How close are we to seeing an anti-cuts terrorist group?
Posted on March 3, 2011It’s pretty clear now that Saturday’s riots – like most riots – were counterproductive for the anti-cuts movement. That’s good news; had the public somehow been moved to support violence and vandalism there would be something very wrong indeed.
It does raise a serious concern, though. How will the hard core of anti-cutters and so-called anarchists (who actually want a bigger state, which is far from anarchism as you can get) react as their failure becomes clear?
The psychology of these agitators is complex but worrying. They have a persecution complex, they fetishise violence and crime and they are utterly convinced that everyone agrees with them, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
In their world, any Government that doesn’t do what they want must be a Gaddafi-style dictatorship, and any indication that the public don’t back them is a sign of an oppressive bourgeois establishment who are just as bad as the totalitarian Government. They seem increasingly divorced from the real world and antipathetic to wider society.
Add into that the hefty leavening of sociopaths who gravitate toward extremism and wanton destruction and you have a potent mix.
I fear that this core – not, I should emphasise, the wider halo movement around them – could easily tip over the edge from public order crime to much more sinister activities.
They have already started widening their list of targets whom they judge legitimate – just look at the absurd attack on charity-owned Fortnum & Mason.
Only a few years ago, SHAC (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty) were following scientists and investors far down the business chain to their homes and attacking and intimidating them and their families. Plenty of people in the anti-cuts hard core will be students of that terror campaign – and even the small core of the anti-cuts mob have more people and resources than SHAC.
Back in the 1960s and 70s, on the Continent a mass leftwing movement spawned groups with a very similar psychology and rhetoric to the rioters we see in Britain today. Their response to failure after failure was to become more and more extreme – shedding those who thought they were going to far, and following their “war against society” philosophy to its logical conclusion: terrorism.
It’s not inevitable – it may not happen in this case, or if it does it could be stopped – but we don’t seem too far at all from spawning a Baader Meinhof Gang or a Red Brigades for the 21st Century.
That’s a scary prospect, and everyone, from the police and the Government to the Unions, UKuncut and the vast majority of peaceful, democratic anti-cutters, must work together to nip any tendency like that in the bud.
A good start would be for the Left to denounce the violence we saw on Saturday – something UKuncut signally failed to do on Newsnight last night.
Tags: Anarchists, Baader Meinhof, Coalition, Communism, Deficit, Fortnum & Mason, Huntingdon Life Sciences, opinion, Politics, public spending, Red Brigades, Riots, SHAC, Terrorism, UKuncut
Good comment. I was wonder just the same thing over the weekend.
The problem is that the left doesn’t disown these adolescents and also the right needs to make the full case for why a rebalancing of the economy is needed, and how someone has to be willing to pay.
Given that its easy to envisage a general election within 6 months that a regressive Labour party could win on a no cuts manifesto we could be back to the 70′s with economic denial and self indulgence the key themes of our government.
29.03.2011 11:01
Its not that unlikely.
Remember the Angry Brigade?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2002/feb/03/features.magazine27
Remember The Weather Underground?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground
29.03.2011 11:42
You don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows…
29.03.2011 19:31
Who are the real terrorists – a group of yobs smashing windows or a government that drops bombs on women and children in Afghanistan and Libya?
29.03.2011 11:52
Both of them
29.03.2011 18:42
You are an idiot.
29.03.2011 21:13
Very simple solution
Doomsday book of all government debts.
Debt tax to pay for it, cumulative number appearing on every payslip
Annual statement of what you share is, breaking it down. So much for bank bailouts, so much for government borrowing, PFI, state pension, civil service pension state second pension…
When people see the money going, they will be angry.
When they see the real cause, government and not the banks, they will be livid.
The majority will then demand cuts.
29.03.2011 11:55
Good article Mark.
I think the only way to deal with these types is to seize any bank accounts or other finances they have and use the proceeds to pay for the clean-up operations.
Parents of students who are members of these violent groups must be made aware that they must et a grip of their offspring, or expect a bill.
As was seen with the Cenotaph saga, their parents seem to have more money than the government.
29.03.2011 12:01
Fortunately, the sponsor, mentor and weapons supplier of 1980s terrorists groups has got a lot on his plate right now.
29.03.2011 12:14
How about a march “for cuts”.
29.03.2011 12:27
Something like this perhaps?
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=204678962884261#!/event.php?eid=204678962884261
29.03.2011 17:01
Open the books on PFI be open about the deals that Labour brokered. Let people see what Labour took from the Tories, meddled with and then created. Mary Shelley has nothing on Labour.
29.03.2011 12:43
I worry that the clueless wing of the Europhiles may turn to terrorism when their dream collapses too.
29.03.2011 13:07
[...] How extreme will UK Uncut become? – Crash Bang Wallace [...]
