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Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 30, No. 3. 1967.

Demonstrator finds way to cloud complex issues

Demonstrator finds way to cloud complex issues

Protest demonstrations by definition are not usually a rallying point for the hail - fellow - well - met sort of people. When President Johnson was eating his Official Lunch in Parliament Buildings last year, the demonstration milling around the lawns and flowerbeds out in front was mostly heated and volatile, peppered sometimes with little brushfire scuffles. This occasion turned up dissenters against very nearly everything over and above the basic Vietnam issue. It was all, of course, fully blown up in the uplifting dailies with that mediocrity which they invariably mistake for moral earnestness.

If ever there was a simple way to cloud over a few complex issues, the demonstrators seem to have found it. This particular display of feeling during Johnson's visit ended up, predictably enough, by turning into a pressure valve for all sorts of different anti-Americanisms and other anti-isms. Included among those present were, on the one hand, the serious intent proponents of a limitation to the destruction in Vietnam. If any man on earth has the power and initiative to change the pace of tilings in the war, that man must be President Johnson. So, the argument continues, give adequate strength to the arms of the opponents of his policies, as a demonstration possibly does, and the change in public and official thinking will lead to a change in the course of the war.

Irrational

On the other hand, as usual, there were the more irrational elements also present, demonstrative but rather incoherent with the excesses of their attitudes, who always emerge at political meetings like this one. A sizeable minority of the world's people seems to keep its sanity by focusing its fears and sense of outrage upon some vague external enemy such as a country or a leader. Here in New Zealand, luckily for the system, this very disruptive phenomenon is nardly in evidence. The number of assassins, poison-pen writers and other hostile bodies is hardly excessive. Obviously they find other channels for working off pent-up aggressions.

Alienated

In a small, highly-socialised country like our own, the people who become alienated and excessively disenchanted with the policies and officeholders of the incumbent Government probably only number a small handful. One very rough guide to this is the figure of non-voters, people eligible to vote at elections who choose not to do so, because they are incapacitated, apathetic, alienated or embarking upon a protest at the choice offering at the polls, In New Zealand the percentage of non-voters is only about half of that in Britain. In America, where the enormous and elaborate ruling structure must seem very irrelevant and remote to a lot of people leading to impotence and frustration with things down at the grassroots, the percentage is double again that of Britain's.

Effect ruined

What all this goes to prove is that the politically eccentric individual, attracted as he always is to the noise and the excitement of a demonstration as a most obvious and immediate form of protest, is rare enough and conspicuous enough here as a phenomenon to ruin all the effect of the fine art of demonstrating.

Demonstrations these days seem to be an ineffectual but quite legitimate way of voicing a dissent at a policy or state of affairs, ritualised and conducted for its own sake without relevance to any obvious end-point. Occasionally there is held a vigil or a meeting at which is displayed a sophistication of thought even greater than that of Mr. Skinner's on what he'd like to do with the economy, which in terms of public sympathy or concerted action is undoubtedly successful The demonstrators are fulfilled. But, and this is usually the case, more often the angry people wandering around with blunt, obscene placards go over with the rest of the population like a lead balloon. The cause's end is defeated by its somewhat dubious means,

Shocked

What can you say to someone who is sincerely shocked at the events, say, in Vietnam, and who wants to find a tangible and effective vehicle for his protest? Or, for that matter, what do you say to anyone frustrated at the injustices he sees here or overseas?

First and foremost: join or form a group of like-minded people. Groups can act in concert on a common policy. Pressuring by force of numbers, building resources, to attract public attention and amplify the message. This all gives to the protest an air of established legitimacy which lifts it out of the realm of anarchy. Single issues and single groups very rarely manage to sway elections and topple governments, but it has happened. Elections are still the best time to air the issues and get the commitment of the politicians. They are, however, notoriously imprecise both as a yardstick of the strengths and subtleties of opinions, and as a clear mandate for any course of action on a single issue.

Some issues, particularly the domestic ones, resolve themselves quite readily into yes no, either or alternatives, and the closer politics becomes to the Ranfurly Shield, the more the voters know exactly where they stand. But so long as the majority is always right, it can become a tyranny to the minorities who have to bend to their will. It is one of the ironies of the democratic way of running things that those people who often most genuinely need state help in their plight, such as the elderly, the mortally sick and the socially and economically deprived, are precisely those people who are least organised for action, least vocal on their own behalf, and least able to help themselves.

Opinion polls

The usual channels to the ear of those who make the decisions are the opinion-polls, delegations and letter-writing, and direct appeals to the public of which demonstrations are one variety. Pressure is always more effective when organised, but it seems to be the occupational hazard of demonstrators to be mis-read, re-written and generally taken out of context. It does, however, provide a group experience and a spiritual release for the participants of the most therapeutic value. Take the case of Cnd today. From the outside it shows all the signs of being a complete religious creed based, rather remarkably, on a single negative tenet. The hymn-like songs, the ritualised proceedings the uncritical adherence of so many of the congregation has every aspect of organised religion.

Preoccupied

All this is not intended to imply that the mass-action campaigns are obsolete. In an age where the papers and TV screens are absolutely preoccupied with politics as tht greatest tree entertainment on earth, any cause has to haye its gimmick. But so often the dabbling in excess is done for Ms own sake, self-defeating, and like any game a constant source of mild diversion from the real issues of the day.