JackHarryBill

So the March for the Alternative was a big event. The UKUncut protests were a big deal. I intended to be at both. But I wasn’t. It took a lot to stop me going and it still feels utterly wrong to be sat here instead of being in London.

In some ways that the turnout was so fantastic makes it easier not being there. In another it makes it worse as I would have been proud to have been part of the whole day but work intervened and I reluctantly accepted that if clients weren’t to be really hacked off then I had to stay here and work. Which I have.

However I wanted to make something of the day that was in some small way connected to events in London. So I tweeted support and followed what was happening.

The fact that I haven’t gone still weighs heavily on my mind but what struck me is that in both on and off line lives I know dozens of people who are passionately opposed to the cuts but also weren’t on the march. Even more than that I realised that as far as I know most of them didn’t even think about going on the march. And I wondered why. What is it that makes people who are passionately opposed to pretty much everything this ConDem government is doing seemingly not even to consider joining a protest?

As someone who started going on marches, demonstrations and getting involved in various campaigns 30 years ago and who has in that time worked as a campaigner I understand that not everyone is as likely to get involved as I am.I know the theories of ladder’s of involvement and I understand that no matter what happens some people will never get involved.

Yet when the stakes are so high, when our “democracy” is pissed all over by the Liberal Democrats who have sold their soul for 3 pieces of silver, one of which they don’t want anyway, when the fabric of our society is threatened by the scale and pace of the cuts and when we see people across the middle east standing up to vicious dictatorships I’d like to know and understand why people who politically oppose this government and it’s ludicrous cuts don’t get actively involved. I don’t seek to condem or cajole. I simply seek to know why it is and then possibly understand better how to involve more people more actively.

I made my decision not to go and I still regret it. I would simply love to know why others made theirs. So do tell me here if you feel like it.

Posted via email from jackharrybill’s posterous