Interview: learning from history

Interview: learning from history

Date: 10 May 2012

Author Tim Gee will be speaking at our Scottish campaigner convention on the 19th May. Here he talks to WDM Scotland about his new book on the history of social movements across the globe – Counterpower: Making Change Happen – and how history has shaped his own global justice campaigning.

WDM: Your book ‘Counterpower’ looks at how social justice movements across the world and across history have won change using ‘people power’. As global justice campaigners, what can we learn from history?

TG: I find history most useful for myth-busting. Specifically it shows us that policy-making is not a process whereby wise elites find the best solution for the most people. On the whole government policy is a reflection of the balance of power in society. From that we can learn that simply designing good ideas and communicating them to those in power isn’t enough. Real transformational change comes when the interests of elites are challenged, and when the movement has the capability to remove the power of regimes altogether.

WDM: What are the roots of your campaigning? What first inspired you to get involved in the global justice movement?

TG: I first met Peter Tatchell when I was 15, and got involved in a relatively small way in the anti-Section 28 campaign, which was fairly successful. After that it was the hard slog of the peace movement during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which was more mixed in its achievements. It wasn’t a great intellectual jump from there to see that if we really want to stop wars from starting, then protesting in the run-up isn’t enough. We need an economy and society where violence is no longer deemed to ever be necessary, and where violence is not inherent to the system. Ultimately that means we need a system that is based on principles of global justice.

WDM: Who are your heroes and how do they motivate you?

TG: Having heroes seems like a recipe for disappointment. But I do have a whole bookcase of political biography from the last 200 years or so which my book draws on. I love the way that the internal dynamics of struggle seem so universal – from the trivial gossip, to the strategic debates to the oscillation between hope and despair that seems to characterise all social movements.

What inspires me the most is reading about the early campaigns of great movements that seemed like they had failed. For example the first big civil disobedience campaign against apartheid in South Africa (The Defiance Campaign) took place more than 40 years before the fall of apartheid. In the short term it was crushed but it transformed the ANC from a fusty elitist organisation to a mass movement challenging the power of the regime. Campaigning almost always has a positive effect, but not always in the ways that organisers predict or hope.    

WDM: Two years ago, you were one of the ‘Superglue 3’ arrested outside RBS while protesting against the bank’s investment in tar sands. Are you still campaigning against RBS?

TG: We spent six months on bail and then on trial, representing ourselves in court and getting the word about RBS’s environmental crimes into the press. The week after we were admonished I joined a UK Uncut occupation of RBS/Natwest in London over their role in the financial crisis, accompanied by a comment piece for the Guardian.

Soon afterwards, as you did at WDM, we spotted that RBS were rather cynically sponsoring the ‘Climate Week Awards’ for environmental initiative. So we thought it would be funny to enter ourselves for it, then make a fuss when they didn’t accept us. On the day, we joined up with Platform and the UK Tar Sands Network to dress up in ‘protective greenwash jackets’ and turned up outside to hand everyone leaflets about RBS. That attracted another round of press coverage and speaking engagements. We received the news last month that RBS won’t be sponsoring the awards in 2012. Now we are playfully considering whether we should enter ourselves for the awards again this year for our campaign against RBS’s green-washing sponsorship…

WDM: What else are you up to at the moment, campaigns-wise?

TG: In the most immediate past I’ve been touring, and have delivered about 40 workshops and seminars in the last three months. It’s been a real thrill to meet so many people working on so many great projects – and especially great to visit the Occupy camps in Leeds, Newcastle, Liverpool, Manchester, Edinburgh and London. But I can’t wait to be back on the front line.

Hear Tim speak at our campaigner conventionclick here to find out more and book tickets