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Jeremy Corbyn's support for Caroline Lucas’s anti-fracking stand, both in and outside court, is precisely the sort of principled, non-sectarian politics that the left needs today.
No one party encapsulates all the individuals, policies and organisational capacity needed to provide sole leadership, which obliges parties, trade unions, community groups and single-issue campaigns to work together.
Lucas herself says that her acquittal, alongside four co-defendants, on public order offences over their peaceful protest outside the Cuadrilla exploratory oil drilling site in Balcombe, West Sussex, last August was “not a victory or cause for celebration.”
This response is understandable given ongoing battles against both fracking and heavy-handed policing.
But this court victory is significant in generating publicity for the anti-fracking campaign and also drawing attention, as Corbyn recognises, to state mobilisation of the police to thwart legitimate peaceful protest.
Direct action to dramatise public disquiet over government policies is accepted as normal in many countries, most notably our French neighbours.
But police in Britain have a panoply of obstruction and public order offences to deploy against protesters, dragging them through the courts as a deterrent to involvement in direct peaceful action.
Lucas’s deep concern “that the right to protest is being eroded and undermined, with legitimate protest criminalised by oppressive policing in an attempt to silence dissent” is fully justified.
The Green MP’s watchword that “protest is the lifeblood of democracy” should be taken to heart by all who seek a better world.
Parliament is supposed to represent the views and aspirations of the people, but too many popular tribunes trim their sails once elected and follow advice to keep their noses clean and not rock the boat overmuch if they wish to have influence.
This is what makes the example of, among a select gathering of equally noteworthy individuals, Labour MP Corbyn and his Green comrade Lucas worthy of respect.
Their determination to stand by the core values and principles that sustain them in Parliament makes a pleasant change from the homogenisation of politics where it is often difficult to work out which party an MP hails from.
Labour’s breathless announcement that it has agreed a “six-figure salary” to recruit David Axelrod, one of Barack Obama’s strategists, to support Labour’s 2015 general election campaign is, in contrast, depressing.
It partly explains Ed Miliband’s obsession with referring US-style to the working class as the middle class, otherwise known as Obama’s “hard-working families.”
Axelrod’s capture mirrors the employment by the Tories of Australian rightwinger Lynton Crosby, whose “dog-whistle” propaganda is designed to appeal to voters’ basest instincts.
The clear message is that an election can be swung by a smart advertising campaign rather than relying on party policies as a means to enthuse the electorate.
The less difference there is politically between the main parties the more that sound and fury are deployed to give the false impression of sharp debate.
It is no surprise that both Corbyn and Lucas should have given their wholehearted backing to the People’s Assembly against Austerity, which provides a focus around which all on the left-progressive side of politics can unite.
The more support that can be built for the assembly’s national demonstration and free festival on June 21 in London, together with ongoing PA activities such as the July 7 Hammersmith Apollo benefit gig, the greater the likelihood of a positive alternative to cynicism and uniformity emerging.