The right to protest in April

Daffodils of Bute Park, Cardiff, swaying in protest of all that is worth protesting about

'APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding   
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing   
Memory and desire, stirring   
Dull roots with spring rain.' 

T S Eliot's 'The Waste Land' is an epitaph on the futility of conflict. So much has been written about and read into the poem that generations of English Literature students have come to love, loathe or feel totally indifferent about what happened in Flanders Fields and all the other battlefields since. Yet Eliot, 20th centuries greatest poet in English language knew all too well that words never ended conflicts until the hotheaded men - it is generally men - on warring sides have had their fill of blood. The Great War, as it was supposedly meant to be, the war to end all wars, never lived up to its promise other than the death of men, ideas and the rise of new regimes, ideas and ideologues. Young men died. Flowers grew in the space where they had fallen, the world meandered through to the roaring 20s, the Great Depression of 30s, another war until the mid 40s, the loss of colonies and the welfare state in late 40s, the Suez crisis, and the rise of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the 50s, feminism, and rise of the new left in the 60s, the energy crisis, the rise of the Arab oil might, and three day weeks of the 70s, the Falklands war, miner's strike, and Hayek & the Chicago school of free market led individualism of the 80's, the first Iraq war and 'ethnic cleansing' in the Balkans in the 90's, the fall of the mighty Twin Towers, destruction of the 1500 years old statues of Buddha, the Afghan Invasion, second Iraq war, credit crisis and the election of an African-American into the White House during the first decade of the 21st century. All monumental events yet the capacity of the human resolve to end conflict and all wars is the resounding echo of Eliot and his true readers. 

Exercising the right not to bloom in the middle of a cold Spring, Bute Park, Cardiff

As the coffin of that erstwhile follower of Hayek and the free market, Margaret Hilda Thatcher was pulled across the City of London with ceremonial honours, many had gathered on both sides of the procession. The quiet applause probably drowned out the few heckles, turning of backs, graffiti and placards outside the Royal Courts of Justice. The importance of the right to protest in a democratic society is a test for democracy itself. We all seem to dislike protesters at causes we personally feel close to. This is my accusation aimed at both the left and the right. There is a human cost of each death to those who had cared about that individual. Some individuals are at once private and public. The possibility of conflict over the legacy of the public image of that individual is likely to cause offence to the mourners of the private individual. The other example of this had been protests by groups opposed to the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, voicing their disapproval as bodies of soldiers were repatriated. There is a time and place for protesting against the dead and their memories. The dead probably don't care. The soldiers who has once rushed towards each other, bayonet fixed to the rifle in a rush of adrenaline only to be torn to pieces by oncoming artillery fire, could not possibly care for conflict any more. Those who care are the living souls and those left to mourn the fallen. Where is the dignity in protest at this juncture of the passing away? 

There is another man who once liked to protest. His protest and long imprisonment defeated apartheid. In the ultimate act of dignity, the onset of the rise of the Rainbow Nation saw Nelson Mandela established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Eliot should rightly have the last words - 

'What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow   
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,     
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only   
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,   
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,   
And the dry stone no sound of water.'



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