Right to protest: are occupation and legitimacy mutually exclusive?

Were Occupy Warwick have the right to protest by camping on University grounds?

Gabriel Turner: So from what I gather, the Warwick Occupy movement is about social equality, which involves no education cuts.

Ed Mancey: Not really. Although that was their official stated aim, like any movement of this type it had the same anti-capitalist protesters as any Occupy camp.

Gabriel: Of course there might be some who take a harder line, but they are all there under the banner of Occupy, a movement with clearly stated and legitimate aims.

Ed: The fact that they call themselves ‘Occupy’ means that they directly associate themselves with groups like Occupy LSX which are viscerally anti-capitalist. And even if I concede that point to you, the form of protest is illegitimate.

Gabriel: Oh yes?

Ed: On a principle of private property, if I were to choose to sit there, it would be illegal. They were committing an illegal act and there are other, more legitimate means of protest.

Gabriel: Okay, to begin with, what is wrong with having a vein of anti-capitalism? We have seen the unfettered egoism of bankers lead to huge inequality and resentment. We need to have more social responsibility and more justice in society. Unrestricted capitalism has to be avoided, and this is Occupy’s message.

Ed: Responding to that is a whole other debate. Even if this argument stood, it still doesn’t make an illegal action legitimate.

Gabriel: What makes a form of protest legitimate is its ultimate success in changing society for the better. Civil disobedience has a long history. Look at the Civil Rights movement in the USA. Look at Gandhi and the Salt Marches. There were thousands at the time just like you, who deny the legitimacy of these forms of protest. Time is the ultimate vindicator of the movement, not your judgement.

Ed: Comparisons to Gandhi show just how insignificant Occupy’s problems are, and just how inflated is their self-regard. There is no large group of people without political representation. Their message has a minority of support. They could send letters to politicians, vote, or hold demonstrations but they have no right to occupy.

Gabriel: Of course I agree, the Occupy movement does not have the same direct support as any of the groups above. That is why occupation is so essential. In a country with a commercial media opposed to the goals of the movement, how can they expect to gain political capital through traditional methods of garnering support? They stand for equality, and so everyone is a stakeholder in the movement. It is simply a question of communicating their message to the majority, which cannot be done through letters to MPs.

Ed: It’s not just the problem of small direct membership, but of the size of the perceived injustice, which for a load of privileged middle class students is low. They are completely different and incomparable with Martin Luther King and Gandhi. They have very little political capital because in the real world, very few people share their views. If, like the tuition fees protestors, they had decent public support, they would be able to utilise methods such as protests. However, they should accept that in a democracy, the will of the majority is more important than their single opinion, and they have no right to throw the rattle out of the pram.

Gabriel: This is essentially a criticism of how well they have been able to communicate their message. Greater social and economic equality is important for everyone, and matters to everyone. Not to mention a right to equal access to higher education, and that is being threatened. The problems causing these policies are problems for everyone (as we have seen with the current economic crisis). If they do not have the support of more people, it is simply because they have not had the opportunity to make these genuine concerns heard.

Ed: I don’t buy either that a perfectly communicated message would justify illegality or that their solutions would solve the problem they advance. However, you highlight another issue caused by Occupy, that if we assume their solutions are good (which I don’t) they were in fact removing support for those solutions. When people see a group of dirty, self-indulgent students, their general middle-class-ness undermines the message that they understand the needs of the working poor.

Gabriel: This is precisely why they were distributing literature, setting up an information tent and a busy programme of talks by respected and clued-up lecturers. These people are just like you and I, except they are acting against perceived injustice. That should be something commendable no matter what class they are.

Ed: Those measures only work if people choose to go up to the tent, whereas most chose not to, because ‘you and I’ implies middle class. I would love to debate this further, but the column is only so long. I can almost understand where they’re coming from, but that doesn’t give them the right to break the law, and they have done themselves no favours.

Gabriel: I just don’t think the harm caused by setting up camp on campus are so great that they invalidate the vital message of equality they are spreading. The very fact we are having this conversation shows the method of protest has been a success, since the idea is actually being discussed.