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Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 30, No. 4. 1967.

Protests must be made despite irrational elements

Protests must be made despite irrational elements

Sirs.—I wish to comment on Peter Quennell's article in Salient, March 31, headed "Demonstrator finds way to cloud complex issues."

His article speaks of a man who, when confronted by a political event such as a demonstration, is really quite unsure how to react to it. On the one hand he feels as an objective political observer he must be reserved and thought ful but uncommitted yet finds it very difficult to disguise his immediate emotive reaction of distaste, almost horror.

His article is ostensibly a criticism of "demonstrations these days." He begins by explaining in a semi-critical way the philosophy of the "serious intent proponents of a limitation to the destruction in Vietnam." We get a deprecating statement like this: "So the argument continues-" which seems to imply "No onc has really given much serious consideration to this assumption and I myself will come back and pull it to pieces." He then goes on to say that as always there are those "more irrational elements" who are rather incoherent "with the excessiveness of their attitudes" who form a "sizeable minority of the world's people" which needs "to keep its sanity" by "working off its pent-up aggressions" on some "vague external enemy."

It looks as if these are the statements he would like to be making about all of the demonstrators but some quirk —of could it be pity? or perhaps his pseudo-objectivity— leads him to forbear.

Peter Quennell spends the second half of his article describing with great knowledge and deep consideration ways in which he would advise the "sincerely shocked" to go about their protests The description parallels almost exactly the ways in which the groups he is criticising have gone about their protests, he adds nothing to them and yet claims that he does. He does not tell us what steps he would take to exclude the irrational elements." which he maintains, inevitably will render any protest ineffective.

It would have been of far greater value to have discussed the primary assumption of all protests, that in some measure pressure from a minority can influence policy. That, if you like, the presence of banners at Parliament when Johnson visited New Zealand makes one iota of difference to the progress of the war. Until this assumption has been disproved, protests must be made even though they unavoidably attract irrational elements.

Michael Short.