29.03.2011 14:24
With all respect, you know absolutely nothing about the Red Brigades or the RAF. (You should find this reassuring, as it completely undermines your prophecies of doom.)
29.03.2011 16:24
Unless you were there, Phil, you can only have read the same histories, interviews and memoirs as me! Where do you think I’m wrong?
30.03.2011 14:41
Back in 2009 I posted on potential problems in July 2012, this could be building up and we simply do not have anything like the security required in comparison with 2008. What will be needed to avoid real trouble before then will be far from popular.
29.03.2011 16:42
Sure this will make little or no difference to most of the commenters on here, but anyway.
1) Part of the anti-globalisation has always been prepared to damage property and confront police. There’s nothing new about that, it goes back a long way and it’s never shown any tendency toward “terrorism”. In fact, the material released regarding the Mark Kennedy/Stone undercover cop case revealed that the police were disappointed at how tame much of the intelligence they were gathering actually was. From personal experience, people talking about political violence was no more prevalent among @ groups than anyone else.
2) SHAC are/were nutters. Just like any number of single issue groups of nutters. Nothing to do with anarchists.
3) Saturday’s march, for all the hysteria, resulted in less injuries to the forces of law and order than the (much smaller) Countryside Alliance protesters managed to do back in 2004. You wouldn’t believe it for the reporting, but at no point in its history has the UK been more peaceful than it has been in the last 10-15 years.
4) Anarchism, ever since it came together as a coherent body of thought, has always been collectivist (forming the libertarian wing of Marx’s international) and in opposition to the rule of capital (ie. private property). It does not differentiate between authority derived from property ownership and political authority. As such your comment about defending the public sector from attack being anti-anarchist is redundant. Have a look at the libcom.org library of history and theory if your curious about where anarchism comes from.
29.03.2011 17:06
Unlikely in this day an age that Left-wing terrorists will emerge from this two bit bunch of trust fund (mummy doesn’t love me) socialists and other social misfits. Most of the European extreme left-wing terror groups of the 60′s and 70′s were funded, trained and generally facilitated by the Soviets and melted away when the Soviet Union and global communism started to shrink back and die in the 80′s.
29.03.2011 17:34
Yes. It’s people like these who give violence a bad name.
30.03.2011 01:13
We’ve already got terrorist animal welfare nut cases and the Eco-fascists are not far behind. The thing that always gets me is how quickly the forces of left libertarianism move to coercion, enforcement and violence. Their huge political egos overcome all opposition. Stopping cuts is good, we want to stop cuts, therefore anything we do to stop cuts is good. QED.
30.03.2011 07:45
Just so Sir; the left is seldom far from authoritarianism. How the baskets can claim to be christian/libertarian/any other sort of socialist defies reason. Just seeking as always to strike at the hand that feeds them as all lefty types do in one way or another.
31.03.2011 03:31
and the right is the defender of all personal and civil liberty, right?
31.03.2011 07:41
right on time: here’s a Tory defending our personal liberty and freedom of expression http://www.publicservice.co.uk/news_story.asp?id=15918
01.04.2011 11:32
[...] support starts to crumble markwallace Posted on March 3, 2011 TweetI said earlier in the week that UKUncut should decry and condemn violence for the good of British politics – now there [...]
31.03.2011 16:15
[...] dark, sexually charged, blogposts aren’t for the light-hearted. Mark Wallace recently asked if how close we are to seeing an anti-cuts terrorist group. If Guido was watching [...]
08.04.2011 10:32
How thorough a reorientation that becomes will in part be a function of the degree of continued mobilisation against the cuts. As Britain devastatingly regressive role in the Middle East intensifies further with its war on Libya it is vital that as many people as possible join the anti-war contingent this Saturday to send a clear message to the government stop the wars!
09.04.2011 05:58
following your logic that all lefties are stalin loving violent thugs inc UKuncut..that would make the EDL peace loving hippies…and didnt camerond cronies suggest cracking down on protests..with police chiefs claiming they are one step away from using water cannon….another police chief (royal wedding) claimed all protestors were criminals…and how come the police hardly arrested the violent shop smashers instead arrested the UK Uncutters at F&M by the way that charity is a front for diverting cash to the Tories (proved)..btw The Tax Dodgers Alliance ‘demo’ had pathetic turnout..so much that Toby couldnt bothered to put in appearance..the Daily Fail article was absurd…’black clad menacing anarchist inside F&M (photo showed people sitting on floor) most of the press wernt inside F&M..as police werent allowing anyone in the building after they cordoned it off…BBC were reporting claiming UK Uncut as smashing up F&M whilst roving reporter sounded bewilderd..at this…in 80s Stormin Norman Tebbit called protestors lazy after maggies cuts devasted parts of the country..MI5 tailed anyone had the nerve to complain and i think the police gave the miners a sever kicking…and that lovely bit of non repressive legislation called the poll tax…
11.06.2011 08:21