The Power in the People

I've been reading the above named book by Michael Mansfield, the famous barrister who has featured in many high profile human rights trials, and it's pertinent with the news that Greta Thunberg has been arrested.

It's primarily about how people coming together and persisting, in the face of government obstruction, can effect lasting change in the pursuit of truth, accountability, fairness and justice.

Some sentences stand out. In the first he's talking out the Stephen Lawrence murder:

"This year — 2023 — marked the 30th anniversary of the murder. The memorial was held at St Martin-in-the-Fields in Central London, just like previous memorials. The last memorial was supposed to be the final one. Doreen did not want to have to convene another. But the spectacle of gross misconduct by police and those in government over the recent past compelled her to take up the baton again. Once more, she brought together those in power to face the force of the people. The new Commissioner of the Met sat alongside Doreen and Stuart. The leader the opposition, Sir Keir Starmer, and Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, were just across the aisle. There was a space reserved for the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, who was due to read from Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom. But he did not appear, nor did he appoint a colleague to take his place, nor was any message conveyed to the congregation, nor to the public. But perhaps that was the message."

And here he talks of the government's plans to leave the ECHR:

"It will come as no surprise that there has been a growing cohort of reactionary ‘people in power’. Their objective is to override the ECHR or even withdraw from it, to ignore decisions made by the European Court of Human Rights (for example on the issue of small boats carrying immigrants) and ultimately to construct an alternative British Bill of Rights, foreshadowed in June 2022. It will also come as no surprise that the purpose of these moves is not about the people at all but about control and, above all, power. Ironically, ‘human rights’ are being demeaned as part of the derogatory ‘woke’ culture by those in power, many of whom are themselves clothed in sleaze. The ‘people’ are viewed as a threat, and that takes us right back to what is at stake — truth, accountability, fairness and justice."

Essentially he says that right wing populists are afraid of the people once they see through their lies and want to curtail their right to protest against the government, under whatever pretext they can find. He goes on to say they can deal with the odd rebel, but not the many. 

He quotes the poet Shelley, who said, in support of the people in the wake of the Peterloo Massacre; "Ye are many - they are few." Laws are not immutable and there have been many bad laws.