The sound of silence

A new Year’s message to the Protesters, the Church and the moaners

Dear All,

I address you, the Protesters, without knowing who you are or indeed, as I hope to explain, what you are doing there. I don’t know what sort of people you are. ‘Idle scum’, said one man, looking at the camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral.

For myself I don’t think of people as scum. I enjoy it when they hold different views to my own, and have many friends with whom I agree on almost nothing. It is from such debate that I have formed my own views, and I hope you will take this in that spirit.

I do think the word ‘idle’ applies, however. Not idle in the sense of workshy, which has a different meaning to ‘unemployed’, particularly in the present economic climate. I mean idle intellectually. A couple of reporters have been to your camp to find out exactly what you are protesting against. One reported that nobody was willing to speak for your cause, there was no leader or spokesman. Nothing wrong with not having a leader, indeed there is much to be said for it. But not having a spokesman is slovenly: it implies that you are scared to let your message out in case someone ridicules it. But all political arguments, like scientific theory, should be subjected to discussion and review. The other reporter said the people he spoke to would only mouth trite slogans like ‘the bankers are to blame’.

What I am saying is ‘Argue your case publicly’; express your arguments forcefully in interviews and newspaper reports. Don’t just shout trivia into the microphones, explain your views.

And now we come to what that message is. Complaining that other people have more money is not a philosophy, much less a morality tale, unless you can prove they have money which would otherwise be yours. You can’t show that, indeed the opposite is the case since the ill gotten gains incur taxes. Then there is the argument that, as I have heard Mary Ann Sieghart in the Independent and many others say, ‘the people bailed out the bankers’. This is an unnecessary personalisation: we didn’t bail out the bankers (who by all accounts were doing jolly well for themselves and didn’t need bailing out); we bailed out the banks. Would you have rather they went bust? Explain.

Ah! You are blaming the bankers for making the banks go bust. If this is what you think, articulate it. My own view is that of course they did more and more deals: architects want to design more and more buildings, evangelists want to convert more and more people. But we were paying people to rein them in. If you keep a fierce dog, and it attacks you neighbour, it isn’t the dog’s fault, it just did what it does, it is your fault. We failed to regulate the banks because the political leadership at the time didn’t want to reduce the taxes coming in. Are you against that lack of regulation? Explain.

Are you complaining about cuts? In fact public spending will continue to rise for the next six years. Are you complaining about where it is spent, Trident not schools, overseas aid not hospitals? Explain.

As things stand, the protests outside St. Paul’s Cathedral have done more damage to the Church than to the banks (or the bankers). Is that what you wanted? Explain.

Now, the Church. I know you, or at least I used to. But things have changed, haven’t they?, and you have some explaining to do. We seem to have an archbishop who, like Tony Blair, ‘doesn’t do God’. Yes, the Lord campaigned on behalf of the poor, but this isn’t a protest about poverty. Yes, He complained that the rich should give money to the poor, but the Church hasn’t been arguing in favour of philanthropy (it should, in my view). Several clerics have resigned because they didn’t want to remove the protesters (and yet, like me, they can’t have a clue what the protest is about, except the notion that bankers are horrid).

Well there it is. I get angry and have probably gone on too long. I am of the views that crises are a part of the capitalist system, that this one was brought about by poor regulation, and that whilst bankers are overpaid that is simply the business of the banks’ shareholders (and is one of the reasons why I don’t own any bank shares). What I would really, really like in 2012 is for someone to argue cogently against these points.

I wish you all a cogent and articulate New Year.