The right to protest
“What kind of conservative, I asked myself, could support a full blown violent revolution?”
Recently I watched the documentary ‘Winter on fire’ about the Ukrainian revolution of 2014. Initially a protest over Europe due to police violence it swiftly escalated into what was effectively a small war between protesters and Ukrainian riot police. Just before this the then Ukrainian president had passed anti-protest laws, or what was commonly referred to as ‘the dictatorship laws’, which prohibited protests, mass gatherings, the covering of faces and legalised trial in absentia.
Although I instinctively oppose revolution of any kind, the question of what can be done when your government openly abolishes the liberty of its people is a hard one. Slowly, in spite of myself and my general feelings of dislike toward the EU, I began to take the side of the ‘revolution'.
Maybe it was the priests and monks that braved bullets and iron clubs to pray in no man's land, or maybe it was the sheer strength of will these people had to fight as hard as they did against armed and trained riot police for so long. What kind of conservative, I asked myself, could support a full blown violent revolution?
The answer is summed up very handily in the idea of ‘changing to conserve’ or in this case protesting to conserve. What initially was a protest about an EU trade deal swiftly became about far more than that: it became about the preservation of liberty and the removal of a newly found oppressive force. In that sense this ‘revolution of dignity’ was about conserving Ukraine as it was, that is, a free society with an emerging tradition of liberty and the rule of law. The president of Ukraine broke the rule of law, abused his people and abolished their freedoms; in this situation he brought about dangerous and unwarranted change for personal and political gain.
These people were then not looking to destroy, not looking to install a revolutionary government but to keep their country as it was. They reacted to an unjust change and I cannot blame them for that; how could I stand there on Remembrance Sunday and extoll the virtues of those who defend this country and all that it represented, and then only a few weeks later condemn these people for doing exactly the same thing?
It was while reflecting on this that I realised all protest, no matter how idiotic, must be allowed to happen. Pandemic or no pandemic I will not condemn people for exercising their sovereign right to protest against the government; instead, I will condemn those who so greasily stole that right away from them.
The London protests should be allowed to happen. Instead, it is attacked by armed police. In a rather pathetic display of mewling conformity many people have attacked this gathering as selfish and unsafe claiming that these people are risking lives just because they can’t go for a pint. All that may be true, or it may not be true, I do not care. A protest is a protest and it is a fundamental cornerstone of our fundamental God-given rights and liberties. To remove these then is worse than corrupt, it is evil.
