‘Rising Up’ and power to the people

Bristol City Council have won a High Court possession order to try and regain control of land by the Stapleton allotments.

Dozens of protesters have set up camp and taken to the trees to try and prevent the agricultural land being used for a MetroBus lane.

As Pamela Parkes finds out Bristol has always done things a bit differently and, when it comes to standing up and being counted, Bristolians have a long, loud and proud history of making themselves heard.

Bristol’s history is rich with protest, riots and demonstrations including the famous Bristol Bridge riots of 1793. The protest against plans to renew tolls across the bridge left 11 dead and 45 injured – one of the worst massacres of the 18th century.

Luckily the more recent people power protests in Bristol have been less bloody and brutal affairs.

In 2011 anti-capitalist campaigners Occupy Bristol took over College Green, a protest against Tesco opening in Stokes Croft made headlines with running battles down the streets, the genteel residents of Clifton driving a tank through the streets in protest against Residents Parking Zones, taking to the trees in protest against MetroBus and one man’s crusade against First Bus – the number of protests, campaigns and action groups in the city is flourishing.

‘Backed into a corner’

At the time of writing environmentalists were still clinging to the tree-tops at the Stapleton Allotments in an effort to stop a controversial MetroBus road being built across prime agricultural land.

While Bristol City Council, who own the land went to the High Court to secure a possession order, Rising Up campaigner Maddy Longhurst said they had no choice to occupy the trees as their concerns had “fallen on deaf ears” and they had been “backed into a corner”.

“What’s interesting about the people coming to the site is how diverse the people here are…people who have a long standing passion and love of wild spaces and habitat, but also people who want to be heard generally and feel that they have not had a voice in the system and they want to participate in something which is raising it’s voice.” , Ms Longhurst said.

This is key according to Dr Richard Sheldon, lecturer in social and economic history from Bristol University.

“What is peculiar about protests now is there is less confidence in the established political parties and people are shifting away from Labour, Liberal Democrats and Conservative and there is a flourishing of different political cultures.”

6 tree protectors currently up trees at Stapleton Allotments 2 protect them. Police & bailiffs present. Your positive support is much needed

— Rising up (@risingupland) February 3, 2015

Just one tweet

He also thinks that “social media is now the most important enabling feature” for a successful protest “although you may doubt the sincerity of people when all they have to do is click online to say they support a cause”.

Sometimes though you just need one tweet to make a difference, as “amateur activist” Daniel Farr found out when he took First Bus to task about its fares and service.

“I’ve thought about it for years, but then one thing happened…and it was the last straw I went on Twitter and I started a petition.

“I never thought it would go anywhere, but it grew and grew…George Ferguson signed the petition and tweeted about it and it started getting hundreds a day

“It was quite overwhelming – it just got bigger and bigger and a lot of people felt the same about the buses in Bristol and how bad they were.”

His campaign led to fares being reduced across Bristol and Bath and he has recently launched Bristol People’s Bus scheme (@brispeoplesbus).

The ability to connect instantly with so many people is what former BBC journalist and social media expert Sue Llewellyn believes makes Twitter and Facebook such effective tools for the 21st Century protester.

The 2011 riots, which spread from London to Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester, “was the moment everybody woke up and realised that you can organise things very easily on social media,” she said.

“People could find out what was going on very quickly with ease of access to social media – anybody can join in, you can raise the profile of what you are doing, word spreads very quickly and it is a brilliantly efficient way of organising people in one click.”

Timing is everything

Ultimately though Dr Sheldon thinks a successful campaign is all down to one thing: “Timing is fantastically important – the ‘burger-off’ campaign against McDonald’s in Fishponds for example. With an election coming up these protests are more likely to get the support of the incumbent politicians.”

Months of campaigning, petition signing and marching by residents seemed to pay off when the council threw out McDonald’s application.

But Dr Sheldon thinks planners may have already made up their minds to reject the application: “In most cases these (protests) are useful for nudging things along that are already coming rather than bringing about an abrupt shift in policy.”

Sometimes even the most theatrical protests can fail to change the mind of the powers that be.

When  mayor George Ferguson announced a resident parking zone (RPZ) in Clifton Tony Miles (aka as Radio One DJ Smiley Miley) hired a Sherman tank in April 2014 and took his protest to the streets.

“I went to a traders meeting at the Avon Gorge Hotel and there were 130 traders practically crying because they could see their livelihoods going down the drain.

“I do believe the ordinary person should speak out – after I brought the tank out it went worldwide – it just proves the power of the voice.”

But the roll out of RPZ across the city carried on and, if driving a tank through the streets of Clifton couldn’t stop it, what could?

“There have been some huge demonstrations which have been unsuccessful like the marches against the Iraq war,” said Dr Sheldon.  “There have also been some imaginative ideas for street theatre in protest and again they haven’t worked.

“A really well timed and well planned demo can make all of the difference, but if the forces are against you it probably won’t make much good.”

It is this feeling of hopelessness that enraged Maddy Longhurst: “It (MetroBus) was always presented as a fait accompli.

She said the process can be “incredibly dis-empowering” when nobody listens to you.

“The whole thing is smoke and mirrors – it gives a false impression that people have power when actually they don’t – there seems to be no accountability of these decisions which seem to reject, overrule or ignore what the majority are calling for.” 

So ultimately can small scale people power really make a difference?

American academic Gene Sharp believes so. In 1993 he published his game changing book “From Dictatorship to Democracy”. The work based on 198 “non-violent weapons”, ranging from the use of colour to mock funerals and boycotts, went on to sell millions of copies.

Sharp’s central message is that power comes from the willing obedience of people – and if the people can develop peaceful ways of withholding consent, regimes will crumble.

So while the orange ribbons tied round the condemned trees in Stapleton may not seem much like a revolution to the casual observer, it does act as a reminder to the powers that be that some Bristolians will challenge and contest decisions taken for ‘the greater good’ and politician’s ignore people power at their peril.