The Guardian | Wednesday 3 July 2013

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Woolwich blowback n Rachel Shabi on the increase in anti-Muslim violence Page

Diary Hugh Muir

They will speak of this week when the history of the Conservative party in the 21st century is written. All year the Tories have been at the mercy of Ukip, losing members, votes and even elected representatives to the surge of Nigel Farage and his associates. But this week the Tories struck a blow. Despite the machinations of Ukip, it is the Conservatives meeting room in the European parliament that will be known as the Margaret Thatcher room. The EU parliament president Martin Schulz has recommended in their favour. There will be tears and recriminations, for Ukip was determined to claim the leaderene. But its all too late. So what happened? For as we said from the very outset, the idea to have a Thatcher room actually came from Ukip. The Tories didnt submit their request until a month later. Well, theres enmity between Ukip and the big beasts of Europe, and there were problems of communication. With rival bids to assess, Schulz was keen to hear arguments from both parties, but all attempts to hear directly from Farage came to naught. He always seemed too busy, a source informs us, and Ukip says others who might have attended the meetings were ignored. They have given it to their mates; the Conservatives, said an aggrieved Ukipian. A day of heavy hearts and cheap shots. How long must disabled people put up with ill-informed prejudice that they suer some kind of illness, lamented the crossbench peer and champion wheelchair racer Tanni Grey-Thompson, as she gave the inaugural Jack Ashley memorial lecture in memory of the great disability rights campaigner. Even the government seems to cling to the old, discredited medical model of disability, she said. Preparing the 18-page claim form for the personal independence payment, which is replacing disability living allowance and just by coincidence losing an estimated 600,000 claimants, she said she was foxed by the request to Please tell us about the healthcare professional who can best tell us about your health condition. The last time she saw a doctor was for a nasty bout of tonsillitis. In 1996. Same old same old. Experts listen but do not hear. To the Lyric theatre, where BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew and Georey Boycott, aided by Stephen Fry, chat to a capacity audience in aid of the Professional Cricketers Association Benevolent Fund. Short videos from fans of Georey are shown: one from David Cameron and, ensuring balance, one from Ed Miliband, who proclaims himself a Yorkshire cricket fan from his youth, partly spent in Leeds. The Labour leader describes Boycott as a friend, but professionally their lives remain separate. Which is a shame. Boycott has advocated sending all bankers to jail. Hed pep up Labours frontbench. An oer no self-respecting Guardian reader can refuse. With his own political career on life support, an entreaty from Nick Grins BNP. Change the course of political history in Britain. Take advantage of the BNPs will writing or executors service, the party invites us. And its inevitable, of course, that many will indeed turn to them for nancial advice. In April it emerged that come 31 December 2010, the party owed 582,961, and had just 15,846 in the bank. And earlier this year Nick urged members to sell scrap metal to raise cash and extolled the virtues of eating roadkill. He is quite the nancial whizz. Finally, some good news from the sta intranet at the Home Oce. In August Rob Whiteman will be leaving to take up his new role as chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy. I believe that the structural changes made to UK Border Agency over the last 15 months will succeed in improving our operations to meet the home secretarys clear priorities, is his farewell message. Of course, these changes resulted in UKBA being pulled back into the Home Oce, a ministerial punishment for all-round uselessness. Rob himself took a hit from critical MPs. Still onward, onward. There are other places, other challenges. Happy days. diary@guardian.co.uk Twitter: @hugh_muir

Seumas Milne From Egypt to Brazil street action is driving change but organisation is essential if it is not to be hijacked or disarmed

Without politics, protest is at the mercy of the elites

Those who marched for democratic socialism in east Berlin in 1989 ended up with privatisation and mass unemployment

