Here’s a scene that’s being played out pretty regularly on the streets of Britain nowadays.
It features a pro-Palestine protestor holding a placard outlining their belief that opposing genocide/war crimes/the holocaust in Gaza is a not a terrorist act.
The placard is a comment on the recent law passed in the House of Commons, proscribing an organisation called Palestine Action - the first direct action group to be labelled terrorist. Support for the group attracts a maximum 14 years in prison.
The protestor in the photograph has carefully avoided the fateful formula ‘I support Palestine Action’ by writing ‘Those who take action against genocide in Palestine are not the terrorists’. The words PALESTINE and ACTION are capitalised. Perhaps that’s what drew the attention of the two policemen who are arresting the protestor.
Yes, you read that right: the protestor is being arrested for carrying that placard.
The vast majority of commentary on what’s going on regarding Palestine protest focuses on the draconian legislation passed by a supposedly progressive Labour government that seeks to criminalise it.
But any legislation needs agents to put it into action - like the two policemen in this photograph. What is their role and responsibility in all this?
Look at them closely: all the paraphernalia of the modern police officer wrapped around two tall, bearded, well-groomed young men invested with the monumental and unassailable power of the state to do things to you that you’d rather they didn’t.
When they get home these two young men see what we all see on the television, our phones, tablets and laptops: chaos at Gazan feeding stations, skeletal children, grieving mothers and fathers weeping over the white shrouds covering their children, refugees murdered by Israeli forces as they try to get food, endless bombing and indiscriminate destruction.
Then the next day they don their uniforms and go out and arrest a few more people protesting this indescribable horror.
Arresting the protestor in the photograph may not mean that the policemen agree with what’s going on in Gaza. But it does mean that they are able to ignore it to the point where they are content to action the legislation that criminalises (some of) those who oppose it.
Question: why you are arresting this protestor?
Answer: because they might be breaking the law.
Question: is there any law you would refuse to action?
Answer: no.
Question: why?
Answer: because I am bound as a police officer to action the law.
Question: if you knew that this protestor would spend the next 14 years in jail as a result of your arrest, would you still arrest them?
Answer: Yes.
In 1970 Albert Hirschman published his ‘Exit, Voice and Loyalty’, outlining the three options open to any of us working in an organisation some of whose activities we don’t endorse. ‘Voice’ relates to us voicing a complaint within the organisation, ‘Loyalty’ refers to us knuckling down and getting on with it, and ‘Exit’ involves us leaving the organisation.
The two policemen in the photograph are driven by Loyalty, but I'm left wondering what it would take for them to go for Voice - or even Exit?
In the 1945-6 Nuremberg trials it was determined that following orders was not sufficient defence to avoid punishment for war crimes. Our two policemen are not committing a war crime, though the people they are protecting from protest most certainly are.
It features a pro-Palestine protestor holding a placard outlining their belief that opposing genocide/war crimes/the holocaust in Gaza is a not a terrorist act.
The placard is a comment on the recent law passed in the House of Commons, proscribing an organisation called Palestine Action - the first direct action group to be labelled terrorist. Support for the group attracts a maximum 14 years in prison.
The protestor in the photograph has carefully avoided the fateful formula ‘I support Palestine Action’ by writing ‘Those who take action against genocide in Palestine are not the terrorists’. The words PALESTINE and ACTION are capitalised. Perhaps that’s what drew the attention of the two policemen who are arresting the protestor.
Yes, you read that right: the protestor is being arrested for carrying that placard.
The vast majority of commentary on what’s going on regarding Palestine protest focuses on the draconian legislation passed by a supposedly progressive Labour government that seeks to criminalise it.
But any legislation needs agents to put it into action - like the two policemen in this photograph. What is their role and responsibility in all this?
Look at them closely: all the paraphernalia of the modern police officer wrapped around two tall, bearded, well-groomed young men invested with the monumental and unassailable power of the state to do things to you that you’d rather they didn’t.
When they get home these two young men see what we all see on the television, our phones, tablets and laptops: chaos at Gazan feeding stations, skeletal children, grieving mothers and fathers weeping over the white shrouds covering their children, refugees murdered by Israeli forces as they try to get food, endless bombing and indiscriminate destruction.
Then the next day they don their uniforms and go out and arrest a few more people protesting this indescribable horror.
Arresting the protestor in the photograph may not mean that the policemen agree with what’s going on in Gaza. But it does mean that they are able to ignore it to the point where they are content to action the legislation that criminalises (some of) those who oppose it.
Question: why you are arresting this protestor?
Answer: because they might be breaking the law.
Question: is there any law you would refuse to action?
Answer: no.
Question: why?
Answer: because I am bound as a police officer to action the law.
Question: if you knew that this protestor would spend the next 14 years in jail as a result of your arrest, would you still arrest them?
Answer: Yes.
In 1970 Albert Hirschman published his ‘Exit, Voice and Loyalty’, outlining the three options open to any of us working in an organisation some of whose activities we don’t endorse. ‘Voice’ relates to us voicing a complaint within the organisation, ‘Loyalty’ refers to us knuckling down and getting on with it, and ‘Exit’ involves us leaving the organisation.
The two policemen in the photograph are driven by Loyalty, but I'm left wondering what it would take for them to go for Voice - or even Exit?
In the 1945-6 Nuremberg trials it was determined that following orders was not sufficient defence to avoid punishment for war crimes. Our two policemen are not committing a war crime, though the people they are protecting from protest most certainly are.
Question: what did you do to stop the genocide/war crimes/holocaust in Gaza, Daddy?
Answer: I arrested a man in a wheelchair dressed as Charlie Chaplin, carrying a copy of Picasso’s Guernica dressed in the colours of the Palestinian flag, while he played an excerpt from Chaplin’s iconic speech in ‘The Great Dictator’.
Question: Why did he play that speech?
Answer: It might have been this bit. Very powerful, but absolutely nothing to do with me.
Answer: I arrested a man in a wheelchair dressed as Charlie Chaplin, carrying a copy of Picasso’s Guernica dressed in the colours of the Palestinian flag, while he played an excerpt from Chaplin’s iconic speech in ‘The Great Dictator’.
Question: Why did he play that speech?
Answer: It might have been this bit. Very powerful, but absolutely nothing to do with me.
‘Soldiers! Don’t give yourselves to brutes - men who despise you - enslave you - who regiment your lives - tell you what to do - what to think and what to feel! Who drill you - diet you - treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate - the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!’
RSS Feed