but here are a couple from my own research and thoughts.
The cause must be “just” – not an easy word to define at the best of times – and has these elements:
- It is clearly a debatable issue in our society.
- There is a clear philosophical underpinning such as civil rights, immorality, an intrinsically evil law or policy.
- The public has been deprived of a fair hearing.
- There is no reasonable alternative.
- It is non-violent, which is a better word than peaceful.
The other side of the coin is the need of members of society to obey laws and only change them through the Legislature or Parliament. This “law and order” theme is the song of the “establishment” through whom unjust policy and law is manna from heaven and works substantially in their favour.
Until this day, slavery in economic chains of those who were freed from formal slavery is justified as “the law” but contains within itself my basis truth – this issue alone tells us how long it takes to get equality before the law and the impotence of decent people who simply want that for everyone. Unions and civil rights leaders have fought for basic justice for many years with every step painful and blocked by those who complain that they are outlaws – overlooking, conveniently, whose interests those laws support and how they came to be passed.
An interesting example is that of Lionel Nathan de Rothschild, a British banker and politician who was, in 1857, refused his seat in Parliament because, as a Jew, he could not (so the established MPs decided) take the Christian oath. Catholics were similarly rejected. Disraeli’s father had him baptized in the Church of England to avoid this problem.
Would anyone see these laws as supportable just because a parliament passed them?
Another famous case was Gandhi’s protest in 1930 in order to help free India from British control. He proposed and led a non-violent march in clear defiance of a Salt Tax which essentially made it illegal to sell or produce salt, allowing a complete British monopoly. Since salt is necessary in everyone’s daily diet, everyone in India was affected. The Salt Tax made it illegal for workers to freely collect their own salt from the coasts of India, making them buy salt they couldn’t really afford. This protest set Gandhi and the Congress Party on the pathway to Indian independence.
Could anyone seriously claim that this law, being passed by a colonial power, must be obeyed?
British Columbians today face huge assaults on their environment from those who control our legislatures. Let me deal with just two – pipelines and tankers, and private power producers (IPPS). In each case the environmental damage is monumental.
With pipelines and tankers, huge irremediable environmental catastrophes are not just a risk but a mathematical certainty with immense and lasting consequences.
IPPs are destroying – not just impacting – our rivers.
What chance to protest has been given the citizen? When did the citizen have the opportunity to affect IPPs politically? Their MLAs and MPs are not bound to the public’s interests but the party line from which they dare not deviate.
These same questions pertain to pipelines and huge oil tankers.
The answer is that worse than having no hearings at all are the phony hearings which permit no discussions of the merits (if any) of these proposals.
The argument is made that our legislators speak for us – the very argument used by the establishment to sustain slavery, keep black children out of “white schools”, outlaw labour unions because they were a conspiracy to interfere with employers’ right to set wages and working conditions, keep Jews from Parliament, to deny women the right to vote, to allow restaurants to keep Blacks out, and on it goes…
It’s interesting how the law deals with these matters today:
- First, legislators on the government side pass laws dramatically helpful to those whose money gets them elected.
- Second, they give away that which they hold in trust for us, to these corporations to desecrate for their own very profitable use.
- Third, people protest by getting in the way of the contractors’ relentless, uncaring and lawful abuse of our environment.
- Fourth, the corporation goes to Court and gets an injunction against the
protesters. (These hearings give no opportunity for the public to deal
with the “merits” of the project.)
- Fifth, the protests continue.
- Sixth, turning a civil act into a crime, the corporation seeks and gets an order to imprison these “criminals” – not for breaking any law, but for “contempt of court”.
Before this year is out I think we’ll have protests where decent, contributing citizens, wanting no more than to pass the province they love to future generations without the scars of private power development or spilled oil. They will go to jail for as long as it takes them to admit their “error”, as in other times, with similar legal machinery (Galileo confessed his “error” when he said that earth went around the sun instead of the other way around).
That’s right, these “criminals”, our friends and neighbours are sent to jail forever unless they recant and apologize.
It is thus democracy is practiced in our fair land.
Please keep an eye out for a new campaign provisionally called “Fares Fair.”
The intention of the campaign is to have the provincial government, through its creation TransLink, allow Income Assistance recipients to get monthly Metro Vancouver transit passes for $30, the same opportunity now extended to thousands of university and college students.
It might seem like a small or even trivial issue compared to larger environmental issues, but consider that for the past decade, more or less, tens of thousands of welfarers in BC have had to pay the same as all others for transit, the least expensive option being monthly passes, for one-zone, of $81, and up from there.
For someone earning an average wage that amount is reasonable, but for someone on a support allocation of just $235, it is 34 percent of monthly income.
If the provincial government denies this small and entirely reasonable concession, the Fares Fair campaign will consider non-violent civil disobedience to, first, get mainstream media attention, and in that way bring mounting pressure to bear on Victoria. We hope you add your support. David Beattie. Email for more info.
An important element in civil disobedience, which gives it it’s moral stature in some respects, is the willingness of those following that path to suffer the consequences of their actions. The corrupt state is forced to reveal its true nature and in doing so discredits itself.