wo years after the Arab uprisings fuelled a wave of protests and occupations across the world, mass demonstrations have returned to their crucible in Egypt. Just as millions braved brutal repression in 2011 to topple the western-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak, millions have now taken to the streets of Egyptian cities to demand the ousting of the countrys rst freely elected president, Mohamed Morsi. As in 2011, the opposition is a middle-class-dominated alliance of left and right. But this time the Islamists are on the other side while supporters of the Mubarak regime are in the thick of it. The police, who beat and killed protesters two years ago, this week stood aside as demonstrators torched Morsis Muslim Brotherhood oces. And the army, which backed the dictatorship until the last moment before forming a junta in 2011, has now thrown its weight behind the opposition. Whether its ultimatum to the president turns into a full-blown coup or a managed change of government, the army lavishly funded and trained by the US government and in control of extensive commercial interests is back in the saddle. And many self-proclaimed revolutionaries who previously denounced Morsi for kowtowing to the military are now cheering it on. On past experience, theyll come to regret it. The protesters have no shortage of grievances against Morsis year-old government, of course: from the dire state of the economy, constitutional Islamisation and institutional power grabs to its failure to break with Mubaraks neoliberal policies and appeasement of US and Israeli power. But the reality is, however incompetent Morsis administration, many key levers of power from the judiciary and police to the military and media are eectively still in the hands of the old regime elites. They openly regard the Muslim Brotherhood as illegitimate interlopers, whose leaders should be returned to prison as soon as possible. Yet these are the people now in alliance with opposition forces who genuinely want to see Egypts revolution brought at least to a democratic conclusion. If Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood

are forced from oce, its hard to see such people breaking with neoliberal orthodoxy or asserting national independence, as most Egyptians want. Instead, the likelihood is that the Islamists, also with mass support, will resist being denied their democratic mandate, plunging Egypt into deeper conict. Egypts latest eruption has immediately followed mass protests in Turkey and Brazil (as well as smaller upheavals in Bulgaria and Indonesia). None has mirrored the all-out struggle for power in Egypt, even if some demonstrators in Turkey called for the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to go. But there are signicant echoes that highlight both the power and weakness of such ash demonstrations of popular anger. In the case of Turkey, what began as a protest against the redevelopment of Istanbuls Gezi Park mushroomed into mass demonstrations against Erdogans increasingly assertive Islamist administration, bringing together Turkish and Kurdish nationalists, liberals and leftists, socialists and freemarketeers. The breadth was a strength, but the disparate and divergent nature of the protesters demands is likely to weaken its political impact. In Brazil, mass demonstrations against bus and train fare increases turned into wider protests about poor public services and the cost of next years World Cup. As in Turkey and Egypt, middle-class and politically footloose youth were at the forefront, and political parties were discouraged from taking part, while rightwing groups and media tried to steer the agenda from inequality to tax cuts and corruption. Brazils centre-left government has lifted millions out of poverty, and the protests have been driven by rising expectations. But unlike elsewhere in Latin America, the Lula government never broke with neoliberal orthodoxy or attacked the interests of the rich elite. His successor, Dilma Rousse who responded to the protests by pledging huge investments in transport, health and education and a referendum on political reform now has the chance to change that. Despite their dierences, all three movements have striking common features. They combine widely divergent political groups and contradictory demands, along with the depoliticised,

and lack a coherent organisational base. That can be an advantage for singleissue campaigns, but can lead to shortlived shallowness if the aims are more ambitious which has arguably been the fate of the Occupy movement. All of them have, of course, been heavily inuenced and shaped by social media and the spontaneous networks they foster. But there are plenty of historical precedents for such people power protests and important lessons about why they are often derailed or lead to very dierent outcomes from those their protagonists hoped for.

he most obvious are the European revolutions of 1848, which were also led by middle-class reformers and oered the promise of a democratic spring, but had as good as collapsed within a year. The tumultuous Paris upheaval of May 1968 was followed by the electoral victory of the French right. Those who marched for democratic socialism in east Berlin in 1989 ended up with mass privatisation and unemployment. The western-sponsored colour revolutions of the last decade used protesters as a stage army for the transfer of power to favoured oligarchs and elites. The indignados movement in Spain was powerless to prevent the return of the right and a plunge into even deeper austerity. In the era of neoliberalism, when the ruling elite has hollowed out democracy and ensured that whoever you vote for you get the same, politically inchoate protest movements are bound to ourish. They have crucial strengths: they can change moods, ditch policies and topple governments. But without socially rooted organisation and clear agendas, they can are and zzle, or be vulnerable to hijacking or diversion by more entrenched and powerful forces. That also goes for revolutions and is what appears to be happening in Egypt. Many activists regard traditional political parties and movements as redundant in the internet age. But thats an argument for new forms of political and social organisation. Without it, the elites will keep control however spectacular the protests. Twitter: @SeumasMilne