The Greeks called it ochlocracy, mob rule to you. Aristotle described it as a pathological form of government, one of the three ‘bad’ ones, tyranny and oligarchy being the other two. His teacher Plato saw no valid difference between ochlocracy and democracy, and his spirit must have wafted through Westminster yesterday.
I don’t know how many in the 150,000-strong mob that overran Whitehall yesterday were familiar with such antecedents. If I were to venture a guess, I’d suggest, in round numbers, none.
However lacking their book knowledge was, their tattoos were abundant. To a naked eye their number certainly exceeded one per capita, which neatly harmonised with the feral expressions on faces contorted in hatred. Eyewitnesses report that many of those faces were adorned with broken noses, bespeaking lives lived hard.
The men, and most of the participants were male, came out to protest against unchecked immigration, or rather against immigration tout court. We could discuss the justice of their cause at our leisure, and I don’t doubt for a second that it was just.
Similarly, the Russians who were killing government officials and policemen in 1905-1917 had legitimate grievances. So did the German SA gangs in the 1920s – the Weimar Republic was indeed running Germany into the ground.
Lest I be accused of polemical hyperbole, I’m not equating Tommy Robinson types with either the Bolsheviks or the Nazis. My point is that, when the rule of law disintegrates, and the mob acquires illicit power, the results may well turn out much worse than whatever provoked such mass action.
Some of those who stampeded and screamed their way through Whitehall and Trafalgar Square might have genuinely wanted to engage in lawful protest. Yet such mass outings also invariably attract a violent mob, thuggish trouble-makers out to have the kind of fun they normally have at football matches.
Let me qualify this observation. The likelihood of mayhem at such events depends on the demographic composition of the crowd. For example, when in 2002 another Labour class warrior, Tony Blair, banned hunting with dogs, 450,000 farmers and Barbour-wearing country folk also marched through Westminster.
(Most people I knew were there, but since I’m pathologically averse to crowds of any kind, I stayed at home. This little phobia may have something to do with my first cousin having been trampled to death by a Moscow football crowd when I was little.)
Yet that Liberty and Livelihood March produced no disorder, no attacks on the police and even no littering. This, though the crowd was three times the size of yesterday’s throng.
Relatively small the numbers might have been, but they made up for it by putting their hearts and fists into the action.
The lads came prepared. Not just a sea of Union Jacks but also blown up photographs of Charlie Kirk were waved in the cops’ faces, which strikes me as somewhat incongruous.
First, most people there hadn’t even heard Kirk’s name until his tragic death the other day. Second, he was murdered by an American born and bred, not by a migrant, legal or otherwise. The photos of the girls groomed and raped by Muslim gangs would have been more appropriate, if somewhat less current.
The crowd were also shouting invective alluding to Starmer’s perverse sexual practices and questioning the nature of his relations with his mother. This suggested they found fault not just with the influx of cultural aliens, but also with the whole ethos that made that invasion welcome.
Again, I sympathise with such sentiments wholeheartedly. If it were up to me, that whole subversive lot of our rulers would be run out of Westminster and replaced with… Sorry, that’s where I stumble.
Tommy Robinson and other savage thugs? God forbid. Nigel Farage’s Reform? Perhaps. However, I distrust single-issue politics, even if I happen to agree with the single issue, as I do in this case.
Farage has tried, rather successfully, to broaden his electoral appeal in recent years. But essentially he remains lucid and convincing on one issue only: Britain’s sovereignty, which he correctly sees as threatened in the short term by the EU and in the long term by swarms of aliens diluting the nation’s identity.
This is a vital issue, no question about it. But suppose for a second that the country finally manages to shake the EU dust (with its ECHR particles) off its feet and to secure her borders against those dinghies. What then? Other concerns would come into play, the economy prime among them.
When broaching such subjects, Farage and his people are rather vague, or sometimes even not fundamentally different from Labour. I understand why: not all of Reform’s grassroots support comes from conservative types.
Farage’s earlier party, UKIP, as one of its leaders explained to me, contained as many national socialists as national conservatives, which is why it couldn’t come out fighting the general conservative corner. National socialism, of course, has had a rather bad press due to some widely publicised historical events.
There was a tendency on the part of UKIP to join forces with Tommy Robinson and his thugs, which I found worrying then and still do, now that UKIP has been rebranded as Reform. Yesterday supplied plenty of reasons to worry.
The tattooed mob attacked the police with sticks, stones, empty bottles, flares, traffic cones and everything else within reach. To the accompaniment of Elgar’s music blaring through the sound system, 26 cops got various injuries, including broken teeth, a broken nose, a concussion, a prolapsed disc and a head trauma.
Tommy Robinson, who recently got away with yet another assault charge, was having a field day, making incendiary speeches and egging his troops on. Nigel Farage had wisely refrained from lending his voice or his name to the proceedings.
He harbours prime ministerial ambitions, and there is a groundswell of public support for his Reform. But our first-past-the-post electoral system makes it extremely hard for third parties to translate votes into seats.
In last year’s general elections, Reform got roughly four million votes, 14 per cent of all votes cast. However, that gave the party only one per cent of the seats in the Commons. On the other hand, Labour’s 34 per cent of the popular vote gave it 65 per cent of the seats.
Though I believe that the only natural political home for conservatives is the Tory Party, it has become so useless as to become marginal. It may eventually get its act together, but by that time there may be no Britain qua Britain left for it to govern.
Hence, if Reform can become agile enough to wiggle its way through the thicket of first-past-the-post, it may provide the only realistic alternative to the two main parties, one subversive ideologically, the other by default. However, that battle must be fought in Westminster Palace, not Westminster streets.
If the mob is used as the battering ram of new politics, it will eventually hold the resulting government to ransom, in effect telling it “We put you there, and we can kick you out unless…” What follows that ellipsis may well spell the end of our civilisation.
If there is no other way to stop the systematic – and accelerating – destruction of the country, then Britain has no hope. Here I must caution you against the belief that things have got to be so bad that they can only get better.
Our despair may plumb such depths that we forget history that teaches that things can always get much, much worse. I remember screaming myself hoarse making this point in the run-up to the 2024 election, when many good people were so furious with the useless Tories that they were ready to welcome any alternative.
Yes, tsarist Russia was rotten, but what eventually replaced it was the devil incarnate. The Weimar Republic was incompetent, but what followed was unadulterated evil. I’m not saying the same is likely to happen in Britain. But we’ll be making a grave mistake if we at least don’t consider the possibility.