The favoured method here will be and has been, as you allude, the abuse of ‘criminal contempt’ by government and corporations operating together with the connivance of a compliant judiciary. The willingness of my and your generations to take this path will be interesting to see. Police forces are not that willing to beat up respectable older citizens and many of us, at the ends of our careers with mortgages paid off, cannot be so easily threatened into submission.
I’d like to add something regarding the comment by Arthur Topham. I am a firm believer that the Palestinian people have suffered an historic injustice from the state of Israel, which must be remedied. I deplore the evident influence exercised on the present Canadian government. But this individual is clearly motivated by anti-semitism, as the conspiratorial tone of his language makes clear. He only harms the cause he claims to support.
I agree with the article and can see a time when “civil disobidience” will be the only way.
As we see our way of life deteriorating, our enviornment destroyed, the increasing power of multi national corporations and foreign governments, peaceful demonstrations will be the way to go.
Governments might want to remember there are a lot of retired baby boomers who have plenty of time to sit in jail. Maybe that is why Harper wants to build all those new prisons. On the upside the government will have to pay for our health care and prescriptions, food, etc. And how charming for the grandchildren to come and visit their grandparents in jail.
I don’t want to go to jail for particpating in lawful exercise of my rights but I will if I have to. I’m retired.
I don’t agree with your wordism in the phrase “intrinsically evil law” evil is not defined. And that word can be far reaching depending on one personal culture and/or beliefs. For instance the USA has been calling all of their problems with Muslim extremists “Evil” but, what about all the countries that the U.S. holds with an iron fist? I think that their particular use of the word evil is a total oxymoron. Anyway, food for thought.
Wikileaks has said, the N.A.U. is on the way. I believe Harper and Campbell, have been working together on that goal.
BC has a vast wealth of natural resources. The BC people do not profit from those riches. They are owned by the wealthy giant corporations, Harper and Campbell work for. The resources and assets, thieved and sold by Campbell, did nothing for the citizens, what-so-ever. The HST was even designed for big business. The HST burden was forced onto the BC people.
Harper and Campbell worked together to, force the Enbridge pipeline and the dirty oil tankers from China on us too. The pipeline will cross thousands of rivers, streams and, over vast tracts of land. China’s dirty oil tankers, have to navigate through, some of the most treacherous seas in the world. When that spill happens, the eco damage will be horrendous. The Alberta tar sands are an, evil abomination.
We all know what pipe bursts do. The clean drinking water underground, is contaminated, by the poison leaching into it. Wildlife also get poisoned, by their drinking water being contaminated, by pipe bursts.
To hell with Harper and Campbell. We must fight this.
You say: I favour civil disobedience if it’s done responsibly and for good reasons.
A very good liberal stance — and I bet the liberal thinking crowd love this statement.
So this statement is for the men and women who everything — a bed to sleep in at night, money to drive their vehicles to and from work and avoid public transportation, who take their families on both summer an winter holidays, … and the list goes on.
Few years back when Nelson’s hospital services where gutted by Campbell, the yuppy’s gathered in vain, meeting after meeting, they raised 70 g’s and pissed it away on a lawyer, instead of a tax revolt, as I told them 3 or 5 times, start a local “trust” encourage local business to gather “sales tax” for our hospital and watch Campbell and company freak out. ok let me know when ya folks want to start this C.D tommy-treehugger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll_Tax_Riots
Britain did excatly that with the protests against the Poll Tax in the 1990’s.
The protests got very big and were often, quite physical – many went to jail.
The Poll Tax was considered the mmain reason for Margaret Thatcher downfall as prime minister of Britain.
Read the link above (and others ) for details.
I agree, that it is going to take a lot of protesting to even get the BC Liberal givernment to even do anything.
A general strike would be a start, followed by protest marches and the likes. Whatever it takes essentially, to get some sort of action – protests and marches make for good coverage and would definately get world media attention.
Thank you
Interesting how you toss a Rothschild into the equation Rafe as if in doing so you now legitimize the take-over of the British political system by this very same International banking firm that was directly responsible for illegally masterminding the thievery of Palestinian lands in order to create their racist, Jews-only ‘state’ of Israel. It was a political move that basically turned the 20th century into a nightmare, not only for the Arabs but the rest of the non-Jewish world and was the direct cause of both the world wars not to mention Korea and now Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. But, thanks to the Jew lobbyists here in Canada we now have Section 13(1) of the CHR Act which makes it a “hate crime” to discuss the Jews role in all of this. As such, I think the greatest form of civil disobedience required today is to challenge our human and constitutional right to freedom of speech. By breaking that Zionist induced legislation we are doing more good for our country and our environment as in doing so we can nail the actual culprits responsible for the majority of the problems we all face. But I know your views on this issue and chances are even this mild critique will be censored.
I absolutely agree that’s what it will take. Kudos to those who camped out on the SFPR site and lots of love for the young woman with the “Stop Harper” sign.
There is only one way to stop them, take away their money.
Stop paying taxes, without our money, we will collapse the government.
DO EVERYTHING IN YOU POWER NOT TO PROVIDE THEM WITH TAXES.